by Mark Gimenez
The colonel stared at the photo of the big man; Devereaux thought he saw a hint of recognition cross the colonel’s face. But Colonel Brice finally shook his head slowly and said, “No.”
“How many men got this tattoo?” Devereaux asked.
“Viper was a twelve-man heavy recon team, operated for four years before I joined up. Casualties were high. Maybe twenty-five men got that tattoo, maybe more. I only knew the eleven men I served with.”
“So we’ll pull SOG records—”
“You’ll never get those records, if they even exist.” The colonel stood and rolled his sleeve down. “Agent Devereaux, my wife knows what I did over there, but my son doesn’t. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I understand, sir.”
Devereaux thought, Only a Vietnam war hero would feel obliged to keep his heroism from his own son.
“He’s seen the tattoo,” the colonel said, “but he doesn’t know what it means. And he knows nothing about Viper team.”
“What about Mrs. Brice?”
“Elizabeth? No. She knows I served in Vietnam, nothing more. She wouldn’t understand. Anyone who wasn’t there, they just can’t understand.”
“Amen to that.”
The colonel snapped the buttons on the cuff of his sleeve and said, “Agent Devereaux, I’d consider it a personal favor if you didn’t mention that man’s tattoo in front of my family.”
Devereaux studied the colonel a moment and said, “All right, Colonel, we’ll keep it between us for now. Just as well, I don’t want to go public with the tattoo anyway, in case I can get the names of those Green Berets.”
The colonel stared at Devereaux but it was as if he were looking straight through him. Eugene Devereaux had been Army infantry in Vietnam. A grunt. Green Berets were the Army’s elite, trained in the art of killing. Ben Brice did not have the look of a trained killer. He was not a physically intimidating man, as were the Green Berets Devereaux had seen in the Army. Nor was he the macho commando stereotype. In fact, he seemed almost too gentle a man to have done what Green Berets did in Southeast Asia four decades ago. But there was something in his eyes that told Devereaux otherwise.
His blue eyes betrayed him like a cheating wife.
7:14 P.M.
Gracie was in pain, scared and crying and praying to be saved. And her father wasn’t doing a damn thing to save her. He didn’t know how.
Instead, Little Johnny Brice was staring at a life-sized image of his daughter’s soccer photo attached to the side of the concession stand under a banner with WE LOVE YOU, GRACIE painted in big letters; stacked below were pink ribbons, cards, fancy balloons, and hundreds of flower arrangements and teddy bears. The concession stand was now a memorial to his daughter.
Gracie was gone because her father wasn’t much of a man.
John had not wanted to attend this vigil, but the FBI said it was important to appeal to the abductor’s sympathy—if he saw on television the pain he was causing her family, he might let her go. But John could think only of Gracie’s pain.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. John turned and looked into the eyes of his father, this man he had called colonel and now Ben but never father or dad, who once was a hero with a family but who now was a drunk with a dog. His mother had told him that his father was a good man destroyed by a bad war; that terrible things had happened to him in Vietnam; that the war had ended but Ben Brice had never found his peace.
John Brice had never allowed himself the slightest sympathy for his father.
“Come on, son,” Ben said, gently pulling John away from the makeshift memorial.
His son’s eyes remained locked on Gracie’s image. He said in a whisper, “I didn’t tie her shoe.”
Ben turned John away, and they walked past the local mayor giving a TV interview—“A safe place, a wonderful place to build your dream home and raise your children”—and around to the front of the building where a young priest was leading the crowd in prayer. Ben and John stood among hundreds of parents and children wearing Gracie buttons and tee shirts with Gracie’s picture on the back and holding candles flickering in the night. Mingling with them were FBI agents; several were inconspicuously videotaping the candlelight vigil with palm-sized camcorders. Agent Devereaux said it was not out of the question that the abductor might show.
“Mr. Brice.” A young blond man and a pregnant woman had come up to John, who turned and looked at them but did not seem to see them. “Mr. Brice,” the young man began again, “I just want to say how sorry I am. We’re having a baby and … I mean …” He glanced at Ben; he was at a loss for words.
“Thanks for your thoughts,” Ben said to the young man.
The couple left. Up front, a young girl stood and sang:
“A-ma-zing Grace, how sweet the sound …”
And the crowd joined in:
“That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
I was blind, but now I see …”
The overhead park lights dimmed slowly until the only light came from the flickering flames of hundreds of candles held high as the people sang.
The stars in the dark Vietnam night seem to flicker in fright, as if flinching at the sound of high-powered weapons firing on full auto and bringing death to this village. But not to this girl. He is determined to save her.
Lieutenant Ben Brice is now carrying the china doll like a football, dodging livestock and running through the burning hamlet toward the jungle where he can hide her. He glances back and trips over a dead pig, sending himself and the china doll sprawling into the dirt. The china doll scrambles up first. Before he can get to his feet, her head explodes like a ripe watermelon; her brains and blood splatter the twenty-two-year-old second lieutenant’s face and fatigues. He looks up to see the major standing there, smoke from the barrel of his .45-caliber sidearm hanging in the humid air, clouding the Viper tattoo on his bare left arm.
“She was just a girl!” he screams at his SOG team leader.
“She was just a gook,” the major responds calmly, wiping the girl’s blood from his weapon. “They’re all just gooks, Lieutenant. And your job is to kill gooks.”
SOG rules are few but absolute: never leave a live team member behind; never let yourself be captured by the enemy; and never question the team leader in the field. The major turns his back on the naïve and idealistic young lieutenant, who violates a SOG rule on his first mission.
“You violated the law of war! And the rules of engagement!”
The major stops, pivots, and two steps later he is towering over the lieutenant, glaring down at him, his blue eyes burning with anger.
“Out here in the bush, I’m the law! I make the rules! And I say we kill VC! We kill livestock that feeds VC! We burn huts that shelter VC! We kill civilians that aid VC! Those are my rules of engagement, Lieutenant!”
The major blows out a breath and calms. He squats in front of his newest disciple, the anger subsided now, and for a moment Ben thinks the major is going to console him, perhaps offer a personal word of encouragement to a young Army soldier unversed in fighting a war in a moral vacuum; instead the major puts the barrel of his .45 to Ben’s head and says in a steady voice: “Soldier, you ever question what I do out here again, I’ll put a bullet through your head and let the VC make soup out of you, too. I guarangoddamntee it.”
The major stands and walks away through smoke and fire and blowing ashes. Ben raises his hand to wipe the blood from his face and sees that his hand is trembling.
Ben felt proud when he had learned the major had selected him to fill a vacancy on SOG team Viper. The major was thirty-seven and a living legend in the Special Forces. Ben Brice was twenty-two and naïve. “You’re a goddamn warrior now, Brice,” the major said after Ben got his Viper tattoo in Saigon. “One of us.” And he was proud when they ambushed that NVA convoy heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, bearing supplies that would aid the enemy and arms that would kill Americans.
Today, he is not proud.
Lieutenant Ben Brice slowly stands and looks down upon the china doll, her arms and legs splayed grotesquely, her vacant eyes staring back at him, the final moment of her life frozen on her face—a face that will haunt him the rest of his nights. He turns and walks away, leaving the china doll and his soul to rot in the rich black soil of the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam.
God has a plan for Ben Brice, or so his mother had always said and so he had always believed, right up until that dark night in Vietnam. Each evening now, thirty-eight years after the fact, Ben would sit in his rocking chair on the porch of the small cabin he had built with his own hands, watch the sun set over Taos, and wonder what God’s plan had been and why it had gone so wrong. Now, staring at the stars above his son’s mansion outside Dallas, the vague outline of an answer was taking shape in his mind.
DAY FOUR
6:05 A.M.
FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux gave a little salute to the uniformed guard wearing a Gracie button as the gates parted in front of his sedan. Briarwyck Farms was the American Dream, an upscale community entered through black iron gates, surrounded by a ten-foot-tall brick wall, and guarded 24/7 by a private security force, a place where all the homes cost at least $1 million, all the parents were successful, and all the children were safe.
But these walls and gates hadn’t kept Gracie safe.
It was Monday morning—sixty hours post-abduction—and Devereaux was stumped. He had a command post equipped with phones, faxes, and computers running RapidStart, the FBI’s sophisticated information management system capable of filing, indexing, comparing, and tracking thousands of leads simultaneously—he just didn’t have any leads.
The girl had vanished.
Devereaux stopped at an intersection in front of the elementary school. A crossing guard holding up a stop sign escorted several children across the street; over her long-sleeve shirt the guard was wearing a white tee shirt with Gracie’s image on the back under HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Below her image was CALL 1-800-THE LOST.
The guard waved him on. He drove down the next block and turned right. The uniformed officers stationed at the end of Magnolia Lane recognized Devereaux’s car and were already removing the wooden barricades blocking the street as he turned. When he did, he saw that the media circus had gone national. The networks had arrived.
“Shit. She’s gonna do it.”
6:49 A.M.
“Mrs. Brice, please don’t do this. It’ll bring out every kook in the country. It won’t help. It’s a waiting game.”
“I’m through waiting.”
Elizabeth left Agent Devereaux standing in the kitchen, obviously frustrated with a victim’s mother who refused to play her designated role. Well, too damn bad. The victim had been missing for sixty-one hours now and this mother was through waiting—for a ransom call to come, for the abductor to be arrested, for a dog to track down her daughter’s dead body, for God to save her. This mother wanted her daughter alive or the abductor dead. Or both. So this mother was taking matters into her own hands.
She was dressed for court; her hair was done and her makeup concealed the bags under her eyes. She would not be the pitiful grieving mother today, looking like hell, voice quivering, tears running down her face and makeup giving chase, begging a pervert on national TV to spare her child’s life. Today she would be a tough-broad lawyer negotiating a deal, just like any other day and any other deal: you have something I want; I have something you want. Let’s make a deal, asshole.
She proceeded down the gallery; the familiar adrenaline rush energized her to the coming performance, the same as when she stepped into the courtroom for the start of a trial. All heads turned her way when she entered the library, which now resembled a television studio. The three networks were represented with cameras and behind-the-scenes personnel; the national morning show hosts in New York would conduct the interviews; and the interviews would run live. Those were Elizabeth’s terms.
“Five minutes, Mrs. Brice!” a little twerp wearing a headset shouted while holding up five fingers just in case she was deaf.
She sat next to John in a straight chair positioned in front of the bookshelves, a backdrop that gave the impression more of a law office than a home. Elizabeth had planned this event down to the last detail, the same as if she were about to bargain with a prosecutor for her client’s freedom; instead, she was about to bargain with a pervert for her daughter’s life. And only she would do the bargaining. She had given her husband the same explicit instructions she gave her guilty clients before a plea-bargain negotiation: Keep your fucking mouth shut!
John was dressed in black penny loafers, white socks, jeans, a yellow shirt, and a goofy blue tie with cartoon characters, his most solemn tie; at least he had tried to do something with his hair. He was staring off into space. She leaned into him and said, “Lose the tie.” While he obediently removed the tie, she plucked the tiny wads of toilet paper stuck to his face where he had cut himself shaving—and she saw the evidence of her attack two days ago. Remorse again tried to sneak into her thoughts; it got a foot in the door this time.
Elizabeth sighed. She always hated herself afterward—after the rage had romped. After she had lashed out at John. He didn’t deserve it. But then, he never deserved it. She had cursed him too many times, but she had never hit him. This time the rage had crossed the line … and it scared her. She stared at her husband and wondered if he hated her half as much as she hated herself.
Playing on the color monitor in John’s mind was his image of the abductor—coarse, thick, hairy, dirty, mean, and ugly—a man who, coincidentally, looked just like the Army bullies who had terrorized him as a boy.
He thought of the bullies again, Luther Ray in particular, wondering where his redneck life had led to—no doubt a double-wide mobile home in rural Alabama. John had always pictured Luther Ray sitting in his recliner under a Confederate flag on the wall and looking forward to a big day during which he would drive his piece-of-shit pickup into town to collect unemployment (having been laid off from the local chicken processing plant) and on the way back home he would engage in some curb shopping (checking out rich people’s trash for stuff that might fit the double-wide’s decor). Luther Ray would be hung over from the previous night’s meeting of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter when he opened his morning paper and read that John Brice was a billionaire.
“Got-damn, is that our Little Johnny Brice?” Luther Ray would say to the wife over at the stove fixing grits for breakfast. “That wimp’s a fuckin’ billionaire?” Then he’d laugh and say, “Shit, we used to kick his scrawny little ass just for fun.”
And then his wife (fat and missing a front tooth) would fart and say something like, “Well, Luther Ray, maybe you should’ve been nicer to Little Johnny and he’d’ve give you a good job and me and the kids wouldn’t be livin’ in this goddamn trailer park.” And from then on, every time they fought about money or his drinking (which is to say, every day), his wife would spew forth that flamage like green vomit from the Exorcist girl, reminding Luther Ray for the rest of his cretinous life that Little Johnny Brice had a billion dollars and he had a double-wide.
John had played out varying versions of that scenario at least once a day for the last nineteen years, conjuring it up on his first drive to MIT, when he had set a goal of being a billionaire by age forty, and improving on it each time. He had added the wife a few years back.
And that was why he had been so brain-damaged about becoming a billionaire. With the stock market and real-estate boom, everyone and their mother was a millionaire. But becoming a billionaire in one day like the Google guys—that would still make every newspaper in the country, even in rural Alabama.
But now Luther Ray would be watching him on TV, hearing how his daughter had been kidnapped in a public park with him right there, and he’d say, “No pervert would’ve snatched our Ellie May with me around and live to tell about it, that’s for goddamn sure. Li
ttle Johnny Brice got money, but he ain’t much of a man. Never was.” And the wife would nod in agreement.
And they’d be right.
“Mrs. Brice!”
Elizabeth jerked her eyes off John and focused on the task at hand—and the twerp standing directly in front of her; he was bent over, his hands were on his knees, and his round face was not two feet from hers.
“There’ll be a setup piece, three minutes”—he held up three fingers, then pointed to a TV monitor off to the side—“you can watch it there. Then DeAnn will go live with you.” Four fingers. “Four minutes, then commercial break. When I signal break, shut up. Don’t go on or we’ll cut you off.”
When the twerp vacated his position in front of Elizabeth, she found herself looking directly at Agent Devereaux standing back behind the cameras; he was leaning into the doorjamb and staring at her. Hey, fuck the FBI! You haven’t found my daughter!
“Quiet!” the twerp yelled. He pointed to the TV monitor.
The morning show first up was coming back on the air. The host introduced the reporter on the story, live from Texas, standing on the front lawn, a Gracie button on his lapel, the house looming large behind him.
“DeAnn, Gracie Ann Brice is ten years old”—Grace’s soccer picture flashed on the screen—“and she is missing this Monday morning. She was abducted by a blond man wearing a black cap and a plaid shirt after her soccer game Friday night here in Post Oak, Texas, a wealthy enclave forty miles north of downtown Dallas. I am standing outside her family’s three-million-dollar mansion in this community of mansions.”
Playing on the monitor was a video of Briarwyck Farms, the media circus outside, and their home. The reporter’s voice-over continued: “The park where she was abducted now serves as a makeshift memorial to Gracie.” Now the monitor showed shots of the park and the concession building, the banner, and the flowers. “Children have brought flowers and notes of prayer for their friend. A candlelight vigil was held there last night. Hundreds of people turned out to pray for Gracie’s safe return. Her abduction has frightened the residents of this community.”
