The Butcher's Bill (The Linus Schag, NCIS, Thrillers Book 2)

by Martin Roy Hill

  Schag took a hesitant sip from his steaming paper cup and asked, "You said you could help Bill Butcher?"

  Clarke sipped her own drink and nodded. "I think so, at least," she said.

  Schag eyed her the way he'd eye a suspect. "How?"

  "You heard what I was trying to explain earlier?"

  Clarke nodded. "When you were shut down by the so-called brain trust. Some of it. I was a little preoccupied with my own thoughts."

  "I can imagine," Clarke said. "You don't think Mr. Butcher could do the things he's accused of, do you?"

  Schag took another sip of coffee, looked around, then back at Clarke.

  "I don't know what I think right now, commander," he said. "I guess he did do it. I mean he left a message at the murder scene—well, one of them. That was pretty much a confession. But . . ." Schag shook his head. "Bill was a good friend. A great guy. Everybody liked him. He was a conscientious agent. A good husband and a loving father. I can't believe he'd just turn like this."

  "And that's what I believe, too," Clarke said. "I'm a neurologist, Agent Schag, and I'm involved in a study looking at the neurological effects of agueloquine on service members who have been given it as a malaria prophylactic. Our data show several service members have had psychotic breaks after taking agueloquine, resulting in acts of violence against themselves or others."

  "Themselves? You mean suicide?"

  Clarke nodded and took a sip of coffee. "Sometimes worse. Sometimes horrific. Have you ever heard of an army sergeant named Bales?"

  Schag thought a moment, remembering. "You mean the soldier who went off post in Afghanistan and murdered several Afghani civilians?"

  Clarke nodded again.

  "Mostly women and children," she said. "He walked off post once and used his service weapon to murder families in their sleep—men, women, and children—then calmly walked back on post. After a while, he went back and did it all again. Now I don't want to defend what he did, but there has been some discussion whether Sergeant Bales was a victim agueloquine psychosis."

  Clarke reached into her black brief case, pulled out a manila folder fat with sheets of paper, and thumbed through the sheets. Finding what she wanted, she handed Schag several photocopied newspaper articles.

  "Bales was only one incident," Clarke continued. "In the summer of 2002, four separate soldiers, all previously deployed to Iraq, murdered members of their families. All four soldiers took agueloquine while deployed. In 2004, another soldier was court-martialed for cowardice. Prior to that, he had an exemplary service record. The Army eventually determined his acts of cowardice were due to agueloquine psychosis and acquitted him."

  She let Schag scan the papers. They were all United Press International news stories about the Army linking agueloquine to a 2004 series of murders committed by soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg. Schag finished reading them and handed them back.

  "I could go on, agent," Clarke said, sliding the photocopies back into their folder, and the folder into her brief case. "Suicides, murders, you name it. Both in the military and civilian communities, and all linked back to agueloquine."

  "Just what is this . . . agueloquine, commander?" Schag asked.

  "It's an anti-malaria drug developed by the U.S. Army to replace doxycycline as a prophylactic to prevent malarial infections," she said. "Doxy is an antibiotic, but it also prevents most malaria infections. The problem is, you need to take it every day, and getting service members to do that is difficult. With agueloquine, you only take it once a week. That was the nice thing about it. Service members were more likely to adhere to their dosage regimen."

  Clarke took a sip of coffee, and dabbed her lips with a paper napkin.

  "Unfortunately, the Army rushed agueloquine through testing," she continued. "There were . . ." She wagged her hand. "There were also some irregularities in the testing. Before it was discovered there was form of neurotoxicity to it, agueloquine was in widespread use around the world, not only by the military but civilians, too."

  Schag thought a moment, thinking back to his deployments to the Middle East.

  "When I've deployed, I've been given a pill to take once a week for malaria," he said. "That had to be this agueloquine, right?" Clarke nodded. "Does that mean I’ll lose my mind?"

  "No, no, no," Clarke said, shaking her head. "Not necessarily. It seems only to have a neurological effect on a very small number people. It may have to do with genetics or a predisposition to mental illness. Some research shows a relationship with mild traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. Other research indicates the psychosis may present after the drug bioaccumulates in the brain or the body. We simply don't know. That's why it's so important we find your friend Mr. Butcher and—how do you say it? And bring him in . . . alive."

  "How do you know for certain Bill was taking agueloquine?"

  "It would be unlikely he didn't," Clarke answered. "The military didn't stop prescribing the drug until 2013, well after Mr. Butcher's tour in Iraq."

  Schag leaned toward Clarke, pounding the table with his finger as he spoke. "They continued to give this drug to service members even though they knew it was unsafe?"

  "It was a matter of necessity, agent," she said. "Understand this, malaria kills more than half a million people each year. Compare that risk to the very minute risk of agueloquine toxicity affecting only a handful of people each year."

  Schag tugged at his lower lip, thinking. He asked, "If this agueloquine is so . . . neuro toxic, why were the shrinks in the meeting so dismissive of your theory?"

  Clarke leaned her elbows on the table, interlaced her fingers, and rested her chin on them, looking at Schag with mock wide-eyed wonder.

  "Because, Agent Schag," she said in a sarcastic, sing-song way, "they're not here to help the police understand Mr. Butcher. They're here to cover the government's ass."

  "What?"

  "They're not the local police or sheriff's experts," Clarke said. "They weren't asked to come here. The U. S. Department of Justice sent them to deflect blame for everything that's happening away from Uncle Sam." Clarke made a gesture with both hands as if shoving them into pockets. "You know, everyone's uncle with the deep pockets?"

  "Why the government?"

  "The government created it. The government issued it to service members. Who else will people blame?"

  Schag took a deep breath, thinking. "So, they throw Bill to the wind and deny he might have been impacted by this agueloquine so anybody hurt by him can't sue the government?"

  Clarke resumed her mocked look of wonder. "Now you're beginning to understand, agent," she said. "Sure, it'd be a long shot, but there is always some scumbag Wall Street lawyer willing to take a chance at a big settlement."

  "I used to be one of those scumbag Wall Street lawyers," Schag said.

  Clarke raised her eyebrows. "Sorry," she said.

  Schag waved a hand, dismissing the subject. In truth, when he worked on Wall Street, he did feel like a scumbag.

  "But you can't know for certain Bill was prescribed the drug, can you?" he asked.

  "We're sure," Clarke said, nodding. "As part of our study, we have access to the medical records of uniformed and civilian Navy and Marine Corps personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The military's ability to capture medical data on deployed personnel greatly improved during these two wars. We didn't want to happen what occurred at the end of Vietnam and Desert Storm, where we had to guess at what service members were exposed to."

  "No more Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome debacles," Schag said.

  "Exactly," Clarke said.

  Agent Orange was a toxic herbicide used to kill jungle growth during the Vietnam War. Thousands of American service members and millions of Vietnamese later suffered severe, even lethal, health problems from exposure to Agent Orange. During the First Gulf War, service men and women suffered health problems from exposure to airborne toxins from burning oil wells, bombed fighting vehicles, and the latest in armor-piercing
depleted uranium munitions. In both cases, years often passed before symptoms appeared. It was a nightmare for the veterans and the government to prove if an illness resulted from a wartime exposure or was naturally occurring.

  "As soon as I heard the news reports about Mr. Butcher, I checked our database for his medical records. They showed he was prescribed agueloquine not only while deployed as an NCIS agent, but earlier, too, when he was with the SEAL teams."

  "And if we do catch him and . . . bring him in alive . . ." Schag winced at the phrase. ". . . what can you do for him? Is there a treatment, or some kind of antidote?"

  Clarke leaned back, took a deep breath, and shook her head.

  "I'm not going to lie to you, Agent Schag," she said. "I don't know if we can do anything for Mr. Butcher. But we can try. The more people we can find like Mr. Butcher, the more testing we can do, the better chance we have of understanding how this happens."

  "In other words, make him a guinea pig," Schag said, not trying to hide the distaste in his voice.

  "Better a guinea pig than a corpse," Clarke said. "Wouldn't you agree, Agent Schag?"

  CHAPTER 7

  MONDAY

  San Diego County Emergency Operations Center

  San Diego, California

  1300 Hours

  SCHAG'S BLACKBERRY VIBRATED IN HIS coat pocket. Pulling it out, he checked the caller ID and saw Tom Riley's name.

  "My master's voice," he told Clarke. Pressing the answer button, he said, "Yeah, Tom, what's up?"

  "Where the hell are you, Lin?" Tom demanded.

  "Having coffee with Lieutenant Commander Clarke," Schag answered.

  "Who?"

  "The doc that spoke at the meeting."

  "Where?" Tom sounded confused.

  "Just across the compound from the EOC," Schag explained. "There's a cafeteria of sorts here."

  Riley grunted. "Well, this is no time to pick up strange women," he said. "Get your butt back here pronto. We've got to get back to the base. The former assistant secretary of the Navy is meeting us there."

  "Charles Bennett?" Schag asked, though he knew the answer.

  "Charles Bennett the Third," Riley corrected. "Old Bomber Bennett himself."

  "On my way," Schag said. He pressed the End Call button and put the Blackberry back in his jacket. "I've got to go, Commander."

  Clarke's eyes were wide. "Something to do with Charles Bennett?" she asked.

  Schag nodded. "The Third," he said, standing.

  Clarke stood, too. "Old Bomber Bennett?"

  "The one and only," the agent said, nodding.

  "Oh, my," Clarke said, slinging her brief case over her shoulder. "What have you done to deserve such punishment?"

  ☼

  Tom Riley and Tim Parker were waiting in the agency car with the engine running when Schag and Clarke reached the EOC. They exchanged business cards before Schag climbed into the vehicle’s front passenger seat.

  "What the hell was that about?" Riley growled. He threw the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking slot before Schag could fasten his seat belt.

  "Commander Clarke is a physician," Schag said, buckling the belt. "She's a neurologist and medical researcher. She had some information on what may have caused Bill Butcher to go over the edge."

  Schag recounted their discussion about agueloquine and its psychotic effects on certain people. When he finished, Riley shrugged.

  "So what's that mean to us?" he asked. "Can she fix him?"

  "She's not sure, but she does feel strongly she needs to study him to find a cure," Schag said. "She wants us to capture him alive."

  Riley grunted as he turned the car onto the freeway, and sped south. "That'll be a neat trick, considering the temper he's in. Besides, it's not our case. It's in the hands of the cops."

  Schag remembered the SWAT lieutenant at the ASW base and felt a bitterness rise in his throat.

  "And what are the cops doing now?" he asked.

  "Yeah, while you were flirting with the good doctor, we got a call from security at the ASW base," Riley said. "They were able to identify Butcher's car, though it wasn't registered to him."

  Schag's brow furrowed. "If it's not registered to Bill, how do they know it was his car?"

  "You remember that severed head Butcher left at the Gideon compound?" asked Parker. Schag nodded. "Well, base security pried open the trunk of the suspicious car. Inside they found everything south of the head."

  The sour taste in Schag's throat increased. He closed his eyes, pushed up his classes, and squeezed his eyes with his finger and thumb.

  "We figure Butcher took the victim's car to the Gideon compound, then drove it to the ASW base," Parker continued. "In the morning, he left the sedan and stole the pickup truck to throw us off his trail."

  "The sheriff put out a BOLO out on the stolen truck," Riley said, "and he's got air units looking for it on all of the freeways. That includes that Predator drone the Customs boys have." Riley shook his head. "What the fuck do they need a Predator for?" He switched lanes to avoid a slow driver, muttering, "Homeland Security gets all the good stuff."

  ☼

  What passed as the conference room for NCIS Southwest Regional HQ was less impressive than those envisioned by Hollywood. People who thought the military had the latest in high-tech equipment always amazed Schag. It was a false impression generated by movie scriptwriters with no military background. Anyone with military experience understood the equipment bought with the taxpayers' money rarely performed as advertised, if it performed at all. When it came to computers and broadband, the Navy had less than even a moderately well-off corporation. Open and secured Internet connectivity was intermittent at best. Computers were old and filled with so much security software they barely operated. The intent of the security software was to combat Chinese hackers who broke into DoD systems with too much regularity. The fact that most computers used by the U.S. military were built in China was never mentioned as the problem.

  The secured conference room was crammed into a windowless room lined with flat-panel video displays for teleconferencing. A camera mounted at the front, along with tabletop microphone-speaker assemblages, provided for video teleconferencing or VTC—when it worked, which it wasn't. A technician cursed as he tried to fix the problem, all the time blaming Congressional budget cuts for all the woes in the country, including his crappy equipment.

  "Those bastards in the House work four days out of every ten and still draw a full-time salary," he grumbled, as he ran a diagnostic program. "Then they say us civil servants make too much money and furlough us one day a week. How do they think things get done in the Navy?"

  "Wah, wah," Riley said. "Poor little you. Just be happy you still have a job, which you won't if you don't get this stuff running in the next fifteen minutes."

  Schag checked his email on his Blackberry. "I thought you said Bennett was meeting us here," he said.

  "That's what I was told," Riley said, looking through some papers in front of him. "He decided differently. He's currently in hiding. Apparently, he believes Bill Butcher is coming after him. He decided it was safer for him to do a VTC." Riley glanced at his watch. "Where the hell is Parker with our coffee?"

  "I'm right here," Parker said, entering the room carrying a carton loaded with three tall cups of coffee and two piles of sugar and sweetener. He handed one to Riley with an apologetic look. "Sorry. The line at the coffee stand took forever."

  He handed another coffee to Schag, who thanked him and grabbed a packet of sweetener. Riley dumped three packets of sugar into his coffee, stirred it, and tasted it. The sweet concoction didn't change his sour mood.

  "You got that thing working yet?" he grumbled at the technician.

  "Just finishing it up," the technician said.

  He booted up the computer and, in a few minutes, the screen at the front of the conference room came alive, showing a field of blue except in one corner where a small box showed the three NCIS agents and the technician in
the conference room.

  "There you go. Happy?" The technician stood up and adjusted the video camera that didn't seem to have any effect on the small video picture. "When your party logs in, he'll automatically show up on the screen."

  "About time," Riley said.

  "Could've had this fixed last week if'n all us techs wasn't furloughed for a day," the technician said, heading for the door. "Next time you have technical problems, call your congressman."

  Schag looked at his watch and asked, "When's old Bomber Bennett supposed to call in?"

  Riley looked at his own watch. "Should be any minute. But he'll make us wait to show us how important he is."

  "Why do they call him Bomber Bennett?" Parker asked.

  "He was part of the old administration's big push to invade Iraq," Schag said, catching a warning glance from Riley. "You've heard of Shock and Awe?" Shock and Awe was the cute media name the previous administration had given its intense bombing of Iraq prior to the land invasion. Parker nodded. "Well, William Bennett the Third. . ." Schag tossed a quick grin at Riley. ". . . was the real political power behind Shock and Awe, only he wanted it to be more shocking and awesome. He was quoted as saying he wanted to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age."

  "And so the media called him Bomber Bennett," Parker said, catching on.

  Schag nodded. "But it had less to do with his fighting nature than with the fact he had a half dozen draft deferments during the Vietnam War when he could've done all the bombing he wanted himself. Now he's been nominated to become defense secretary."

  "That's—strange, isn't it?" Parker asked. "I mean he's not exactly an ally of the president. They're from different parties."

  Schag shrugged. "Hands across the aisle?"

  "Maybe the new administration wants to appear strong on defense," Riley said. "Bennett has the experience."