The Summer House

by James Patterson

  Huang stands up as well, wiping his face once more. He’s hungry and thirsty, and his back is aching something awful.

  The shadows are coming closer.

  Huang says, “No offense, Allen, but I sure wish Major Cook was here.”

  “No offense taken,” Pierce says. “God knows what kind of reception he’s getting in the ’stan.”

  A moment slips by.

  Pierce says, “Get your service weapon out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Lieutenant. Now.”

  Huang clumsily takes his SIG Sauer out of his side holster, the weight feeling odd and uncomfortable in his hand. Pierce, though, holds his pistol casually, like he’s been around weapons all his life.

  “They’re getting closer,” Huang says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Should we tell somebody here?”

  “Marcy, the jail attendant? By the time we get real police here it’ll be too late.”

  “At least the door is locked,” Huang says.

  “Yeah.”

  Two people come to the door, and Huang feels his heart rate thump right along, and the hand holding his pistol is growing warm and moist.

  A click, the door is unlocked, and a large man and woman come in, both wearing Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department uniforms.

  Pierce says, “Help you, Sheriff Williams?”

  Huang recognizes the woman, but her whole demeanor and even the look of her face has changed. Earlier she had a hard and confident smile and bearing, like she was in charge of everything around her.

  Now?

  Her face is pasty and she looks tired, but her eyes are flashing with heat and anger.

  The other officer is a deputy with LINDSAY on his name tag. He is one of the biggest and bulkiest men Huang has ever seen, and Huang can feel violence ready to be released from the man, if the sheriff wills it.

  “Holster your weapons,” she says. “Now.”

  Huang waits and follows Pierce’s lead. “As a courtesy, Sheriff. No problem.”

  Pierce returns his SIG Sauer to his holster, and Huang does the same with his own, though it takes two attempts to do so, making the deputy smile.

  The sheriff says, “Mind telling me what the hell you two are doing here?”

  Pierce says, “Keeping an eye on the place.”

  “You don’t belong here,” she says. “Get out.”

  “I’m afraid that’s a nonstarter,” Pierce says. “We’re staying.”

  Deputy Lindsay crosses his large arms. “The sheriff told you to leave. Get out.”

  To Huang’s shame, his legs are starting to tremble, but Pierce is still keeping cool. Huang wonders, Is this a family thing, learning at a very young age as a black man how to stand your ground in front of the police?

  Pierce says, “Gee, thanks for the echo, Deputy. And we’re not leaving. An Army Ranger died here a few days ago. Dr. Huang and I are making sure such an event doesn’t happen again.”

  “How?” Williams says. “You’re just sittin’ on your asses in here.”

  Pierce says, “Yes, and tired asses they are. But we’re also keeping an eye on who’s coming in and who’s going out.”

  The deputy looks at the sheriff like he’s a Doberman pinscher on a leash, begging to be let loose to attack. Sheriff Williams says, “I could have the two of you arrested.”

  “For doing our jobs?”

  “For trespassing,” she says.

  “The Ralston police chief said we could stay. Marcy, the attendant, even came by to tell us some hours ago that she welcomes the vigilance.”

  “I don’t care,” Williams says.

  Pierce laughs, and Huang notes how he’s casually moved his hand back to his holstered SIG Sauer.

  “You want to arrest us, is that right, Sheriff?” Pierce asks. “Restart the whole states’ rights versus federal rights argument? Drag us out into that parking lot full of reporters from Savannah, Atlanta, DC? Get a whole bit of negative publicity? Is that your game plan?”

  Huang wonders if Pierce is pushing the sheriff too hard in front of her subordinate. This may tip her to do something violent, something to save face.

  Williams just remains quiet for some long seconds, then says, “The court hearing for Staff Sergeant Jefferson begins in a matter of hours. An hour after it does, you and everyone else from Quantico better be heading up to the Savannah airport. Come along, Clark.”

  She heads for the door, and Deputy Lindsay shakes his head. “Look at you two. Friggin’ Chinaman and colored boy, thinking you can do anything. You boys can’t do squat.”

  Huang wishes he could come back with a good answer, but Pierce does the job.

  “You’re wrong, Deputy,” he says. “We’re not a Chinaman or a colored boy. We’re officers in the United States Army.”

  Chapter 81

  Afghanistan

  AFTER THE HOURS TRAVELING on the Gardez Highway to FOB Chadwick—just outside Khost and near the village of Pendahar—the Humvee I’m in finally passes through the barriers, checkpoints, and vehicle traps. I’ve not slept a wink on this long drive, my body tense and nearly trembling, again thinking of what happened to me at another time, in another Humvee.

  This vehicle, however, safely gets into the FOB and stops, and I slowly get out, holding my cane in one hand and my rucksack in the other. There are squat buildings all around us, made of metal shipping containers and concrete, the same dull sandy color. The quiet lieutenant who’s in charge of this small convoy comes back to me just as a siren starts wailing, making me feel like I’m in wartime London, 1940.

  He swears, says, “Come on, hurry up!” just as a recorded male voice announces over loudspeakers, “Rocket attack, rocket attack, rocket attack.”

  We move about ten or so meters before there’s a far-off thud that makes the ground quiver, and I follow the lieutenant and others to a blast shelter. Its walls and roof are made of thick concrete, and the open ends of the roof are protected by a blast barrier that we slip through.

  Just as we get inside there’s another thud, and the six of us, then ten, and then more than a dozen soldiers of different ranks, stand inside.

  I say to the lieutenant, “Can you tell me where Major West is, of the Seventy-Fifth Rangers?”

  The lieutenant says, “I can, but I won’t. Not until the all-clear sounds. Otherwise you might have your head taken off the second you step out.”

  I know I need to wait, but I look at my watch.

  Time is slipping away both here and back in Georgia.

  In the shadowy interior of the blast shelter, a soldier says, “Shit, I guess we pissed somebody off, huh?”

  Laughter from most of the soldiers in here, but not from me.

  Fifteen minutes after the all-clear sounds, I’m in the office of Major Fredericka West, Special Troops Battalion, Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, which is nearly identical to the Ranger office in Bagram: plywood over a wood frame, homemade shelves, no windows, and locked gray metal filing cabinets. Major West is slim, with close-cropped dark-brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a worn ACU. As she moves papers around her gray metal desk, I see her left hand is furrowed with scar tissue. A set of telephones is near her elbow—for both secure and unsecure phone calls—and a military-grade laptop, like the one I’m carrying.

  She looks exhausted. “This is where we waste a bunch of time talking about your trip and how you’re feeling, and do you need something to eat,” she begins, “but we don’t have time for that crap. One, I’ve got, well, a shitload of work to get through, and two, your bosses at Quantico want your ass wrapped up in silver ribbon and sent on the next flight home.”

  I say, “Then why don’t I see a roll of silver ribbon on your desk?”

  West grimaces, begins to talk, waits as one helicopter and then another roars overhead, disturbing the dust that’s everywhere in this small office. An M4 automatic rifle is in a weapons rack near the corner.

  “You’re not being rolled in tape because
we Rangers owe you one, and because I’m trying to figure out why a fire team from Fourth Battalion is being charged with a crime in Georgia similar to the one they allegedly committed here in-country.”

  “In a village called Pendahar.”

  She starts typing on the laptop keyboard. “Aren’t you the informed one.”

  I say, “And aren’t you the pissy officer. What’s the problem, Major? I’m the one about to be brought up on charges and who’s just come in to see you after spending nearly a day in the air.”

  Quiet, as her fingers work some more.

  “No excuse,” she says. “Sorry. Been a rotten day in a series of rotten days, not to mention the local muj are still sending us 82-millimeter love letters. Can you give me a quick recap of what happened to Staff Sergeant Jefferson and his team in Georgia?”

  I say, “A week ago seven residents of a rural house in Georgia, including a two-year-old girl, were murdered in a nighttime attack. The police reports, witnesses, and forensic evidence all led to the staff sergeant’s team. They were placed under arrest, and my team was tasked to do an investigation.”

  “What did you and your team learn?”

  I paused, then said, “At first it looked open-and-shut. Then we found discrepancies in the witness testimony, and those witnesses are now missing. And one of the four Rangers committed suicide while in custody.”

  More typing. “Is your investigation complete?”

  “I’m in Afghanistan,” I say. “Not yet.”

  “Yeah, I figured that,” she says. “You’re wondering about the civilian killings in Pendahar that were linked to those same Rangers before they were sent home, correct? Seeing what happened here in Afghanistan, if it did something to their psyches that led to them repeating the atrocity in Georgia.”

  “That’s been our thought,” I say.

  “Then let’s take a look,” she says. “Here’s body-cam footage we managed to secure of that attack.”

  West turns the computer around so we can both view the screen as it comes to life.

  The footage is stamped with running numerals denoting longitude, latitude, and time, and it’s in light ghost-green night vision. I hear breathing, murmuring voices. The view comes to a wooden door set against a one-story, small stone house. I see body shapes, and somebody does something to the door. There’s a bright flare of light and the thump of an explosion.

  Yells.

  Shots being fired.

  The view is shaky as one room is entered, another, and then another.

  More gunfire.

  Robed women scream, hold up their hands. Rapid fire collapses them. A young boy runs into another room, is cut down.

  I see the flash of weapons.

  Uniformed men.

  More screams.

  The video goes black.

  My hands and chest feel heavy. “Can I see it again, slower? Muted?”

  “Sure.”

  I look through the video a second time, spotting the mottled look of the uniforms—one bearing the RANGER tab on a left shoulder—and the weapons, from an AK-47 to a pistol, and then I look at Major West’s calm yet serious face.

  “Well?” she asks. “What say you?”

  “It’s a fake,” I say. “Those aren’t Army Rangers.”

  She nods. “Good job, for a former NYPD detective.”

  West swivels the computer screen back to her. “I don’t know what happened in the States, but those Rangers sure as hell didn’t kill a houseful of civilians in Pendahar.”

  Chapter 82

  Afghanistan

  SHE GIVES ME one more stare and says, “Just out of curiosity, how did you know it was a fake? To most people I’m sure it looks pretty damn real.”

  I try to swallow, fail. My throat is incredibly dry. A jet takes off outside, the noise silencing me longer in this plywood room.

  When the jet engine sound drifts away, I say, “The shootings were real. The casualties look real. But those weren’t Army Rangers. The uniforms were wrong. There was a mix of regular ACUs and fatigues of the Afghan National Army. The weapons were wrong, too. I saw an AK-47 and what looked to be a Russian pistol, maybe a Tokarev.”

  She slightly smiles. “But one of the shooters was wearing a Ranger tab.”

  “Yes,” I say. “But you and I both know that Rangers don’t wear any unit patches in the field…and the camera froze there for a second too long, like whoever was doing the taping wanted to make a statement.”

  “Good job, Major.”

  “What’s the story, then? A setup?”

  “That’s what we’re thinking,” she says. “Commit an atrocity, put it up on YouTube or other social media, blame the Rangers and the Crusader unbelievers defiling this holy land, blah, blah, blah. Some unlucky innocents got caught in a cross fire organized by the local Taliban. But we were lucky to have intercepted the video before it was spread around too much. Oh, there were rumblings and the start of an official investigation—which I’m closing out when you go out that door—but the Rangers were innocent. We even showed the video at a local tribal loya jirga, and the tribal leaders are on board that the Army didn’t do it.”

  “But…the Rangers are accused of doing the same thing stateside.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s a puzzle, isn’t it?” She looks down at her notes and says, “Hold on. You said the civilians who were killed in Georgia, some of them were drug dealers. How far up did they go? Big-time players?”

  I shake my head. “Some weed, some crystal meth, and fentanyl. Strictly small-time.”

  “Too bad…well, good, I suppose. But I was thinking if they were players, and they were involved in something to do with opiates, and Afghanistan being the leading cultivator of the same, with a lot of flights going back to the States, there could be some sort of connection.”

  “Not with that group,” I say. “Do you have any additional information on Major Frank Moore, the Fourth Battalion’s executive officer?”

  West shakes her head. “He was supposed to have been deployed a couple of days back when the Fourth Battalion left Hunter Army Airfield, but he was unable to be located. Then Savannah cops pulled him out of the local river back there, bullet round right to the face. They’re running the investigation, but I was able to learn that he was probably killed after meeting with Staff Sergeant Jefferson, who’s being held in a local jail, yes?”

  “Ralston,” I say. “He’s in a jail in Ralston.”

  “And you tell me he’s planning to plead guilty to those shootings?”

  I check my watch, run the difference in time in my mind and say, “In about eight hours, yeah.”

  “Hell of a thing to do if he’s not guilty, but he’s taking the rap anyway.”

  “He’s doing that, but the two surviving members of his team will go free. That’s the deal. They don’t face a trial, and he pleads guilty, takes whatever sentence comes his way.” West ponders this before I add, “You Ranger guys are tough. And loyal.”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” she says.

  “You think Staff Sergeant Jefferson would plead guilty to something he didn’t do to see his guys get cut loose?”

  “He’d have to have one hell of a good reason,” she says.

  Something comes to me and I say, “Hold on. This alleged massacre in Pendahar. I heard that was the reason they were sent home ahead of schedule. But you’ve told me that it was pretty suspicious right from the start.”

  West carefully says, “It was.”

  “But why send them home on such flimsy evidence?”

  “Good question.”

  She doesn’t say any more, and I quickly realize how to fill in the blanks. “They weren’t assigned to a local Ranger company. They were sheep-dipped, borrowed by the CIA.”

  Her words are even more careful. “That’s what I heard.”

  “What did they do for the CIA?”

  “High-value target raids, I’m sure,” she says. “Staff Sergeant Jefferson and his fire team were q
uite experienced in those types of raids. The CIA has a paramilitary unit, the Special Activities Division—I have a Ranger friend who’s worked with them—but they don’t have as much field experience as some Ranger units.”

  “The CIA was controlling them,” I say. “Why did the CIA send them home ahead of their deployment schedule? This house raid, the killing of civilians, it was just an excuse. A cover story.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “You’ll have to talk to the CIA about that.”

  “All right, where are they?” I ask. “I’ll go ahead and do just that.”

  West says, “It’ll be a waste of time. You’d want to talk to the field officer handling those raids, and he’s been transferred.”

  “Who’s the officer?”

  “Fellow named Kurtz, though God knows if that’s his real name. He’s at Observation Post Conrad.”

  “Where’s that?”

  West points to her door. “About ten klicks that way, up in the mountains between here and Pakistan. Only way up there is by helicopter.”

  “Can you get me there?”

  Her phone rings and she holds up a finger. She takes the call—“West”—and seems to listen for a minute, then says, “Thanks for the heads-up, Sergeant Major.”

  West hangs up the phone, shakes her head. “You know better than that, Major Cook. We don’t have any air assets. We get assigned them for a planned and specific mission, and I’m not in a position to do that. Sorry.”

  “Major West,” I say, “the answer to whatever the hell is going on with those Rangers is up there with that CIA officer. One Ranger is dead. Another is facing life imprisonment for murders he might not have committed. Are you going to let that staff sergeant go to prison for life, probably face execution? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Her brown eyes flash at me with anger. “What I’m saying is that I can’t make up a manifest and put your name on it, Major Cook, because I’ve just been told that there’s an MP unit about twenty minutes out, coming here, looking for you.”

  Shit, I think. Shit, shit.