What’s happening with the medics?
they are working, came the response, again very quickly.
Outside? Not in ambulance yet?
yes
You still can’t tell anything about him?
bloody
What’s he wearing?
can’t see
He’s alive?
don’t know, sorry
The palm trees swayed in the breeze. A bulldozer, a jackhammer, both somewhere far away. He cased the workers near him on break from a jobsite, thinking maybe he could use them. They smelled strongly of paint, all of them in jumpsuits, bandanas over their heads, sunglasses, hard hats in hand, drinking refrescos. He clocked three women with children and groceries waiting for the bus, not wanting to miss their ride nor a new element of the scene. A man in a panama talked nonsensically about Christ to a young man wearing a too-large sport coat. Despite the carnage, no one was crying or wailing. No one knew the dead. But they were keyed up, eyes edging around like it could happen again, whispering as if a terrible ominous thing were coming. Like herd animals, worries chewed over like cud.
He could use this.
His phone buzzed. Another text from the kid.
they’re loading him
Shit. He’d have to follow the ambulance to the hospital.
okay
If it was one of the American soldiers, Tomás needed to interrogate him—probably impossible at the hospital. And if he was a Zeta, he’d need to be silenced. Again, the hospital wasn’t ideal.
Tomás moved to a better vantage on the ambulance. No lights, no sirens. Okay. He had a minute or two. A few cops with semiautos strung across their chests stood between him and the ambulance. The rest at the scene, a fútbol field or more away.
The paramedics pushed the stretcher toward the ambulance, detectives and investigators parting slowly, such was their ogling. In a minute he’d be loaded up and gone. Tomás tensed, his limbs tingling in a sudden certainty: he had to do it now. The hospital would be too hard.
He’d have to take care of it here.
He waited for an officer to go to the trunk of a squad car, away from the throng, in a spot of slight concealment behind a power-line pole not far from the cop and his car. When the cop opened the trunk and removed a shotgun, Tomás swept up behind him and in a fluid motion took the cop’s shotgun with one hand and stabbed him under the ribs with the other. Little jewels of blood in the air as his knife went in and out. “This will hurt, but you will live,” he said before he ran the knife across the cop’s forehead. Tomás let him go, and the cop said “Gah” as he gripped his side and staggered to turn around, his face bloody, his eyes full of blood, his mouth open in an astonished rictus, pinched as though breathing were itself a tremendous labor. His lung was collapsing or collapsed or filling or filled with blood, and he was blind and mute. The cop stumbled toward the throng that remained, heedless of his predicament.
Tomás quickly put two flares in his back pocket and, one-handed, rummaged in the trunk some more, tossing small empty boxes onto the ground. He ejected the shells from the shotgun and placed them in the trunk just so. He grabbed a police radio and put it under his arm as he lit each flare. He closed the trunk on the shining casings of bullets and the red shotgun shells and leaned the shotgun against the bumper and calmly strode away.
The cop had dropped at the end of a thin spoor of his own blood, and when the shells exploded and the bullets began to pop from within the trunk, the crowd bunched and flexed as it came to mistaken terms with the noise. The trunk rocked and smoked and everyone ducked and scattered. Those who saw the bleeding cop recoiled from him and the chaos nearby as the panic grew. The policía fired in the direction of the erupting squad car, thinking the culprits were hidden behind it. The desired pandemonium.
The policía ducked and dashed and performed heroic slides into positions around the smoking squad car. A last pop brought a fusillade of bullets into the car as Tomás emerged from the ambulance, wiping his hands on his pants as though he’d finished a chore or greasy meal. He pulled the radio out from under his arm and turned it on and fiddled with it near his ear as he walked away. The policía closed in on the smoking and now silent trunk of the squad car.
A horn blasted the new quiet. An SUV rolled up to the barricade and was waved into the restricted area. Parked. Two people jumped out. Not wearing balaclavas like all the other law enforcement. One black man and a woman, both in black jackets, bulging with body armor. They kept tight together, wary and scanning, and approached the cops showing identification, working their way to a clutch of commanders.
Americans.
He texted the boy.
You see the gringos?
yes
you see the woman
yes
Does she have brown hair?
no she is blonde
So this wasn’t the DEA woman. Some other gringos.
They went with a group of police to the scene of the battle, the spilled motorcycles, the charred pickups. The dead men. The man in body armor studied the ground, went where the cops pointed. The woman scanned around, and when she looked up toward Tomás, he turned and walked away.
Is she watching me?
No
Tomás saw Ernesto peeking from within the steeple.
Where is she now?
The ambulance.
Tomás got in the van. He’d have to watch these gringos, whoever they were. Tail them. It was something, it wasn’t much. His phone shook on the dash where he’d set it.
did you kill the man in the ambulance
He set the phone back and could see in the side mirror the white woman shouting at the man who’d come with her, the two of them running to the SUV. The man and woman climbed in the SUV, and it pulled away.
who are these gringos
When the SUV pulled away, he started the van. They were in a hurry. Good, so was he.
He waited five seconds and pulled out. The phone vibrated in his lap. He rolled down the window and threw it hard to the pavement.
BAGRAM AFB, PARWAN PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
MARCH 19, 2004, 21:25
POLYGRAPHER:
Tell me about Abdul Kalali.
CARVER:
The poppy warlord? He’s around five-eight, two hundred pounds. Wears these yellow aviators like some kind of sheik or pedo.
POLYGRAPHER:
Shipley picked him. Why?
CARVER:
He wasn’t afraid of al-Qaeda, for starters. The people in Paktika feared him, let him know what was going on. He was a serious jefe with zero charisma, but Shipley felt like he’d be the best bet.
POLYGRAPHER:
For what?
CARVER:
You know what we were doing.
POLYGRAPHER:
What did he tell you you were doing?
CARVER:
Backing the most reasonable player in all of Paktika.
POLYGRAPHER:
And what did you think of that?
CARVER:
Like, ethically?
POLYGRAPHER:
Yes. And legally.
CARVER:
This is a weird question, isn’t it?
POLYGRAPHER:
How’s that?
CARVER:
The Agency renditions motherfuckers to black sites like Chinese takeout, and you wanna know if I was clutching my pearls over Shipley’s arrangement with a big bad heroin producer?
POLYGRAPHER:
Tell me what you thought.
CARVER:
I thought about how my great-granddad ran whiskey in Kentucky and then took that money and expertise and went into stock-car racing, even stood for mayor once.
POLYGRAPHER:
I think I follow, but go on.
CARVER:
I thought Abdul Kalali might could bring a little peace and order to Paktika.
POLYGRAPHER:
Okay. So how did the pursuit teams aid his operation?
CARVER:
You gotta understand something. The economy up there is based on one thing: heroin. Growing it. Moving it. Protecting it. Shipley tried to warn the State Department that making farmers grow wheat wasn’t gonna help win the War on Drugs.
POLYGRAPHER:
Why?
CARVER:
It took the bottom out of wheat prices. Even if people wanted to, no one could afford not to grow poppies. We weren’t gonna get rid of al-Qaeda by destroying the local economy. But of course, nobody listens.
POLYGRAPHER:
So what did the pursuit teams do for Abdul Kalali?
CARVER:
Torched his rivals’ fields. Stole their pumps, shit like that. After Karzai got in power, we made sure the local police didn’t fuck with him or his outfit.
POLYGRAPHER:
And you employed coalition resources?
CARVER:
We called in a few air strikes on the other warlords. Said they were al-Qaeda. Maybe they were. But more importantly, we made it seem like Abdul Kalali had AC-10s at his disposal. And it worked perfectly. The villagers started feeding him intel about al-Qaeda activities, which he passed on to us. Some villages in Urgun, they just started talking to us direct. Where the enemy ratlines were. Which families were hiding weapons. Which villagers were giving aid and comfort.
POLYGRAPHER:
What do you know about the incident on April 23, 2003?
CARVER:
Wait. You gotta understand something. Enemy engagements went down like 80 percent.
POLYGRAPHER:
Got it. What do you know about April 23, 2003?
CARVER:
I assume you’re talking about when Special Forces intercepted that shipment? All I heard was that the runners said Abdul Kalali had a deal with the CIA. I dunno if it actually escalated all the way to Tenet versus Rumsfeld, but Shipley said we shouldn’t expect any more intel from the Defense Department. Or help of any kind.
POLYGRAPHER:
What did he tell you about the Concern?
CARVER:
What concern?
POLYGRAPHER:
The Concern. His pet project in the Special Activities Division.
CARVER:
I never heard of any projects.
POLYGRAPHER:
He logged a lot of time in Paktika with your pursuit team in particular.
CARVER:
Yeah, nevertheless. You think I’m lying? Look at the needle.
POLYGRAPHER:
The needle isn’t dispositive.
CARVER:
What does that mean?
POLYGRAPHER:
It means I’m the one needs convincing. So why don’t you tell me about your time in Pakistan. About the Ground Branch’s interaction with the DEA in Karachi.
Chapter Nineteen
Crocodiles
Harbaugh swallowed the black beans straight from the can, hardly chewing. She’d never tasted anything so salty, cold, perfect. She sopped the juice from her chin with her wrist and tapped on the bottom of the can and jammed her fingers in there to get the last beans gummed to the sides. She looked around, licking her fingers.
The house Carver had brought them to was so clean and empty that her initial impression was new construction. There was nothing in it, no furniture or decoration, the walls a basic talcy white, windows covered by faux-wood blinds. The only appealing feature was the high-end saltillo floor tile. But the place wasn’t new. Nicks on the Formica counter, a chipped and stained backsplash, a cracked window. She’d thought it must be a safehouse, something the CIA kept handy. But that assumption was dodgy—why would the US government keep a house in Tampico? She had zero idea how Carver’d acquired it. Or even if he’d acquired it. They could be squatting, for all she knew.
She opened the cupboard in a renewed pang of hunger. Empty. Unless she wanted to eat the newspaper laid out on each shelf. Why did people do that? To protect the shelves? Or the dishes and canned food? She’d kill for a can of anything. Hominy, peas, tomato sauce, whatever. She yanked open an accordion set of doors to a pantry that housed only an old broom. She went through the drawers, scanned the bottom cabinets. The lukewarm fridge. Her eyes came to rest on the empty can of beans on the counter. Maybe Carver would return with another.
But she couldn’t imagine taking more food from him. Nah, I’m good, she’d say, even though she was starving. She didn’t want to seem the least bit needy. She closed the cabinets. Stood there, situating herself. It seemed important to be capable, ready for anything. She wanted him to see her that way now, after what they’d been through.
Gustavo had no such compunction. He lay splayed in the corner of the living room, passed out on the tile floor. When they arrived, she’d watched him sit against the wall, nod off, slide like a melting thing to the floor, exhausted after however many hours coked-up and adrenalized. Now he groaned in the throes of some psychic ache. He rolled over, grunting like a giant fretting fetus.
She, however, felt pretty goddamn good. Despite the bruise at the base of her neck, an astonishingly sharp pain from a scratch on her forearm, her hunger pangs (starving!), she had this . . . butterfly glee and hum in her nerves.
What the hell was this state she was in?
She started bouncing on her toes, her thighs and calves like springs. She squatted and stood and reached. Goddamn! A well-oiled and tuned-up machine—that’s how she felt, like a vehicle suited for the landscape in which it found itself. Alert and at home. In this bare kitchen. In Mexico, of all places. She belonged here, in the middle of all this.
She squeezed her legs. She could run in these skinny black jeans, no problem, go for a run run, that’s what she wanted to be doing. What it would feel like to cut through the humid morning air. How she’d perform here in the swampland outside Tampico compared to the razor cold of the Upper Peninsula or the Culver City stairs. She’d go for miles in this womby nourishing air, she’d been hardened in the Los Angeles smog, the icicle severity of Michigan, she’d go for days, and they’d see—
Jesus Christ. Just stop already. No one’s watching. No one cares.
She closed the rest of the cupboards, studied her surroundings the way she would in the long minutes before a raid. The tile in here was a deep royal blue, like an ocean you could stand on. She listened to her own breathing. She heard a small plane far away overhead. Birds outside the window.
She found her mind wandering to what would come next, all the wonderful things that could be. Carver getting them on a private jet. She and Carver ushering Gustavo into a black SUV in San Antonio. The look on Dufresne’s face. Beers with Cromer and the rest of Group 11. Introducing Carver to Childs. Telling the tale. How she’d been a fucking pro. How she’d done the things, and what things they were. How she’d fled the warehouse, kept ahead of mad howling stalking killers. Moman dead in his own office chair. How she’d hid there, getting the drop on the Zeta. How she’d outrun the assassins on foot at the warehouse and outmaneuvered them in the car, navigated herself and Gustavo to Carver, and how they were somehow alive yet and that because she’d kept her shit together. All the noise and sheer speed of everything going haywire—just thinking about it made her sweat again, a scared sweat—the curdled shouts, the gunfire echoing off the buildings, the scream of tires, the flash of the rocket and the muzzles, the stinging hot reek of gas afire like a punch in the nose.
And then it was over and quiet and the only thing to do was ride along, Carver driving, Gustavo in the back seat. Silence and dark. No headlights, even though it was night. She didn’t ask questions, she didn’t talk the whole time Carver drove them out of the city, even when he swerved, muttering “Jesus, crocodiles.” Out her window the moonlit crocodiles too kept silent, thrashing away from the car in quiet muscular shadows. The night hooded all thoughts. She was too spent to even muse.
When they finally got to the house, Carver walked ahead of her as Gustavo stumbled after and then they were inside, Carver handing her the can of black beans befo
re he left again, and it was the next day before she noticed, she’d lost hours somehow (was it afternoon now?), she had no idea how long she’d been here, she just knew she was in the time after the shocking things had happened and right before all the good things about to begin. She was alive. There was pride to take in that, she’d earned this moment of cuspy Christmas-morning relief, as if all that remained to do was open her presents.
Carver driving, the moonlight on his bare forearms.
They’d locked eyes as he handed her the can.
Blue eyes that practically muted him.
He’d said things she didn’t catch.
The deep blue ocean of tile swelled in her vision, made her feel suddenly dizzy, almost seasick. She squatted. Caught up with herself. The blood rushing to her stomach, probably. She sat staring at the grid of grout. She tried talking herself out of hunger, out of moonlight, out of his eyes and such.
You’re still deep in the woods, Hardball. Straighten up. Got a lot of ground left to cover.
On her phone, three missed calls from Childs. She typed him a quick note. Don’t worry. Coming. I’ll be in touch soon.
Across the room Gustavo twitched and squirmed. He flopped and shook his head like some kind of insect-ridden dog and then went still again. The motherfucker. Despite how good she felt, she still loathed him. He’d caused all this horrific shit, and now he was over there on the floor like a college kid trying to outsleep a hangover. A useless pile. She felt a raw, uncut dread looking at him. Not just the fat, sweaty man himself, she realized, but what he foretold: a flight back to the United States, ultimately back to Los Angeles, back to the office, the break-room microwave, her apartment microwave, her life. To Bronwyn, in some other form. Even though Gustavo was such a get that he would smooth over everything at DEA for her, her Christmas-morning feeling had turned and soured.
Make Them Cry Page 18