Web of Justice

by J J Miller

  But it wasn’t Charlie I heard from next. It was Lund.

  A new message appeared on my phone.

  “HAPPY VIEWING,” it said.

  There was a link below the text and some login details. I tapped on the link and it took me through to a YouTube channel. The frame was black. With a sickening feeling, I keyed in the username and password Lund had provided. Once I hit “enter” a still of the video appeared.

  I felt like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. It was Bella. Gagged and bound. Lying down on her side.

  Jack was at my shoulder.

  “It’s a private video,” he said. “Only you can see it.”

  I hit play and immediately wished I hadn’t. I could hear Bella breathing hard through her nose. She was whimpering quietly. And after a few seconds I realized she was trembling. I looked closer.

  “She’s shivering,” I said as tears stung my eyes. The anger welled up again, and I had to control the violent urge to smash my phone to smithereens.

  “There’s a comment,” Jack said. “Added five minutes ago.”

  I flipped the video up to bring the comment into center frame.

  “See, Madison? I told you you would see your daughter again,” it read. “As you can see, she is in a very cold place with not much to shield her from the elements. She will probably be dead in about three hours.”

  Even at the speed we were flying, we didn’t have enough time. Beyond Bozeman, we had no idea where to go next.

  I had to try and engage Lund. I had to find a way to change his mind, change the course of my daughter’s fate.

  “Is this about Bati Kot?” I wrote.

  “You know damn well it is,” came the reply. “Your unit destroyed dozens of lives and just walked away blameless.”

  “It was a firefight.”

  “Liar! I knew many of the local people. They told me what happened. Your patrol took a suicide hit and then pulled out shooting everyone in sight.”

  “That’s not what happened. We took fire. Many of those civilians were killed by AK-47 rounds. There was a full investigation, and my unit was exonerated.”

  “Right, an investigation by the US military into civilian casualties inflicted by the US military. It was a sham.”

  “I was there. I saw what happened.”

  “Then you saw at least one of your men maintain fire as your patrol withdrew, killing men, women and children as he went.”

  It was true. While I’d denied it for as long as possible, Lund was telling the truth. It was the darkest day of my military career. As we pulled out following the attack, a brief skirmish ensued before I ordered the men to hold fire. But Private Alan Halloway was caught in a fearful mental lock and kept his turret-mounted .50 caliber M2 firing as his Hummer sped away. The M2 was a heavy machine gun with devastating power. Any victims that weren’t killed by Halloway’s weapon lost either their arms or legs. Weeks later, I’d been part of the team that went to visit the villages where the victims and victims’ families lived. To the wounded we gave three thousand dollars in green backs. For each of the dead, their families received five thousand. The investigation confirmed we were engaged in a firefight, but it buried the undisciplined actions Halloway, whose bullets caused half the human carnage. It had come away ruling that while a deeply regrettable number of Afghans had been killed and injured by bullets from both sides, the conduct of my unit had fallen well within US military combat guidelines. In other words, the civilian casualties were deemed to be within the justifiable bounds of warfare.

  I had no reason to defend Private Halloway now despite my innate allegiance to the corps. Speaking against a fellow Marine was not an easy thing to do—standing by each other to the hilt was sacrosanct.

  “That is true, I admit,” I finally wrote. “I wish I could have gotten closer to our shooter to stop him, but in the heat of battle, he was mentally beyond reach.”

  “The heat of battle? Can you hear yourself? You’re an apologist for mass murder.”

  There was an incoming call. It was Charlie.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Victor Lund has a property in Montana. It’s a few acres located in the mountains near Big Sky.”

  That’s why Bella was shivering. She must be in the mountains somewhere. Mid-winter at God only knows what altitude. This time of day, this time of year, the temperatures would have to be well below freezing. My whole body ached at the thought of her pain.

  Charlie sent an address through.

  “We’re going to need a car,” I said.

  “Claire’s onto it,” Charlie said. I could hear Claire talking in the background. “Claire says it’s done. She’s booked you a Ford Expedition. You just have to do the forms at the Hertz counter.”

  I thanked them both and hung up.

  We were due to land in thirty minutes. Both Jack and I keyed in the address Charlie gave us for Lund’s property plus a link from a real estate site. It was a sixty-acre lot on Latigo Road, nestled in the foothills of Wilson Peak on the side of the valley opposite Big Sky’s iconic Lone Peak.

  Just like we had for Reseda, we studied the layout of Lund’s house—it was a huge, six-bedroom lodge spread over three floors. We checked the snow depth and found Montana was having a very good ski season. Big Sky was reporting five feet at the base. That’s what we could expect at Lund’s property. From the maps app, it was hard to get a read on the landscape and how close to the house we might be able to get undetected. We’d just have to see when we got there.

  The thought occurred to me that we were taking a huge punt in assuming that this was where Lund had taken Bella. There was no certainty that we were right. And if we were wrong, Bella was dead.

  I looked out the window. Everywhere I could see was white, divided here and there by a road or a fence. On the mountain faces, dark cliff bands were left exposed where it was too steep for the snow to hold. For all I knew, we were flying directly over her.

  Hurry up, I urged the pilot inside my head.

  Out the window the cold blanket of white rolled past.

  Where are you, my little angel? Just hold tight. Hold tight, my darling. I’m coming.

  A new comment appeared beneath Bella’s video.

  “Still there, Madison?”

  “Yes,” I wrote. “Where have you taken her? If she dies, I will skin you alive and feed you to the wolves.”

  I had to encourage him to believe we had no idea where he was.

  “Funny you should say that. Because you won’t be seeing your daughter ever again. There will be nothing of her to bury. The wolves and bears will see to that.”

  I buckled over and screamed out loud.

  “Is everything okay back there?” asked Captain Seger over the intercom.

  I looked up the aisle. The cockpit door swung open and Hank was there leaning over and looking our way.

  “Yes. All good, Hank,” I shouted and waved. “How long?”

  “Dropping the wheels now, Mr. Madison. We’ll be touching down in no time. I’m going to need you to buckle up, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  I waved at him, sat back, and clipped my belt. I kept my eyes glued to the window. My legs were jiggling. My hands clutched the arm rests. I prepared to sprint through the terminal to get to the car rental desk.

  “We’re going to get her, Brad,” said Jack.

  And while I appreciated his attempt to reassure me, I couldn’t escape the string of horrific thoughts that sat in the back of my mind like toxic waste.

  What if we don’t get there in time?

  What if Lund decides not to wait for Bella to freeze to death?

  What if he hasn’t taken Bella to his Wilson Peak property at all?

  The Gulfstream landed and Hank taxied the plane over to the terminal. As soon as it stopped, Jack and I were up front, ready to exit.

  Hank emerged from the cockpit.

  “Mr. Madison, I took the liberty of making some very discreet inquiries to see if there’s been any m
ovement out of Gallatin Field.”

  “Yes?” I said warily.

  “It seems Mr. Lund keeps a chopper there. Flies it himself. And twenty minutes after his plane landed his chopper took off. He has not returned.”

  I shot a quizzical look at Jack. He smiled.

  “I told Hank we were on Lund’s tail, hoping he might get some info out of the control tower staff at Gallatin. Turns out he could.”

  I turned to Hank.

  “Thanks Hank. Do they know where Lund went?”

  “They said he headed south. And given the elapsed time they don’t expect him back. They’re sure he’s landed somewhere.”

  As Hank spoke, Jack zoomed in again on Lund’s property on his phone.

  “Here,” he said, showing me the screen. The Google Maps image revealed the property in summer. There was no helipad, but there was a tennis court. “That’s where the bastard is. For sure.”

  We stepped out of the Gulfstream into the brisk Montana air and bolted for the terminal.

  34

  While Jack handled the paperwork at the car rental counter, I called Charlie. I wanted her to dig around and see if there was anything she could find about Victor Lund on the Bati Kot incident. In short, why would he bear such a personal grudge against me? I was fully aware of his efforts to brand my unit as a bunch of callous murderers but I wondered if that was the full story behind his lasting wrath.

  I told Charlie that some of his correspondence with the US military might have been leaked in the Afghan War Diary, the trove of classified documents that had been released by WikiLeaks.

  “Jeez. WikiLeaks. Sounds so dated. That’s kind of the Middle Ages in the history of hacking. I mean, props to Assange and all, but the world’s moved on.”

  “Can you just check it, please?”

  “Of course. But I haven’t been laying idle, you know.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Do you have something?”

  “I dug into Victor Lund’s medical history,” she said.

  “You mean....”

  “Yeah, I hacked his records. Piece of cake, really. Most medical clinics are. And the Camden in Beverly Hills is no different. They charge their patients double what you’d pay elsewhere, but their database is easier to crack than a freshly laid egg.”

  “Okay, well done. What did you find?”

  “Victor Lund is a bulimic. Has been for years.”

  Bulimic? A man in his sixties? I thought only young people had that, young girls in particular.

  “That accounts his emaciated features,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Charlie. “Other tell-tale signs include a raspy voice and coughing.”

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “As far as I could tell from the doctor’s notes, his bulimia was triggered by a traumatic episode. Lund did not go into detail with his doc, but he did say it began after he returned from Afghanistan and began divorce proceedings initiated by his wife.”

  “Right. Anything else.”

  “Yep, the doctor noted Lund seemed to harbor a burning anger but rebuffed his attempt to steer him towards therapy.”

  “Why address it when you can take it out on the world?”

  “You and I both know that’s what men prefer to do,” said Charlie, reminding me of her nasty experience at the hands of online trolls. “But Lund was hurting in other ways too.”

  “Like what?”

  “He was suffering chronic pancreatitis early last year. Typically that’s caused by alcoholism, but in Lund’s case it was bulimia. To make matters worse, the pain intensifies when he eats something. So he’s been prescribed enough Fentanyl and Oxycodone to drop a herd of cattle.”

  “He might be drugging Bella with that stuff,” I said.

  “Maybe, but he’s also being prescribed Restoril to help him sleep.”

  “Restoril?”

  “It’s a sleeping pill. Also goes by the name of temazepam. So it’s more likely he’s keeping her sedated with that. He probably has a stash on hand because his quack has strongly advised him to use it sparingly—it can put you in a coma if you use too much in conjunction with opioids like Fentanyl.”

  “Right, thanks for that, Charlie. Keep digging, please,” I said the words quietly. The wave of dread had come back in force. I felt depleted, exhausted once more.

  Jack slapped me on the back. It was enough for me to snap out it.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I’m driving. You can keep an eye on Bella as we go. And play navigator.”

  “No worries.”

  It was about an hour to Big Sky heading south along US101. Snow covered everything in sight. The township gave way to a rural landscape of flat paddocks sheeted in white. The roofs of ranch houses were capped with up to three feet of snow, and a still mist hung over the Gallatin River, which ran alongside the road. Light was fading from the overcast sky. In an hour it would be dark. That had its positives and negatives—good because it meant we could approach the lodge unseen, bad for Bella because the temperature would soon drop rapidly. The readings I had from Big Sky were that it was presently thirteen degrees, and it would fall to eight by seven o’clock.

  I didn’t really want to watch the video stream, but I had to. I could see Bella was still breathing from the movement of her chest, but her eyes had closed. Whether that was from pure exhaustion, drugs or the beginnings of hypothermia, I didn’t know.

  “Stay with us, my darling,” I said to the phone as if Bella could actually hear me. “Please, stay with us. Daddy’s coming.”

  We were approaching the turnoff to Big Sky when Charlie called again.

  “Brad, does the name Bianca Vanek mean anything to you?”

  The name drew a blank initially, but after a few seconds the penny dropped.

  “Yes, she was the Czech aid worker killed at Bati Kot.”

  “Well, Victor sent several emails to the officers investigating the Bati Kot massacre. He was urging them to come clean about what happened. He said the US military was responsible for Vanek’s death even though her autopsy reported two bullets fired from an AK-47 had killed her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Vanek’s family and the Czech government accepted the findings but Lund refused to. But there was something the military knew but only revealed to Vanek’s family.”

  “What was that?”

  “She was pregnant.”

  “And the father? Did they say who the father was?”

  “No. But about five minutes ago I managed to contact one of Vanek’s Facebook friends. From photos on Vanek’s account, they appeared to be very close friends. So I reached out to her on Messenger and she got back to me straight away.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said Vanek was two months pregnant. And she knew the sex. It was a girl.”

  My blood was stone cold.

  “My God. And the father?”

  “The friend told me she didn’t know who he was, but Vanek told her he was a married man, an American. He was going to leave his wife and they would bring their daughter into the world together.”

  “She just told you this?”

  “I can be very persuasive. I told her it was urgent, that it could not be more critical. I told her a young girl’s life was at stake.”

  “Thank you, Charlie.”

  It was now perfectly clear what was driving Lund’s madness. This was an eye for an eye. He believed I’d robbed him of his daughter. Now he was determined to take mine.

  35

  As we began the climb up the winding, icy Latigo Road, Jack killed the headlights. The vehicle crept upwards between six-foot walls of snow that almost glowed in the dying light. It was like driving through a glacier.

  We were confident Lund had no clue we were onto him. His tone in our comment exchange on YouTube was sickly smug. He was certain he was treating me to the hell of seeing my daughter die without being able to do a single thing about it.

  “Stop here,” I said.

&
nbsp; We were two hundred yards short of the entrance. Jack pulled out his gun. I retrieved mine from the glove box. In unison, we both dropped, checked, and reloaded the magazines.

  “Let’s go get your daughter,” said Jack.

  The walls of snow provided cover as we trod our way up the road. Ahead I could see a break—the driveway into Lund’s lodge. I motioned for Jack to stop and raised my head above the snow. The slope fell back from the road, providing a clear side view of the lodge, save for a few small pines. Several lights in the house were on. But, almost obscured by the house about fifty yards beyond, I could just make out the tail of a helicopter. My heart skipped a beat—Bella was here, somewhere.

  I ducked back down and informed Jack. He had to take a look at the chopper himself.

  “Brand new Bell 407,” he said, “Not bad.”

  “Lights are on, but he could be out and about, so we have to watch our backs too.”

  “Sure, let’s keep it our surprise.”

  From the top of the driveway, fresh tire tracks lead into one of the garage doors. A car had been used here recently. There were only a few back windows overlooking the driveway, so we dashed quickly down to the lodge.

  Darkness had just about closed in now. The clouds had cleared to reveal an obsidian sky littered with crisp pins of light and a fingernail moon. I was on edge in a good way—hyper alert, armed and utterly present in the moment. For a fraction of a second, I savored the heightened sense of being. It was the same kick that war provided, the kick most soldiers tell you they miss when they get back home.

  Three feet of untouched snow was going to make moving around the house difficult. We’d sink deep with every step and our tracks would be obvious. But we had no time to lose. In Reseda, we’d split up. This time, we stuck together for cover. We headed down the side of the garage for the back.

  My legs sank up to my lower thighs with each step into the soft powder, and it was an effort to haul them out. But we reached the back undetected and came to a door. I looked in through the glass. It appeared to be the ski room. I turned the handle, thankful it was not locked. I opened the door slowly, giving myself just enough room to move inside. But even that movement was enough to let a ski pole that must have been placed against the door slip onto the slate floor. At the sound of the clattering, I heard footsteps coming from the far side of the house. I stuck my head into the passageway, looking left toward the main living area. As soon as I did, a gunshot sounded, and a bullet flew past me six inches from my face and buried itself in the wood-paneled wall.