“Who called in the air strike?” Sloane had asked, recalling that Katherine Ferguson said her husband told her something similar.
“The captain, I guess.” Cassidy paused, looking like he was trying to silently solve a physics problem.
“What?” Sloane asked.
“Except our radio was broke.”
“What do you mean, broke?”
“I mean broke. The captain couldn’t have called in an air strike because the mouthpiece was crushed. I remember we could hear but we couldn’t talk back.” Cassidy looked confused. “What’s going on?”
“Did you get a better look at the barrels, see a label on them, anything at all?” Sloane asked.
Cassidy shook his head. “I was just glad to be alive, man. I wasn’t worried about nothing else. Besides, we weren’t allowed to go near the building.”
“Why not?”
“They secured it.”
“Who?”
“Contractor types.”
“Military contractors?” Jenkins asked.
Cassidy nodded. “But hell, I don’t know. I couldn’t tell those guys apart half the time anyway.”
THE FEMALE OFFICER pulled open the passenger-side door and slid in out of the rain. “Anything?” she asked.
“Last one coming back now.” Her partner read the screen. “Okay, Mr. Jenkins, you’re good to go.” He pushed open the door, stepped into the rain, and walked around the car to open the back door for Jenkins. “You can’t just walk through private property because it’s convenient,” he said, helping Jenkins out of the car and removing the handcuffs.
Jenkins wasn’t in the mood for a class on property rights. He rubbed his wrists and grabbed his backpack and phone.
“You want us to go with you to make sure your client is all right?”
“No,” Jenkins said. “But thanks.”
He ran down the street to where he had parked the Explorer, climbed in, and started the engine. Pulling into the street, he flipped open his phone. The interior window remained black. He pressed the power button. Nothing happened. The water had killed the battery. He tossed it on the seat and drove.
At the bottom of the hill he was relieved to find Sloane’s home still standing, and even more relieved to see the transformer atop a utility pole sparking and emitting a small blue flame. He deduced it caused the explosion. Still, that didn’t explain why Sloane had called. Perhaps he had spooked at the explosion. No. The phone rang first, then the explosion. Jenkins stepped from the car into a steady drizzle and retrieved his shotgun and rifle from the back. He crept along the side of the van and glanced through the passenger-side window. The drive shaft had been modified to accommodate a man no longer able to use his legs, the seat pushed close to the steering wheel and an arm protruding from the column to allow the driver to use his hands to accelerate and stop the vehicle.
Kessler.
Jenkins worked his way around the van with his rifle slung over his shoulder, shotgun at his hip. He quietly unlatched the gate, took a moment to survey the yard, and ascended the first porch step.
Movement caught his attention. He stopped, considering the beach, letting his eyes roam the area. With the cloud layer and no artificial light he could not distinguish anything from the shadowy movement of the waves on the surface of the water.
About to turn back to the house, he again sensed movement. He lowered the backpack and shotgun and raised the binoculars, scanning the surface of the Sound. He was about to lower the binoculars when he saw something protrude from the surface of the water. It looked to be the rounded head of a seal. Jenkins had heard the animals bark at the Point but had never seen one. Another rounded head surfaced close by, followed by a third. One seal would have been unusual. Three was implausible.
One of the heads rose from the water revealing a face mask and breathing apparatus. The other two divers followed. Jenkins refocused further out into the Sound. A boat sat anchored offshore, a dangerous thing to do at night with the massive cargo ships that used the passage as a shipping lane.
The crocodiles had reached the beach. If they made it to the house they would kill Sloane and Kessler. Sloane had deliberately given them the scenario they needed. Witnesses would talk about how an enraged Sloane burst into Kessler’s office that afternoon and threatened to expose Kessler in the killings of three guardsmen to cover up an illegal drug operation while in Iraq. The implication would be that Kessler went to Sloane’s home, killed him, then turned the gun on himself.
Jenkins couldn’t let it get that far.
KESSLER TURNED TO Sloane. “Butch was right. I didn’t call in an air strike,” he said, keeping his voice low. “The radio was broken. The mouthpiece was crushed. I could receive transmissions, but I couldn’t respond.”
“Someone wanted to blow that building. You were the excuse to do it,” Sloane said. “It wasn’t a granary.”
“Chemicals,” Kessler said.
“Argus supplied Saddam with precursor chemicals he used to build his chemical weapons, and they made a lot of money doing it.” Sloane explained how UN inspectors had found chemical and biological agents in Iraq as late as 1998, long after it became illegal to supply them.
“But it’s a highly regulated industry,” Kessler said. “How could Argus hide the shipments?”
Sloane explained what Mills had learned about the chemicals being shipped through Jordan or Syria and then through the free-trade port of Aqaba to a middleman who was falsely identified as the end user. The middleman would then load the shipments onto trucks and illegally drive them into Iraq.
“As you know, there were no border checks.”
Kessler asked, “What about the payments?”
Sloane continued to repeat what Mills had learned, explaining that even after the embargo, Jordan continued to import 300 million dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil every year. Syria, too, purchased the oil.
“A middleman could have presented an invoice for food or other supplies approved under the oil-for-food program to a commercial attaché at Iraq’s embassy in Jordan. The attaché would then pay him out of the proceeds from the sale of Iraq’s oil shipments. Similar scams could have been run through Syria, which was making a billion dollars a year from the Iraq-Syrian oil pipeline, all of it outside UN control. Saddam just had to find a way to hide the chemicals.”
“That’s not a problem,” Kessler said. “Iraq is a huge ammo dump. We’d find explosives everywhere. An abandoned granary would have been perfect because it would not normally have been a military target.”
“And Argus couldn’t take the chance of an officially sanctioned military mission,” Sloane said.
Kessler agreed. “If we had found the chemicals, it would have gone a long way toward the administration’s justification for the war, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or at least the capability of manufacturing them. No way Argus could have kept that information from leaking.”
“It would have exposed one of the largest military contractors, and several members of the president’s administration,” Sloane said. “The public outcry would have forced the administration to pull every Argus contract.”
“Billions of dollars,” Kessler said.
“And not even Argus’s friends in the administration could have protected it from a Department of Justice or congressional inquiry. In fact, I suspect they would have distanced themselves,” Sloane said.
Kessler looked stricken. “Griffin used us to target the building to make it look like a military mission.”
Sloane nodded. “James didn’t die on a military mission.”
“But how could Argus fake the transmission? What about Bravo three-sixteen?”
“I think I can explain that,” Sloane said. “The problem is I can’t prove any of it, and without proof, we’re both vulnerable.”
“You didn’t tape Cassidy.”
Sloane shook his head. “That was just a ploy to hopefully keep us alive. They won’t kill us if they think we have evidence
to implicate Argus.”
Sloane’s cell phone rang. He checked the number, expecting Charles Jenkins, but didn’t recognize it. He didn’t immediately recognize the voice either.
“Mr. Sloane? This is Tom Pendergrass.”
“YOU SAID YOU taped Cassidy?”
Aboard the fishing vessel anchored off Three Tree Point’s shore, Mr. Williams cupped the headphones to his ears. Up to that moment, he had heard only music. Sloane and Kessler must have moved to a room closer to the transmitter in Sloane’s jacket. He slid to the computer screen and read their conversation as it simultaneously appeared on the screen while continuing to listen.
“I didn’t have time,” Sloane responded. “You’re the last witness.”
The transmission again went silent. Then Kessler said, “The FBCB2.”
Mr. Williams sat up.
“What about it?” Sloane asked.
“It would have recorded the transmission from Bravo three-sixteen. It would prove that Cassidy told you the truth.”
“But you destroyed it. Your witness statement said you climbed back inside the Humvee and burned the hard drive.”
“But we both know I didn’t write that statement.”
“You didn’t burn it?”
“I didn’t have to. When I dropped back down the hatch, the FBCB2 had been split open.”
“It was destroyed.”
“Yes and no. As I said, it was split open. So I just yanked the hard drive out and shoved it in my rucksack. I didn’t give it a second thought.”
“What did you do with it?”
“After I got shot they put me on a transport to Germany and I spent several weeks in a hospital rehabbing before they sent me back to the States. I had completely forgotten about it. I didn’t realize I still had it until I got back to Fort Lewis and was preparing for discharge.”
“You still have it?”
“They sent my stuff there. It was still in my rucksack.”
“They didn’t confiscate it?”
“I’ve heard stories of guys getting their M16s home, knives, all kinds of stuff. Nobody was going to question something no bigger than a Palm-Pilot. Hell, it would have been easy if I’d been trying.”
“And you’ve kept it? You still have it somewhere?”
“Not remembering bothered me,” Kessler said. “I felt guilty about Ford’s death. I thought someday I might get the courage to listen to it, see if I screwed up. Eventually I guess I didn’t have the courage to find out.”
Sloane’s voice became more urgent. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”
“That’s the problem,” Kessler said. “I put it in the most secure place I could think of.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s in a safe in my office at Argus.”
There was a pause in the conversation. Then Sloane spoke.
“We need that hard drive. We need to get it tonight.”
“I can get in,” Kessler said. “But if Argus is onto me, the problem won’t be getting in. The problem will be getting back out.”
Mr. Williams smiled and picked up the phone. Colonel Griffin answered on the first ring.
“Colonel,” he started. Then he heard a concussive blast and turned to look out the window of the boat. A fireball rolled into the sky.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The plate-glass window exploded. The blinds ripped from their hinges. Propelled backward, Sloane landed hard on the floor. Kessler toppled from his chair and landed beside him. They waited a moment, then Sloane shook the cobwebs and scrambled to his knees, Glock in hand.
“Are you all right?”
Kessler nodded.
“Wait here.” Sloane crept to the window, careful to stay below the sill. He had limited ammunition and would have to use it sparingly to hold off Argus. Ideally he wanted one man alive, one chance to maybe get information to prove Argus was complicit in the killings of Ferguson, Thomas, and Cassidy. He slowly rose and peered over the window ledge.
A fire burned on his lawn.
A TRUCK HAD backed down the easement, a city employee standing in a bucket at the end of an extension arm. The man had managed to restore temporary power to the area; the lights in the neighbors’ homes and the street lamps again cast an orange hue on the wet pavement. Sloane stood in the easement finishing a conversation with a Burien police officer. A neighbor had called the police upon hearing the explosion from Sloane’s property and seeing the fireball. Sloane had kept to the story Jenkins had earlier told the police.
“While I was living in Northern California someone broke into my apartment and trashed it. There’s a report on file with the Pacifica Police Department. It was ultimately the reason we moved. Seattle was supposed to be a fresh start.”
“And now you think that same person has followed you here?”
“I don’t know,” Sloane said. “I thought I’d put it all behind me. Then I started to receive the threatening phone calls again. I sent my wife and son away and hired Mr. Jenkins.”
When the officer completed his questions, he told Sloane a detective would be contacting him to discuss the matter further. Then he got back in the vehicle and drove off.
Sloane walked down the easement into his backyard. Jenkins stood on the lawn, the binoculars focused on the water. “Boat’s gone,” he said.
Sloane looked at the twisted and charred remains of his barbecue. “That was your plan, shooting my barbecue?”
Jenkins shrugged. “I was making do with what I had. Besides, it worked, didn’t it? They spooked and left.”
“How many came?”
“Too many for us to handle. This way is better. Where’s Kessler?”
“Making phone calls.”
“What do you think the response will be?”
“I don’t know, but Griffin said Kessler was well liked, that his men were loyal to him.” He looked out over the water. “Does this remind you of anything?” Sloane was thinking of the bluff in West Virginia where the two men had met. Jenkins had explained to Sloane that he was the boy from the mountains in Mexico, and that Jenkins had been partially responsible for the massacre that had orphaned him.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Jenkins turned and looked at Sloane’s house. “Is Kessler up for this?”
Sloane nodded. “He’s a soldier. It means a lot to him, what happened to his men.”
“What about you?”
“No turning back now.”
“You can always turn back, David.”
Sloane thought of Beverly Ford and her four children. He thought of James Ford, Phillip Ferguson, and Dwayne Thomas, whom he never knew, and he thought of Michael Cassidy, a punk drug dealer. Even he had deserved better. He thought of Tina being forced to tread water in a mountain pool while her son watched her slowly drown, a memory the boy was not soon to forget.
“Not always,” he said.
ARGUS INTERNATIONAL
ROBERT KESSLER ROLLED down the window and gave a friendly wave as the security guard stepped down from his booth.
Didn’t this guy ever go home?
“How are you doing, Mel?”
“What are you doing here this late, Captain?”
Kessler had never seen the guard’s eyes. He was surprised they were blue. “I spent all day at Little League games,” Kessler said. “You know how that goes.”
“Not me, Captain. I’m not married.”
“Still playing the field, huh?”
“Right now I’m dedicated to my job.”
“That’s admirable,” Kessler said. “I better do the same.”
The guard smiled. “No rest for the wicked.”
“I have a presentation to the board of directors tomorrow on how we intend to protect our workers administering that new contract in Egypt. How about you? Don’t you ever go home?”
“I’m working a double shift. I like the long hours.” Mel passed Kessler the clipboard through the window. “I’ll have to ask you to sign in, Captain. It’s reg
ulations after-hours.”
“I know all about regulations,” Kessler said. He scribbled his name and time of entry and handed back the clipboard. The guard pressed the button on his belt, raising the wooden arm.
“You have a good night, Captain.”
The plant was lit bright as day. Kessler parked in his reserved spot closest to the back entrance to his building. The spot was marked by a handicap placard, a man in a wheelchair. Kessler shut off the engine, unlocked the seat, and swiveled to lift himself out of his seat and onto the wheelchair. Getting situated, he pushed a button, the van doors slid open, and the platform lifted him out onto the ground. For all of his rehab, and his determination to live some semblance of a normal life, to be a role model for his kids, he couldn’t even get in and out of a car on his own. He had rationalized his loss as an honorable reminder of his service to his country. Now that, too, had been taken from him. It left him bitter. It left him angry.
He rolled up the concrete ramp to the back door, punched in the code on the security keypad, heard the steel latch slide, and pulled open the door.
Though the halls and cubicles were deserted, nearly every light in the building shone brightly. Kessler rolled inside his office and shut the door behind him, now acutely aware that his office was bugged. He moved behind his desk and reached beneath the wood chair railing along the wall, feeling for the button. When he pressed it, the map on the wall pulled apart, revealing a wall safe. Unfortunately, it had been installed for a man of average height. Kessler loosened the leg straps and used his upper body to lift himself from the chair, leaning his weight against the credenza. He entered the computerized code and pulled the door open.
As he sat down, the door to his office opened behind him. Colonel Bo Griffin walked in, flanked by two men from Argus’s security forces, each carrying an automatic weapon.
“You’re here awfully late, Captain,” Griffin said.
Kessler settled into his chair. “Did I miss the memo, Colonel? Has Argus hired you?”
Wrongful Death: A Novel Page 29