by Chuck Logan
Jesse cocks her head and poises her pen over the empty page. Her hand shakes slightly. Her eyes widen.
“First thing is,” Sam says, “they skewed the after-action report to say Marge and Toby were killed in the crash. Keith Colbert was there. He said Marge and Toby were out of their harnesses. Look.”
He twirls the notebook around and takes the pen from her hand. Then he sketches the outline of a helicopter and marks two Xs, one inside the outline and one to the left front, outside the diagram. The last X he draws is on the right side of the cockpit area.
“The blast hit the right side of the aircraft. Laura was killed instantly.” He pauses to evaluate her eyes. “You with me?”
Jesse nods and maintains eye contact as a thickness builds in her throat.
He taps the inner X. “Toby, he managed to get out of his harness and was found laying in the cargo bay with his pistol in his hand. He had severe injuries from impact, but Keith said it was three bullets in his chest that killed him.” He pauses to let this sink in.
The pen taps the X outside the outline. “That’s Marge.”
Jesse supposes that Sam is showing her his cop/soldier game face. Old school. No hint of emotion in his voice or his eyes about the woman he was involved with, who volunteered to take his place that day . . .
She drops her eyes to the X on the lined notebook paper. Marge. X marks the spot. Then she raises them, like, Okay, you got my full attention, Top.
Sam nods and continues. “Now, Greg says he found Marge’s body here, six feet to the left front of the cockpit. She couldn’t have been thrown out at that angle, not in her gunner harness. What’s the first thing you think about in a crash?”
Not trusting her voice, Jesse retrieves her pen from Sam’s hand and prints, Help your crew members.
Sam nods again. “So she had to get out on her own. That’s where she was killed. Two shots to the back of the head. And her pistol was found on the ground next to her body. Keith’s no medical examiner. He’s a dentist from Williston. And he didn’t see all that many casualties over there. But he can recognize point-blank gunshot entry wounds. Marge was executed. He meant to file a report that Toby and Marge had been shot after the crash. Then he gets called over to Task Force Brown, where they go though it again and amend his report. In the new report everybody dies in the crash.”
After a moment, Jesse prints deliberately, What did Keith say about changing the report?
Sam shrugs. “They transferred him and his crew to Kuwait same night you went down, advance work on the drawdown. I couldn’t locate him again before they shipped me out.”
Jesse narrows her eyes and prints, What else?
Sam sips his coffee, sets down the cup, and says, “I tried to track down the dude with the code name Keith was flying, the one working with the Iraqi cops. He helped Keith dig you out of the cockpit.”
Jesse holds up her hand and clamps her eyes shut. Something. Then she reaches over, taps her finger on Sam’s wristwatch, and takes her pen and draws a squiggle on the page with a forked tongue coming out of the head.
With a grin, Sam says, “You got it. Guy was wearing a gold Rolex. Them Snake Eaters always wear them gold Rolexes, huh?”
Jesse bobs her head and raises her split eyebrows.
“Couldn’t find him either, just a name: Joe Davis, former jarhead. They booted him out of the country for some reason. But he was part of a task force involving the FBI, and I have some contacts I asked to run some checks.
“The Iraqi Intelligence Ministry, which sponsored the raid that day, wouldn’t return my calls. Gotta understand I was working at a considerable disadvantage over there. I even tried talking to the State Department about the contractor, Noland, who was the target of the attack you flew into. Complete radio silence there too. I did manage to find out that a routine satellite overfly of the area where you got shot down was retasked that particular day. No eye in the sky.”
Sucks, Jesse prints.
“Big time. Problem is, from the moment the blast went off until Keith landed was maybe four, five minutes for all the dust to clear.” Sam’s face is now set, implacable. “So only two people know what happened in that dust cloud: the shooter and maybe you.”
Hearing that, she takes a moment to put both hands on the edge of the table to steady herself.
Then Sam reaches over and pats her hand. “I got a feeling about this so, for now, let’s stay off phones and email. So how about I send you old-fashioned letters? There’s some other stuff I’m poking around in, but it’s just a hunch at this point. I’ll keep you current if I turn anything up.”
Then, as Sam pushes the notebook to her side of the table, he cocks his head and points at the stars all over the cover. “What’s this?” he asks.
Jesse shrugs, picks up the pen and prints doodles on the cover.
“Hmmm.” Sam’s eyes conjure briefly with the scrawled symbols, then they both look up at the same instant, sensing Toby, who stands in the doorway.
“Right,” Sam says, “easy does it for starters. They only gave me half an hour.”
As he starts to stand up, Jesse stays him with pressure on his arm, opens her notebook, and prints, Sam, how you doing with Marge?
Sam pats her hand again, but his expression remains stoic. “That’s my next stop soon’s I get home. Pay my respects.”
That night Jesse waits for sleep, pressing the notebook containing Sam’s diagram with both hands against her chest. Beyond her open door the ward is a hush of nurses making rounds on their silent cat-pad shoes and the muted beep of monitors floating in the vast white noise of a sleeping hospital. She repeats the word clear over and over under her breath, stretching out the phoenetics: C-L-E-A-R as she visualizes the cluttered, gunked-up screen of her mind. Clear is basically downloading a freaking antivirus program.
Brought it down in a controlled crash. Did your job.
Chapter Thirty-One
Davis, laying low, is on his third Motel 6 and has just finished a spinach salad at a Subway when the cold cell rings. He thumbs connect.
“Joey, it’s Mouse. We caught a break.”
“What’s up?”
“Bobby Appert and some people are willing to give us a big assist. He left a message on your old phone.”
“I left the phone in the car I ditched in Baltimore.”
“So? Doesn’t mean I can’t monitor incoming signals. He wants a meet. So give him a ring. And Joey, go in heavy and be careful. It could get dicey. Like there could be some large carnivores sitting in on this meeting. Oh, and bring your old ID.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Gotcha.” He glances through the restaurant window at the blue Escape parked in the Subway lot. Large carnivores, Mouse said. Why else would he include an armory in my latest survival kit?
Down the road he pulls into a Holiday station to top off the gas tank and calls Appert’s cell number from an outside pay phone.
“Appert.” Old time cop voice.
“Surprise.”
“Joey not Joey,” Appert says cryptically. “We gotta talk.”
“Do I need my lawyer?”
“You need to stay flexible. You need to find the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Take Route 198 off the parkway, then take the first right. That’ll get you into the north tract. The road ends at some picnic tables next to the Little Patuxent River. Six p.m. You got that?”
“Got it. See you at six.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“It’s on,” Roger Torres says into the encrypted satellite phone. “Six p.m. my time, Appert is meeting Davis at a remote location off the Baltimore Parkway.”
“And you know this how?” Morgon asks in Michigan.
“Voice intercept off Appert’s cell phone. We have solid copy.”
“Certain people would like it if you could interrogate him. Find out who his handler is.”
“What’s your feeling?”
“Off the record, I just
want the whole thing to go away. You’re the man on the ground.”
“So capture is not absolutely necessary.”
“Capture could be a costly proposition; this guy’s a pro.”
“I understand. I’ll be in touch.” Roger ends the call and then studies the three very fit young men who stand at a picnic table under a flowering dogwood at the north I-95 rest stop between Washington and Baltimore. They study a map spread out on the cement table. They wear shorts and polo shirts, and until they started looking over the target area, they were kicking around a soccer ball. Now they converse quietly in Spanish but slip into fluent English if passersby stray too close.
To Brian Cawker, watching through tinted windows behind the wheel of the Lincoln Town Car, they look more like Olympic athletes from a small Central American country than seasoned operators. A Jamacian-bobsled-team kind of impression. Perhaps not quite ready for the bigs. True, they are clean-cut and polite and appear to come from the Castellan rather than the Indio end of the Mexican gene pool. “You sure about these guys?” he asks, turning in the driver’s seat and giving Roger a polite smile.
“Best I could get on short notice,” Roger says.
“They won’t blow away some family out there on a picnic?”
“C’mon. They’ve been thoroughly briefed.” Roger purses his lips and fingers a thin 18kt Van Cleef Arpels gold chain around his brown throat. Cawker is a compleat professional. His opinion has weight.
“We’ll see,” Cawker says as he watches the trio swagger over to his car. Overconfident, they strut like teenagers. Then he zips down the window and gets a good look into the cold, merry depths of the brown eyes in their Conquistador faces. The Aussie shrugs and says, “They might be up for the job.”
“I want him alive, if possible. I’d like to question him,” Roger says.
“He’s a trained man—on the run, you say?” one of them asks, holding up a file photo lifted from Davis’ last assignment in Iraq.
“Oh, yes; ex–Force Recon. He’s definitely trained . . .”
“Then capturing him could be difficult.”
“Very difficult.”
“And we’re concerned about the FBI man. What if he’s not alone?”
“Well . . .” Roger shrugs.
“Precisamente,” the man says.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Davis drives the Parkway toward Washington, goes past the 198 exit, passes over the Patuxent River, and wheels the Escape off on County 167. He slows at a sign that announces, Main Campus, Central Tract. A wooden dispenser holds road maps of the grounds. He gets out, takes one, and learns that the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center is the nation’s first wildlife experimental station, established in 1937. Maybe Appert has a sense of humor; Ft. Meade abuts the wildlife park to the north.
He locates the area Appert mentioned on the map, then explores the gravel service roads until he estimates he’s a mile from the access route Appert specified. He’s checked the sunrise-sunset tables on Mouse’s iPhone and knows sundown will be at 8:33 p.m.
It’s now 5:40. Davis wants to get a look at the opposition before he hooks up with Appert. An hour before sundown will do nicely.
He parks the Escape in the brush, opens the hatch, and shakes a long camo backpack, a pair of khaki shorts, and two plastic liter bottles of spring water out of an HTO Outfitters bag. He made the purchases after he got directions from Appert. He kicks off his tennis shoes, removes his jeans, pulls on the shorts, and relaces his shoes.
Then he threads one of the silencer attachments on the CAR-15 and then breaks it down, detaching the stock receiver group from the barrel. In two pieces, the weapon fits into the pack. Then he screws the other silencer on his. 45 pistol and sticks four magazines apiece for each weapon in his web vest. The rifle, the pistol, and the vest go into the pack. The pack goes on his back, and his old floppy bush hat goes on his head. He jams the park map in his back pocket and takes a moment to drain one liter bottle of spring water. He tucks the other bottle in a pocket on the side of the pack. Then he hangs a cheap plastic compass around his neck on a flimsy cord. He now looks like a backpacker out for a day trip.
Using a GPS azimuth and orienting off the degrading sun, which he keeps on his left shoulder, he jogs into the trees and heads northeast. His target destination is where Route 168 dead-ends at the Little Patuxent River. Soon he falls into a relaxed rhythm of moving and listening and evaluating the ground ahead. It’s pleasant enough going, except for the bugs, and, overhead, a canopy of silver maples, birch, hickory, and an occasional towering white oak blocks the sun. Skirting thickets, checking his compass and the sun, Davis pads along on a shadowed carpet of moss and ferns and decayed leaf mold.
Movement right.
He pauses, slight crouch, eyes tracking. Then he sees a doe push up on her haunches and nonchalantly move deeper into the brush. Not used to being hunted in here.
He checks his watch: 6:25. The Rolex blazes gold in a beam of sunlight. Vanity purchase; old bad habit. He removes the watch and zips it into a side pocket on the pack.
First he smells and then sees the meandering river. He checks the compass and the park map. The river tracks roughly diagonal, north to south east. When he sets a new course north and west, more directly into the setting sun, he moves with more deliberation. Heel and toe, and mind the dry branches that snap. After fifteen minutes of this silent ballet he catches a gleam of slanting sunlight on metal through a break in the brush. A few cautious steps closer, and he picks out the windshield and grill of a blue Crown Victoria. And a flash of red hair. Suit jacket off, the FBI man leans against the car with his arms folded over his white shirt. Appert jars the eye against all the green.
You been too long in the city, guy; you’re hanging out there like a bedsheet.
Davis takes a small pair of Zeiss binoculars from the pack and lenses the area immediately around the FBI man. Then focuses on the car. There’s a shadow hunched down in the passenger seat. Okay, he didn’t come alone.
Appert parked in a sward of mowed grass at the end of a gravel road. Three picnic tables are scattered in an open oblong maybe 150 yards long, fifty yards wide, and bounded on one side by the river and by woods on the other three. If they’re here, there’s at least two of them—if they know what they’re doing: one to the left and one at the bottom of the open rectangle. A basic L-shape—to cover the target area. He doesn’t think they’d put the river between themselves and the road, their exit.
A freshening breeze stirs through the foliage, causing the leaves to shiver and sigh; an advantage that diffuses specific sounds. Now every step is calculated and every patch of the ground ahead is scrutinized as he skirts the south end of the clearing. It takes fifteen minutes to cover fifty yards. He freezes when he picks up a twitch of movement that breaks the pattern of the wind-ruffled leaves.
A brown twitch.
Finds it. A deer’s ear, rotating, directional. Then he sees the large liquid eye. Carefully, he selects a dry stick and heaves it into the thicket. The deer erupts from cover and bounds with the headlong survival instinct of a buck. Then, as the crashing recedes, Davis hears a sound that is distinctly out of place: A muffled scritch of static. Then a low voice: “Relajado—carajo venado.” Then a double scritch, the unmistakable signal of someone keying a mic twice: Roger that.
Okay. Davis can dig it. El Gallitos. He’s been on a few live-fire exercises against narcos in Columbia and Mexico. Now he is moving in slow-motion inches, homing in on the voice.
The man lays prone, folded into the roots of an oak; he wears a camo smock and a nylon skullcap, and his hard cheekbones are the color of mahogany. He holds a radio handset in one hand. A stubby Uzi submachine gun with a silencer is poised in the other. The tree he’s using for cover is just back from the edge of the wood line. Davis can look past the man and see Appert’s shirt in the distance like a white postage stamp.
Slowly Davis backs away. He figures whoever the guy was talking to on the radio is c
lose enough to be startled by the deer. So two of them at this end. The Uzi tells him the guy isn’t here to take notes.
Now he makes his way, ever so slowly, to the east, toward the river. After a brief scout, he finds a suitable ford, part sandbar and some rocks, and crosses to the other side. Moving faster now, with thirty yards of cover between his route and the river, he parallels the clearing and goes right past Appert, who is now pacing and looking at this watch. When enough woods screen him from the clearing, he studies the river again and fords across through water that never rises above his waist. Picking his way through the trees north of Appert he notes a clump of birch across the road from Appert’s car: three trunks splayed off like a sturdy fleur-de-lis.
Two minutes of careful watching, and he is reasonably certain the shadow between the pale white trunks is a man’s head and shoulders.
So three.
Quickly, quietly he slips to the edge of the woods just north of Appert, looks around briefly, and selects a depression behind an uprooted oak, the sturdy trunk four feet in diameter, the exposed roots scraggy as a mud-caked hydra. The tree lies athwart a direct line to the birches across the road. He removes his backpack, assembles the CAR, loads one magazine, transfers another to his hip pocket, then lays the .45 and four mags on the tree trunk. Then he duckwalks up to the edge of the brush, six feet from the FBI man.
“Appert,” he whispers loudly, “Don’t react. We are not alone . . .”
“Wha . . . ?”
“Wander toward my voice and unzip like you’re gonna take a pee.”
Appert swings his eyes into the brush. “What the fuck you doing in there?” he growls—too loudly—and Davis knows he’s made a mistake because Appert is not a patient kind of guy, at least not tonight.
“You’re an hour late, asshole!” Appert shouts. Worse, he points his finger directly at him.
So much for snatching one of them alive! Davis pitches forward, shooting out his hand.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Davis swipes at Appert’s ankle to knock him off his feet as a muted stutter commences across the road and gets a handful of air. Appert’s ahead of him, stretched out in a sliding-into-first dive into the brush. Bullets hiss-zip-snap through the overhead. Branch bits and green confetti shower down.