Wood's Wall

by Steven Becker

  “I’m not hiding anything,” Mac tried to sooth her.

  “Whether I believe you or not, they have enough to discredit me and you as witnesses. They’ll tie us together and put a bow on it. I’m so deep in this drone thing that they’ll think I made it all up, and that’s the end of the case and my career. Davies has been warning me not to get personally involved. Maybe he was right.”

  “I was there, Mel, I saw what happened. They can’t say it didn’t.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. If they can discredit you as a witness, they will. I want to know what’s in those emails.” Her face softened slightly, “I can help you.”

  “There’s nothing there. I get all kinds of emails and calls from all kinds of people. They want me to dive for salvage for them. I do have a reputation here. That’s got to be all it is.”

  “Why all the secrecy, then?”

  “That’s the way they work. They all think they’re going to find the next Atocha or hit oil. Every one of them has an angle and they are not always on the up and up.” He looked hurt. “I guess you were right to be paranoid about someone reading emails.”

  “Clear it up and testify, then. I can take over as lead council and throw that slime ball Patel out on his butt.”

  He walked toward her, hoping to calm her down, but she resisted his touch. “We’ve been through this. I’m not going to do it. Screw them and whatever they think they have on me.”

  “Sometime in your life you’re going to have to take a stand about something. You can’t fish a couple of days a week and think the what’s going on in the world is not going to effect you. That’s naive.”

  “You sure you want to go there?”

  “Yes.” She glared at him, her dander up. “Don’t you get it? Drones, NSA snooping. It’s death by a thousand pinpricks. Somewhere you have to draw the line and send them a message.”

  She was dug in now and he knew it but couldn’t stop. His frustration, built up over the last year came out. “You can’t make everything a pitched battle — too many casualties, and I’m afraid we’re becoming one. Please, this is the perfect chance for us. Just walk away. Davies will find another horse to ride and another knight to joust at his windmills. They always do. You’re just a cog in the machine.”

  “Bastard. I thought you cared about what I do.”

  “I do, just not who you do it for. Bradley Davies has been using you and you’re so involved in fighting the battles that you can’t see it. He’s winning the war. There are other lawyers.” He regretted that the minute it came out of his mouth.

  “At least I’m involved in something.”

  He tried to let that pass, but was too far gone. “The two of us can’t fix this. It’s bigger than us.” He regretted it the minute it came out of his mouth, but was too proud to back down.

  “Damn right the two of us are done. I’ll do it myself.” She stormed out.

  Mac stood, stunned. He thought about going after her, but knew better. If she was going to calm down and see this clearly, she needed to do it by herself. He went back to the boat and got the box of supplies they had brought, took them upstairs, and laid them out on the counter. She was still nowhere in sight, but she couldn’t have gone anywhere. He just needed to give her some time. There was no quick reconciliation for this one — she’d have to come around, one way or another, on her own.

  He tore a sheet of paper out of a notebook and started to write.

  When he was done, he left the note on the table and headed back to the boat. Maybe it was better to clean up the mess at home without her, anyway. She had her phone if she wanted to talk. He’d come back out in the morning and patch things up.

  23

  Cesar checked the weapons as he loaded them into his truck. Two rifles, a shotgun, and a couple of handguns slid under the back seat. Then, satisfied he was ready for anything, he called to Jose.

  “What’s up?”

  “Those gringos switched the stuff on us. Now those sand heads are all hot, and Diego needs to make them happy. Es un loco mundo, amigo.” Diego had been clear about working with Ibrahim.

  The terrorist limped out of the house as Cesar pulled to the curb. “You had better have a plan my friend.”

  “Let’s drop the ‘friend’ shit. We’re here to make our bosses happy. That’s it.” Cesar said.

  “My boss, as you say, is Allah. I will succeed.”

  Silence prevailed as the truck made its way toward Marathon. Cesar was determined to end this tonight. While he was at it, he’d check and see whether the other gringo had come up with his money. He’d put that on the back burner after killing the hostages — pretty hard to make a trade when you had nothing to trade with. But if there was a chance he could get the hundred large, it would sure make the conversation with Diego easier.

  They drove in silence, Cesar intentionally keeping Ibrahim in the dark. He liked to work alone and the thought of sharing his plans with an outsider angered him. The truck pulled into Mac’s driveway and stopped next to a pickup.

  “Stay here and watch the front.” Cesar told Ibrahim as he moved carefully around back with Jose. They took turns leading and covering each other, not knowing whose pickup was parked or what to expect. They reached the back and moved up the stairs to the deck outside Mac’s bedroom. He didn’t notice the reflection in the glass of an empty seawall as he picked the lock on the sliding glass door. He sent Jose in first, scanning the back area before entering himself. Once in he used the flashlight mounted on his AK-47 to search the area. It was empty. The men moved downstairs. Blood congealed in pools where the victims had fallen, smudge marks showing where he had dragged the bodies out toward the water. Satisfied the house was empty, he sent Jose to get Ibrahim and settled in to wait. He was a patient man when he was stalking prey. Sooner or later the occupant would return. All his instincts pointed to the material being here.

  ***

  Trufante was restless. Sue had the night shift, leaving him alone in her apartment, and he was both tired and wired, the pain killers mellowing him at the same time as the antibiotics and pain set him on edge. Sue had told him this might happen, not having the selection of antibiotics she had wanted, but hadn’t told him what to do about it. He paced the apartment, flipping channels on the TV, and finally he gave up, showered, and left. She was going to be mad … if she found out. But the walls were seriously closing in on him.

  Hoping alcohol would set him right, he took his regular seat at the bar, doing his best to keep his bandaged finger out of sight. Annie came over with a beer, leaned down, and pecked his offered cheek. A long deep drag on the beer, and he began to feel better. The bar was busy, thankfully, and the lack of his usual conversation went unnoticed. Two beers later, he was starting to level off. Maybe even feeling good, the alcohol doing its dance with the pain killers.

  He hardly noticed when Heather entered.

  She came right toward him, a tired-looking man following in her wake, with determination on his face. He knew her by sight, had spoken with her once or twice, but she was more the kind of friend you nodded and smiled at. He gave her his trademark smile and hoped she would move past him, not really sure how well words would come out of his mouth in his present state. But she didn’t veer away. Instead, she came right at him.

  “Tru, I’ve got some questions for you. Could we go outside and have a chat?” She had no authority to question him, but was making herself friendly, obviously hoping that he’d play nice.

  “Well sure, little lady,” he said, grateful his mouth could still produce words.

  He signaled for Annie to put his tab on hold and moved toward the door. Heather had to grab his arm when he tripped on the foot rail. She tightened her grasp as he stumbled again, guiding him through the door. Once outside, she parked him on a bench and sat next to him, making it less confrontational. The guy stood within hearing range.

  “You want to tell me what happened to your hand?” she started.

  “Oh this?” He hel
d up his hand. “Just a little accident. I’m all good.” Even in his present state he knew better than to tell the police anything.

  “Well, we got a witness that puts you at a crime scene. A murder, actually. Can you tell me where you were last night?”

  Trufante sobered slightly at that, and looked at the guy in the shadows. It took his scrambled brain a few seconds to realize that he knew the guy — one of the men from the house the night before. Shit.

  “Might have been in some trouble,” he answered slowly, shrugging. “I was kidnapped and dragged along. Been recuperating, else I would have come in and talked to y’all. I was planning on visiting tomorrow, telling you what I remember.”

  “Well, why don’t we have that talk now.” She took a small recorder from her purse and he nodded, accepting it.

  “How ‘bout we go back inside? I could use another beer. A lot more comfortable in there,” he noted quietly. “This ain’t gonna be a pretty story.”

  ***

  Heather knew she had to walk a line between what she could request of him and what she could demand. She followed along and went inside. They found a table in a quiet corner and she ordered him a beer. Anything, as long as he talked. She watched him as he sipped his beer and smiled, but she didn’t have to look too closely to see him wobbling in his chair. Maybe a hospital would have been a better place to talk.

  “You sure you’re ok? We could take you over to the hospital and have them look at you.”

  “I’m good.” He looked at his wrist, where his watch would have been if he’d remembered to put it on, and sighed. “Didn’t he tell you what happened?” he asked, looking at Jeff.

  “We know what happened in the house, how the drugs were found, and about Cesar taking the women.”

  Trufante looked like he was going to fall over. “You mean you don’t know?” he gasped.

  “Know what?”

  “Well …” He tipped off his chair and fell before he could complete the thought. His head hit the floor and bounced several inches before coming to rest.

  Heather was immediately on him. He was out cold. She quickly examined him, and found his vitals steady, no evidence of a head injury. In fact, he just looked like a sleeping baby.

  “Crap. Help me get him out of here. We should have taken him to the hospital as soon as I saw him.”

  Heather’s mind was racing as they each grabbed an arm and walked him out of the bar.

  24

  Mel wrote late into the night. It was cathartic and calmed her swirling mind. After the fight with Mac, she’d gone on a rampage, first cleaning the house, then burning her body with pushups and squats. She even tried to go for a swim to blunt the pain. And she hated to swim.

  In the end, she wrote it all out. Her entire case, in longhand. The entire incident where Jim Gillum and the Navy had spied on her and Mac. And everything that followed. It took pages — mostly lists of reasons that drones had to be regulated now, not after they were in use. This was really the crux of the issue for her. Drone use was inevitable. The hardware and software had already been developed to fight terrorists. It was just a matter of time until they were crisscrossing the skies. Her concern was that they not be used against innocent citizens. As she wrote, though, she began to feel her quest was hopeless. She looked down at the cup of coffee she had brewed, thinking. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t win, she was starting to doubt if she had the energy and resolve to fight the battle.

  She’d had an idea brewing for the last year. It kept floating around in her head, surfacing whenever conflict arose. The concept was still fuzzy, so she started to write again, hoping she could finally define her thoughts. It was becoming harder to fight her cases. Battle lines, once clearly drawn, were now fuzzy. Her opponents had hidden agendas. Even her supposed allies, like Patel, had their own agendas. She’d always believed the law was defined by the constitution and should be argued by the merits of a case - not it’s blowback or affect on another case that may be won or lost based on this one. That was politics - not law.

  Then there was the general state of sanity. If you looked through someone, really got down to their motivations, you found that they were only motivated by a few things. Money was the usual culprit. Follow the money, and it usually led to the truth, and underlying motivation. Next were the genuine do-gooders. They truly wanted change for the sake of improving people’s lot in life. The thing they didn’t understand was that their agenda could have unintended consequences. They couldn’t see past their initial goal, and really analyze a situation. Last were the people who had an agenda to make every one live by their point of view. This last group had surrounded her for the last ten years, and during that time she’d come to realize that they were actually insane.

  Maybe Mac was right. It was a losing battle. Her latest fight against the use of drones showed all this. Advocates for either side were hysterical in their support of their cause. These groups were as polarized as the zealots they sought to find with the drone programs. This made for an unwinable situation. The government was too big, had too many branches, most not knowing what the other was doing. They had the press in their pockets. Then there were private contractors working for the government with their own set of rules. How could one issue take all that on, make it into the national spotlight and last more than one twenty-four-hour news cycle? The founding fathers, who she had come to respect more and more as time passed, used to deliberate and write things down. This was a stage of analysis and discussion that allowed time to pass, not the hurry up and get in front of a microphone before people forget who you are which was the culture of politics today.

  The edge had worn off by the time she finished writing. The room was in shadows, illuminated only by the gas lamp on the table. Her rage spent, she started to tear up as she looked around the room at her father’s life. Every book and picture reminded her of good times or bad. Their relationship had been special through her first year of college. He’d raised her alone, her mother passing when she was in middle school. She admitted to herself reluctantly that he’d done a good job. She glanced around the room., surprised to see her certificate from The University of Virginia. Going to the school had filled the void from being raised in the Keys, but had caused a rift between them. She had decided quickly, against her father’s wishes, to get a law degree. As the years passed, she’d visited him less and hung out with her law friends more, their world views diverging, as generations often do. She had blamed it on his stubbornness, but realized later that stubbornness was a family trait, and she was just as guilty.

  And now Mac. The lunkheaded conundrum, she called him. Part hardcore Marine and part monk. The guy who could talk to Trufante in his Cajun slang, and turn around and quote Seneca about stoic values. She knew she had a way of intimidating men, but he was unusual. He would hear her out, not take her crap, and even give a healthy dose back to her.

  She walked back to the shelves and looked at a picture of Mac and her dad some twenty years earlier, standing on a bridge piling next to a stack of books on Mayan civilization. She knew something was changing deep within her. She knew Mac had overreacted earlier, but she had pushed his buttons. He was the guy she truly wanted.

  She fell on the couch and wept, the isolation here forcing her to reconcile with her demons. Her phone had died hours earlier, with no chargers out here. She turned the 12-volt VHF radio on for some background noise, and turned the squelch down, the static soothing her. Then she cried herself to sleep.

  ***

  Mac eased the boat to the dock, skillfully judging the wind and tide, and using both to set the boat in place. He jumped out to tie the bow off before the wind got a hold of it. When he turned to go for the stern line, he found a gun to his head.

  “Jose, tie off the boat. You,” a hand pushed Mac toward the house, “we need to have a talk.” Mac felt the pressure of the barrel on the back of his head as he was pushed towards the house.

  They entered the building and moved towards the o
ffice, Jose came in behind them.

  “Tie him up.” The man pointed to the office chair. He kept the gun on Mac as Jose secured him.

  He struggled against the restraints, watching as the man started to search the safe. “You got what you came for last night.” Mac said.

  “No, actually we didn’t.” The drug runner jabbed a finger in his face. “The material was switched. Didn’t think I’d figure it out so quickly, did you?” He took a revolver out and spun the empty chamber. “You know, it’s not really a gun if it’s not loaded.” He removed a box of bullets from the safe and loaded the gun, then spun the chamber again.

  “Now, it’s a gun.” He held the gun to Mac’s head. “Why don’t you tell me where the right material is?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My friend asked me to keep the box for him. I just put it in the safe. That’s all.”

  “Your friend, the Cajun with the large smile? He’s not smart enough to do that kind of switch.” He waved the gun toward the shop. “You, on the other hand, look like you could easily accomplish the task.”

  Mac was at a loss now. He was about to deny it further when Cesar rammed the gun into his temple, knocking him unconscious.

  ***

  Ibrahim walked in the door. He looked at Mac. Cesar had finished with the safe and was now rummaging through the office.

  “You’ll never find it in this mess. Let me question him.” Ibrahim said.

  “Suit yourself.” He moved into the workshop and started digging through the piles of tools and gear.

  Ibrahim went out to gather supplies. He found an empty bucket and filled it with water. Half was tossed on the unconscious man. He waited as he came to.

  “Tell me where the material is, infidel,”

  Mac’s voice was slow, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told the other guy that I was just holding the box for a friend. I don’t even know what’s in it.”