Ultimate Betrayal

by Joseph Badal

  “I’ll tell you one thing. Your old man’s got bigger balls than an elephant. I hear he looked that killer in the eye and never blinked once. Guy coulda plugged him and he just stood there like he was a visiting neighbor.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” David demanded.

  The bodyguard smiled and said, “You better ask the Don.”

  An hour later, Peter was escorted into the room.

  “What’s been going on?” David said.

  “Gino and I played a little game and—”

  “I thought we agreed I’d call the shots,” David shouted. He then turned on the bodyguard and said, “Where’s Gino? I want to talk to him. Now!”

  Peter didn’t let David continue. “Son,” he said, “I appreciate your concern, but I’m a grown man. I can make my own decisions.”

  “What did you do?” David asked.

  Peter explained in detail what had happened back at the house. “We caught the guy who chased us from the cemetery.”

  It took David a moment to come up with a response, but finally he quietly said, “I love you, Dad, but sometimes you really piss me off.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Peter replied. “That’s my job.”

  Then Gino entered the basement room. The old Mafioso smiled as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

  But his smile disappeared when David said, “That was one stupid stunt you pulled.”

  Gino ignored David’s insult and said, “I want you to listen to this.” He took a DVD from his suit coat pocket and inserted it into a player built into the wall. He fast forwarded the disk. Then a man screamed.

  “That’s the guy in the Camaro,” Gino said.

  David heard a man set down the rules for Toney, and then:

  Man: “You come to our neighborhood with a gun, and you gonna kill two of our friends, the Hoods. Why?”

  Toney: “I got orders to kill the son. If the father is in the way, I gotta kill him, too.”

  Man: “Who hired you?”

  Toney: (Hesitation. Screams. Thirty second pause, then gasps.) “Rolf Bishop.”

  David stiffened. That makes no sense at all, he thought.

  Man: “Who’s this Bishop?”

  Toney: “A former Army officer. The guy who’s been picked by the President for a top job at the CIA.”

  Man: “You shittin’ me?”

  Toney: “No, it’s the truth.”

  Man: “Vinnie, find out if this guy’s blowin’ smoke up my ass.”

  Toney’s screams of agony were so intense this time David was about to tell Gino to stop the torture, forgetting for a moment this was a recording.

  Man: “Jesus, Vinnie; what you tryin’ to do, fry the son-of-a-bitch so he can’t tell us squat? Get your damn foot off that switch.”

  “Right here the tape machine was shut off for fifteen minutes,” Gino said. “Until Toney could talk again.”

  Toney: (Weakly) “I’m telling you the truth, I swear. I’m not lying. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

  Man: “Okay! You still saying this CIA guy told you to kill David Hood?”

  Toney: (Gasping) “I swear, I swear. He told me to do it.”

  Man: “Why?”

  Toney: “Please don’t hurt me again. I give you my word, I don’t know why. He just said, ‘Go kill Hood.’ ”

  Man: “Did you bomb Hood’s house in Maryland?”

  Toney: “I didn’t do that. It was a guy named Francis, Jim Francis. He was a crackhead. He planted the explosives. Fucked up the job real good.”

  Man: “How do you know this Francis guy blew up the house and killed the woman and her two kids?”

  Toney: “Cause I was the one supposed to kill Hood, but I let Francis do it instead. All he had to do was shoot him or run him off the road into a telephone pole. Whatever. The stupid bastard wasn’t supposed to use explosives.”

  Man: “You got any idea why Bishop wants Hood killed?”

  Toney: “No!”

  Man: “So where do we find Francis?”

  Toney: “Probably in the D.C. morgue. He died of an overdose.”

  Man: “Well, Monty-baby, you did pretty good. Anything else we should know?”

  Toney: “No, except Bishop ain’t gonna quit ‘til Hood’s dead.” (Brief pause)

  “We gotta assume,” Gino said, “that this moulie, Toney, has been missed by now and that Bishop is unhappy and worried about it. I know what I would do if I was in Bishop’s shoes and wanted someone dead badly enough—send out a hit team with a lot of firepower.”

  “We can’t just sit here and wait for someone to get lucky and kill David,” Peter said.

  “You got that right,” Gino responded. “First of all, neither of you can stay at your house.” Gino paused for a moment. “I figure Bishop thinks he’s going after a business executive and his elderly father. He probably knows nothing of my involvement. That’s to our advantage. I think you both should stay here today. Tomorrow morning we’ll all move out to my place in Chestnut Hill.”

  Then Gino looked directly at David and said, “Why would Bishop want you dead?” The question was asked in an even voice that broached no equivocation, no holding back.

  David heard Gino, but he absentmindedly shook his head as though he was overwhelmed with what he’d heard on the tape.

  “What’s on your mind?” Peter asked. “You look like you’re off in Never-Never Land.”

  “It makes no sense. I don’t have a clue why Bishop would want me dead. The last time I saw the guy was in early 2004, when I was assigned to his unit.”

  “Okay,” Gino said. “We’ll find out about this guy Bishop. And then I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch.”

  APRIL 19

  CHAPTER 19

  Marine Gunnery Sergeant Sam Collins was usually glad to help a fellow Marine, whether he was on active duty or a veteran. But Chicago Lieutenant Dennis O’Neil had tried his patience. Collins thought it was great O’Neil wanted to organize a Marine reunion, but his job in the Marine Corps Personnel Office was a full-time affair. So, when O’Neil called again, at 7:30 a.m. sharp this time, Collins snapped, “Look, I’m pretty busy right now. Maybe you could call back later.”

  “I know you’re busy, Sam. But I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t really import—”

  “You’re going to get my ass in trouble if anyone discovers I sent you copies of those three files,” Collins whispered.

  “Sam, I badly need your help. Look, I’ll catch the first flight out of Chicago for D.C. I need to see you tonight. I’ll call you at your office when I get there.”

  Before Collins could respond, O’Neil broke the connection.

  Dennis O’Neil called his boss and told him he needed a couple “personal days.” Then he booked a seat on a flight that would put him into Ronald Reagan National Airport in the middle of the afternoon. He had a couple hours to burn before he had to drive to O’Hare and used the time to make a few more calls.

  Elizabeth Perkins, in Anaheim, answered the phone on the seventh ring. Her voice was tremulous, almost frightened-little-girlish.

  “Mrs. Perkins, this is Dennis O’Neil from Chicago. Your husband and I served together in Afghanistan.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. O’Neil, I remember. You’re putting the reunion together.” She paused a moment and said, “Zach would have loved so much to get together with all of you. What a shame that . . . .”

  She began to cry. Dennis waited.

  “I’m sorry about that, Mr. O’Neil. I can’t seem to do anything but cry about Zach.”

  “That’s understandable, Mrs. Perkins. I really am sorry to bother you, but I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Questions? What kind of questions?” she asked, suspicion suddenly in her voice.

  “First of all, I need to inform you that I’m
a detective with the Chicago Police Department. When I read your note about Zachary’s murder, I looked into the circumstances of his death. There are a couple things that concern me. I should also tell you I have absolutely no authority to investigate a crime in Anaheim, so if you hang up on me now I’ll understand.”

  “Mr. O’Neil,” she said with sudden strength in her voice, “if you can help find whoever killed my Zach, I’ll talk with you until hell freezes over.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Perkins. Were you and Zachary married when he was in Afghanistan?” Dennis asked.

  “First, please call me Beth,” she said. Then she expelled a quick laugh and said, “Well, I should hope so, Lieutenant. We already had two kids and I was three months pregnant with Amy when Zach shipped out. But what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Do you recall if he ever mentioned a unit in Afghanistan called the Special Logistical Support Detachment?”

  “No, I’m sorry. My husband never told me anything like that. He would never really talk about any of his assignments, especially if they were classified. In fact, the only thing he ever talked about was how much waste he saw over there.”

  “I can relate, Beth. I saw a lot of young men get wounded or killed in Afghanistan.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that must have been awful. But that wasn’t what I meant when I referred to waste. You see, Zach was transferred to a unit in Afghanistan after he got wounded. He spent the last four months of his tour with that unit. I can’t tell you how happy and relieved I was when he wrote that he wouldn’t be in the field anymore and would be in an air-conditioned office. The waste Zach referred to concerned things he saw after he was wounded and transferred. I don’t know what he did. I was just glad he wasn’t getting shot at anymore.”

  “Thanks for your help, Beth. I promise I’ll try to find out who killed your husband.”

  O’Neil made two more calls, to Eric Carbajal’s widow in Belen, New Mexico, and to Fred Laniewski’s widow in Wildwood, New Jersey. Neither could shed any more light on her husband’s murder or his involvement with the SLSD. But there were common strands in their stories. Each of their husbands had been transferred to an office job near Kabul after being wounded in the field, to a unit that had something to do with logistics. They remembered their husbands had written about their new assignments and, after they returned to the States, reminisced about the tons of stuff that came into Afghanistan. One widow mentioned that her husband had thought someone at the Pentagon had lost his mind.

  The late spring heat and humidity enveloped O’Neil when he stepped out of the terminal at Reagan National Airport. His dress shirt went limp by the time he reached the taxi queue. He felt as though he’d walked into a steam bath. And the taxi he was assigned had no air conditioning. The taxi driver was a Nigerian who spoke quite elegant British English, referred to O’Neil as “My good man,” and used the word “bloody” to describe everything about Washington D.C.—“bloody weather,” “bloody politicians,” “bloody traffic . . . .” By the time the driver dropped him off at his hotel, across the street from the Watergate Complex, O’Neil was in a nasty mood.

  After he checked into the hotel and found his room, O’Neil called Sam Collins.

  “Hey, Sam,” O’Neil said. “I’m here in D.C. Can you meet me?”

  “You really flew all the way from Chicago? And didn’t know for sure I would actually see you?”

  “Dead Marines, Sam! Murdered Marines! All I want from you is an hour of your time.”

  “All right. Meet me at McNally’s Tavern on 9th Street in two hours.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  O’Neil got to McNally’s Tavern at 6:30 p.m., fifteen minutes before Collins was due to arrive, and after he ordered a beer, looked around the bar. The place had the appearance of a blue-collar bar converted to a yuppie club. It was half-filled with men and women in business suits. The bar, fronted by stools and a gleaming brass foot rail, extended from the front window all the way to the back wall. There was a narrow circulation area between the bar and tables along the wall opposite the bar. A man and a woman occupied a table close to O’Neil’s. He caught snatches of their conversation—something about a two hundred million dollar IPO for a social media company. O’Neil sighed. He’d never cracked the sixty-five thousand dollar salary level. He quickly pushed the envy out of his mind. If he had to do it all over again, he’d still be a cop.

  He considered his approach to Collins. The man could make his search for information easy. But if he refused to cooperate, getting information from the Pentagon would be tortuous and time-consuming, at best. And maybe impossible.

  A fortyish man with buzz cut blond hair, dressed in a Marine khaki summer uniform, walked up to the table. “Detective O’Neil?” he asked.

  O’Neil nodded his head, stood up, stuck out his hand. He read the nametag pinned over the Marine’s left blouse pocket: COLLINS. “Nice to finally meet you, Sam. Please call me Dennis.”

  Collins grunted something and took O’Neil’s hand.

  O’Neil could tell from the Marine’s frown he wasn’t happy about this meeting. He pointed at the chair on the opposite side of the table. “Please sit down, Sam. I appreciate you meeting me.”

  Collins dropped into the chair and looked around the bar, as though he was reconnoitering the place for enemies. O’Neil quickly looked him over. Collins looked lean and hard, with that square-jawed look seen in Corps recruitment posters.

  “How’d you know to pick me out in this place?” O’Neil asked.

  Collins smiled. “Look around.”

  Dennis laughed when he realized he was the only man over forty in the place, and the only one, besides Collins, with a Marine buzz cut.

  They ordered two draft beers from a harried waitress and then Collins said, “So, tell me what you need.”

  “I told you before that three Marines who served in my unit in Afghanistan have been murdered in the last few weeks. Assassination style. Gunshots to the head. The murders have to be connected. There’s only one thing I can find that all three men had in common, besides being dead and serving in the same Marine unit. After each of them was wounded, he was transferred from the Marine unit to something called the Special Logistical Support Detachment.”

  O’Neil paused when the waitress returned with their beers. “Then I heard on TV this morning that the President just nominated a former Army colonel named Rolf Bishop to a top spot at the CIA.”

  Collins’s eyes snapped wide open.

  O’Neil leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. “In Bishop’s Senate confirmation committee hearing, it came out that he was the commander of this Special Logistical Support Detachment.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Collins said. “You really do think the murders of three former Marines are connected in some way. You think the murders may be tied to this SLSD unit. And you think the new CIA Deputy Director may be tied to this—”

  “No! No!” O’Neil interrupted. He leaned even closer to Collins. “I didn’t suggest Bishop had anything to do with the murders. I just know he commanded the dead men’s unit.”

  “I hope to God Bishop isn’t involved. In this town, that guy’s got more juice than Ocean Spray.”

  “I hear you, Sam.”

  “Okay, so what do you want?”

  “I want to know the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every person who served with the Special Logistical Support Detachment.”

  “Jeez, what if there are hundreds of them?”

  “God, I hope not,” O’Neil said.

  Collins sighed. “Okay, I’ll do my best. Where can I reach you?”

  O’Neil gave Collins his cell number and then picked up the tab for the beers. They walked from the bar together. O’Neil turned down Collins’s offer of a ride back to his hotel.

  “I need the exercise.”

  After
Collins pulled out of the parking lot, O’Neil walked toward his hotel. It was now dark but it was unseasonably warm—a good evening for a walk. While he waited for the traffic light to turn green at the first corner, he noticed the headline on the front page of a newspaper in a newspaper box. It read, “Bishop Confirmed to CIA Post.”

  Rolf Bishop relaxed in the plush back seat of his CIA limousine. It was after 11 p.m. and had been a very long day. But he was full of the feeling that life was good. The U.S. Senate had confirmed him in his new CIA post. The President had then introduced him to the White House press corps and to the nation at a press conference in the Rose Garden. Afterward, Bishop had been driven out to Langley where he presided over a CIA staff meeting of his senior department heads. A dinner in his honor at the White House had capped everything off. The dinner was really nothing but an excuse to raise a million dollars or so for the party, but he still relished the attention and deference paid to him. This was heady stuff for a poor kid from Iowa, and he ate up every bit of it.

  Bishop thought about the David Hood matter and felt a slight tremor of doubt that eroded his euphoria. He hadn’t heard from Montrose Toney. He thought the guy had probably run off. He’d have to track him down and eliminate him.

  The first order he’d issued as Deputy Director of the CIA was for an intelligence trace to be put on any inquiries about the Special Logistical Support Detachment or Operation Harvest that hit the computer files of any government agency or department. Even though he assumed once Hood was taken care of, there would be no one left alive who would ever be interested in tying him to the SLSD, he wanted to know if that question asked by the senator in the confirmation hearing had put any reporters on the trail of the SLSD and Operation Harvest. Even if the subject of drugs never came up, he realized the activities of the unit could prove embarrassing, considering the tremendous fraud perpetrated by Operation Harvest on Congress and the American people. He realized he was acting paranoid, but he believed in taking every precaution. Although the Pentagon had buried Operation Harvest so deep it would probably never be unearthed, all it would take was one asshole reporter having a drink with some pissed off Pentagon clerk with a long memory.