The Abduction

by Mark Gimenez

  “Come on, you son of a—”

  The engine coughed and wheezed like a two-pack-a-day smoker then turned over. Ben quickly shifted into reverse; the Jeep jerked itself back out of the parking space. Then it died.

  “Cripes!” from the passenger’s seat.

  Ben jammed his boot down on the accelerator again; the Jeep fired up again. He rammed the stick shift into first before the Jeep could change its mind. The vehicle lurched out of the airport, belching a cloud of black smoke.

  Once they were on the access road leading to the interstate, Ben glanced over at his passenger. John was his mother’s son—the same sharply etched facial features, the same curly black hair, the same slender frame, the same brilliant mind. He was so unlike his father. Ben’s thoughts turned back again to that night when—

  “Stop!” John shouted.

  Ben slammed on the brakes. “What?”

  John pointed. “Pull in there!” Then he started punching the buttons on his cell phone like he was calling 911 to report an emergency.

  “Hi, this is Gracie. I can’t answer the phone right now ’cause I’m on a date with Orlando Bloom—I wish! Actually, I’m like, at school or soccer practice or Tae Kwon Do class or chasing E.T. around the house. Anyway, I’m not here to answer my phone, duh, so leave a message or whatever. Bye.” The machine beeped.

  Elizabeth was now sitting in Grace’s chair at Grace’s desk in Grace’s room listening to Grace’s voice. It was all she had left of her daughter. She reached over and hit the play button and listened again to her dead daughter’s voice.

  Gracie said, “Ben Brice was a hero.”

  The big man was shaking his head slowly like Mom did when Sam acted like a little butthead. “Ben Brice,” he said in a soft voice, almost like he was talking about someone who had died. “What are the odds, Junior? We drive halfway across the country to snatch this girl, turns out she’s Ben Brice’s grandkid. Same wave of His hand, God gives you her and me Ben Brice.”

  Junior was now looking at the big man like he was from another planet. “The hell you babbling about, Jacko?”

  The big man named Jacko said, “The major always said it ain’t no coincidence that the world’s oil is in the Middle East, same place the world’s three religions got started. He said, ‘God put that oil there, Jacko, ’cause one day it’s gonna bring the Jews, Muslims, and Christians back to the Middle East for the final conflict. Armageddon in the desert. God’s master plan.’ ”

  “What’s all that got to do with her?”

  “She’s my oil, Junior.” Jacko turned to Junior but pointed a gnarly thumb at Gracie. “She’s gonna bring Ben Brice back to me for the final conflict.”

  “Who the hell’s Ben Brice?”

  Gracie said again, “He was a hero.”

  Jacko snorted smoke. “He was a traitor. The traitor got us court-martialed.”

  Junior looked at him and frowned. “You mean—”

  “Yeah, I mean. He’s the one betrayed the major.”

  Junior’s eyes got wide, like Nanna’s that time she hit four numbers at the lottery and won six hundred dollars. He said, “He’s a dead man.”

  “Not yet he ain’t,” Jacko said. “But he will be soon enough.”

  “But how’re we gonna find him?”

  “We ain’t. He’s gonna find us.”

  “He ain’t never gonna find us on that mountain.”

  “Yeah, Junior, he will. I don’t know how, but he will. ’Cause we took something belongs to him.”

  9:44 A.M.

  “Now this is my kind of work,” John said as he and Ben entered the Range Rover showroom. A smiling salesman wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a clip-on tie appeared before the glass doors shut behind them.

  “Morning, gentlemen. I’m Bob.”

  A Range Rover dealership was like a second home to John R. Brice. When he had spotted it from the Jeep, his spirits had soared like a kid on Christmas morning: a new Rover would dang sure get them to Idaho! John walked over to a Land Rover on the showroom floor—Java black exterior—and opened the door—Alpaca beige leather interior. He had seen all he needed to see. He turned back to Bob.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty-seven,” Bob said. “That’s a steal for this baby.”

  Certainly Bob didn’t think he was going to hose John R. Brice on the price of a Land Rover. Like most techno-nerds, John did not possess real world expertise requiring physical dexterity or social skills; he did not know how to lay tile or change the oil or fix a running toilet (don’t even think about a major appliance) or interface effectively with his kids’ teachers or his spousal unit. But he knew all the important things in life as defined by his generation: he knew how to write computer code; he knew how to buy stuff on the Internet; he knew how to make a billion dollars from intellectual property; he knew how to compare cell phone calling plans; and he knew the specs for a Land Rover.

  “Land Rover LR3 series, HSE package. Four-point-four liter V-8 power plant with Bosch Motronic Engine Management System. Four-wheel-drive with electronic traction control, electronic air suspension, and antilock brakes. Terrain Response, Active Roll Mitigation, and Dynamic Stability Control systems. Five-hundred-fifty-watt Harmon Kardon Logic 7 surround sound stereo system with thirteen speakers and amplified subwoofer. Nineteen-inch alloy wheels. Cold climate package, leather seats, sunroof, Bi-Xenon headlights, rack-and-pinion steering, and the Urban Jungle accessory kit, although I’m partial to the Safari kit. Total MSRP, fifty-six-five. Plus transportation and dealer prep fees and add-ons, fifty-seven-five. I can shop this vehicle on the Net and pay forty-nine-five max. Because I’m in a hurry, I’ll pay fifty-one, cash and carry.”

  John’s brain dump had Bob’s mouth agape. “But at that price I’m giving it away. Look, I’ll come down to fifty-six.”

  “No way, dude. Fifty-two or we’re history.”

  “Fifty-five?”

  “Fifty-three, and that’s my final offer.”

  “Fifty-four.” John turned away. Before he took two steps: “Okay, okay, fifty-three.”

  “Done.” John put the phone to his ear. “Carol, you still there? Wire fifty-three thousand to—”

  “Plus tax, title and license,” Bob said.

  “How much?”

  Bob started tapping on a little calculator. “Title is two-fifty, license is one-fifty, sales tax is six-point-seven-five percent times fifty-three thousand …”

  To Carol on the phone: “Plus three thousand nine hundred seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents to—”

  John held the phone out to Bob, who was still tapping away.

  “… that’s three thousand nine hundred seventy-seven …”

  “Yes, we know,” John said. “Tell her your bank account number. I need this vehicle in real time.” He pointed outside. “And you gotta take that POS Jeep off our hands.”

  Bob hurried off with the cell phone. John turned to Ben.

  “And that is how you upgrade to a new luxury SUV.”

  Ben was shaking his head in obvious amazement. “What does ‘POS’ mean?”

  10:36 A.M.

  “Piece of shit,” Jan Jorgenson said. She flung the dried-out marker across her office and into the trash can.

  She had come into the office that morning for the first time since the abduction and tried to focus on the long list of young Arab men residing in Texas, but her mind wouldn’t let go of the girl on that soccer game tape. The image haunted her. She felt as if she were quitting on Gracie Ann Brice. But she was not a quitter. Marathon running had taught her to never quit. Twenty miles, you’re in a brain fog, your body is on autopilot, your feet are numb, you’ve lost control of your bowels, and you’re hitting the wall—but you don’t quit; you never quit. If you quit, you never learn the truth about yourself.

  FBI Special Agent (on probation) Jan Jorgenson was determined to learn the truth about Gracie Ann Brice.

  So rather than running six miles as she normally did during her lunch hour
, she was outlining the Brice case on the large grease board in her small office in downtown Dallas. She had written GRACIE ANN BRICE at the top of the board above five subheadings: GARY JENNINGS … JOHN BRICE … ELIZABETH BRICE … COL. BEN BRICE … DNA.

  Under GARY JENNINGS, she had written BriceWare and blood in truck and jersey in truck and 9 phone calls and coach’s ID and child porn. Damning evidence. But still, the FBI’s Evidence Response Team couldn’t find a single hair from Gracie’s head in Jennings’s truck or apartment or on his clothes; or her fingerprints in his truck or his fingerprints on the porn picture; or child porn in his apartment or on his computers. He didn’t come close to the sexual predator profile. Nothing like a child abduction in his background, and a wife and baby and a million dollars in his future, but he chucks it all to rape and murder his boss’s ten-year-old daughter?

  As the kids say, I don’t think so.

  She had next completed the entries under JOHN BRICE: Ph.D., MIT … marries Elizabeth Austin … moves to Dallas … BriceWare … IPO. Other than his billion-dollar wealth after yesterday’s IPO, a possible motive for ransom, nothing else in the father’s background sparked her interest. Why would someone take John Brice’s child?

  She had then written under ELIZABETH BRICE: Born NYC … Smith College … Harvard Law … Justice Department … quits Justice, marries John Brice, moves to Dallas … white-collar criminal defense. Why would someone take Elizabeth Brice’s child?

  She was now filling in the life of COL. BEN BRICE: West Point … Vietnam … Green Beret … Colonel … Medal of Honor … classified duty … Viper tattoo. Why would someone take Colonel Brice’s grandchild?

  Why would someone commit this crime?

  What were possible motives?

  She sat back down at her desk, which was covered with information Research had gathered about Colonel Brice from public sources, copies of newspaper and magazine articles, arranged in reverse chronological order. Research had highlighted in yellow each place the colonel’s name was mentioned in the articles. She thumbed through several. One was dated 30 April 1975, about the fall of Saigon, with a photograph of a U.S. helicopter rising from the roof of the American Embassy; a soldier was standing on the skid like a fireman on a fire truck and cradling a small object in his arm.

  Another article was dated 7 August 1972, with a photo of President Nixon placing the Medal of Honor around Colonel Brice’s neck in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, awarded because Brice had single-handedly rescued one hundred American pilots from a POW camp; the colonel’s wife stood beside him.

  Jan scanned several articles from Stars & Stripes, the military newspaper, then came to a front-page article from the Washington Herald dated 12 November 1969. The accompanying photograph showed reporters crowding a grim Colonel Brice outside an Army building, only he wasn’t a colonel back then, but a young lieutenant. Her eyes ran over the article: something about a court-martial over a massacre in Vietnam. Jan Jorgenson was not born until 1980; consequently, the Vietnam War meant no more to her than the Civil War. She was about to move on to the next article when her eyes caught a word in the fifth paragraph of the story: viper.

  A shot of adrenaline ricocheted through Jan’s veins: Colonel Brice has a Viper tattoo. The unidentified male at the park had a Viper tattoo. The court-martialed soldiers had been in a special operations unit code-named Viper. She read on.

  SOG team Viper, led by Major Charles Woodrow Walker, massacred forty-two Vietnamese civilians on 17 December 1968 in a small hamlet in the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam. Lieutenant Ben Brice reported the massacre. Once the media got wind, Quang Tri became a political cause. Members of Congress opposed to the war demanded that Major Walker be court-martialed. The Army resisted: Charles Woodrow Walker was a living legend. But when a group of senators threatened to hold up military funding, the Army surrendered and charged Walker and his soldiers under Article 118 of the Code of Military Justice: murder.

  Lieutenant Ben Brice was the sole witness for the prosecution at the court-martial; he testified that Walker incited the massacre and murdered a young girl in cold blood. Major Walker had only to take the stand and deny the massacre. Case closed. A living legend trumps a lieutenant every time.

  The crowded courtroom was silent with anticipation when the thirty-eight-year-old Army major, a strikingly handsome figure from the photo Jan was looking at, stepped to the witness stand in his uniform, his chest covered with medals, and stood erect as he addressed the members of the military tribunal.

  “Dying, gentlemen, is a big part of war. People die in war. Men, women, and children. Soldiers and civilians. Enemies and allies. And Americans. Communist forces have killed forty thousand U.S. soldiers in Vietnam—forty thousand, gentlemen! And the Army is court-martialing me over forty-two dead gooks?”

  The major sniffs the air like a bloodhound getting a scent.

  “I smell the corrupt stench of politics in this courtroom.”

  His accuser gazes upon the major, the very image of a Green Beret commando: six foot four, two-hundred-twenty-pound body hard as a side of beef, blond flattop, bronze face, and a voice that sounds like thunder. And he has those eyes, eyes like blue crystal that can see straight into your soul; when he locks those eyes on you, it’s as if you’re looking at Jesus Christ himself, his men say. They call themselves his disciples.

  The major locks his eyes on the court-martial panel.

  “When we bombed Germany into rubble in World War Two, we killed thirty-five thousand German civilians in Dresden alone. When we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we killed three hundred thousand Japanese civilians. But we did not cry over their deaths. We did not court-martial the pilots who dropped the bombs or the generals who ordered the bombing. We honored them as heroes. We gave them medals and parades. We put a general in the White House.

  “But this war, I am told, is different. This war is unpopular with the people. To which I say, so fucking what! Since when did this man’s Army give a good goddamn what civilians think? Do you care what that lawless mob of malcontents protesting outside the gates to this Army base, burning the American flag you and I swore to defend, thinks? The soldiers fighting and dying at this very moment in Vietnam are not defending those civilians. They are defending this country! And I’m not about to let a buncha draft-dodging dopers tell me when and where and who I can kill to defend this country!

  “And, I’m also told, this war is immoral, ugly, brutal, and evil. To which I say, yes, it is. Just like every other war this country has ever fought. War, gentlemen, is not pretty or neat or nice or humane fare fit for the evening news. War is ugly. Brutal. Inhumane. Evil. And necessary for the survival of the Free World!”

  He points at the window.

  “That mob wants America to lose in Vietnam. That mob wants to bring down the American military. We—you and I and this Army—cannot let that happen! We must not let that happen! For if we do, if we let that mob destroy this Army, the world will no longer fear America. Now, we can live in a world that does not love America. We can even live in a world that hates America. But, gentlemen, we cannot live in a world that does not fear America. We cannot live in a world that thinks it can fuck with America. Because once every piss-ant dictator, rebel, warlord, and terrorist thinks he can fuck with America, he will! Gentlemen, I am on trial, but it is not the future of Major Charles Woodrow Walker that is at stake today. It is the future of the United States Army. It is the future of America.

  “I stand accused of murder by an Army that cowers before politicians, politicians who have never fought a war but who enjoy the freedom war brings—the freedom we give them!—politicians trying to win an election by appeasing that mob. I, gentlemen, am trying to win a war! To defeat Communism and preserve peace and prosperity for the United States of America!”

  The major removes his coat. He unbuttons his left sleeve. He rolls the sleeve up. He shows the panel the Viper tattoo imprinted on his bicep. And he translates the Vietnamese words for
them: “ ‘We kill for peace.’ By God, if this country is going to enjoy peace and prosperity, we damn well better be ready to kill for it!”

  The major now points at his accuser.

  “Since Truman betrayed MacArthur, every soldier at West Point knows that politicians will always betray the military. We expect that. But we don’t expect betrayal by one of our own, by a fellow member of the Corps. Just as Jesus Christ had Judas Iscariot, so too do I have Lieutenant Ben Brice. He betrayed me. He betrayed you. He betrayed his Army. He betrayed his country.

  “Did we kill those gooks? You goddamn right we did! And I will kill every gook in Vietnam if that’s what it takes to win that war! To defeat Communism! As God is my witness, I don’t regret killing those forty-two gooks! My only regret is that I didn’t put a bullet in Lieutenant Brice’s head, too!”

  Ben’s thoughts were jolted back to the present when the Land Rover bounced hard.

  “Now there’s a motive—revenge.”

  Agent Jan Jorgenson turned to the last page of the article. Major Walker and the nine other Green Berets were acquitted of murder but found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, stripped of their rank, and dishonorably discharged from the Army.

  Did Walker abduct Gracie Ann Brice for revenge against Colonel Brice? And who is Major Charles Woodrow Walker? And where is he now?

  11:05 A.M.

  The big man named Jacko was saying, “I remember one time, me and the major, we got these two VC up in the chopper, five hundred feet off the deck. The major’s interrogating them—where’s your base camp, how many men, and so on. The one gook, he keeps saying, ‘Doo Mommie,’ which means ‘fuck your mama’ in Viet. Well, the major finally got his fill, so he grabs the dink and throws his ass right out the door. We hear him screaming all the way down. Then the major grabs the other dink—that sumbitch pisses hisself. And he talks, gives us the coordinates of their base camp. We called in the B-52s the next morning. They wiped that camp and about five hundred gooks off the face of the earth.”