He takes another taste and says, “And I must apologize for something else.”
“The kidnapping?” the man asks. He’s tall, with muscular shoulders and arms that show he likes to work out, but with a pudgy middle and sides that show he spends a lot of time sitting in front of a desk. He has on blue jeans, no shoes, black socks, and a wrinkled pink polo shirt. Pelayo thinks of himself as a global man with global tastes, but really, a man wearing pink?
“That’s a harsh word, a harsh phrase,” Pelayo says. “Let’s just call it an unfortunate turn of events, a matter of business, that’s all. Hopefully, in two days or so, all will be settled and you will be rejoined with your wife, Captain Amy Travis Cornwall, 297th Military Intelligence Battalion, Military Intelligence Corps, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, recently home after an eight-month deployment to Afghanistan.”
The man’s face colors but he stands still. The little girl is staring at Pelayo, and he offers her a slight smile. She returns to her coloring book. The hand holding a colored pencil is shaking.
Pelayo says, “In the meantime, is there anything else I can provide to you and your daughter?”
“How about our freedom?”
He smiles. “I wish, but, ah, my hands are tied at the moment. I’ve dispatched your wife on a very, very important mission. To have that mission succeed, unfortunately, I need to have you and your daughter in our possession.”
“Fuck you,” the man says. His daughter doesn’t say a word.
Pelayo stands up. “I won’t take that as an insult. You’re a father, a husband, under serious stress. That insult…I will let it slide. But remember this in the hours ahead: be very, very happy and prayerful that you’re not in the presence of my cousin Miguel. If you were…well, let’s just say at this point, you would be begging for the sweet relief of being killed.”
He takes another satisfying sip of the Coca-Cola—really, how could anyone not tell the difference?—and as he turns, the man calls out, his voice pleading, “Wait, please. Just a moment? Please?”
Pelayo sees the man is no longer angry, no longer ready to curse him again. Instead, well, the man’s shoulders are slumped. He is showing he is defeated.
But Pelayo sees that as just a temporary success. Many times, a defeated and humiliated man will come back with a surprising vengeance and fury at the most inopportune time.
“Go ahead.”
The man says, nearly looking down, “We’ve eaten just once. It was quite the nice meal. I…I thank you. But could we have some snacks and other drinks, just in case we get hungry? And my daughter…she loves chewing gum. Could we get that for her as well?”
He smiles. This is going better than he expected. “You will have it all within the hour.”
Pelayo now is beyond the door, and Casper is ready to close it, when the man says one last thing:
“Why? Why did you do this to us?”
Pelayo shrugs again. “You know very well why. And soon so will your wife.”
He steps back, and the plain gray metal door closes shut on the American father and his daughter.
CHAPTER 12
I RESTRAIN myself from jumping up and slapping Sue Judson on her pretty face, but I manage to minimize the screen for GILLNET so she doesn’t know what I’m up to.
But even then, she knows I’m up to something, which is just as bad.
Her expression is a mix of curiosity and concern, and she says, “Is everything okay at home, Amy?”
Instantly I’m on guard, and I say, “Of course everything’s okay. Why do you ask?” And I’m thinking, All right, what does she know, has her husband, Luke, said something about me and work and that appointment tomorrow with the CID officer—another problem the size of the moon I’m trying to ignore—and then I try to dial it back and add, “Are you all right?”
“Me? Oh, yes, fine, it’s just that…well, I’ve seen you here plenty of times with Denise, and I’ve never seen you at one of these terminals. Is your computer at home broken?”
“Well, it’s been giving me some hiccups, and I was running some errands and—”
She puts her hand on my right shoulder and says, “I hate to interrupt you, but your daughter was asking me about getting a book for her from the interlibrary system, and darn it, I can’t remember the title. Do you know it?”
“No, I don’t,” I say, conscious that with every passing second, every passing minute, Tom and Denise are farther away from me. If they are still in the back of the van, each sixty seconds of blather with Sue is taking them a mile farther.
She gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Well, I’m sure Denise is home right now. If you want to give her a text, I’ll wait here.”
“I’m not really sure…” and I was about to say, where she is, but I can’t say those words out loud—no, I refuse to say those words out loud.
“Oh,” Sue says, smiling widely. “It’ll only take a second. I can wait. Then I can take care of her.”
“Sue,” I say, also conscious that with every passing minute, my presence on this parallel classified computer system is being recorded, “I really don’t have the time.”
“Amy, just a quick text, that’s all.”
“Sue…”
“Amy, just a quick text, and we can take care of it right here,” she says, and she quiets her voice—I suppose so the other computer users around us don’t hear. “I’m sure Denise will be happy to see how thoughtful you are.”
Thoughtful. Sure. How thoughtful. I should have left the Army after having her and gone into private industry, and she and Tom would be safe at home, with better clothes, better gadgets, fatter savings accounts, and above all, safe.
Safe from her mom’s sins.
“Sue?”
“Yes?”
I crook my finger at her, so she leans down, still smiling.
I lift myself up so I can whisper in her ear without anyone else overhearing.
“Sue,” I say, choosing my words carefully, using my best parade-ground command voice. “Leave me the hell alone or I’ll hurt you.”
CHAPTER 13
WITHIN TWO seconds I’m back at the screen, face warm, back tingly, knowing I’ve just tossed a hand grenade into the comfortable civilian life of one Sue Judson, and right now, not particularly giving a crap.
I double-click on the icon for GILLNET and go to the hit, indicating some sort of audio or visual surveillance system at or near Morgan Airport, and a lit acronym comes up.
USFWS.
In this man and woman’s Army, I’ve come across and memorized scores of acronyms, but this one is a puzzle until I click on it and come up with…
US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Well.
Not really part of what one would call the nation’s intelligence agencies, but I navigate GILLNET and find a video system piggybacked on a cell phone tower, used to film certain patterns of bird migration. How fascinating.
But it also overlooks part of Morgan Airport.
With apologies to naturalists everywhere, I manage to seize control of the surveillance system and rewind back to the time when I last saw the van—I wait.
And wait.
The video feed comes back to life, and I get a shot of the airport, its strip, and the two outbuildings.
Nothing else.
I fast-forward, but not too fast, because I don’t want to miss anything.
Some minutes flicker before me. I hear harsh whispers. I look up, and Sue Judson is having a serious talk with two other librarian staffers at a center workstation.
I make the informed guess that I’m the subject of the irritated chatter and go back to the screen.
The camera captures something flying by.
A bird?
No.
I hunch forward, peering at the screen.
Oh, yeah, it’s a bird all right, but a man-made bird.
A jet aircraft, lining up for a landing. It gets closer and closer, and then it makes the landing and slows itself, and I reco
gnize it as a twin-engine Learjet 60, one of the most popular business-sized jets in the world.
I rub my fingers together.
All right.
Not a big deal. This airport belongs to a medical device company, and maybe they’re here to drop off or pick up someone.
The jet taxis to the end of the runway, slowly circles around, the view now being blocked by the two buildings. I can make out the nose of the fuselage and nothing else.
Strike that.
I can make out that no one’s walking in or walking out.
The jet seems to be waiting for somebody.
“Oh, God, yes,” I whisper. At the very limits of the camera, one can make out a dirt access road leading to the small airport.
Bouncing along this dirt road is a red van.
I get three seconds of view, but it’s enough.
I reach to the screen, give the van a quick touch as it, too, disappears from view.
All I can see now is the fuselage of the Learjet.
It stays still.
I know why the earlier system, CYCLOPS, didn’t pick up on the van. It was too far away, fuzzy, indistinct.
But now I’ve seen it.
And I know who is in it.
I touch the screen again.
The Learjet starts to taxi out and—
There!
I freeze the view and I catch the registration numbers, painted on the near engine nacelle. The letters and numbers aren’t sharp, but they’re sharp enough.
I quickly write them down.
NS-28312.
I let the video play again, and the jet gains speed, goes down the runway, and lifts off, and within seconds, it’s gone from view.
“Fly safe, you bastards,” I whisper. “You’ve got my family in there.”
Then I clear everything, shut down, log off, and push my chair back.
I need to get moving, but I also need to do something else. On my way out I catch a red-faced Sue Judson’s attention and put a reassuring hand over hers.
“Sue, I’m so sorry I snapped at you back there. Work…I’m under a lot of pressure, and there are things going on at home. I’m sorry you had to take the brunt of it.”
She smiles wanly. “I understand. We all have problems like that, here and there.” Sue’s face brightens up. “Someday, I’m sure you’ll look back on this and have a good laugh, am I right?”
I head to the doors.
“No, Sue, you’re very wrong.”
CHAPTER 14
PELAYO ABBOUD makes a slurping sound with the straw and the last of the Coca-Cola, and passes the empty bottle over to Casper Khourery, who cocks his head a couple of millimeters, a gesture just large enough so Pelayo knows what’s next.
“Ah, yes,” he says. “One more errand to undertake. Are they ready?”
Casper nods and takes the lead, still holding the empty glass Coke bottle with the straw sticking out as they maneuver their way across the filthy basement, cluttered with construction materials, pallets of packaged food and drinks, and boxes of open tiles and polished wood. The air is hot and muggy, pierced with the sound of hammering, power tools buzzing, and shouts of construction workers.
They head down a wide corridor, freshly installed Sheetrock on either side, little metal screw heads still visible. There’s a pallet with empty Coke bottles in open wooden crates, and Casper withdraws the straw, puts the bottle in with a little clink, then drops the used straw on the dirty floor. A few more meters and there’s an open door to the right, which they both enter.
The two men who successfully kidnapped the two Americans are sitting on a large black folding table, both wearing gray jumpsuits. When Pelayo comes in, the two men stand up, looking intently at him and Casper. Pelayo nods, gives them a slight smile. No need to overdo it, for these two men have grown up in blasted and destroyed areas of the Middle East that Pelayo doesn’t even want to think about.
“Gentlemen…Amir, Hakim, you’ve done exactly as you were hired to do,” Pelayo says. “My thanks once more.”
The older, harder one—Amir—says in an accented voice, “We would like to depart now. After we are settled.”
“But of course. Casper?”
Casper leaves and then quickly returns with two gym bags, each marked by the blue-and-yellow insignia of the El Tigre football club. Amir steps forward and there’s a small knife in his hand. Not bad. A good man with a good knife can close in on any armed man and slit his throat before a trigger is pulled. Amir is prepared and suspicious, a good man to hire.
“You…open them up. Show me what’s in them.”
Casper looks to Pelayo, and he nods. Both bags are unzipped, displayed, showing mounds of banded American one-hundred-dollar bills inside. Amir says something sharp, and Hakim comes over, takes the bags, examines a few sample bands, smiles and laughs.
Amir takes one of the bags, and Hakim takes the other.
“We are finished here,” Amir says. “Show us where to go.”
Pelayo extends an arm, Casper backs out, and the two men slowly walk out into the wide hallway. Casper takes the lead, and Pelayo walks beside the two men. He says, “Outside there will be a van, with a change of clothing, and it will take you to your friends at the airport. From there, vaya con dios.”
The two men say nothing as they approach a wide ramp leading outside to the even hotter, muggier air. The younger of the men says something, and as Amir replies, Pelayo steps back. The two men are now walking across a heavy green plastic tarp. Pelayo takes a 10mm Glock out of an open cardboard box to his right marked GOYA and shoots both men in the back of the head.
A minute later, after walking away from the two dead men and back into the basement, Pelayo and Casper enter a wide construction-scale elevator. As it grumbles its way up, Casper—with both bags of cash slung over his shoulders—takes the Glock from Pelayo’s right hand and gives him a moist cloth, which he uses to wipe the gun oil and powder residue off his hands.
“Ungrateful, weren’t they?” he says to Casper. “I wished them well on their journey, with God at their side, and they didn’t even say thank you.”
Casper says, “Too greedy, too eager to leave.”
“Lessons learned, eh?”
“Well, perhaps they suspected there was no one waiting for them at the airport.”
Pelayo emits a loud sigh. “Suspicious lot, weren’t they?”
The elevator door opens up to another hallway cluttered with construction equipment, and Pelayo walks to the corridor’s end. Casper opens one door, closes it behind them as they enter a very short hallway, and then opens another. From there, it’s like going from a slum to a rich man’s estate in less than two meters.
Pelayo feels the tingle of appreciation and gratitude as he enters the top-floor suite, with its curtained floor-to-ceiling windows, balconies overlooking the rest of the complex and the nearby Gulf of Mexico, luxurious furniture and big-screen televisions, as well as cool, air-conditioned air, so unlike the hot and humid basement. Two of his men are sitting at a low table, heads bowed, cleaning two American-made M4 automatic rifles. The table is covered with a work cloth. Good boys.
He looks around, sees two of his other boys sitting on a leather couch, reading magazines. They are magazines about guns and cars, which is fine. No porn lying around, no adult DVDs, no young women lounging about with thong bikinis, laughing and touching too much. Those are distractions he will not allow.
It is through very hard and dangerous work, pure focus and discipline, that Pelayo has gotten here, and he will never, ever forget those lessons, including never, ever sampling the merchandise, whether its smuggled cocaine, opium, marijuana, Fresca soda, or frightened teenage girls from Eastern Europe filled with lying promises about a new life in the New World.
He goes down a short, wood-paneled corridor and then to the left. This room is his own little communications hub, stuffy, the windows taped with thick cardboard against the glass. There are banks of communications gear, keyboards, an
d computers. One man looks up and Casper goes to him, leaning over, the two of them softly talking.
Casper stands up, a troubled look on his face.
Pelayo says, “Yes?”
“The Cornwall woman has departed. But the phone we left for her…it’s going in the wrong direction. It’s now in New Jersey. She’s going in the wrong direction.”
Pelayo smiles. “No, she’s sending us a sweet message. A nasty one, but a sweet one. She is telling us that she will do the job, but that she is a force to be reckoned with.”
He steps forward, gives Casper a comforting pat on the shoulder, noting a few flecks of blood on the back of his hand.
“But so are we,” Pelayo says.
CHAPTER 15
AS FAR as waiting rooms go, this one in Fort Belvoir is all right. Special Agent Rosaria Vasquez of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has been in some real rat holes in her years of dedication to the service that she loves. Beat-up mobile homes with rusting sides and leaking ceilings. Apartment buildings built near railroad tracks, meaning she would have to pause her interrogation each time a freight train rattled through. Army-issued tents, the sides flapping, wind whistling by, sand getting into everything, the constant drumming roar of diesel generators and passing vehicles threatening her concentration as she diligently asked questions and waited for answers.
In all of those locations, she was doing her job: interrogating various Army enlisted men and women, NCOs and officers, chasing down crimes that are as old as humankind—rape, theft, homicide—as well as those only pertinent to her Army, from mishandling of classified documents to espionage.
Today’s interrogation is one of those belonging to the Army, the death of a prisoner in a foreign land, in the custody of an occupying force, said force being the Army of the United States. A CID unit in Afghanistan is up to its ears re-investigating that end of the case and Rosaria is here on the other end, conducting the first domestic interview with the supervising officer who ended up with a dead Taliban fighter in her custody.
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