Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  “Then the least you can do is let me use a phone so I can get myself on the next flight out.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to be on the next flight out, sir.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said raising my voice.

  “We’re not done with you.”

  “You’re not done with me? What is this, East Berlin?”

  “Sir, if you don’t keep your voice down, I can have you arrested.”

  “Even when you’re arrested you’re allowed one phone call.”

  “If you want to be arrested, I’d be happy to arrange that.”

  He stood up and walked out. Closed the door behind him. I heard it lock. A National Guardsman, crew-cut and bulky and wearing camouflage fatigues, was now standing guard outside the room. What the hell was this?

  Another twenty minutes went by. I’d definitely missed my flight. I wondered if another airline had a flight that would get me there close to eleven. Maybe I could floor it and still get to Santa Clara on time. Or just a little late.

  I kept looking at my watch, saw the minutes tick by. Another twenty minutes later, a couple of Boston police officers, a man and a woman, came into the room, showed their badges, and asked to see my ticket and boarding pass.

  “What’s the problem, Officers?” I said. Outwardly I was calm, friendly. Reasonable. Inwardly I wanted to rip their faces off.

  “Where are you traveling, Mr. Steadman?” the man said.

  “Santa Clara. I just went through all this with the TSA guy.”

  “A one-day trip to California?” said the woman.

  “My wife’s pregnant,” I said. “I wanted to get back home so she’s not left alone. She’s confined to bed. A high-risk pregnancy.”

  Get it? I wanted to say. Corporate executive, family man, married, wife pregnant. Not exactly the standard profile of an al-Qaeda terrorist.

  “Mr. Steadman,” the woman said, “your suitcase tested positive for the presence of C-4. Plastic explosives.”

  “What? That’s obviously a mistake. Your machine’s screwed up.”

  “No, sir,” the male officer said. “The screeners confirmed it by running another test. They took a swab and wiped down the portfolio and ran it through another machine, and that came up positive, too.”

  “Well, it’s a false positive,” I said. “I’ve never touched C-4 in my life. You might want to think about getting your machines checked out.”

  “They’re not our machines,” the woman said.

  “Right. Well, I’m a senior vice president at a major corporation. I’m flying to Santa Clara for a meeting with the chairman of the board. At least I was. You can check all that out. One simple phone call, and you’ll be able to confirm what I’m saying. Why don’t you do that right now?”

  The cops remained stony-faced.

  “I think we all know there’s been some kind of a mistake. I’ve read about how those three-million-dollar machines can be set off by the particles in stuff like dry cleaning fluid and hand cream and fertilizers.”

  “Are you carrying any fertilizer?”

  “Does my PowerPoint presentation count?”

  She glowered at me.

  “You get my point. Machines make mistakes. Now, can we all be reasonable here? You have my name and my address and phone number. If you need to reach me for anything, you know where I live. I own a house in Cambridge. With a pregnant wife and a mortgage.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the man said, sounding like he was concluding the interview. They both got up and left me there to cool my heels for another half an hour or so before the TSA supervisor with the comb-over came in and told me I was free to go.

  It was just after eight in the morning. I ran to the departure gate and found a U.S. Airways agent and asked her when the next flight to San Francisco was. Or San Jose. Or Oakland.

  There was an American Airlines flight at 9:10, she said. Arriving at 12:23. I could be in Santa Clara at 1:00. When the extremely punctual, and very pissed off, Nakamura-san would be sitting in first class on his way to Tokyo.

  I called Dick Hardy. In California it was a little after five in the morning, and I knew he wouldn’t appreciate being awakened at home.

  “Steadman,” he said, his voice thick.

  “Very sorry to wake you, sir,” I said. “But I’m not on the flight to San Francisco. I was detained for questioning. Some sort of huge screwup.”

  “Well, get on the next one, for God’s sake.”

  “The next one gets me in at 12:23.”

  “Twelve twenty-three? That’s too late. Nakamura-san will be long gone. Got to be an earlier flight. He’s arriving at eleven o’clock promptly.”

  “I know. I know. But there’s nothing else.”

  Now he was fully awake. “You’re standing up Hideo Nakamura?”

  “I don’t know what else to do. Unless you can reschedule him—”

  “Reschedule Nakamura-san? After the way I twisted his arm to get him here for one goddamned hour?”

  “Sir, I’m terribly sorry. But all these ridiculous terrorist precautions—”

  “Goddamn you, Steadman,” he said, and he hung up.

  I walked back to the parking garage, dazed. I’d just blown off my boss and the chairman of the board.

  It was unreal, an out-of-body experience.

  I kept flashing on the TSA supervisor with the stupid comb-over.

  “Did you pack your bags yourself?”

  And: “Was your suitcase out of your possession at any time?”

  Was it out of my possession at any time?

  Franny saying, “Kurt was here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Put something on your desk.”

  He knew I was flying to Santa Clara, and he’d been in my office recently, rigging up my briefcase with his little toy confetti bomb. I kept my overnight bag in my office closet.

  He’d set me up.

  The way he’d set the other guys up. Trevor Allard and Brett Gleason were dead.

  And now Kurt had turned on me.

  50

  My day’s appointments had been canceled, so I drove straight home, steaming mad. Kate was surprised to see me at home. She seemed somber, depressed, remote. She told me that her sister had taken Ethan to the Museum of Fine Arts to look at the mummies, and I gave her the short version of how airport security had detained me for almost two hours on a bogus suspicion that I was carrying a bomb.

  She was barely listening, and normally this was the sort of thing that really got her going. Normally she’d be listening with eyes flashing, indignant along with me, saying things like, “Oh, you’re kidding,” and “Those bastards.”

  Instead she made little pro forma clucks of sympathy, her mind somewhere else far away. She looked haggard. Her eyes were bloodshot. While I was telling her how Dick Hardy had basically exploded, she cut me off. “You must be so unhappy with me.”

  “Now what?” I said. “What in the world makes you say that?”

  Her eyebrows knit together. Her face crumpled. Her eyes got all squinty, and her tears began flowing. “I sit here all day like—like an invalid—and I just know how sexually—frustrated you must be.”

  “Kate,” I said, “where’s all this coming from? You’re pregnant. High-risk pregnancy. We both understand that. We’re in this together.”

  She was crying even harder. She could barely speak. “You’re a senior vice president now. A big shot.” Her words came in ragged clumps, between gasps. “Women are probably coming on to you all the time.”

  I leaned over next to her, took her head in my hands, stroked her hair. The pregnancy, the crazy hormones, all this time in bed. She was going out of her mind. “Not even in my wet dreams,” I tried to joke. “Don’t worry about it.”

  But she reached over to her nightstand and picked something up, held it out to me without looking.

  “Why, Jason? How could you?”

  I looked. It was a condom, still in its packet. A Durex condom. />
  “That’s not mine,” I said.

  She shook her head slowly. “It was in your suit jacket.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “You dropped your suit on the bed this morning when you were packing. And when I got up, I felt something in one of your pockets.” Her breathing was uneven. “And I—you—oh, God, I can’t believe you.”

  “Baby, it’s not mine.”

  She twisted her head to look up at me. Her face was all red and blotchy. “Please don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me you’re carrying someone else’s condom around.”

  “I didn’t put it there, Kate. Believe me. It’s not mine.”

  She bowed her head. Pushed my hands away. “How can you do this?” she said. “How can you do this?”

  Furious now, I grabbed my BlackBerry from my suitcoat pocket and hurled it toward her. It landed on the pillow next to her head. “There you go,” I shouted. “That’s my personal scheduler. Go ahead, look through it. Maybe you can figure out when the hell I’d even have time to have an affair, huh? Huh?”

  She stared at me, taken aback.

  “Let’s see,” I said. “Ah, yes. How about sneaking in some quickie nookie between my eight forty-five supply-chain management call and the nine o’clock long-term-strategy staff meeting? Slip in a little horizontal mamba between the ten o’clock end of the staff meeting and the ten-fifteen sales call with Detwiler? Some coochie in the two minutes between the meeting with the systems integrators at the Briefing Center and the forecast review session?”

  “Jason.”

  “Or maybe a minute and a half of the funky monkey between the eleven forty-five cross-functional concall and the twelve-fifteen meeting with the order admin, then a quick game of hide-the-salami in the fifteen seconds I have to get to a lunch meeting with the district managers? Kate, do you realize how insane this is? Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I don’t have a goddamned free second! And for you to accuse me of something like this just pisses me off. I can’t believe it.”

  “He told me, you know. He told me he was worried for us.”

  “Who?”

  “Kurt. He said—said he probably shouldn’t say anything—wasn’t his business, he said—but he wondered if maybe you were having an affair.” Her words were muffled, and I had to listen hard to understand.

  “Kurt,” I said. “Kurt said this. When did he say this to you?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Don’t you understand what he’s doing? That just fits right in to the pattern of everything else.”

  She glanced at me, shaking her head, a disgusted look on her face. “This isn’t about Kurt, whatever his flaws,” she said. “We have bigger problems than Kurt.”

  “No, Kate. You don’t know about Kurt. You don’t know what he did.”

  “You told me.”

  “No,” I said. “There’s more.”

  I told her everything now.

  Her disbelief slowly melted. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it turned into disbelief of another kind.

  “Are you leaving anything out?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Jason, you’ve got to talk to the police. No anonymous calls. Openly. You have nothing to hide. Tell them everything you know. Tell them what you told me.”

  “He’ll find out.”

  “Come on, Jason.”

  “He knows people all over the place. In the state police, everywhere. He’ll find out. He’s got everything wired.” I paused. “And—he threatened me. He said he’ll do something to you.”

  “He wouldn’t. He likes me.”

  “We were friends, too, him and me—remember? But he’s totally ruthless. He’ll do anything to protect himself.”

  “That’s why you’ve got to stop him. You can do it. I know you can. Because you have to.”

  We were both quiet for a few seconds. She looked at me. “Do you hear a funny sound?”

  I smiled. “No.”

  “It sounds like a…maraca. Not right now, but I keep hearing something.”

  “I don’t hear anything. Bathroom fan, maybe?”

  “The bathroom fan’s not on. Maybe I’m losing my mind. But I want you to call the police. He’s got to be arrested.”

  I fried some eggs, toasted an English muffin, brought a breakfast tray up to her. Then I went to my study and called Franny and filled her in.

  “The detective called again,” she said. “Sergeant Kenyon. He asked for your cell number, but I wouldn’t give it to him. You’d better call him back.”

  “I will.”

  As I spoke, I was tapping away on my laptop. I pulled up that Special Forces website I’d bookmarked and went to the “Guestbook” where Trevor had posted his question about Kurt. No other replies had gone up.

  “I’ll be in soon,” I told Franny, and hung up.

  I signed on to AOL, the account I hardly ever used. Six e-mails in the in-box. Five of them were spam.

  One was from a Hotmail address. Scolaro. The guy who’d replied to Trevor, said he knew something about Kurt.

  I opened it.

  I don’t know this guy Semko personally. One of my SF brothers does and I asked him. He said Semko got a DD for fragging a team member.

  DD, I remembered, meant “dishonorable discharge.” I hit reply and typed:

  Thanks.

  Where can I get proof of his DD?

  I hit SEND, and was about to sign off, when the little blue AOL triangle started bouncing. New mail.

  It was from Scolaro.

  If he got DD he was court-martialed. Army court documents are public record. Go to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals website. They’re all available online.

  Quickly I typed a reply:

  What’s your tel #? I’d like to give you a call.

  I waited a minute. E-mail is strange—sometimes it goes through in a couple of seconds; other times the big pipeline, wherever it is, gets clogged, and mail won’t get through for an hour.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to answer.

  While I waited, I did a Google search for the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. The browser cranked and cranked and eventually popped up with a warning box.

  Access Restricted to Military Active Duty, Reserve or Veterans. Please enter valid military ID or Veterans Identification card number.

  I couldn’t get in.

  I sat there for a few moments, thinking. Who did I know who might have a military ID number?

  I picked up the phone and called Cal Taylor. “Cal,” I said, “it’s Jason Steadman.”

  A long, long silence. A TV blared in the background, some game show. “Yeah,” he said at last.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  I entered Cal’s ID number, and the website opened.

  I scanned it. I didn’t know what that guy Scolaro was talking about. I didn’t see any court documents. On the menu bar on the left, one of the items was “Published Army Opinions,” and I clicked on “By Name.”

  A list came right up. Each line began with a last name. Then ARMY and a seven- or eight-digit number—a court case number, maybe?—and the “United States v.” and the rank and name of a soldier. Staff Sergeant Smith or Colonel Jones or whatever.

  The names were listed in alphabetical order. I scrolled down, so fast that the list became a blur, then slowed down a bit.

  And came to SEMKO.

  “United States vs. Sergeant KURT L. SEMKO.”

  My heart raced.

  The blue AOL triangle was bouncing. Another e-mail from Scolaro. I double-clicked on it.

  No way. Not talking about Semko. Said too much already. I got a wife and kids. Sorry. You’re on your own.

  I heard Kate’s voice from down the hall. “Jason, there’s that maraca sound again.”

  “Okay,” I yelled back. “Be there in a minute.”

  A PDF document opened.

  UNITED STATES ARMY COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS UNITED
STATES, Appellee

  v.

  Sergeant First Class KURT M. SEMKO

  United States Army Special Forces, Appellant

  A lot of names and numbers and legalese. Then:

  A general court-martial composed of officer and enlisted members convicted appellant, contrary to his pleas, of signing a false official document with intent to deceive (three specifications), one specification of false swearing, and three specifications of obstruction of justice. Appellant pled not guilty to and was acquitted of premeditated murder…

  I skimmed it quickly. Kurt had been charged with the murder of a fellow soldier—a “fragging,” they called it—named Sergeant First Class James F. Donadio. Donadio was described as “formerly a close friend of the appellant.” A “protégé,” some of Kurt’s teammates testified. Until Donadio had reported to their captain that Kurt had been stealing war trophies—“retained illegal weapons”—which was against regulations.

  Then Kurt had turned on his former protégé. It was all there, under “Background and Facts.” Donadio had found a cartridge jammed into the barrel of his M4 rifle. The weapon would have blown up if he hadn’t noticed it. Then a “flash-bang” grenade, normally used to clear a room, had been rigged up to Donadio’s bed so it exploded one night. Flash-bang grenades made a loud explosion but caused no injuries.

  Another time, a jumpmaster noticed that Donadio’s static-line parachute had been sabotaged. If he hadn’t realized that the pack closing loop had been switched with another line, Donadio would have been badly hurt.

  Pranks, I guess you’d say.

  Kurt was suspected of all these acts, but there was no evidence. Then one morning, Donadio had opened the door to the Ground Mobility Vehicle he always drove and maintained, and an M-67 fragmentation grenade exploded.

  Donadio was killed. No grenade was found to be missing from Kurt’s gear, but one was missing from the team’s general weapons locker. Everyone on the team had the combination.

  All but one of the twelve team members testified against Kurt. But again, the evidence was lacking. The defense argued that Kurt Semko was a highly decorated, much-lauded soldier of documented bravery in combat. He’d won three Purple Hearts.