Root and Branch

by Preston Fleming

  Zorn was getting the picture.

  “So they’re dumped at sea?”

  The loadmaster nodded.

  “We’re at war, sir.”

  “But how can detainees vanish without their absence showing up in the official documents?” Zorn asked, still puzzled. “What about flight manifests, transfer records, head counts at detention facilities, and per capita food and housing allowances?”

  “They’ve worked out a system to cover it.”

  “Can you walk me through it?”

  “If you’ll pick up the next round.”

  “Hold that thought,” Zorn replied, and headed off to the bar for more drinks. By now the club had grown crowded, and he had to wait for his order.

  The moment he laid the tray with drinks and snacks on the table, Randy knocked back another shot of Jack Daniel’s. Soon he slipped into an even more expansive mood.

  “About the system for covering the disappearances, then. What will the flight manifest show on a typical removal flight from the mainland to Corvus?”

  “The manifest will list a pseudonym for each live detainee who boarded and disembarked at Corvus. And on the connecting flight to the overseas repat center, the same pseudonyms will appear again. Except that some of the passengers listed on the second manifest won’t actually be aboard. So when the repat center stamps the second plane’s manifest as received, the number of detainees arriving in North Africa will be fewer than the number shown in the documents.”

  “Got it. The paper trail ends in North Africa, is that it?”

  “Right, and there’s absolutely no way to figure out from the documents how, why or when the missing detainees disappeared.”

  But Zorn wasn’t satisfied yet.

  “Okay, then,” he continued, leaning forward on both elbows. “Say a detainee disappears en route to Corvus and the papers show him as having arrived safely in North Africa. But the family, or a reporter, or some Congressional staffer, wants to know where to find him. What answer would they get?”

  “They’d be directed to the repat center where the detainee supposedly went. And then they’d be told that lousy record-keeping in the receiving country and lack of cooperation from the local authorities make it impossible to trace him any further.”

  “Son of a bitch. That’s diabolical,” Zorn muttered.

  “Our guys aren’t idiots, Mr. Zorn. They know exactly how the bureaucracy works and they’re very good at covering their tracks.”

  “And you say this shrinkage has been going on since you came on board?”

  “Not exactly. I signed on in March, and the first dump I was involved with happened in late April or May. That’s when it became a regular thing.”

  “So how many detainees do you suppose have been disappeared in this way since April? Hundreds? Thousands?”

  “It depends on how many transit sites there are. I’ve only been to two. I’d say we’re probably looking at the low thousands.”

  “And how many of the people working these flights do you think know the score?”

  “Not as many as you might imagine,” Randy said with a faraway look. “Only us loadmasters get to see the whole picture. When a dump is scheduled, the cockpit crew isn’t even allowed to see who or what’s taken on board, to preserve deniability.”

  “What about VIPs like me who get roped into pushing the button? How often does that happen?”

  The loadmaster put down his beer mug and let out a sinister laugh.

  “Oh, we always like to have an official visitor in the navigator’s seat on those flights. It’s part of our indoctrination for senior people. You see, it’s hard to blow the whistle on someone for doing what you’ve done yourself. Especially when caught on video doing it.”

  Suddenly Zorn remembered the closed-circuit television camera in the C-130 with its blinking red light and felt his skin crawl. Then his dread turned to anger, and not just toward Randy, or Travis or Pat Craven, each of whom had maneuvered him into tipping the detainees overboard. But at himself for not having refused it.

  “And you, Randy?” Zorn asked, doing his best to conceal his fury. “Do you have any regrets about what you’ve done on these flights?”

  The loadmaster put down his mug and laid his palms flat on the table.

  “Regrets? Never.”

  Zorn raised an eyebrow but said nothing. After a long pause, the loadmaster went on.

  “This may surprise you, Mr. Zorn, but I’d do these flights every day, twice a day, if they’d let me. I’ve pulled three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and I’ve seen what the jihadis do to their enemies. No, when I get called for a removal flight, I never turn it down. Not once. It’s not every guy who can stomach this kind of work. But I can. And I’ll keep doing it until America runs out of jihadis for me to dump.”

  Zorn nodded and pushed away the remains of his drink.

  “I think it’s time for me to turn in,” he said. “I appreciate your willingness to talk, Randy, and I won’t forget your help. And, rest assured, your secrets are safe with me.”

  But the last statement was a lie.

  Zorn crawled into the narrow bed at the visitors’ quarters and lay down, doing his best to process what the loadmaster had told him. Could an organized system of extrajudicial killing have been going on for months, using Zorn Air Transport’s own aircraft and crews, right under his nose? Who at DHS was behind it? How far did it reach? And how could he put a stop to it?

  A cold shudder racked his body as more distressing thoughts raced through his head. What would he say to Pat Craven on his return? Would Craven produce the videotape of him dumping detainees in an effort to blackmail him? What if Randy harbored second thoughts about having talked to Zorn and reported their conversation to the base chief? And how could Zorn USA remain in the ESM program after what he’d learned? Would the company run out of cash if he terminated the contracts? But before the procession of worrisome thoughts went much further, Zorn dropped off into an alcohol-fueled slumber.

  The next thing he knew he was back in the C-130, pushing the red button and watching the upper and lower sections of the rear door separate from one another. Sunlight streamed into the airplane’s fuselage and the roar of the turboprop engines was deafening. Icy gusts of wind buffeted Zorn, nearly throwing him off his feet. Then the rearmost pallets rolled onto the lowered ramp and those beside followed.

  Not until then did Zorn notice the gangly detainee with the Abraham Lincoln whiskers roll past, dropping straight down from ten thousand feet. He kept pushing the button until his thumb ached and the remaining pallets rolled into empty space.

  At once the aircraft seemed to climb from the sudden loss of weight, once again throwing Zorn off balance. He grabbed at the airplane’s fuselage to right himself, but it wasn’t enough. He lost his footing, slipped onto the rollers and tumbled headlong toward the gaping hole at the stern of the aircraft. Only when he flew over the edge and peered down at the blue ocean below did he wake up with a sharp gasp.

  Chapter Fifteen: Base Chief

  “Remove the document—and you remove the man.”

  –Mikhail Bulgakov

  EARLY JUNE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Zorn was famished when he left his room in the guest quarters and set out for breakfast at the mess hall. As he left the staircase and opened the outside door, he found Clayton, the thirty-something co-pilot from the previous day’s flight, waiting for him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Zorn,” the co-pilot greeted him in a low voice.

  “Hello,” Zorn replied after doing a double take. “But how do you know my name?”

  “I ran into Randy last night on his way back from the base club. He had a bit too much to drink and let it slip out.”

  “And what else did he say about me?” Zorn added, unhappy with the indiscretion.

  “He knew I was looking for a transfer and thought you might be able to help me.”

  The co-pilot looked anxious but sincere.

  “So what’s wrong
with the assignment you have now?”

  “I think you know, Mr. Zorn. You learned about it yesterday a half hour north of Puerto Rico.”

  “So you knew all along we were carrying passengers and not corpses?”

  Clayton gave a sad nod.

  “Of course I did. I found out the same way you did, on my first flight down here.”

  “Yet you didn’t transfer out then?”

  “I was afraid to, sir. Our navigator lodged a complaint right after we landed and I never saw him again. After that, I decided to wait for the right opportunity to get out.”

  Zorn thought back to his own final months in the Agency and how he had become fed up with intelligence work and resolved to quit at all costs.

  “I see,” Zorn said, wondering what might have become of the dissenting navigator. “Have you told anyone else about wanting a transfer?”

  “Just Randy. He said you weren’t too pleased with pushing the button but didn’t blame the crew for it. So I thought I’d take the risk to approach you.”

  While Zorn paused to think, he cast a sharp look.at the young co-pilot.

  “Look, I’m not trying to make trouble, Mr. Zorn. And Randy’s not a bad sort. But he’s had multiple deployments and he’s kind of messed up right now.”

  Zorn looked around and saw a couple of airmen approaching.

  “Okay, Clayton. I think I understand where you’re coming from. Since you’re technically a Zorn employee, send me an email and I’ll see what I can do. Just a line or two. And sign it ‘Clay.’”

  Zorn recited his business email address.

  “But as a sign of good faith, I’d like something in return.”

  “Name it.”

  “There’s a video camera in the cargo hold that records who pushes the cargo ramp button. Do you know it?”

  Clayton nodded.

  “I want my recording to get lost.”

  The co-pilot bared his teeth in a friendly grin.

  “Today’s your lucky day, Mr. Zorn. That system falls under the co-pilot’s control. And, you know, sometimes those recordings go bad for no reason at all.”

  Zorn swallowed a laugh.

  “I think you and I are going to get along just fine, Clayton. But right now I’ve got to run off to see the base chief. Anything special about him that I ought to know?”

  The co-pilot shrugged.

  “Never met the guy. But I do have one piece of advice.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I suggest you find a way to miss your return flight this afternoon. We’re scheduled to do another dump over the trench and it might look funny if I sabotaged a second recording.”

  The pilot smiled at Zorn as if sharing a private joke.

  “Thanks, Clayton” Zorn replied, returning the smile. “And please do get in touch. Zorn Air Transport always has opportunities for promising young pilots.”

  Zorn appeared at the administration building’s reception desk just before nine A.M. for his meeting with the base chief. The duty officer led him into the chief’s office, a twenty-by-twenty carpeted room furnished with a cheap maple veneer desk and chair, a four-drawer file safe, and a glass-top conference table with eight swivel chairs. The chief came out from behind his desk to met Zorn at the table.

  “Jerry Pike,” he said, holding out a limp hand with long, sensitive fingers resembling those of a pianist. Pike appeared to be in his fifties, slightly taller than Zorn, but rounded and flabby. He looked the prototypical bureaucrat, a balding, puffy version of Mister Rogers who could reduce any color to gray. He reminded Zorn of the hall-walkers at CIA headquarters, officers past their prime yet short of retirement, eternally between assignments, and walking the halls in hopes of landing new work to make the time go by.

  “Must I use my pseudonym or can I assume you know my true name?” Zorn asked to encourage frankness. “I thought you might have it if Pat Craven told you I was coming.”

  “Yes, the undersecretary did share that with me,” Pike replied with a forced smile. “And I must say I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. Zorn, having read your father’s writings.”

  “I stand very much in my father’s shadow.”

  “Oh, don’t sell yourself short,” the base chief insisted. “Your Triage system is an impressive achievement. Without Triage, I doubt the emergency measures could have worked nearly so well as they have. We’d probably still have our thumbs up our assess sorting out the bad apples from the good. Corvus would be jammed to the gills.”

  “So have you used Triage data in your work?”

  “Yes, but not at Corvus. Risk assessments are all done stateside.”

  “And have you worked here long?”

  “Not really. I came a couple days ago to fill in as acting chief. The regular chief had to visit North Africa on short notice. Listen, I’m terribly sorry he couldn’t be here. He’s been with the ESM program from day one and knows all there is to know about Corvus.”

  Zorn offered Pike a sympathetic smile, as if the substitution were unimportant. But inwardly, the fact that nobody had told him of the chief’s absence set off alarm bells. Especially since Craven hadn’t shown up, either.

  “Well, anyway,” Pike went on, “now that you’re here. I’ll do the best I can to answer your questions. Where would you like to start?”

  Zorn couldn’t discern whether Pike was unaware of what had happened on the flight from Dover or was playing dumb. If the latter, that was a game two could play. He answered accordingly.

  “How about giving me your standard briefing, with the facilities tour afterward. Would that work for you, Jerry?”

  “Of course. My presentation deck is cued and ready. Let’s start there.”

  Pike offered Zorn a seat at the conference table before stepping to the wall and pulling down a retractable projection screen. Then he retrieved a laptop computer from his desk and entered a few keystrokes to pull up the deck.

  Pike’s presentation, likely having been prepared by Tetra’s graphics staff in Crystal City, was every bit as slick as Zorn might have expected from a top-tier contractor. In fact, one of the opening slides described Tetra as the FedEx of counterterrorism, where virtually everything of a time-urgent nature was handled overnight. Pickups of detainees from local police stations, drop-offs at Triage interview centers, risk assessment calculations, short-haul flights to transit centers, long-haul flights to repatriation sites, all were integrated seamlessly and carried out largely during the hours of darkness.

  “After you’ve done this kind of work for a while,” Pike quipped with a knowing look, “one can’t help becoming a bit of a night owl.”

  The presentation went on to cover nearly all the points of interest that Zorn expected. It opened with the Corvus Base mission statement and went on to include base maps and photographs, budget figures, a statistical profile of the detainee population, and current issues facing the removals program. It was pure boilerplate and didn’t require the presenter to have spent any time at all on the ground at Corvus.

  Having trained as a financial analyst, Zorn paid close attention to Pike’s financial statements and the various graphs and charts. Most of what he saw was consistent with Zorn USA’s internal data and with the classified materials he reviewed in the SCIF at DHS. On the surface, Pike’s figures for incoming and outgoing detainees seemed to check out.

  But having heard Randy Hellman explain how the numbers were systematically cooked, and having lent a hand in the shrinkage that occurred over the Puerto Rico Trench, Zorn knew the presentation was riddled with lies. And that Pike probably knew it. But Zorn had come to investigate, not accuse, and resolved to learn all he could without making waves. Particularly when he toured the detention wings, where he hoped to lay eyes on some live detainees.

  When the last slide had played, Pike asked if his visitor had any questions.

  “I do, but why don’t we take them up during the tour? I imagine much will become clear as we go along.”

  “Shall we start
with a visit to the air base, then?”

  “Let’s skip the air base,” Zorn replied. “I’m in the air logistics business and have a pretty good idea of what goes on at air bases. But I’m a novice in the detention business. What I’d really like to see is what goes on inside the wire.”

  In an instant, Pike’s demeanor seemed to go from a state of guarded readiness to one of heightened alert.

  “Well,” the Tetra official said, letting out a long breath while weighing his answer. “I can offer you a general sort of tour of the detention area. But you should understand that certain places are off-limits for security reasons.”

  “I have a full TITAN clearance, Jerry. And I’ve given up my holiday weekend to fly down here. I’d like to see everything.”

  Jerry Pike stroked his chin and gave Zorn a questioning look.

  “It’s not just about secrecy, Roger. It’s about safety. We hold some seriously dangerous characters at this facility, and we don’t want them to hurt anyone. Or to identify our people. That’s why our guards have to cover their faces.”

  “That’s okay. I’m fine with wearing a mask. Would it help if we brought a couple of guards along?”

  Pike exhaled deeply and appeared to be thinking hard.

  “That goes without saying. In fact, I may have to rely on the guards to refresh my memory on certain points. I’ve taken the tour several times but never had to lead it before,

  Pike’s smile aimed at nonchalance but fell short. Next he stepped to his desk and phoned base security to ask for two escorts along with an XL-sized staff jumpsuit.

  A few minutes later, a pair of guards arrived, each built like a professional wrestler. One brought a spare jumpsuit bearing a Tetra corporate logo on each sleeve and the word “Security” writ large on the back. Zorn donned the jumpsuit over his civilian clothes and put on a protective face mask. Pike retrieved his own jumpsuit from a coatrack and slipped into it before the two men set off with their escorts.