Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  Glancing down to his lap, Ridge realized that the sandwich was still sitting half-open across his thighs, bits of meat and bread peeking out at him.

  “I was certainly thinking about it. Why?”

  “And I was thinking that thing has been sitting out for more than four hours now,” Beckwith said. “There’s no way that can be healthy.”

  Opening his mouth to respond, Ridge paused before any sound could be heard. Pressing his lips together, he felt his mouth curl up into a smile.

  “And you really think some hard bread and meat is the biggest threat to my health right now?”

  To that there was no response for a moment, Beckwith simply staring at him, trying her best to give a disapproving glare, before she too succumbed to a smile. As she did so, she stepped around the chair and lowered herself into it, unloading the items in her arms onto the seat beside her.

  “No, I suppose it isn’t,” she said, her voice betraying one of the few hints of weariness he had heard in all their years together.

  “Ha!” Ridge let out, the sound completely reflexive, gone before he even knew it, a fact that only made them both smile more. “At least she’s honest, folks.”

  Allowing the good humor to settle for a moment, one of the few happy times in a day that was supposed to be chock full of them, Ridge remained reclined in his seat, his attention drifting down to his lap, the sandwich no longer seeming nearly as appealing as it had before.

  “Ask you something?” he asked, the mirth of before gone, his voice back to neutral.

  Across from him, Beckwith had also returned to her usual state, staring back intently at him, waiting for him to ask without providing a verbal command to do so.

  “Do you think I’m crazy for doing this?”

  In the previous ten hours, hundreds of thoughts had pushed their way through Ridge’s mind, almost all of them connected to the Tarby family, or General Ames, or a supply convoy in the desert months before. Very few had actually been about the task he was performing, about whether or not the ends could ever justify the means that were underway.

  “Do I think-“ Beckwith began to repeat, the words clearly phrased into a question.

  “Yeah,” Ridge said, jumping in, cutting her off. “With all of this. The calls, the favors, the sitting here at one in the morning on my last night in office, my whole staff still awake and strewn across the city.”

  “None of us mind,” Beckwith said. “You know that.”

  “Not exactly the point in all that I was looking for clarification on,” Ridge replied, arching an eyebrow.

  Matching the look, Beckwith pursed her lips and said, “I know that, I was just saying, you don’t need to worry about us.”

  “And I know that,” Ridge said, “but it doesn’t mean it isn’t part of a situation that has gotten far more out of hand than I ever envisioned.”

  “You?” Beckwith replied. “How do you think I feel? Had we done a better job of vetting our guests this morning, this never would have happened.”

  Seeing a flash of confusion cross Ridge’s features, his brows coming together, she continued, “She was supposed to have asked something about national parks, say thanks and be on her way. If she had...”

  Again her voice fell away, not needing to state the obvious, Ridge knowing where it was going.

  To a degree, she was right. Not about her failing to vet properly - that single piece he had not once considered – but to the fact that had Clara Tarby only played by the rules, they would all be sleeping comfortably right now, herself included.

  “Did you see the state of that woman when she sat down in front of me?” Ridge asked, bypassing Beckwith’s statement and picking up a new parallel track. “The look on her face, her physical appearance, the anguish when she spoke.”

  Boring his gaze into Beckwith, he held the position a moment before looking away, “I just...she deserved to at least know what happened to her son.”

  He didn’t bother adding that she was also right, that he had spearheaded the effort to send those troops over, that the fate of Josh Tarby was at least partially tied to a decision he had made.

  Not that he especially needed to, Beckwith almost always having a way of understanding such things.

  “I agree,” Beckwith said softly. “Which is why the answer to your question is no. I don’t think you’re crazy for pursuing this at all.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Jesus, have you stepped in it now.”

  The words were delivered free of inflection, very much a statement and not a question. For a moment, Ridge allowed his face to relay the confusion he felt, pulling the phone away from his face, using the caller ID to identify the voice on the line, the tone familiar, but only just quite.

  Murray.

  “Sea Bass?” Ridge asked. “Where are you? Why do you sound so different?”

  “Don’t worry about where I am,” Murray snapped, the words clipped and curt. “And the reason I’m talking like this is so nobody can hear me.”

  The same look still strewn across his features, Ridge pulled the phone away from his face, covering the receiver with his other hand.

  “Susie, I’m sorry, can you excuse us for a moment?”

  Offering only a curt nod, Beckwith collected her things from the neighboring chair and stood, pausing for an instant as if she might say something before letting it go with a nod and turning for the door.

  A moment later she exited, closing it behind her.

  “Why can’t you let anybody hear you?” Ridge asked. “What the heck did you stumble into?”

  “I didn’t stumble into a damn thing,” Murray said, agitation and irritation both plainly obvious in his tone. “You’re the one that bumbled haphazardly into a mess and happened to pull me along with you.”

  Even if the words came out a bit more forceful than intended, the point was no less received, Ridge feeling his stomach contract tight. The very last thing in the world he had wanted was to start pulling innocent bystanders into this labyrinth, his goal simply to provide some long overdue relief to Clara Tarby.

  Somehow in the time since, he had managed to put her in the hospital and had Murray on the run, to say nothing of whatever other collateral damage he might have kicked up.

  “How bad?” Ridge said simply, hoping that the words and the tone that dripped from them would be sufficient to relay how sorry he really was.

  For a moment there was no response, the only sound a long sigh, before Murray replied, “Pretty damn.”

  Just as with most of the people he’d spoken to over the course of the evening, gone was any trace of the previous venom that had laced his words, replaced instead by deep-seated exhaustion.

  “I’m listening,” Ridge replied.

  For as cold, as callous, as the response might sound, Ridge meant nothing by it, knowing that Murray would understand it as such.

  The man had called him back, clearly, because he had information to pass along. The faster Ridge made it possible for him to do so, the better.

  “Ever heard of an outfit called Black Water?” Murray asked.

  His visage scrunching slightly, Ridge mumbled the words several times in succession.

  “I’m guessing you’re not talking about the song from the Allman Brothers?”

  “The Allman-“ Murray started, cutting himself off just as fast, muttering something that Ridge vaguely heard that seemed to include the words white people music.

  “No,” Murray continued, “I am not talking about the song from the Allman Brothers. What I am talking about is the military contracting outfit that was started five years ago and has been popping up with increasing frequency in war zones all over the country.

  “You’ve heard of Black Forest? This is the latest knockoff version.”

  Snapping himself forward, Ridge placed his backside on the front edge of his chair and reached out, sliding the legal pad and pen back over before him. Drawing two hard lines across the width of the page to demarcate hi
s notes from Bumppo, he wrote the name of the organization in block letters, scrawling a blue box around them.

  Not until the name Black Forest had been mentioned did things really click into place for him, the name one that he had encountered with far more frequency than he would have liked over the years.

  “Okay,” he said, “Black Water, who are they and what do they do?”

  “What they do,” Murray said, skipping to the back half of the question, “is pretty much what all contracting outfits do, which is whatever needs doing.

  “Private security, cleanup details, escort units. These guys are mercenaries for hire, making a quick buck wherever there is turmoil enough to support their particular brand of skills.”

  “That brand being...” Ridge began, already foreseeing where this was headed.

  “The best and brightest our planet has to offer,” Murray said. “Soldiers of fortune across the board, all with a healthy swath of patriotism that was later replaced by capitalism.”

  “Meaning?” Ridge said, fighting to process everything he was hearing, wanting to be careful to parse out this organization from Black Forest and any lingering presuppositions he might have about them.

  “Guns for hire,” Murray said. “To borrow clichés, they kick ass, take names, and get paid handsomely for it.”

  Nodding, Ridge continued jotting notes, questions flooding into his mind.

  “Alright,” he said, scribbling out a final few letters and underlining parts of the previous sentence. “So why do I care about Black Water in particular?”

  “Because they were co-founded by none other than your General Arnold Ames.”

  Poised with his hand held an inch above the legal pad, Ridge stopped writing, his eyebrows rising up his forehead. All air was expelled from his lungs as he stared at the desk, long enough that the various objects all lost focus, swirling into one large mash of colors.

  “What?”

  A humorless snort was the first response, followed by, “I thought that might get your attention.”

  Blinking quickly in succession, Ridge returned to the tablet, writing the words in oversized letters across the bottom of the page. Flipping the pen down atop them, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his forehead, staring at the notation he’d just made.

  “So that little stunt he pulled showing up here in full dress uniform...”

  “All for show,” Murray said. “I mean, he did technically retire in good standing from the army, and he is still employed down the street at the Pentagon, but he’s purely on the civilian side now.

  “Traded in his patriotism for the almighty dollar, just like the rest of them.”

  It was a narrative Ridge had heard many times over the years, happening with increasing frequency as time passed. Soldiers enlisted at an early age and allowed the government to train them up before moving into the private sector and using those skills to make a tremendous amount of money.

  Leaders that spent a lifetime in the system that wanted one big payday before walking off into a retirement.

  In a way, it wasn’t much different from what happened in the very office building he now found himself sitting in, people like Ellerbe and Stroh padding their resumes before shifting to the other side for exorbitant pay raises.

  The only difference was that the havoc wrought by people like those employed by Black Water could potentially be a lot more devastating.

  “And when you say global?” Ridge said.

  “Yep,” Murray confirmed, “they currently have people on the books from all over. Couple of South Africans, a few from the Swiss Guard, even a Latvian or two, though how the hell they found those guys is anybody’s guess.”

  Shaking his head slightly, Ridge said, “No color has ever unified the world quite like green.”

  “Yep,” Murray repeated, his cadence beginning to pick up slightly, it becoming clear he needed to wrap things up, to be moving on soon. “So that was all I got on Ames, and I don’t know that anything is afoot here, but just the same, I’m going to disappear for a little while.”

  He didn’t have to say the rest of what it was clear he was thinking, Ridge getting the message.

  Murray was from that moment on off-limits. Any existing markers – professional or personal – were now considered paid in full.

  “Be careful, Sea Bass,” Ridge said simply. “Thank you, and let me know when you come back up for air.”

  For a moment there was no response, as if Murray was contemplating how to best respond, before he said, “I just may do that. In the meantime, keep your phone on.

  “There might be a call coming in from the other side of the world that could give you a little help.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  An hour earlier when he had given Leopold Donner the order to do nothing, Ames had been under the impression that the situation still required monitoring and little more. Jackson Ridge was certainly becoming a bit worrisome, was burning up the phone lines, calling in untold favors that only someone with three-plus decades of experience could have, but that didn’t necessarily make him a threat.

  The incident that he was looking into was nothing remarkable on the surface. Unfortunate for sure, perhaps even tragic to the outside observer, but it featured nothing that would be grounds for any amount of real concern.

  That line of thinking had been with Ames as he sat in the dark, slowly sipping from a glass with three fingers of Glen Livet, alone in the living room of his home. With his back pressed tight against the stiff sofa, his gaze was aimed at the glowing spire of the Capitol Building a short distance away, his mind tracing over how far he’d come – or rather, fallen – in the preceding years.

  The decision to move into the private sector was one he had never wanted to make, not that it was ever really up to him. Circumstance and the occasional cruelty of fate had decided to intervene and take that over for him.

  For as well compensated as a general in the army was, it seemed amazing how fast the costs of long-term care could chew through a retirement account, the joint ailments of his parents causing him to move into the private sector, knowing that if ever he was going to keep them taken care of or have any hope of retiring the way he would like himself, he needed to take advantage of his last few years of earning potential.

  From that was born Black Water, a joint venture with a pair of silent partners, the hope being to capitalize on his own extensive network of contacts to ensure he was first in line for some plum contracts.

  And for five years, just that had occurred, even landing him a post inside the Pentagon, allowing for enough water cooler conversation and workplace scuttlebutt to make it possible for him to always be in point position whenever an earning opportunity presented itself.

  And earn he did.

  So much so that his focus shifted, his grasp on the things that truly mattered slipping to the wayside. With more money coming in than he had ever imagined, in a matter of just years he had been able to afford the brownstone he was currently sitting in, taking up a liking for things such as the scotch he was now drinking, the steak he had had with Donner earlier in the day.

  And as such things tended to do, the access to more only increased the longing for more.

  Twisting his focus from the white marble aglow in the distance to his own reflection in the picture window, Ames could see the light coming in from the neighborhood outside, the faint hue outlining the right side of his face. Cut from hard lines and ridges, he still looked the part of a man that had dedicated his life to the service, even if his driving force had changed in the ensuing years.

  At times, he had allowed himself to fall into bouts of bitterness or self-loathing, even going as far as standing in front of the mirror each morning and questioning his own manhood, wondering what he had become.

  Just as fast he had given up on the notion, pushing such things to the side, knowing that nothing good could come from them.

  He had made his decisions, had consciously chosen the path he
was on. There was no use subjecting himself to self-flagellation in the aftermath.

  Now, all there was to do was continue monitoring, waiting for noon to arrive, hoping that Ridge would be shunted to the side by the hands of time, allowing him to continue on that path.

  What had happened to Josh Tarby was an accident, was tragic, but it would not be enough to be his undoing. Not now, not after so much time and careful planning.

  With that thought in mind, Ames raised the scotch to his lips, intent to take another deep sip, but was stopped with the tumbler halfway there, his phone kicking to life beside him. Pulling his attention to the side, he stared down at the buzzing device, holding the glass in place a moment before slowly lowering it back into position.

  Using his opposite hand, he snapped up the phone and pressed it to his face.

  “Ames.”

  “General,” a voice said, the tone instantly recognizable.

  “Go ahead, Valdez.”

  “Just thought you should be aware, there’s some activity,” Valdez said, rattling the information off in quick fashion.

  “I know,” Ames said. “I figured it was only a matter of time before Ridge started pinging me.”

  To that there was a long pause, the man falling silent, before saying, “Sir, this traffic isn’t from Senator Ridge, and it isn’t concerning you.”

  The creases of Ames’s face drew tighter as he left the glass beside him on the couch and stood, taking two steps forward and stopping, close enough to the window to feel the cold air emanating from the glass.

  “Continue.”

  “It’s about Black Water, and it’s coming from somewhere else,” Valdez said. “Can’t tell exactly where yet, the back trail is pretty well covered, but I should have it soon.”

  At the mention of Black Water, Ames felt his body go rigid. Even if the inquiry itself wasn’t coming from Ridge, there was no way that somebody else just happened to be digging into them right now.