Mission Liberty
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MacKenzie made the arrangements with a sergeant named Rodriguez in the 14th Mortuary Services Battalion for the storage and transportation of Stephen’s remains. Rodriguez was glad to assist, saying he’d expected to be busier than he was.
She could only learn, with Walter Ford’s help searching all the available computerized databases, the name of one of Stephen’s distant cousins, a man named Roy who lived in Santa Cruz. The cousin hadn’t talked to Stephen in over ten years and hadn’t a clue that Stephen had gone to Africa, or even that he’d ever entertained dreams of being a writer. Stephen’s parents were both dead, Roy said, killed in a car crash when Stephen was sixteen. Stephen’s father had been a machinist, the cousin thought, though he wasn’t sure, and not a military man. Stephen had gone to a junior college for a few years, Roy recalled, but beyond that, the cousin had lost touch and couldn’t be of any further help. He said he didn’t want to have anything to do with funeral arrangements and wouldn’t know who might. There was no next of kin. That’s all he had to say.
Ford also discovered that for a while, Stephen had attempted to maintain a Web site, where he’d posted his blogs and his thoughts, but the Web site had gone down years earlier, and nothing of it remained. Stephen had sublet his apartment in Chicago to a stranger he’d met from a flyer he’d posted in a Laundromat, and he’d removed his things before the sublettor moved in. A neighbor MacKenzie managed to contact said he believed Stephen had sold all his worldly possessions to pay for the trip to Africa. The neighbor had bought a piano from Stephen, an upright, for three hundred dollars. The neighbor described Stephen as a loner, a really nice guy who nevertheless didn’t seem to have that many friends.
Mack didn’t know Stephen played the piano.
Examining his belongings more closely, she discovered that the ticket he’d bought had been one way. An ATM transaction receipt showed that he’d withdrawn $2,000 in cash a month earlier, and that he still had $6,217.23 in the bank. She called the bank to say she’d be acting as executor for the estate, and that Stephen would have wanted his money donated to charity, Oxfam, she decided. The bank said there’d be paperwork. She gave them her stateside mailing address. She was unable to turn up any will, note, or indication of what Stephen might have wanted to have done with his remains upon his demise. He’d said only, after their night together, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but as bad as everything in this country is, I wish I could stay right here with you forever. I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier or more alive.”
So she made arrangements for that to happen, for him to stay there forever. She had him cremated in a mortuary in Accra, Ghana, and then she arranged with a C-130 pilot flying a relief mission to take her over the GPS coordinates she’d marked and noted, the morning they’d awoken together. She put Stephen’s ashes in a clay bowl, of traditional Fasori design, with an etching of a lion on it. When the pilot lowered the C-130’s cargo door and the cargomaster gave her the go signal, she dropped Stephen’s ashes out the back, where they would mingle with the African dust, and help redden the African sunset for a day, and return to the land where humans first came down from the trees and walked upright. She’d decided, beyond what she had done already, that she would allow the mystery of Stephen Ackroyd’s life and death to end there. She didn’t know quite what to say, but she’d memorized something she thought might be appropriate.
“Kwa maana jinsi hii Mungu aliupenda ulimwnegu,” she said. “Hata akamtoa Mwanawe pekee, ili kila mtu amwaminiye asipotee; bali awe na uzima wa milele.”
Her words were lost in the wind, but perhaps the wind was where they belonged.
She had two remaining tasks. One was to make sure that Corporal Okempo received a commendation for bravery under fire from the African Union, if not a promotion as well. The second task was to order the largest birthday cake she could find, chocolate with lots of frosting and colored flowers, and all the birthday candles it could hold, delivered to the orphans at Camp Seven, which was still under reconstruction. The cook she talked to on the USS Lyndon Johnson told her he’d worked in a bakery stateside. She found a relief pilot willing to make the delivery. On the cake it said, in bright red letters made of frosting, THIS CAKE IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT MONSTER-FREE.
DeLuca returned to Washington. He was summoned to the Pentagon, where he was read the riot act, loudly and at length, for overstepping his authority and allowing, once again, his mission to expand beyond its original parameters. General LeDoux was at the meeting and took DeLuca’s side, but the heat was intense. At the end of the dressing down, DeLuca was told he and Team Red were suspended from duty, pending further review, and that a letter of reprimand would be added to his file. They asked him to write up a full report, and he said he would, though he knew no one would read it. LeDoux assured him, after the meeting, that the suspension was only temporary, and that the letter of reprimand would be revoked, and that the bureaucrats were only covering their asses, in case someone from above, or someone from the media, got wind of what had happened.
“I know,” DeLuca said. “I may be extraordinarily youthful in appearance, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Frankly, I don’t give a shit, as long as I can still do my job.”
“You can,” LeDoux said. “I’ll make sure of it. I’m going to take some heat myself for this, but I think I can square it. Can I ask you one question?”
“Sure,” DeLuca said.
“This goes no further than us,” LeDoux said. “Did you suggest that Paul Asabo put on the robe and then open the gate, or was it his idea to assume power?”
“Come on, Phil,” DeLuca said. “You know I’m not smart enough to do something like that. I’m not even a commissioned officer.”
“Stay by your phone,” LeDoux said. “By the way, do you remember how I went through channels with your request to rescue the ambassador by posing as a car bomber?”
“Yeah?”
“I finally heard back from command,” LeDoux said.
“And?”
“Request denied,” LeDoux said. “Too high risk.”
“Shit,” DeLuca said. “I guess we’ll just have to think of something else.”
“Don’t worry, though—you still have friends in high places. Matter of fact, the White House thinks very highly of you. Apparently there’s talk of giving you some kind of medal for rescuing Reverend Andrew Rowen.”
“Rescuing Rowen?” DeLuca said in disbelief. “I pointed to a bus.”
“Yes,” LeDoux said. “Promptly and with great accuracy. And for that, the president is extremely grateful.”
“Can I go now?”
“Yes, you can,” LeDoux said.
About the Authors
David DeBatto has served in the active-duty Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard as a German linguist, counterintelligence course instructor, and counterintelligence special agent. He served in Europe at the height of the Cold War in the late 1970s to early 1980s and in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 where his Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) hunted Saddam, WMD, and top Ba’ath party leaders. He is currently writing further books in this series for Warner Books along with Pete Nelson as well as articles for major publications such as Vanity Fair, Salon, and The American Prospect. He is also a frequent guest on major television and radio news programs giving his analysis of breaking stories in the global war on terrorism. David lives in Florida.
Pete Nelson lives with his wife and son in western Massachusetts. He got his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1979 and has written both fiction and nonfiction for magazines, including Harper’s, Playboy, Esquire, MS, Outside, The Iowa Review, National Wildlife, Glamour, and Redbook. He was a columnist for Mademoiselle and a staff writer for LIVE magazine, covering various live events including horse pulls, music festivals, dog shows, accordion camps, and arm-wrestling championships. He’s published twelve young adult novels, including a six-book series about a girl named Sylvia Smith-Smith, which earned him an Edgar Award nomination f
rom the Mystery Writers of America. His young adult nonfiction WWII history, Left for Dead (Random House, 2002), about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, won the 2003 Christopher Award and was selected for the American Library Association’s 2003 top ten list. His other nonfiction titles include Real Man Tells All (Viking, 1988), Marry Like a Man (NAL, 1992), That Others May Live (Crown, 2000), and Kidshape (Rutledge Hill, 2004). His novel The Christmas List was published by Rutledge Hill Press in 2004.
More Explosive CI Action!
Please turn this page for a preview of David DeBatto and Pete Nelson’s new novel
CI: Homeland Threat
available soon from Warner Books.
DELUCA WAS ABLE TO GRAB THE RINGING TELEPHONE at his bedside before it woke his wife. He slept more lightly than she did, a habit he’d picked up in Iraq, if not before then. He glanced at the clock on his bed stand. It was twenty minutes after five. Nobody calling at that hour would be calling with good news.
“DeLuca,” he said.
“Good morning,” the voice said. “Captain Martin with General LeDoux’s office.”
DeLuca had spoken with Martin a hundred times before, but Martin was the sort of guy who needed to give himself a full introduction each time he called, a formal military sort who followed the book at all times, but an okay guy.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” DeLuca said. He took the mobile handset into his study. The sky was becoming light in the east, overcast after a night of rain, the air coming through the window screen fresh and damp and full of ozone. Glancing out the window, he saw a pair of deer, sniffing at the tulips his wife had planted in the garden. He’d made a slurry from raw eggs and painted the flowers, upon the advice of his friend Walter, who knew about such things. The slurry was working—the deer turned away. Some people thought they were cute. He thought of them more like rats on steroids.
“Bad news, I’m afraid,” Martin said. “There’s been some activity. All in the last twelve hours or so.”
“What kind of activity?” he said. “Where?”
“Minnesota, South Carolina, Florida and England,” Martin said. “Three retired generals and an admiral have been attacked. And possibly something in your neighborhood. I can’t really give you a full briefing, right at this moment. We’re still gathering intel, but we only now got word. General LeDoux wanted to schedule something for later in the day, but it looks like some of our retired stars are being targeted. And/or their families.”
“In my neighborhood?” he asked. “In Boston?”
“We’re not sure,” Martin said. “We’ve gotten news there’s been a homicide. No details yet. We were hoping you could look into it.”
“A homicide?” he said. “Why are you calling me?”
“It’s military,” Martin said.
“The M.P.s handle crimes by military personnel.”
“We don’t know the killers,” Martin said, “but it appears to be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil against a military target. Global coordination has been suggested. The Pentagon wants to get CI involved. They’re still discussing to what extent, but they want you to scramble, I’m afraid.”
“Okay,” DeLuca said. “Who and where?”
“Boston Common parking garage,” Captain Martin said. “It’s Katie Quinn. General Joe Quinn’s daughter. We can tell you more at the briefing but right now, we’d like to get you on the scene ASAP. We just picked it up a little while ago, so it’s pretty fresh.”
“I’m about twenty minutes away,” DeLuca said.
“We’ll talk to you after you’ve had a look,” Martin said. “We sent a car to General Quinn’s house too. We might want you there as well, but we’ll let you know. First things first. Sorry to have to wake you.”
“It’s all right,” DeLuca said. “I had to answer the phone anyway.”
DeLuca grabbed an armful of clothes, dressed quietly in the downstairs bathroom and left his wife a note on the kitchen table to tell her something had come up and to call him on his cell.
He found his Bs and Cs in the drawer of his desk where he kept them, then took his service Beretta from underneath his mattress and donned his shoulder holster, the weapon concealed beneath his jacket. A familiar feeling came over him. In the fifteen years between getting out of the Army the first time and re-enlisting after 9/11, he’d served with the Boston Police Department. He knew the drill, too well.
He was on the road minutes after hanging up the phone, on a steamy summer morning where the humidity and the temperature were both already in the low eighties. Traffic at that hour was light. He took the Northeast Expressway over the Mystic River Bridge and then 93 south into “The Big Dig,” the massive reconstruction effort that, over the past fifteen years, had successfully taken interstate 93 and sunk it into the ground, the expressway now a tunnel beneath downtown Boston costing the city a mere $14 billion, which was only $12 billion more than they originally thought it would cost. He emerged at the Summer street exit and took it to Tremont, circling The Common once to see where a squad car blocked the garage entrance on Charles street, and parked finally on Boylston at a meter, walking across the park to a kiosk where an elevator and a stairway led down into the garage.
He’d walked the Boston Common a thousand times as a detective. The rain had stopped, but the sidewalks were still puddled. He recognized a homeless guy he’d known only as Marvin the Moon Man, who liked to sleep in the cemetery and who was, at this early hour, sitting on a bench in a thorazine haze, talking to himself. In another hour or two, Crazy Larry would be playing the bongos by the baseball fields. There were probably already Emerson College students, smoking pot in the Public Gardens. DeLuca noted the irony—the last time he’d visited the Boston Common had been to attend a political rally for retired U.S. Army General Joseph Quinn, who’d been running for president. General Quinn had spoken of how he’d come from Boston originally, traveled the world to serve his country and come home to Back Bay, and how he would nevertheless be willing, if called upon, to move to the White House to serve his country again. DeLuca had known General Quinn since Gulf One. He’d always liked and respected the General, for how he’d carried himself in Desert Storm, for the way he’d led the coalition of forces in Kosovo, and for how he’d always respected and stood up for the common soldier. DeLuca would have voted for him in a heartbeat, had General Quinn won his party’s nomination, but he hadn’t. Now, if Captain Martin’s information was correct, the body of the General’s daughter lay dead in the garage below.
He found the crime scene on level two, in the northwest corner of the garage, four squad cars with their flashers flashing, a forensics van and a number of unmarkeds. At this hour on a Saturday morning, the garage was nearly empty. A uniformed officer stopped him as he approached and told him no one was allowed to get any closer. DeLuca showed the officer his Badge and Credentials and asked him who was in charge. The uniform told him Lieutenant Morrissey was in charge but that Captain Wexler was there too.
“The Army is involved in this?” the cop asked.
“You got it. You said Billy Morrissey?” DeLuca said. “I thought he’d be up in New Hampshire ridding the rivers of unwanted trout by now.”
“No sir,” the uniformed officer said. “He’s still with us.”
Morrissey was talking to a junior officer. DeLuca approached and waited for Morrissey to look up. He smiled when he did.
“Hey Billy,” DeLuca said, shaking the hand of his old friend. “Thought you did your twenty.”
“Hello Lieutenant,” Morrissey said. “Long time no see. Or what was it when you were in the Army? Sergeant?”
“I’m still in,” DeLuca said. “Promoted to Chief Warrant Officer, if you gotta know. Who else is still around besides you?”
“Couple guys,” Morrissey said. “Me, Doyle, Finn, Kaz Takata, Difranco, Lapinski, a couple others. And Wexler, of course.”
He nodded toward the man standing by the garage tollbooth.
“Why’s Wexler here?”
“At five A.M.? He still an asshole?”
“Did the Sox win the Series?” Morrissey said. “Yeah, he’s still an asshole.”
“You know what I heard about how the Sox won the World Series? Their lucky charm?” DeLuca asked his friend.
“What?”
“They had Ted Williams’ head in the cooler,” DeLuca said. “Keeping the Gatorade cold.”
“I bet it was smiling too,” Morrissey said. “You here on Army business?”
“I’m afraid so,” DeLuca said. “Counterintelligence.”
“What the fuck’s that mean?” Morrissey asked. “You’re against intelligence?”
“Don’t make me sound like Frank,” DeLuca said. “CI is sort of the Army version of the FBI. Except with more toys. Something goes wrong inside the Army, we look into it.”
“Like internal affairs?”
“Not exactly, but sort of,” DeLuca said. “We’re also who they send into the fifth world to find the guy who knows the guy who knows the guy who’s causing problems. Sort of like working a drug gang from the street up. Except with bombs. Katie Quinn?”
“Behind the car,” Morrissey said. “I didn’t think the Army got involved in civilian matters.”
“We do since 9/11,” DeLuca said. “The Patriot Act gives us a bit more leeway. To be honest, they haven’t told me yet why I’m here. There’s apparently some question as to how civilian this is. I think they also wanted me because I know the father.”
“General Joe?” Morrissey said, walking slowly.
“I worked his security detail, Gulf One,” DeLuca said, walking with him.
“Yeah?”
“They knew he wasn’t going to sit behind a desk at HQ when the ground game got going. He was out there in the dirt with everybody else, but they wanted me to make sure he didn’t fall into the wrong hands.”