Damage Control

by John Gilstrap

  He glanced over his shoulder at the blood-spattered apparition that had once been a healthy, stable young man. Now, he had that faraway look that never meant good things. The kid needed a break, and with a thousand-mile slog lying ahead for them, they all needed rest.

  “Set the craftsman for tomorrow,” Jonathan said. “For tonight, see if there’s not a town somewhere nearby with a church. We can hole up there, gather our wits, get a shower and a change of clothes for the PC.”

  A pause. “Are you looking at the same map I am?” Venice asked. “Your location defines the middle of nowhere.” Another understatement. They were driving through endless jungle, somewhere near where the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero met each other—in an area where the prominent feature was a lack of prominent features. Jonathan had heard that people actually take vacations out here. Amazing.

  A couple of minutes passed before Venice contacted him again. “All right, I think I’ve found a place for you to go to ground tonight. Let me know when you’re ready to copy map coordinates.”

  The easiest way was to enter them into his handheld GPS. “Go ahead,” he said.

  Venice slowly read off the minutes and seconds of longitude and latitude, enunciating carefully while Jonathan punched in the numbers. When he was done, it took a few seconds for the map to materialize, and when it did, he had to look carefully to see the village that lay camouflaged beneath the canopy of leaves.

  Venice explained, “That large building on the far northeast corner of the village is a Catholic church, Santa Margarita. I crossed that with church records and I found there’s a priest attached to it, a Father Jaime Perón. Beyond that, I don’t know much of anything.”

  Actually, considering how little time it had taken, that seemed like a lot.

  Jonathan checked the stats. “I show twelve-point-one miles as the crow flies, nearly due north, but I don’t see any roads. Can you help out there?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Venice said. From the smile in her voice, he suspected that she’d been waiting for him to ask. “Churches need to be built. I found directions for the construction materials. Let me plot the route and upload it to you. Give me ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jonathan took the opportunity for them all to stretch their legs. Given the weaponry and equipment, the Toyota’s front seat got awfully small. It felt good to stand. It had to be over a hundred degrees out here, and the humidity topped the charts. And now that they’d stopped moving, word had traveled to the vast population of biting insects that it was dinnertime. The foliage on either side had a predatory, man-eating look to it. Stories abounded of soldiers who became separated from their units for a minute or two, only to get hopelessly lost when they tried to reconnect. Perhaps not in Mexico, but as far as Jonathan was concerned, all jungles shared the same primary danger: they removed him from his slot at the top of the food chain.

  As Jonathan adjusted his vest and weapons to get them to set more comfortably, he kept an eye on Tristan, who walked to the edge of the road to pee. He noted that there wasn’t much of a stream.

  When the boy returned to the vehicle, Jonathan pulled a water bottle from a side pocket of his ruck and handed it to Tristan. “Here,” he said. “It’s important to stay hydrated.”

  Tristan shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”

  “You’re in the jungle,” Jonathan said. “I can tell you’re dehydrated. You need to drink this. Sip it, don’t gulp.”

  Reluctantly, Tristan accepted the offer and stripped the cap off the bottle. He took a sip. As he lowered the bottle, Jonathan handed him a package of Pop-Tarts, also from his ruck. “Give yourself some calories and carbs, too.”

  The kid looked like he might turn those down, as well, but then accepted them anyway. “Please tell me what’s happening,” Tristan said as he ripped open his package. “I know there’s something wrong.” He sat on the Toyota’s back bumper.

  Jonathan sighed. There were advantages and disadvantages to honesty when things went bad. For Jonathan, truth was always the easier option. As harsh as the truth may be, at least there wouldn’t be feelings of bitterness down the road.

  “I’ll start with the good news,” he said. “You’re alive, and my single mission right now is to make sure you stay alive. You can call me Scorpion, and my friend is Big Guy.”

  “Those are code names,” Tristan protested. “They’re not real names.”

  “True enough,” Jonathan said. “But that’s the way it’s going to stay. Our mission is to get you home to your family. I’ve never once lost a precious cargo.”

  “Until today,” Tristan said. “You lost a lot of them today.”

  Jonathan bristled, yet fought the urge to equivocate. He said, “You’re right. And I’m sorry about that. I wish I could have done more.”

  “So, is that what I am?” Tristan asked. “Precious cargo? I’m the ‘PC’ I hear you talking about on the radio?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You talked about me a lot,” Tristan said. Jonathan interpreted the statement as his request to hear details.

  “That brings me to the bad news,” Jonathan said. While he caught the kid up on the recent revelations from Venice, Boxers continually scanned the surrounding jungle, his hand never leaving the grip of the rifle that he wore slung across his ample belly. Boxers had the kind of gut that looked like fat from a distance, yet would doubtless break your entire arm if you tried to hit it.

  When the story was done, Tristan gaped. “So you’re telling me that the Mexican government thinks that I killed the people you killed?”

  It wasn’t exactly the way Jonathan would have phrased it, but he conceded the basic point.

  “But why would I do that? I mean, why would they think that I did that?”

  Jonathan hesitated. Did he really want to give up that much detail?

  Screw it. “You’re not thinking of it the right way,” he said. “People don’t actually believe that you killed anyone. They want other people to think that you did. You were framed. All of us were framed.”

  Tristan squinted against his confusion. “But why?” “Exactly the right question,” Jonathan said. “Only I don’t have an answer. I don’t know that I’ll ever have an answer, and for right now, that’s less of an issue than getting the hell out of here. Drink some of your water.”

  The abrupt change of subject took some of the dread out of the air. Tristan took another mouthful.

  “So here’s what I need from you,” Jonathan said. “For this to have some semblance of a happy ending, I’m going to need something really close to blind obedience from you.”

  The comment drew a skeptical look.

  “Bear with me,” Jonathan went on. “I pledge two things to you. Number one is to bring you home safely. The second is to tell you the truth. That’s what I’ve been doing here. I know that the truth isn’t all that pleasant, but it is what it is. People are looking for us to hurt us, and if we don’t get out of this country sooner rather than later, they’re going to find us. At this juncture, that’s about the worst outcome I can think of. So we’re going to have to keep moving.”

  “A shit sandwich,” Tristan said. “That’s what my dad used to call bad choices. Nobody wants to eat it, and no amount of mayonnaise or mustard can make it better than what it is. Still, it has to be eaten.”

  Jonathan laughed. “I like that,” he said. He’d heard the analogy before, but hearing it come from a kid this young somehow made it funnier. “Your dad sounds like somebody I’d get along with.”

  The words seemed to cause pain for Tristan. “Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate.

  Jonathan didn’t press. “A shit sandwich is exactly what we have. I know that it’s stressful and that it’s unfair, and scary as hell, but you’re going to have to suck all that up and get over it. If that sounds harsh—”

  “It doesn’t sound harsh,” Tristan said. “It sounds real. I’ve always been a better runner than a fighter anyway. What do y
ou need me to do?”

  On a day that was marked by countless surprises, the kid’s attitude marked yet another one. Jonathan had been prepared for whining and fear and maybe even recalcitrance. But “What do you need me to do?” had been nowhere on his list of expectations.

  “Mostly, I need you to stay adaptable,” he said. “Tonight we’re going to find a place where you can change clothes and get some rest, and tomorrow we’ve got a couple of cloak-and-daggery things to take care of, and then hopefully, we’ll be on our way.”

  Tristan’s eyes narrowed as he cocked his head. “What does cloak-and-daggery mean?”

  Jonathan laughed again. “You’ll know it when you see it, I promise,” he said. He checked his GPS again to see if Venice had loaded the route yet. Nothing.

  “Can I ask a question?” Tristan said.

  Jonathan looked at him and waited.

  “Shouldn’t we think about just contacting the police? I mean, framing people for murder has to be as illegal here as it is at home. If we talk to the police and tell them what really happened, maybe all of this will go away. If we run we’ll just look guiltier, won’t we?”

  Jonathan’s GPS pinged. Literally saved by the bell. He checked the screen, and sure enough, there was the route to Santa Margarita. “This is it,” he said. “Mount up.” He looked to Boxers. “Big Guy!”

  “On it,” he said. Even as he strolled back to the car, his eyes never left the woods.

  “You a little high-strung?” Jonathan asked.

  Boxers gave him a droll look. “Funny how I get that way when people shoot at me.”

  Once inside with the engine started, Jonathan oriented himself to the map and pointed the way.

  Father Dom D’Angelo crossed the parking lot that separated St. Kate’s from the Security Solutions offices and headed straight upstairs. Dom was the only civilian on the planet—“civilian” was Jonathan’s slightly derogatory term for anyone not a part of the community that included employees and Special Forces operators—who had ready access to the inner sanctum of The Cave, passing unmolested through multiple layers of security.

  The inside of The Cave was larger than it appeared from the outside. Occupying the third floor of the firehouse that served as Jonathan’s home, the main part of the office space housed twenty or so investigators and support staff. The Cave, on the other hand, housed only three offices and the War Room, though it occupied one-fourth of the total floor space. Opulence was the order of the day in The Cave—the best of everything, from technology to furniture.

  Whereas Jonathan’s taste ran to clubby leather and dark woods, Venice’s was chrome and glass all the way. Dom crossed the thickly carpeted space quickly and made a beeline for the high-tech teak conference area that someone had dubbed the War Room.

  Venice and Gail were already at work. Each had taken a position at the massive conference table and was clacking away at their own built-in computer terminal. The enormous screen at the far end showed a map of Mexico. He presumed—correctly, it turned out—that the blinking dot in the far southwest corner of the country marked Jonathan’s location.

  “What do we know?” he asked.

  “Clearly, Digger’s been sold out,” Gail said. “What I can’t figure out is, who would have that level of knowledge? They had names, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Could it be the Mexican government?” Venice asked. “If they decided to get into the kidnapping business, they would certainly have the planning resources to pull it off. Plus, if they were using their own people, they would know the names of kidnappers. Getting the hostages’ names after they’d been taken would be a cakewalk.”

  “But they wouldn’t have Leon Harris’s name,” Gail said. “Or Richard Lerner’s. I can’t imagine why the Mexican government would want to engineer a kidnapping, but even if they did, they couldn’t engineer the rescue. How did they get the guys’ aliases?”

  “You’re thinking that Dig was the target from the beginning?” Venice asked.

  Gail nodded. “I don’t see another way. I think whoever is responsible knew about some guy named Leon Harris, or maybe they knew about someone named Scorpion. With all the cutouts and email diversions it takes to contact our covert side, there’s no chance that anyone could link it to Security Solutions. Without Dig’s real name, and without a company name, they’d have no dots to connect. Maybe this whole rescue op was just bait to snare the guys”

  Dom’s next thought arrived whole and fully formed. And it scared the hell out of him. Gail’s comment about bait triggered it. “It’s the church,” he said. “The Crystal Castle or whatever. That has to be the source of the betrayal. They found Jon as the rescuer, and then passed the information along to someone in Mexico. That has to be it.”

  Gail shook her head. “There has to be an intermediate step,” she said. “There aren’t many who do what we do, but there are a few. What’s the guarantee that the church would choose Security Solutions for the rescue? Surely, it’s not just a random plot to entrap random rescuers.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” Dom said. “I’ve been chewing around the edges for a while now, ever since I heard about the three-million-dollar ransom. Where does a church get that kind of money? I’m sure they have good reserves, thanks to their television stuff, but three million? That’s a lot of money, even before Digger’s fee. What does that run, anyway?”

  “Six figures,” Venice said. Money matters always embarrassed Jonathan, and as a result, his fee was a more closely guarded number than nuclear launch codes.

  “Okay, six figures,” Dom said. “Another big sum. Thanks to Dig, St. Kate’s is one of the best-endowed churches in the diocese, but a number like that would bring us to our knees.”

  “Maybe the Crystal Palace is really rich,” Gail suggested. She looked to Venice, who started tickling the keys right away. “Maybe three million is just a drop in the bucket to them. The Crystal Palace is a moneymaking machine. Have you ever watched one of their broadcasts?”

  Dom smirked. “Um, no.”

  “Well, I have. Every other verse of the Bible is followed by a plea for money. There’s the Building Fund, the Outreach Fund, the Prayer Circles, and on and on and on.”

  “I wonder what happened to their fund-raising after the good Pastor Mitchell was caught in her dalliances,” Venice thought aloud. She turned to her keyboard and started typing.

  Over the course of the past year, Jackie Mitchell had spent more time as a punch line than a preacher, following some Internet videos that showed her providing extra-special counseling to a young male member of her flock in one of Scottsdale’s finest hotels. Over and over again. The righteously aggrieved Mr. Mitchell—the pastor’s husband—had not only left her, but had recently started taking to the airwaves to pronounce her a fraud.

  Pastor Mitchell had many defenders among her congregation, of whom more than a few had written op-ed pieces for the newspapers. But as far too many celebrities had learned the hard way, once you earn a slot in Jay Leno’s nightly monologue, your future is more or less sealed in poo.

  “Uh-oh,” Venice said. “Oh, my God, this can’t be true.”

  “What?” Dom and Gail asked together.

  Venice scowled and shook her head. “Is this even possible?” She looked at the others and typed some more. “Check the screen,” she said. As she spoke, she pushed a button on the master control panel that she alone knew how to operate, and the lights dimmed. Not all the way, but enough to make the screen more prominent. Given the technology of the room, Dom imagined that she could make it snow in here, too, if she’d wanted. Or maybe not.

  She tapped a few more keys. The map of Mexico dissolved to a screen full of numbers arranged in neat columns. “These are the bank records for the Crystal Palace.”

  Dom’s jaw dropped. “How did you get those?”

  Venice raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “Me either,” Gail said. “When
the feds finally figure out what we do, I want to have some shred of plausible deniability.”

  “According to Google, the Crystal Palace scandal first broke about fourteen months ago, just after they’d committed to a multimillion-dollar building project, and contracted for three more years of television time.” She looked to the others. “I guess you know that unlike commercial television, where the networks pay for the programs they broadcast, these religious shows have to pay for their own time.”

  Dom hadn’t realized it because he’d never given it any thought. Now that he did, it made sense.

  As Venice went on, she used the cursor as a pointer. “If I’m doing the math right, for the two years previous to that time, they averaged an income of four-point-three million dollars a month, with expenses of just about four-point-three million a month. They were just breaking even. I haven’t had time to find out where all that money went, but it’s probably not important for our purposes. At least not yet. Now look at this.”

  She clicked, and the records scrolled at a dizzying speed, stopping on another set of numbers. “Here are the records for the first month after the scandal broke. Expenses stayed at four-point-three million, but revenues dropped to three-point-six million.” She clicked again. “The month after that, they brought in two point seven. Fast forward a few more months, and they’re getting only eight hundred twenty thousand dollars. The month after that, two-eighty. They’re hemorrhaging cash.”

  Gail made a face. “I don’t understand—”

  “I’m not done yet,” Venice said. She scrolled month by month. “Look here. That trend continued month after month, not a single deposit over three hundred thousand. Until three months ago, when they started making four million again, and then five. Last month it was five-point-nine million dollars.”

  “Now, give me a minute or two,” she said before disappearing into thought while her fingers pounded the keyboard.

  Confident that the results would be impressive, Dom waited quietly with Gail while Venice worked her magic.