Ground Truth

by Rob Sangster

  “In there,” he said.

  They dumped Guzman inside the cage. Gano kicked his thigh and got no response. Jack turned a metal desk on its side and wedged it against the wall facing the entrance to the building. All three of them squatted behind it, Debra between them.

  They were silent, scarcely breathing, eyes fixed on the door.

  “Sinclair did this,” Jack whispered hoarsely. “He wanted me dead even if a full-scale attack pushed Guzman into poisoning the aquifer. He talked Gorton into changing the plan.” He glanced at the other two, and away. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  Debra squeezed his hand. “Maybe they won’t find us.”

  “They will find us,” Gano said, “They’ll search every building. I damn sure hope they’ve been briefed that this plant is full of deadly gas and flammables. Otherwise, their technique is to kick in the door, toss in a couple of hand grenades, and spray the place with automatic rifles. Then they send in the grunts. Bad for us.”

  They heard automatic weapons firing nearby.

  “They saw what direction we ran,” Gano said, taking his .38 back from Debra. “When they get here, whatever happens, don’t stand up or they’ll cut you in half.”

  Seconds later, a barrage of bullets slammed into the metal door. Already unlocked, it swung open and banged into the wall, hanging from one hinge. Silence. The attackers were listening, poised to invade the building.

  “Ready men,” called a gruff voice, “on my signal.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Guzman clawing at the cage wall to haul himself to his feet. Jack grabbed his ankle with one hand. Guzman jerked loose and lurched out of the cage into the open, screaming with all his strength. His curses in Spanish were punctuated by shouts of, “Fuck you. Fuck you.” He shook his fists at the door.

  The impact of bullets pounding his body jerked him from side-to-side like a puppet. He swung a defiant left hook, pitched backwards, and landed in a heap. The shooting stopped and the attackers quickly withdrew.

  “Son-of-a bitch,” Gano said matter-of-factly, “that fat bastard got the last laugh on me.” He was holding his upper arm where blood oozed through his shirt. When Debra looked at the wound in alarm, he added, “It’s a ricochet, a flea bite. But thanks to Guzman, now they’re sure we’re the bad guys so they’ll come in shooting.”

  Jack wrapped his arm around Debra’s shoulders. Her martial arts skills wouldn’t be enough this time.

  He said softly, “I love you.” She looked at him and winked.

  “Gano,” he said, “I’m going to tell them who we are.”

  “Right, like they’ll take your word. I’ll try something that works in old war movies.” From his cramped position behind the metal desk, Gano sang out at the top of his voice, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” He paused. Nothing happened. “We fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.”

  A rifle barrel poked around the corner into the space and fired two shots that glanced off a steel vessel.

  “Knock it off, damn it, until I tell you,” someone shouted outside. The same voice called through the doorway. “What comes next?”

  “First to fight for right and freedom,” Gano sang out. “And to keep our honor free.”

  “That proves shit.” There was a pause. “Who won MVP in Super Bowl 44?”

  “Drew Brees,” Jack called. “We’re here to stop the wells from being poisoned.”

  “This is Captain McIntyre, Special Forces,” called a stern voice. “How many are in there?”

  “Three, alive.”

  “Who’s the one on the ground?”

  “He was going to poison the aquifer.”

  “Identify yourselves.”

  “Jack Strider, Debra Vanderberg, Gano LeMoyne. The aquifer is safe for now, but the pipeline that runs up the hill has to be repaired immediately.”

  “First I want you to come out single file. No weapons. Hands on top of your heads.”

  “Tell your men to back off,” Gano called.

  “We’re not backing off. Now move it.”

  “Don’t know about going out there naked,” Gano said to Jack. “Those trigger-happy sons-of-bitches turned Guzman into Swiss cheese. I’ll just hang on to my ol’ .38.”

  Jack looked at Guzman’s corpse. He wasn’t worried about McIntyre’s men being trigger-happy. He was worried that Sinclair might have made sure three gringos wouldn’t leave this plant alive—no matter what. Of the options, what they would do if they saw Gano with a gun was more predictable.

  “Leave the gun, Gano,” he said. “They can take us apart anytime they want. I’ll go first.” He stepped around Guzman’s body into the beam of the Captain’s blinding flashlight, hoping that he wasn’t making a mistake that would result in all of them dying.

  Chapter 54

  July 12

  10:00 p.m.

  CAPT. MCINTYRE had seemed relatively sure they weren’t the terrorists he’d been sent to kill, but he wasn’t accepting Jack’s story either. He’d separated and handcuffed them and taken their cell phones. Then he’d radioed the Black Hawk.

  “Pick me up in the plant’s parking lot. Come in hot, no lights. Do it now.”

  Twenty minutes later, after marching them to the parking lot and loading them aboard the Black Hawk, McIntyre placed a set of headphones on Jack and disappeared into the cockpit. Jack looked at Debra, seated behind him. She appeared a little worse for wear but gave him a brave smile.

  Sometime later, McIntyre’s voice came over Jack’s headphones. “We’ll land at Fort Bliss in a few minutes. A plane will be waiting to take you to Andrews Air Force Base. If you’re legit, you’ll be a hero. If not, I wouldn’t want to be in your boots after what happened in Albuquerque.”

  Soon after they landed on the Fort Bliss runway a few minutes later, they were transferred to the plane in silence and seated out of conversational range of one another. Jack called a crewman over. “My hands are numb from being cuffed behind my back. How about getting these cuffs off?” He thought the response would tell him a lot about their status, how they were being regarded.

  The crewman went to the cockpit, returned and removed Jack’s cuffs. Jack was starting to stretch when the man said coldly, “Wrists together in front of your body.” The cuffs were reapplied, and the crewman put Debra and Gano through the same procedure. The change made the flight less miserable, but they were still being treated as possible criminals.

  It was dark when they landed at Andrews AFB and were led to a gunmetal gray Ford SUV with smoked windows for the next leg of the trip.

  The sun had begun to rise just as they reached the destination, a manor house at the end of a half-mile long drive. It was white, vaguely Colonial, flanked by several guesthouses and what looked like a stable. This was obviously very high-end real estate, yet the landscaping was basic, mostly hedges and natural grasses. Instead of Mercedes and horse trailers, the vehicles scattered around were a variety of nondescript black sedans.

  To Jack the utilitarian furnishings inside the mansion reinforced the likelihood they hadn’t been brought here for fox hunts or pool parties.

  A young man took him directly to a bedroom where he removed the handcuffs. No TV, no phone, and the bookshelf was bare. The design of the wrought iron strips outside the large window was decorative but they were still bars. He was sitting on a corner of the bed when the same man reappeared, bringing him a Continental breakfast.

  “Where are we? What kind of place is this?”

  The man cocked his head to one side. “You’ll find that out tomorrow,” he said and started for the door.

  Jack started after him but the man got out fast and closed the door behind him. Jack heard the lock slide into place and stared at the blank, solid door. He was too exhausted to
really connect with the rage that had been building inside for the past few hours. He had put his life on the line to save the damn aquifer, to stop Montana from blowing up three more cities—maybe. So where was the presumption of innocence? Where was Gorton? Too tired to beat on the door to demand answers, he looked down at his filthy clothes and thought he ought to take a shower. Instead, he let the clothes drop in a pile and collapsed on the bed.

  July 13

  Noon

  “MR. STRIDER, TELL us everything you know about the crimes committed by your father, Judge H. Peckford Strider.”

  That’s how the interrogation by two agents, or whatever they were, had begun. The room looked as though it had at some time been a large bedroom, rectangular, a row of curtained windows along the west wall. A short conference table ran parallel to the east wall. The agents sat in two of the three chairs that faced the windows. They’d put Jack in the chair across from them that faced the wall. There was other furniture in the room, but it didn’t match and seemed to have no function other than to fill up the room.

  The agents wore business suits, government standard. He felt ridiculous sitting across from them wearing a gi with the belt called an obi. Karate gear. During the night, someone had taken the clothes he’d worn through the battles at El Castillo and the Palmer plant and left these . . . pajamas. The gi made him think of prison garb designed to make the wearer stand out in a civilian population. There was no way the people interrogating him would look at him and think he was a hero.

  The pasty-faced, middle-aged man in a floral print shirt repeatedly referred to his father as a “trafficker in human flesh.” He also pointed out that District Attorney Rick Calder had never exonerated Jack and had implied, instead, that smuggling, human or otherwise, might be a genetic trait.

  Their style and implications annoyed him, so after several denials, he refused to play. When they finally switched their line of questioning to the events of the past two weeks, Jack was willing to be more forthcoming. However, he quickly realized that when he answered a question in a way critical of former Secretary of State Justin Sinclair, the agents’ eyes narrowed and they abruptly cut him off. At one point, after Jack added another accusation against Sinclair, one man looked at the other and said, “Jesus.”

  They drilled in on the bundles of cash the Special Forces men had removed from the Land Rover at the plant. Jack pointed out that the vehicle belonged to Montana but, since their questions were based on their belief that the cash was evidence of Jack’s participation in Montana’s scheme, they disregarded his denials.

  After almost six hours with no breaks, the second agent, a pencil-necked man wearing thick horn-rims, asked the same question for about the tenth time. Jack wanted to knock the plastic smile off the agent’s chops, but instead he said, “I’m fed up with your innuendos. Either I’m free to leave or I’m going to exercise my Miranda rights.”

  The agents didn’t answer, but made some notes and left the room.

  What the hell was going on? Jack stood and stretched vigorously, as he’d done every hour for the past six. He wasn’t being waterboarded, but this was no friendly debriefing either. The agents had been trying to provoke him into losing his temper, blurting out something incriminating. Or catch him in inconsistencies. They seemed certain he was guilty of something and expected him to tell them what it was. They seemed ready to keep him in suspended animation until he confessed.

  He waited, glad for a break, but was soon bored. He tried the door. Unlocked. He cracked it open and looked out. No one in the hall. Time to look around. He walked into the hall and looked through a window on the far side. Beyond the lawn and a saltwater marsh, a wooden Skipjack sailed past in open water. To any sailor, the Skipjack was the emblem of the Chesapeake Bay. He looked at the sky. From the angle of the sun, he had to be on the Eastern shore. Judging from the time it had taken to drive from Andrews, he was in Maryland.

  He walked downstairs and happened onto a solarium, a long room with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall. Like the window upstairs, the view was impeded by bars with an intricate Arabesque design. A sturdy oak table, ten feet long, ran lengthwise down the room, flanked by four chairs per side. It gave an otherwise casual space the austere aura of an AA meeting. He immediately noticed the door that opened onto a slate terrace and tried the handle. Key-locked. When he turned, a tall man with the fixed stare of a Doberman had entered the solarium at the far end. He shook his head ‘no.’

  Jack walked back upstairs to the room where he’d spent the night. The interrogators were probably comparing notes, setting traps for tomorrow. Somewhere, Debra was reasoning through what was happening. Gano would be pissed, looking for an edge.

  He thought about the karate pajamas, locked doors, and no communication with the outside world. He, Debra and Gano were prisoners. That could only be happening because Gorton had ordered them detained. Since Gorton controlled this remote, secure place, odds were good it was a CIA safe house where they could hide people indefinitely or sweat their guests without upsetting the neighbors.

  He tried to put himself in Gorton’s mind. By now, Gorton knew Jack had been right about the aquifer and the dirty bombs. Despite that, he clearly did not regard Jack as a hero. Therefore, as a result of Sinclair’s poisonous insinuations, he must believe that Jack had been in on all of it with Montana. Some of the questions the agents had asked implied that when Jack saw the scheme collapsing he’d sold out Montana to save himself. The bricks of cash in the Land Rover could support that belief. Gorton could have even bought the bullshit Sinclair fed him about Jack having been involved in Peck’s crimes.

  Sinclair had tried to program the Special Forces to cut down the three of them at the plant. Because that failed, he knew that Jack could still damage him badly. He’d stop at nothing to make sure that didn’t happen.

  The President was sinking in quicksand. Having bungled the blackmail threat and let a dirty bomb go off in Albuquerque, he desperately needed Sinclair to back him up. And Sinclair would do that to avoid being blamed for his own role in the fiasco. Each was trading on their thirty-year friendship, and both had reason to fear what Jack Strider might say. Would Gorton offer him an incentive to keep quiet? Would he do something a lot more coercive?

  Or would the most powerful men in the world, the man who had snatched him from the real world in the middle of the night, simply make him—and Debra and Gano—disappear for good?

  Chapter 55

  July 14

  8:00 a.m.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Jack awakened and checked his watch. Nine hours of sound sleep and not one dream. Despite having been beaten up by the physical and emotional intensity of the past few days, he felt halfway recharged—and completely fed up.

  Fortified by coffee, fried eggs and hash browns, he told his inquisitors in the upstairs room, “I’ll play your games until noon. After that, not one more word. This isn’t Guantanamo Bay. Last I heard, the Constitution still applies in Maryland.”

  Neither man reacted to his ultimatum. They simply started on their list of questions. At eleven, they declared a fifteen minute break and left. He stayed in the room, bracing for a showdown.

  When they returned, the senior agent said, “We’re done here.” His scowl contrasted with his bright Hawaiian shirt.

  “You’ve been jerking me around for two days and all you say is ‘Done here’? How about an apology? Maybe something like, ‘We’re very sorry for the misunderstanding. You’re free to go now. We’ll call a cab’?”

  The man’s scowl deepened. “I didn’t say you were free to go. Some people want to see you at four o’clock this afternoon.” They both turned and walked out of the room without another word.

  After a flavorless lunch on a tray in his bedroom-cell, Jack was left alone behind a locked door. Solitary confinement. Nothing to do but think.

  So that’s what he di
d. Less than six weeks ago, his carefully-orchestrated career had been right on track. Then Peck killed himself, the scandal broke, and Jack’s future had evaporated. Since then, he’d stood up to several crises, Mac and Ana-Maria had been murdered, and Sinclair, Montana and Guzman had tried to kill him. Had all that changed him? Bet your ass it had.

  Sinclair, the deadliest of them all, would keep trying to kill him until he succeeded. The only chance he—and Debra and Gano—had was to persuade Gorton that Sinclair was the mastermind behind the smuggling of nuclear waste and guilty of murder.

  And Jack had another mountain to climb. To prevent cartels and terrorists from getting their hands on the nuclear waste in the cave, he had to get Gorton to take charge. That wasn’t very likely because they were in this CIA safe house only because Gorton had already sided with Sinclair.

  By the time he heard the click of the lock in the door at 3:45, he was in a foul mood.

  “Stand up,” the agent said. “Give me your wrists.”

  Handcuffs again. His face was hot as he came to his feet, but he took a deep breath and held out his wrists. If the four o’clock visitors were imported interrogators who planned to sweat him, he was ready. Being locked up had lit his fuse.

  Being led downstairs to the solarium, he felt like a gladiator entering the arena. Bring it on.

  Debra and Gano, also handcuffed and in karate gear, stood together by the window.

  “Hey,” Gano called, “glad you could make it. Looks like we all got the same come-as-you-are invitation.”

  “You two okay?” Jack asked.

  “Let’s see,” Debra said, “house arrest, nonstop verbal abuse, fashionable jewelry—” She held up the cuffs. “—and you ask . . .”

  The door opened. The President of the United States walked in.

  Jack was knocked off balance by the man’s sudden appearance. When he saw Gorton’s unreadable mask, his defenses shot up. He knew instinctively that this was about to be very unpleasant.