“Sorry,” I say.
Her face calms down. “You’re former NYPD, right?”
“That’s right,” I say. “Nineteen years in.”
She nods and says, “Go up two compounds. That’s where the Night Stalkers hang out. There’s a warrant officer there named Cellucci. You might have some luck with him…but no guarantees. I’ll walk you over, see that you get in.”
I stand up, grab my rucksack. “Thanks, Major.”
“Good luck, Major Cook,” she says as she, too, stands, “because you’re certainly going to need it.”
The sirens start up again, and the steady, calm male voice of the recording comes back.
“Rocket attack, rocket attack, rocket attack.”
Chapter 83
Afghanistan
THE NIGHT STALKERS is the nickname of the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, probably pound for pound the bravest and craziest helicopter pilots in the world. Responsible for operations in Panama, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan, along with the raid that took out Osama bin Laden, they’re the Army aviators called upon to perform the most hazardous and nearly impossible missions.
Their compound is just a short walk from Major West’s, and while some of the soldiers and civilian personnel seem a bit jumpy after the two recent mortar attacks, the same isn’t true for the Night Stalkers, some of whom I find outdoors after Major West escorts me there. I come upon a rest area for these aviators, set outside three one-story metal-and-wood shacks. Beyond a concrete-block wall and coils of razor wire, their modified and exceptional helicopters of choice are lined up: two rotor transport MH-47s with extended fuel booms up front, Black Hawks for a variety of missions, and the much smaller two-crew Little Birds, used for reconnaissance and close combat and support.
Nearby is a gravel-covered area with weight-lifting equipment, punching bags, and half a dozen wooden picnic tables, where laughing and confident men are having late morning coffee and sausage, eggs, and pancakes on Styrofoam plates. They’re dressed in jeans, cut-off sweatshirts, hoodies, and vests, most wearing ball caps. The wind is steady, meaning they have to hold on tight to their food and drink.
As I approach the nearest table, I’m given a quick look by the men, and then they go back to their stories and breakfasts. I can see why I got the quick look: I might be an Army officer, but I’m not one of them, so I don’t count.
About then I’m ready to believe them.
I say, “I’m looking for a guy named Cellucci. Is he around?”
One of the aviators, with a close-cropped black beard and wearing sunglasses, a tattered Red Sox baseball cap on his head, says, “What’s up, Major?”
“I just need to talk to him,” I say. “Can you point him out?”
The aviator says, “Over there on the left. The laughing asshole wearing the Yankees cap.”
“Thanks.”
I go over to the table where he’s sitting, laughing indeed, wearing the offending black-and-white Yankees cap and a black fleece jacket. Cellucci looks to be in his early thirties, muscular, with a happy-looking, red face that can probably go from joy to deadly anger in seconds.
“Excuse me,” I ask. “Cellucci?”
The other three guys laugh, and Cellucci says, “The same, Major. Chief Warrant Officer Carmine Cellucci. What can I do for you?”
“I was hoping I could talk to you,” I say. “In private.”
His grin doesn’t waver. “Mind if I ask why? Sir?”
I take out my identification, display it for him. “I’m with the CID. Does that answer your question?”
As one, his three breakfast mates go, “Ooooh, the Looch is in trouble, the Looch is in trouble,” and he says something profane to them. They pick up their coffee and plates and leave us alone as I sit down across from him.
“Do I need representation?” he asks. “You looking to jam me up?”
“No, not at all,” I say, smelling the sausages and pancakes still before him, my stomach grumbling from not quite remembering the last time I ate.
“Then what’s this about?” he asks. His smile is still there, but there’s wariness behind those sharp brown eyes.
“I need transport,” I say.
He says, “This is a hell of a way to make a request. You got the paperwork, push it through channels.”
“I don’t have any paperwork.”
That takes him aback, and he laughs. “What, you think me and the guys here are flying a taxi service, Major? Where are you looking to go?”
“Observation Post Conrad,” I say. “It’s up in the nearest mountain range. That’s all I know.”
He stares at me and starts laughing again. “OP Conrad? For real? Why not Mars while you’re at it?”
“Remote, then?”
He shakes his head, takes off his Yankees cap, scratches at his nearly bald head. “Yeah, remote as hell, and the place is legendary. And not in a good way. There’s one American up there, a guy named—”
“Kurtz,” I interrupt.
The cap goes back on. “That’s right, Kurtz. Like Brando in that Vietnam movie. Far away from whatever passes for civilization, he’s up there with a group of Pashtun tribesmen who are loyal to him and their tribe, and nothing else.”
“What do they do up there?”
“Whatever the hell they want,” he says. “Why do you need to see him?”
“I need to talk to him about an investigation I’m conducting.”
“Go through channels, get the paperwork. Hell, I wouldn’t mind taking a trip up there. That’s some ass-puckering flying.”
“I don’t have time,” I say. “I need to talk to him today.”
Another shake of his head. “You think you can get Kurtz to answer your questions? You know he’s Agency, right? Won’t talk to anyone…unless you have a fistful of Hershey bars.” Cellucci notices my confused expression and repeats himself. “Yeah. Hershey bars. And not the ones with the almonds. One guy who went up there six months ago for a supply run—even a scheduled one—told me he couldn’t even drop his load until Kurtz got his Hershey bars. Tell me, Major, you got some Hershey bars in your ruck?”
“No.”
“Then we’re just wasting each other’s time. Sorry, Major. Wish I could help.”
He starts to get up from the picnic table, and I say, “Brooklyn?”
Cellucci says, “Nope. Queens, through and through.”
“My bad,” I say. “I’m from Staten Island.”
He gathers up his trash. “No kidding. How did you end up in CID?”
“NYPD,” I say. “Detective second class, Midtown South. I was in the Reserves and decided to stick around after I got injured from an IED.”
“Well, good for you. Bet some days you wish you stayed home.”
I nod. “Some days.”
“Sorry, gotta run, Major.”
One last chance. “Get out of jail free card.”
He pauses as he puts a crumpled brown paper napkin on his plate. “What?”
I say, “You get me up there to see Kurtz, I’ll make it so that you don’t get another speeding ticket, parking ticket, or any other motor vehicle violation. For a year, starting when you get back home.”
That gets his attention. “You got that kind of pull?”
Probably not, I think. “I’m serious.”
“I can tell,” he says. “Man, you must really want to go up there bad.”
“I do.”
He crumples everything up in his two strong hands. “Major…sorry. No can do. That’s way out-of-bounds, and you know it.”
Cellucci goes to a rusty fifty-five-gallon metal drum near a set of weights, drops in his trash, and I rub at my face and turn, just as two soldiers come in from the other side, wearing Military Police brassards on their left arms.
Looking for me, I’m sure.
Chapter 84
Afghanistan
AS CASUALLY AS I can, I get up from the picnic table, leaving my cane behind—too blatant a
sign of who I am—and I follow Cellucci and two other warrant officers as they walk back into the nearest building. The three of them are laughing and joking, and don’t notice me following them, and I hope the two MPs on the other side of the compound are doing the same thing.
They pass through a swinging plywood door, and I’m in a ready room, with couches, chairs, large-scale maps pinned up on the wall, flags from various states, and pennants from every type of sports team imaginable. Some Night Stalkers are seated, thumbing through magazines or playing with handheld video games.
Where to go?
Anywhere, I think, anywhere away from that door the MPs will eventually come through.
Once they get to me, check my ID, it’s done. Over.
And what’s going on back in Georgia?
Five times since I left Bagram I called Connie on my Iridium, and five times there was no answer. Once or twice I could believe it was due to some satellite problem or solar flare interference, but not five times.
I don’t like it, knowing she’s back there, riding herd on my crew, with a hostile and criminal county sheriff keeping an eye on everything, and her going to a meeting with a guy who says he knows the truth about the massacre.
I go down a narrow corridor with a concrete floor, more plywood doors and cubicles on it, and the smell is of aviation fuel, sweat, and ill-washed clothes. This smell is also called FAN, for feet, ass, and nuts.
The corridor opens into an operations center with computer screens, communications equipment—radios, secure telephones—and more maps and photographs up on the walls.
Boy, I really don’t belong here.
An officer with a colonel’s rank starts to get up and say something, and I turn around and take three quick steps, nearly knocking down Chief Warrant Officer Carmine Cellucci, who’s carrying a tan plastic bag in his right hand.
He laughs. “Hey, Major, there’re two MPs out there looking for a Major Cook who’s using a cane. What a coincidence, huh?”
I say, “You see me with a cane?”
“Ah, no, but the MPs will probably go beyond just that,” he says. “By the way, two years.”
“What?”
He takes my upper arm, starts leading me away from the inquisitive colonel back in the operations center. “You give me what you promised back there, except it’s for two years, not one.”
“Deal.”
“And it includes my girlfriend.”
“You’re pushing it, Cellucci.”
He stops, opens the plastic bag, and lets me look inside. A pile of Hershey’s chocolate bars, in their familiar dark-brown packages with gray lettering. “You need to pay to get in.”
I don’t hesitate. “Your girlfriend, too.”
He closes up the bag. “Good,” he says. “Just don’t tell the wife. C’mon.”
“But orders,” I say. “Paperwork. What changed?”
“Oh, a sweet coincidence,” he says. “One of the Little Birds in my company just finished a maintenance cycle. Somebody needs to take it up for a test flight, make sure the oil doesn’t leak or a screw doesn’t fall off. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great,” I say.
He takes me through a door to the outside and says, “We’ll be heading out in about an hour after I do a preflight check and get our gear together. By the way, what kind of investigation you doing, you need to talk to Kurtz about it?”
“A Ranger staff sergeant,” I say. “He’s up on murder charges, intends to plead guilty later today. I don’t think he did it. I hope Kurtz will back me up on this.”
“Where’s the Ranger being held?”
“Georgia,” I say. “And I think he’s in danger.”
Cellucci whistles. “Once spent six months in Georgia, training some of their pilots. Young and scared, and I’d be scared, too, with Russia and its shit-ass military right next door.”
“Not that Georgia,” I say as we approach a set of tents. “The one back in the States.”
“Oh,” he says. “That Georgia. Man, that could be worse.”
I say, “It certainly could.”
Another glance at my watch.
Time is still slipping away, and I’m so far from being where I need to be.
Chapter 85
FOR THE PAST few minutes, dogs have been barking as Sheriff Emma Williams maneuvers her cruiser down the narrow, bumpy dirt road a few hours before sunrise on this day she has to control from start to finish.
The dirt road widens and ends in a wide spot of dirt and gravel, where half a dozen ATVs, four battered pickup trucks with large muddy tires, and one bright-blue and highly polished Mercedes-Benz A-Class sedan are parked.
There are also three trailers set in a semicircle, and another one is farther away. Even at this time of the morning, there are lights on in every trailer, because the chained hound dogs back there make for an effective early warning system. There’s also a heavy scent of nail polish remover, and as Williams gets out of her cruiser, then puts on her hat, she knows that not a single ounce of nail polish exists in these four trailers.
She leaves the cruiser’s engine running, as well as keeps the headlights on.
The wind comes up and the smell doesn’t lessen, because that farther trailer is a meth lab, and in one random spasm of intelligence, the family that operates the lab made sure it was far enough away so that if it exploded, the rest of this isolated compound wouldn’t go up as well. Two large barns are visible in the distance, through a stand of trees, which they use to dry their marijuana harvests.
“Hiram Tolliver,” she yells. “You up in there?”
Dogs bark inside, and then the door to the closest trailer opens up, and a tall, heavyset man stumbles out, tying tight the string around his dirty gray sweatpants. He also has on an Atlanta Braves tank top. His upper arms are hairy and flabby, and quiver as he comes toward the cruiser.
“You’re not Hiram,” she says.
“Nope,” he says, yawning, rubbing at the back of his head. “I’m his nephew Boyd.”
“Boyd,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“No, ma’am,” he says, shielding his eyes with a beefy hand. “Look, can you switch off those headlights?”
“No,” Williams says. “What did your uncle tell you to do?”
He coughs, scratches at his stomach. “He told me to do whatever you wanted, no questions, no talk back.”
“That’s a hell of an open ticket, you know.”
“Uncle Hiram, he says he’d make it good for me. ’Scuse me.” Boyd turns and clears his lungs, spits twice on the dirt. Turning back, he wipes a hand across his mouth and says, “Whaddya need, Sheriff?”
She says, “You’re coming with me to the county jail. You’re going to be placed in a cell. Later this morning, maybe just before noon or somewhere close to that, a prisoner is going to be put in that cell.”
From her left pants pocket she takes out a slim knife. “After he’s placed in there with you, you’re going to slit his throat with this.”
She holds out the knife, and he takes it. “Gosh, ma’am, that’s pretty cold, you know? Killin’ a man I don’t know, I don’t have a grudge against.”
“He’s an uppity nigger that thinks he’s better than you.”
“Oh,” he says, taking the blade, sliding it into the pocket of his sweatpants. “That’s okay, then.”
“Good.”
“But…ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“How do I get there? I mean, there’s no warrants or anything out there on me. Ma’am?”
Williams smiles. This is going to be all right.
“Boyd, come over here and knock off my hat. Okay?”
“Um, okay.”
Boyd comes over, knocks off her hat.
“Now,” she says. “Pick it up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He picks up her hat and hands it over, and she puts it back on. She grabs his wrist, turns him around, and quickly and efficiently puts on the
handcuffs.
“Boyd Tolliver, I’m placing you under arrest for assaulting a law enforcement officer,” she says.
“Ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“My wrists are sore from chopping wood yesterday. Mind not putting on the cuffs too tight?”
Williams leads him back to her cruiser.
“Not at all,” she says.
Chapter 86
CAPTAIN ALLEN PIERCE gets up from his chair and kicks at Lieutenant John Huang’s legs. For the past couple of hours Huang has tried to sleep with three chairs pushed together, and that hasn’t gone well, with Huang falling twice onto the floor.
Huang jerks awake. “What’s up?”
“Circus is about to start,” Pierce says, looking at the crowds suddenly moving toward the door of the jailhouse. “A sheriff’s van just pulled in.”
Huang yawns, stretches, winces. “What’s our job?”
Pierce checks his service weapon. “Make sure the staff sergeant gets to the courthouse without a Jack Ruby getting in the way.”
The door flings open, and Deputy Sheriff Clark Lindsay comes in, looking the same as he did a few hours ago, except now he’s wearing a bullet-resistant vest over his uniform, with yellow letters denoting SULLIVAN COUNTY SHERIFF and a stylized badge underneath.
Two other deputies follow him, carrying shotguns.
Pierce says, “Good morning, Deputy Clark. Taking time away from ironing your white sheets to play bus driver?”
Clark comes up close to Pierce, and Pierce doesn’t budge an inch. Clark grins. “Boy, one of these days, you’re gonna leave. And I’m gonna stay right here, and Sullivan County will get right back to where it belongs.”
Pierce says, “In 1950?”
“No,” he says, “where people mind their business. Now get out of my way. Me and my boys got work to do.”
“No problem,” Pierce says, just as the Ralston police chief, Richard Kane, comes in, carrying a clipboard.
“Clark,” the chief says, looking worn down, his thick moustache drooping. “Glad to see you here. Let’s get this taken care of so we can get back to normal.”
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