The Wizards 1: Combat Wizard

by Jack L Knapp

  My Talent was often hampered by the wash of emotions and thoughts from others who might be nearby, but this was not the case now. There were just the two of them at their table and me at mine. No one else was close enough to hear anything that might be said and no one else in the building was emotional about what they were doing.

  I listened, while appearing to be studying the guide that listed medical services available in Juarez.

  “I’m sorry I broke down like that, Ray. I had no right to dump on you. It’s just that...it’s my sister. We haven’t seen her for two days now. She went to work and never came home, and none of her friends have seen her or know where she is.

  “She works at a maquila in Juarez, for Siemens I think. And God, so many girls have died over there, and no one knows who’s been doing it, and no one can do anything to find out!”

  Ray flinched. “Oh, shit. Uh, sorry, Ana Maria. Yeah, I know about that problem, the disappearances of the girls. And so many of them...” He stopped, embarrassed that he’d almost blurted out something she almost certainly knew, but might not want to admit, even to herself.

  “We knew of the danger when she took the job, Ray, but mostly it’s narco gangsters killing other narco gangsters. Sometimes soldiers get in fights with them too, but we don’t have anything to do with the narcos and we stay out of places they go. You can get killed by accident, but,” she shrugged “that can happen anywhere. And we have to live; we can’t afford to leave Mexico except temporarily to come here to school. Marisela was helping pay my expenses and I intended to do that for her after I got my degree and found a job. So many girls have disappeared, and so many have been murdered...”

  “Do you have a lot of family around Juarez?” Ray asked.

  “No. We came up from the south. Some of our family live around Chihuahua, the city I mean. There’s also an uncle in Parral. They say that the narcos are there too. Maybe they are not so bad as in Juarez, but they’re there.

  “We wanted to attend a university, and we have a distant connection with the Escobar family, the ones who helped when the city of Paso del Norte was being established. We are of a distant branch, but family ties are important. Our family is the Camacho family, and we are not of the ricos but we are also not of the poorest. We decided that neither of us wanted to attend the City University in Juarez, and not the Technologico either."

  She was hiding something that she didn't want Ray to know about. Whatever it was, maybe I could pick it up if I kept listening. It might have something to do with the universities in Juarez, or perhaps it had to do with the narco gangs. I couldn’t be sure of what her concern was, but it was something she didn’t want to talk about. I also realized that I could better understand her thinking; she had calmed down. The worry was still there, but it was no longer in control.

  “Your family couldn’t help?” Ray asked.

  “No. We had a little money, and my father found a nice house out of the city that we could afford to buy. The people who owned it sold it to my parents much cheaper than they would have done before the troubles. Some houses are simply abandoned; can you imagine it, to just go away and leave your home? The narcos have taken over some of the houses but we got this one. It’s very nice, and the neighborhood is quiet. We have been happy there,” she paused for a moment, “for the most part.

  “Thank you for listening to me, Ray. I don’t know what to do. My sister is missing, we are all so worried, and we have no one to turn to. It’s happened to so many like us!”

  “I could...I don’t know. Maybe look around a little?” Ray said. “I haven’t gone across the border except once, but if you’re so worried and if there’s no one else...?”

  “Thank you, Ray. I couldn’t ask you to do that, to risk your life. And what could you find out? No, perhaps she’s with some friend we don’t know about; I have to believe that. We’ve checked the hospitals and the policia, but they have told us they know nothing. But she may yet turn up, and if she does, she’ll get such a scolding!

  “But I have to go now. My parents don’t need to begin worrying about another daughter!”

  The two of them stood up and Ray held out his hand to shake. She bypassed that and hugged him, then kissed his cheek. He watched as she walked out of the library.

  I decided that I needed to ask Ray some questions; I still wanted to know why he’d been so interested in Shezzie and me, and there was nothing in his thoughts about us. When he reached down for a briefcase that he’d laid on the table, I spoke up.

  “Excuse me. I think I’ve seen you before, maybe in the SUB?”

  Ray looked at me. “Could be. I hang out there between classes. Maybe so; you look familiar to me, somehow.” Suddenly he snapped his finger. “It was the accident. You saved a little girl.”

  “Yeah, that was me. I saw her, and I thought she was in danger, so I pushed her out of the way. No big deal. That car wasn’t moving fast, and I didn’t get hurt. Cost me a pair of pants, though; I guess I hit a rock when I fell, and it tore the hip pocket. Maybe it happened when I was getting up after I fell. Still, it was no big deal.”

  “You don't know about the video or the news report?” Ray asked.

  “I never heard about a video. Why would this make the news?”

  “There was a student who saw the accident, and he had a cell phone. He saw the little girl too, when she fell, but he was too far away to help. Anyway, he had a camera and he started taking a video, and after you saved the girl, he put the video on the web. He probably put it on YouTube, and the El Paso Times picked up on it because of the UTEP connection. They ran a story about it, made it sound like a bigger deal than you’re saying it was. You’re sure you weren’t hurt? Some of the video was a little washed out by a red glow, I guess maybe the sun hit the camera lens or something, but it was still usable. It showed you tumbling down in front of that car. Really, it looked like you had been hit and knocked down, not just fell. And after that, you just disappeared, no one knew who you were, so people wondered. The unknown hero saves the girl and rides off into the sunset, you know? It was just like a Hollywood ending. The video went viral after that, after it hit YouTube I mean. A lot of people saw what happened, even if they don't know who you are.”

  “I don’t pay much attention to YouTube, and I’ve been out of town, just commuting in when I need to be here. I haven’t seen the Times article either. You're saying a lot of people saw that video and read the article?”

  #

  One of the people who had seen the newspaper article noticed something strange; the heroic young man who had pushed a child to safety looked somehow familiar.

  Colonel Henderson, Retired, had time, and curiosity. He looked at the article again and tried to think about what had caught his attention.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I kept talking to Ray while trying to get hints of why he’d been interested in me.

  There had been the accident, of course; but it appeared that he’d had more than that to tweak his interest, and I didn’t like not knowing what that something was. It was just an impression, not very strong, but it bothered me that I couldn't find out more; you can get really paranoid when you know someone’s out there who would like to blow a hole in your spinal cord.

  But I wasn’t getting much more from listening to Ray’s thoughts, and I didn't want to ask him directly. I was stronger than I had been before Shezzie and I had melded, and especially when using TP, but my ability still wasn’t strong enough.

  I had gained some insight into the problems of the young woman Ray had been talking to. I decided to see if he would open up about the subject they had been discussing.

  “I overheard you talking to your friend. It’s too bad about that young lady’s sister; it must be tough on all the families, girls going missing. Some of them get found buried out in the desert, but some of the time they just don’t get found at all. I can’t help but believe that if it were happening on this side of the border, the town would be swarming with FBI. Mexico mu
st not have the resources, or maybe they don’t care as much. The missing girls are mostly poor, they're working for the maquilas, and some of them probably aren't even Mexican. Even if they are Mexican, they likely came from the interior, and the others came up from Central America and South America. They get this far, but then they can’t get across the border so they take whatever jobs they can get. The coyotes that do the smuggling manage to make a lot of money from the misery of a lot of really poor people.”

  “Yeah,” Ray sighed. “they’re predators. They go after their own people, the poor ones, but they try to leave the powerful people alone. You’ve got to believe that those rich ones over in Mexico have connections to the gangs. It’s all politics, I imagine; they’re politicians, they have money, they know people, and some of them are likely part of the drug gangs. The coyotes don’t want to mess with those people.

  “We really need to drop this war on drugs. It’s not working, and it never really has. Just like during prohibition, people ignore the law, and all that happens is that criminals smuggle in the drugs. We’re financing Mexico’s problem; other nations too, but especially Mexico.”

  “You think we should just make it legal?”

  “I do. There's nothing else left to do. The war on drugs is lost, and it never had a real chance of succeeding.”

  I thought about it. “Well, the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan are happy to have it stay illegal. Drug profits keep the cash rolling in and they find it easy to exchange that cash for weapons.”

  “Sure,” Ray said. “We’re financing our own enemies. Some of that money goes to support the relatives after some suicide bomber blows himself up. A lot of them go that route because they can’t see any other way to help their families. Some would probably like to change their minds, but they get locked into the vests, and someone with a cell phone will blow the explosives if the bomber weakens at the last minute.”

  “I saw some of that. Were you over there too?”

  “I was. I stayed mostly in one of the headquarters compounds doing security work, and a lot of that was just shuffling paper. That was my final overseas post and I retired when the tour was finished. I came back here to get away from what went on in Afghanistan, and now I’m just a couple of miles from Juarez, which is just about as bad as the Rockpile. Fanatics there, crooks here, and none of them give a damn about the people around them. I don’t go over there, into Mexico I mean. I would like to help Ana Maria find her sister, but I don’t have contacts and I don’t know what I can do.

  “My last job was working for a general named Adams. Good man, and I knew him from before when I was stationed here at Bliss. So when he needed help fast, he tapped me. I was just as glad he wanted me for the job because I was short in-country, and that gave me something worthwhile to do for the last couple of weeks. Except I never found out anything. He wanted answers, and I couldn’t find any. I don’t think I can talk about it, though.”

  I sat there in shock. Finally, I had picked up a leaked thought. That last job he’d done was look for Shezzie and me! I had no idea what to do now, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Shezzie saved me by coming through the library door.

  I had time to link with her for a few seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

  I could feel Shezzie’s agitation. I was concerned too, but I felt now that it was important for us to know how much Ray had found out about us while he was investigating. This was really the first opportunity we’d had to get that information, so I thought it worth the risk. I could shut Ray down if that became necessary; just a light pinch of the carotid arteries for ten seconds, I’d know when he went unconscious, and then I could relax the process before he sustained lethal damage. With luck, he’d not wake up until we were heading for our place in Jemez Springs.

  I was outwardly bland. “Ray, this is a good friend of mine. Her name’s Shezzie. You can call me Tom.”

  Well, he could. It started with T, and if one of us slipped and called me “T”, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  “She might know something that could help your friend. If nothing else, she knows about counseling. She worked for a doctor at one time. If you aren’t in a hurry…?”

  That story was wrong, but there was just enough truth in it to be believable. Those are the best lies. I had acquired a certain skill at laying a false trail in recent months.

  “Sure, I’ve got time. And hey, if you were in the Army, maybe we know people in common.”

  No we don’t, Ray. I was thinking it but I wasn’t saying it. Shezzie gave me a look, so I guess she picked up the thought.

  “I saw enough stuff to last more than a lifetime. And no, I won’t talk about it, even if it did include people we knew. Only those who were there with me know what happened. Let it stay that way; if you stayed inside the wire, then you just don’t understand. You can’t.”

  Sensibly, I decided that was enough and shut up.

  “Ray, I heard something of what your friend, the young lady, said. She’s very worried about her sister, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is. I can’t blame her for that, either. No one really knows how many young women have gone missing over there. The police and the Army have found some of them, buried in shallow graves in the desert outside the city. But there are probably at least that many more who have never been found. Mexico really has failed to protect her citizens.”

  I nodded in agreement while silently contacting Shezzie,

 

 

  I excused myself and asked the clerk at the desk whether a study room was available. There was one, not reserved now, so I asked to use it until someone arrived to claim it

  I went back to the table where Ray and Shezzie had been chatting. He had asked her about ‘working for a doctor’, and a quick subvocal conversation with me at the desk had prepared her with the story I’d told Ray.

  “We’re doing more talking than sitting quietly and reading, and the librarian is probably unhappy with us by now. I've got a study room, so why don't we take the conversation back there?”

  Ray agreed; we gathered up bags and books and headed back to the room.

  We sat down at a table, and Shezzie and I decided we were ready to link our Talents to see if we could pick up more from Ray’s mind. I let her take the lead while I tried to keep the conversation going regarding the woman he’d been talking to.

  Mistake! Suddenly a simple covert effort to gain information turned into something else, something that could be either much better or much worse.

  We found ourselves not in a two-way link but in a three-way meld. Once it started, just as had happened with Shezzie and me, I couldn’t control what was happening. At least, this time I didn’t worry about breaking away before the process killed me.

  I don’t know how long it lasted. It might have been a minute or it might have been half an hour. I came out of it with a dazed feeling and knowing a lot more about Ray than I had wanted to.

&
nbsp; He was looking at me with shock, and then he looked at Shezzie.

  “You’re Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt! I thought the terrorists were holding you or maybe that you’d been killed.” Then he looked at me. “And you’re Chief Tagliaferro! I didn’t even know that the two of you had disappeared at the same time. For all I knew, you could have been two separate disappearances.”

  “No, Ray. We left together. We had reasons.” I paused for a moment, still a little reluctant to share the information.

  “Ray, I had to leave. I was in danger of being assassinated by our own people. An agency…no reason to name them now, but they’ve been after some other people I knew, and I may be the only one left. I had to get away. I couldn’t trust anyone there not to be one of the assassins, not to be someone who would maybe turn on me when I didn’t expect it. Colonel Schmidt knew about it and decided her duty was to help me.

  “She actually resigned from the Army. There’s a letter in one of her files that someone will find someday. She resigned her commission, and if she’s ever found out, that letter may help provide cover for her. But she made the decision for what we considered to be the good of the nation. She saw that her greater duty was to help me, so we left together. Her only real offense is the irregularity of not waiting for the paperwork to be approved. By resigning rather than retiring, giving up her pension may help her should this matter ever be raised.”

  “But you, Chief, you’re technically a deserter! Holy cow, man! Even if there was some agency or someone after you, you didn’t resign!”

  “No. But as a soldier I found out something early in my training. The right of self-defense is always permitted. That’s accepted behavior for everyone, soldiers and officers and commanders. I just chose to extend it to cover this.”