The Secret Corps

by Peter Telep

  They were always Marines. That part they had never forgotten, but the thrill of clandestine operations had been replaced by real world obligations and responsibilities, by training others to do the fun jobs, by spending more time on theory than on practice. But now he was back. They were back.

  Before Corey could regale himself any further, Easy Money exited through the front door, lifting the collar of his overcoat. He hastened along the brick path, his polished leather oxfords flashing in the walkway lights as though they were drawing current. He was money, all right. Money, money.

  “Let’s go,” said Willie, shoving a balaclava into Corey’s hands.

  “What’re we doing now?”

  “New plan. We’re going to roll this guy.”

  * * *

  The old man was an avid subscriber to Popular Science, and nowadays Johnny often perused the magazine’s website, scanning articles about military technology such as how squids were inspiring better camouflage for soldiers and how new condensation technology captured drinkable water from diesel exhaust. In some of the more pointed articles, he learned that one of the smallest subatomic particles in the known universe was called a “quark.” However, while sitting there in the idling SUV, he realized he had just discovered a new particle, one even smaller, one he dubbed “his patience” because it was infinitesimally small, arguably nonexistent. For every second that the driver and Shammas spent in the woods, Johnny lost a year of his life.

  He was eighty-seven now, a hunchbacked wizard with wild white hair. He sat on the front porch of his Smoky Mountain cabin and apologized to his nieces for his failures. “I don’t know what happened to your father. I don’t know who killed him.”

  While they cried, he clambered to his feet and smashed his rocking chair across the porch. He screamed and shook his wizened fists at the storm clouds.

  Johnny shook his head at that image and willed himself away, back home, back to Elina. She soothed him with her musical voice and with that pearlescent sheen in her eyes that had never faded, even after all these years. Being married to a Recon Marine was no picnic (not that we would truly know). He reflected on that John Milton quote he liked to paraphrase: those who wait also serve. Elina had reminded him of all the time he had spent away, and the pangs of guilt and longing struck hard. It was Daniel who always told him how lucky he was, that he had found a woman who could put up with his over the top personality, his locker room antics, and his child-like spontaneity. Johnny might be preaching the good word of “Easy day, no drama,” but living with him was only for the few, the proud—and not for the faint of heart. When he was younger, he never felt guilty about his service. Elina knew what she had signed on for, but now, as they grew older together, the enormity of her sacrifices became clear, no longer clouded by his unyielding sense of duty and ego. If the trail ended here, he would return home, and she would be there for him, his rock. She would say he had tried his best. She would urge him to be thankful for what he had, and not focus on what he had lost. His brother was never coming back.

  “I’m the sheepdog now!”

  Johnny banged his fist on the steering wheel. “I can’t take this any more,” he told Josh. “We’re going.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Josh answered, studying the table computer. “Wait. Movement near the trees.”

  “Oh, no,” Johnny gasped. “Is this... is this really happening?”

  During his final year in the Corps, Johnny had been an Assistant Operations Chief with 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company. He had been responsible for directing staff members and platoons in target development, mission analysis, operational planning, and the execution of anti-terrorism operations. He had gone downrange to Al Anbar province, Iraq, where he developed unit training management curriculums, operational plans, procedures, and the tactical employment of combat supporting units. That was the Marine Corps description of serious planning, of putting people together and making shit happen. After twenty-three years in the Corps, Johnny understood that plans needed to be flexible and rewritten on the fly to account for an asymmetric enemy.

  Nevertheless, this driver had completely surprised him. The kid had tucked his arms beneath the pits of a body and was struggling to drag it from the woods, moving in short bursts between which he caught his breath. He reached the grassy shoulder and picked up his pace, plowing through a bed of fallen leaves that marked his path. As he neared the Buick, he waited a moment to check for cars, then lifted the body higher and made one last dash.

  Josh zoomed in with the drone’s camera, and there he was, Shammas, his heels dragging, his forehead torn apart from an exit wound the size of a golf ball. A Mardi Gras mask of blood obscured half his face. The driver reached the tailgate, hauled Shammas higher, and then, in a final heave, dumped him into the trunk.

  Once Shammas’s legs were folded inside, the driver slammed shut the lid and climbed into the vehicle. His brake lights flashed before he sped away.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I remember one night in Iraq when we took these Army Special Forces guys upriver. They drove their ATVs right onto the boats. We dropped them off, and four hours later they came back. Rumor was they were on a mission to get these two insurgent leaders to kill each other. I never forgot that. And that’s how I came up with the plan to tie up our loose ends in New London.”

  —Corey McKay (FBI interview, 23 December)

  The darkness materialized to life and rose behind Easy Money’s car. That darkness was Corey, moving with the practiced ease of a veteran Marine, once a boat captain, now a crimson-eyed reaper behind his balaclava. The brawny man took one look at the business end of Corey’s pistol, threw up his hands, then whirled—

  Coming face to face with Willie’s Glock.

  As he opened his mouth to scream, Willie shoved a glove into that gaping maw, then jammed the barrel of his pistol into Easy Money’s forehead. A shudder of empathetic pain had Corey flinching his brows.

  “Shhh, big boy,” Willie said. “You scream, I shoot. We’re just here for a little cash. You chew on that glove and keep quiet.”

  In the next instant, Corey was down at the man’s oxfords, wrenching free a lace he would use to bind the brawny man’s arms behind his back. Back in the good old days, they would have a roll of duct tape or a pair of zipper cuffs—or even a pair of handcuffs—because in every squad there had always been some tactard who over packed for every operation. This plan, however, had been devised on the fly, and Corey had realized during the sprint over that they had nothing with which to bind the man. Then he had considered Easy Money’s mirror-like oxfords—foot wear worn by the Donald Trumps and Warren Buffets of the world.

  With the lace in hand, Corey followed Willie as he forced the man behind the car, toward one of the carport’s brick columns that would shield them from the inn’s front door and windows. Corey bound the man’s arms behind his back, then got to work, rifling through Easy Money’s pockets, snatching his wallet, keys, phone, and another prayer card similar to the two they had already found. He carried no weapons and was armed only with a coupon for dinner at On The Waterfront, a local seafood place. Corey thumbed the key fob, unlocking the car. In the glove box, he found the vehicle’s registration and insurance information, along with the owner’s manual. He scanned the documents, then nodded to Willie and came around, opening the hatchback and folding down the back seats.

  “Get inside,” Willie ordered.

  The menace in Easy Money’s eyes was impressive, even reptilian, a toxin that could both immobilize and help digest his prey. His large head shifted between Willie and the car, and Corey sensed the gears grinding in his head: make a break now... or obey. A man as well-dressed as him, a man of his comportment—a man of his size—was not used to being ordered around, let alone mugged.

  For his hesitation and defiance, Corey rewarded Easy Money with a gloved punch to the head, a few inches west of his temple. Stunned by the blow and more docile, Easy Money barely fought back as they wrestled
him into the hatchback. Corey used Easy Money’s remaining shoelace to bind his legs. They rolled him onto his belly, then closed the hatchback and raced off. In their minds, they were a pair of Olympic sprinters bounding for the SUV. In reality, they were light years slower.

  They had left their vehicle near the backhoe they had IDed earlier, and once across the street and back inside, Willie started the engine and guided them up a service road and back onto Pequot Avenue. “What did we get?” he asked.

  In the bluish glow of the LED cabin light, Corey examined the documents. “Well, the registration and insurance confirm what we saw online with the tag search: his car is registered to the Islamic Center in Shelton, Connecticut.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Got another one of these,” he said, holding up the Islamic card. “Nothing written on the back. Just the praise Allah text.”

  “What’s up with these cards? What’re they doing with them?”

  Corey shrugged. “Maybe we should have questioned him.”

  “Not worth the risk,” Willie said. “We want him to think he got mugged. Just something random. Nothing else. If he goes back to his buddies and says he was questioned—”

  “Yeah, I know, that blows the alarm.”

  Willie nodded. “Did he have a driver’s license? Any credit cards?”

  Corey opened the wallet and dug through it. “No credit cards. Just some cash, couple hundred bucks at least. And here’s the license. State of Connecticut. Says his name is Jerome Buttler. Lives in Windsor.”

  “Outstanding. We’ll use the money for gas. And we’ll hang on to the license, but it’s probably a fake. What about the phone?”

  Corey lifted the prepaid, compact flip phone from his lap. “No calls recorded, no numbers saved, no messages. He might have an app that erases everything.”

  “He probably does. And guess who pays the phone bill?”

  “The Islamic Center in Shelton.”

  “No doubt.”

  Corey sighed. “Be nice if we could get into his room and search it.”

  “For all we know, the whole place could be run by jihadis. And who knows, this guy could be a player or just a courier. Do we want to take that risk?”

  “He’s dealing with Shammas and Blue Door,” Corey reminded him. “And he’s tall enough to have killed Johnny’s brother.”

  “That’s true. And there’s no telling how far up the chain of command he could get us.” Willie began making a U-turn.

  “What’re we doing now? Going back?”

  “Hell, yeah. We can’t leave him.”

  * * *

  Those thugs had taken his wallet and phone. How would he explain this to his colleagues here and to those in Namibia? And what about his primary responsibilities? The phone call he was supposed to make? He spat out the glove, tugged against the shoelace digging into his wrists, then turned to Allah:

  The dua’ of any one of you will be answered so long as he does not seek to hasten it, and does not say, ‘I made dua’ but I had no answer.

  The lie came like a murmur at first, then fully announced itself. He would say he had lost his jacket, and inside were the wallet and phone. He would commit to this story—because if they learned the truth, he would not live to see another day.

  Given who they were.

  And what they were about to do.

  * * *

  The GPS indicated they were on Sullivan Road, crossing the bridge over I-64. Josh divided his attention between the SkyRanger’s computer screen, the nav display on the dash, and his window, where the valley unfurled like a roll of frieze carpet pinpricked with light. Soon, the two-lane road burrowed beneath a dense canopy, following a tortuous path along the ridge lines. The Buick was now eight hundred meters ahead, the driver over compensating for curves, suggesting he was not familiar with the corners and switchbacks. As a precaution, Johnny resorted to only the running lights and had reduced their speed to 25 mph.

  They had been shadowing the kid for the past thirty minutes. Shammas’s death had rendered both of them mute and listening absently to the engine’s hum, along with the soft whir of heat through the vents. Josh had never been very superstitious, but he had an eerie feeling that they should turn back, that their deaths had already been predetermined on the day they were born, that this hunt had no part in the narrative of their lives. They were challenging fate, enraging Odin and the other gods, and recompense would be exacted with the blood of their friends and loved ones.

  To combat the feeling, he checked the drone’s systems time and again, wishing he had a shot of whiskey to dull the edge. Meanwhile, Johnny sat there inert, allowing his life force to drain into the seat. Even Corey’s text updating them on their mugging of Easy Money had elicited no response from him. He was, Josh knew, hell bent on intercepting the driver and drawing equal amounts of intel and blood. Here was where they differed. While Johnny wore his heart on his sleeve, Josh kept his stowed aboard a Riverine Patrol Boat crewed by ogres in olive drab. Good luck getting near it. The truth was his father had taught him to guard his emotions, especially when lying supine on the double-wide’s linoleum floor as though crucified against his own future. Now Josh committed himself to remaining calm and observing the enemy while trying to assess his motivation—yet another survival ritual.

  Had the driver been ordered to kill Shammas? Then why had Shammas left the car? It seemed he had gone off to take a leak, and, perhaps the driver had seized the opportunity to shoot him, either because Shammas was trying to escape or because he had orders in hand. What had Shammas done to warrant his execution? Perhaps he had failed to do something. Johnny’s prying represented a security leak, and maybe Shammas had paid the price for his inaction. Josh rewound the questions and reviewed them again, the suppositions flashing but as quickly dying, leaving behind smoke coiled with mystery.

  Josh adjusted the drone’s course, skimming the treetops as the Buick slowed, the driver hesitated, then finally turned left. Shady Oaks Road was shaped like a whip in mid-stroke and terminated about 1.5 miles ahead at the crest of a broad hill, the tallest among several shoulders of rock. Frowning, Josh worked the tablet computer, gaining more altitude. He cleared his throat. “Johnny, stop at the next corner. Don’t turn.”

  “Roger.” Johnny pulled off the road, switched off the running lights, and parked. “What do we got?”

  “Check it out.” Josh pointed to the navigation screen. “Looks like a dead end.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “I don’t see anything yet. Maybe you can check it on your phone.”

  “I will. I think we got him, Josh.”

  The SUV’s cabin, now cast in the warming glow of the tablet, adopted a new air, as though all of the pessimism, so pervasive just moments ago, had fled through a crack in the window. It was easy to assume that Johnny had lost all hope, but he had not. His was an undying hope that had raised his shoulders for twenty-three years in the Marine Corps, a hope sometimes camouflaged by setbacks and despair but one that would rise like a sniper in a ghillie suit to remind him, Josh, and every Marine that it had not forsaken them, that it was always there, as pure and clean as mountain air.

  While Johnny brought up Google Earth on his smartphone, Josh tracked the Buick until it neared the end of the road, arriving at the clearing, with the little towns of Beaver and Daniels lying to the northeast like collections of candles in a darkened cathedral.

  With a daring that quickened his pulse, Josh piloted the SkyRanger even closer to the clearing, toward the rough hewn perimeter of trees. He slowed to a hover, then buzzed straight up for a wider view. As the clearing grew more distinct in the white-hot display, he and Johnny exchanged a curious look.

  The clearing was paddle-shaped, with the bulbous end spanned by six or seven intersecting dirt roads forming a capillary between an assortment of structures, some resembling trailers, others more barn-, garage-, or warehouse-like from above. There were fourteen in all, with as many cars parked around them—s
edans, SUVs, pickup trucks. Near the more narrow top of the clearing lay several long dirt courses with tall berms like those found on shooting ranges. Over on the southwest side stood a fenced off area with tilled ground, perhaps a makeshift farm or corral. Encompassing the entire enclave was a chain-link fence crowned with concertina wire, a fence whose main gate lay beside the berms.

  The Buick paused at the gate, and a figure came from the nearest trailer and stopped to unlock it. Once the gate was dragged aside, the Buick passed through, with the figure locking up after the new arrival.

  “I have to bring in the drone,” said Josh. “Fifty minute run time on the battery, and it’s getting low. I’ll send up number two while the first one’s charging. Looks like only one way in or out, unless he hikes down the other side the mountain. In that case, I’ll spot him with the second drone.”

  “Sounds good,” Johnny replied. “But Josh, what’re we looking at here? I can see it on Google Earth, but there’s no name for it, no nothing.”

  “It’s like some kind of private trailer park.”

  “Or a commune.”

  Josh ran a quick web search for Islam, Raleigh County, West Virginia. He clicked on the first link. “Whoa, Johnny, look at this.”

  Johnny scanned the headline and immediately called Willie, his voice freighted with tension. “You still up there?”

  “Yeah. We’re watching him. He’s tied up in the car.”

  “I need you down here.”

  “You want us to leave? That’s a big loose end, Johnny. I hate to say this, but what if he’s the guy who killed your brother?”

  “He’s tall enough, but I think he’s too big. He’s not the guy. Get down here A-SAP. I’ll drop a pin for you on the map.”

  * * *

  Willie ended the call, then faced Corey, wearing an expression that left no room for argument. “You got the first shift.”

  “And it’s an all night drive,” Corey added, his enthusiasm knowing no bounds. He punctuated his reminder with several epithets as they both got out in the marina’s parking lot and traded places, Willie now riding shotgun.