Damage Control

by John Gilstrap

  “We don’t have time for this,” the Big Buy said.

  “Yeah, we do,” Scorpion replied.

  Tristan felt a hand on his shoulder. It didn’t comfort him so much as steady him.

  He knew he should be repulsed. These men were trained killers—so used to it that they treated cold-blooded murder as more of a business transaction than the unspeakable act of violence that it was.

  “Listen to me, Tristan,” Scorpion said, his voice so close to his ear that it made him jump. “Maria wanted you to live, and in the end she was fine with dying to make sure that happened. When I went back to speak with her, she told me that you reminded her of her brother Jaime. He was about your age when Felix Hernandez’s goons murdered him.”

  Tristan took a huge breath and wiped tears and snot from his face with a swipe of his arm. He knew that Scorpion was trying to comfort him, but how did—

  “It was Maria’s idea to booby-trap her own body,” Scorpion went on. “She knew the soldiers would stop to check on her. That was the explosion you heard, son. That was Maria saving your life. Saving all our lives.”

  Tristan’s world felt as if it had too many moving parts. They were out of synch, and nothing made sense. “What makes me worth all this?” he asked. There, he’d spoken aloud his worst fears.

  Scorpion gave a kind smile. “Fifty or sixty years from now, when you look back over a whole life, I hope you’ll be able to answer that question.”

  A few feet away, Big Guy shuffled impatiently, and Tristan got it. He’d have countless years ahead to throw pity parties for himself.

  But here, they still had a job to do.

  A miserable, awful freaking job, yes, but a job.

  They had to go home.

  When Jonathan saw the lights approaching from the other end of the tunnel, he knew their ordeal was over, but he wasn’t at all sure what the initial meeting was going to be like. At the first sign of the glow, Jonathan brought his team to a stop.

  “My name is Leon Harris!” he yelled. “I am with Richard Lerner and Tristan Wagner! We are heavily armed, but pose no threat to you!”

  A voice called from the light, “Put your weapons down and advance!”

  Jonathan yelled, “No! It’s been a long day, and we will not disarm until we know that we are safe.”

  “Ballsy move, there, Boss,” Boxers grumbled.

  A long silence followed. Two minutes or more.

  “What are they doing?” Tristan whispered.

  “I have no idea,” Jonathan confessed.

  “Well, they’re not shooting at us,” Boxers quipped. “That’s kind of a nice change.”

  Finally, the lights up ahead moved, and a dark form emerged from the glare, walking closer. There was a purposefulness to the stride.

  “Hands off your weapons,” Jonathan whispered.

  “I don’t have a weapon anymore,” Tristan said.

  “He wasn’t talking to you,” Boxers whispered back.

  At the precise instant when Jonathan realized that the silhouette belonged to a woman, that woman’s voice said, “Welcome home.”

  She walked directly to Jonathan and extended her hand. “Veronica Costanza,” she said. “I’m with the FBI.” She scanned the other faces. “You’re missing one.” Behind her, others approached.

  “Maria didn’t make it,” Jonathan said.

  “But she saved our lives,” Tristan said.

  Veronica looked for confirmation.

  “Saved us all,” Jonathan said. “A courageous woman.” The disappointment on the FBI agent’s face was obvious—the United States’ case against Felix Hernandez and Trevor Munro had just fallen apart—but there was sadness there, too.

  Agent Costanza turned to Tristan. “You, young man, need to follow these agents out of this god-awful tunnel. We’ll get some food in you and get you back to your family.”

  “I’m not under arrest?” Tristan asked. He looked shocked.

  “We’re in the process of getting that all worked out,” she said. “Meanwhile, don’t worry about it. I want you to go with Agent Purgo here.”

  A recent Academy graduate stepped into the light and offered his hand to Tristan. “You can call me Kent,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Tristan shook his hand and stepped forward. He looked to Jonathan and Boxers. “I’ll see you guys in a few minutes, right?”

  “Not if I see you first,” Boxers said—but with a smile.

  “We’ll see you in a few, Tristan,” Jonathan said, knowing full well that he’d just lied.

  Agent Costanza crossed her arms. “Busy day?”

  “A little bit,” Jonathan said.

  “You know, the Mexican government is calling you two terrorists.”

  Boxers said, “I can see how they might get that impression.”

  “The television pictures are pretty impressive,” Costanza said. She clearly was marking time for something. A few seconds later, she cocked her head in the way characteristic of an incoming message in an earpiece.

  Sure enough, she brought her hand to her lips and said into a wrist mike, “All right, I copy. Thank you.” To Jonathan and Boxers: “My orders on you two could not be clearer. The essentials are this: You were never here. There’s a guy out there waiting for you with a car. I don’t want to know where you’re going. Have a nice night.” She checked her watch. “Oh, my bad. It’s five a.m. Have a nice day.”

  “What are you going to do with the tunnel?” Jonathan asked.

  “Use it as a bargaining chip, I hope. I figure we can make some people really uncomfortable on both sides of the Rio Grande with what we find. Now get out of here.”

  It turned out to be a longer walk than Jonathan had anticipated—every bit of a hundred yards, he guessed. He walked with Boxers in silence, doing his best to ignore the harm he had brought to so many families.

  The tunnel ended at another metal ladder. This one emerged into the basement of a home whose owner no doubt had serious explaining to do. Jonathan spoke to no one as he passed a dozen or more law enforcement officers who’d obviously been instructed not to notice them.

  The basement stairs led to a modest living room, and from there, the front door brought him back to the thick summer air.

  “She said something about a car and driver,” Jonathan thought aloud.

  “I’m voting that it’s him,” Boxers said, pointing to a late-model Expedition, where Dom D’Angelo sat on the flatbed under the open tailgate, waiting.

  “Well, well, well,” Jonathan said as he strode across the grass to greet his friend. “What on earth—” The dour look on Dom’s face froze Jonathan’s words in his throat. “What?” That’s when he noticed that his old friend was wearing his priest uniform, clerical collar and all.

  Dom stood. “It’s Gail,” he said.

  Jonathan didn’t ask how Dom had arranged for the private Lear from El Paso directly into Scottsdale Airport. He was sure it had involved Venice and her access to his credit card, and all of that was fine. While he worked the phone, trying in vain to get meaningful information from a medical staff who feared HIPAA lawsuits far more than they cared about close friends and relatives, Dom and Boxers left him alone in the aft end of the plane while they clustered in conversation up front near the door to the flight deck.

  Big Guy looked especially uncomfortable in the luxurious leather of the passenger compartment. He’d told Jonathan before that he hated the view from the cabin. “Who the hell cares where you are or where you’ve been?” he’d said. “I want to look at where we’re going.”

  The flight was blessedly short, and since Scottsdale Airport specialized in executive charters, and therefore understood the peccadilloes of wealthy, busy people, the time from wheels down to having his butt in the seat of a moving car clocked in at something less than ten minutes. And nobody gave a crap about his filthy appearance or camouflaged clothing.

  That would come when his driver whipped into the Osborn Medical Center’s driveway and d
isgorged his passengers into the emergency department via the space normally used to park ambulances. He’d left his body armor and weapons in the Lear—all but his .45, which was legal to carry in Arizona, but he had nonetheless concealed in a high hip holster under the flap of his shirttail.

  He strode to the triage station, and as he approached, he drew the attention of an armed security guard, who stepped forward to intercept. As he closed the distance, though, and got a really good look at Boxers, he seemed to lose some of his resolve.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” he said.

  Dom took the lead. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Can you direct us to the trauma intensive care unit?”

  The guard’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Good afternoon, Father,” he said. Something about that collar brought out politeness in people.

  It was all Jonathan could do to endure the navigation instructions. He wanted to be with Gail, to see for himself what those animals had done to her. Having just navigated the length of a country and survived a running firefight, he was more than capable of finding a hospital room on his own.

  A beefy hand landed on his shoulder. Boxers’.

  “Hey, Boss,” Big Guy said, barely above a whisper. “You need to take a breath and settle down. We got no enemies in here. Everybody’s on Gunslinger’s side.”

  Point taken. The main problem with adrenaline was that once it got into your system, it took its own sweet time going away. It was time to shift from war mode to peace mode, and he didn’t have the luxury of his typical transition time.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Dom led the way from here. The walk turned out to be far shorter in execution than it was in description. Once they got to the door of the unit, Dom stepped aside to allow Jonathan to press the buzzer.

  “I’m here to see Gail Bonneville,” he said to the harsh voice of the woman who answered his push of the button over the intercom.

  “She’s already got one visitor,” she said. “Only one more is allowed.”

  “I’m bringing my priest with me,” Jonathan said. There wasn’t even a hint of request in his tone.

  The nurse didn’t reply, but the lock buzzed and Jonathan pulled the door open.

  He looked to Boxers. “Sorry, Big Guy.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Boxers said. “I’ve seen plenty enough hospitals. I’m gonna go find the cafeteria and clean them out of food.” He started down the hall without waiting for a reply.

  Jonathan paused at the door and looked at Dom. “How bad?” he asked. Again.

  “She’s been shot, Jon.” Dom’s tone had a what-do-you-want-from-me edge. “Three, four hours ago, last time I saw her, she was still in the ER and they said they thought she’d live, but there were no guarantees.”

  It was pretty much what he’d reported the previous two times Jonathan had asked the question. Word for word, in fact.

  Jonathan realized that he was stalling. He hated hospitals. He’d logged too many hours in them getting himself repaired, and he’d lost way too many friends in them.

  The locked double doors led to an anteroom, and from there to another set of double doors that remained closed but unlocked.

  Stepping through those doors into the trauma ICU itself was like stepping back in time—into a past where you could bring modern technology along for the ride. In recent years, hospitals had undergone face-lifts that made them look like happy, inviting places, their hallways resembling high-end hotels.

  In here, though, where life was as fragile as a single missed symptom, nothing counted but efficiency. Glass-walled rooms guaranteed a lack of privacy as mostly naked patients lay plugged in to more technology than a space shuttle. Swollen yellow bags of urine hung from every side rail, the specific color and quantity of their contents serving as important indicators of their owners’ health.

  Gail lay in the room that was directly diagonal from the entryway, requiring Jonathan and Dom to pass assorted victims of varied traumas. Most appeared to be unconscious, and of the two whose eyes were open, both showed no interest in the television that played in the bracket near the ceiling. Instead, they stared out through their drug-induced hazes into whatever images their brains had manufactured for them. At least they didn’t appear to be in any pain.

  Jonathan saw Irene Rivers in the chair at Gail’s bedside before he actually saw Gail beyond the enormous wrapping that encased her head.

  “You didn’t tell me that Wolverine was here,” Jonathan said sotto voce to Dom.

  “She didn’t tell me she was coming.”

  I wonder what that means, Jonathan didn’t say.

  Irene seemed to sense their approach and turned in her seat to see them. She stood and extended her hand. When Jonathan took it, she covered it with her left. “I thought she deserved a little company,” she said, answering the look she saw in Jonathan’s face. “She’s tough. I wish we still had her on the payroll.”

  Jonathan smiled at the compliment, then eased past her for a closer look at Gail. Her face was swollen and bore purple highlights, but he’d seen worse. He knew to look past the drain lines and the intravenous tubes, and was heartened to see that the dressings and bandages were pure white. That meant she wasn’t bleeding and she wasn’t leaking cerebrospinal fluid, both good signs.

  “Shot in the arm, the chest, and the head,” Irene said over his shoulder. “And she was still able to take out four bad guys.”

  Jonathan turned to face Irene. Again, his face spoke for him.

  “We don’t know the details,” she said. “I’m not sure we ever will. A worker at the Crystal Palace heard noises in the stairwell and stepped out to investigate. He found a blood trail and followed it to Gail. The worker called nine-one-one from his cell phone, and thank God he did, because if he’d called on a landline, it would have gone to the same security desk that turned away the police that responded to my first call. Scottsdale Police and Fire responded and because I had been knocking around for information, they dialed me in, too. Our people followed the same blood trail back up the stairs, and we found the guys she’d killed.”

  Irene paused to make sure she had Jonathan’s full attention. “Wait till you get this,” she said. “Your girlfriend made it down eleven floors with those injuries.” She looked back to Gail. “One tough, tough young lady.”

  Jonathan had known that since the day they’d first met. But he’d known a lot of very, very tough people who’d lost their battles against bullets.

  He moved back to her bedside and threaded his way through the IV tubes to grasp her hand. As he entwined his fingers with hers, he noticed traces of blood in the crease where her manicured nails met the nail beds.

  Gail stirred at his touch, and he smiled, gently raising her hand above the bed rail and bending to kiss it.

  “It’s Digger,” he said. “I’m here.”

  Her uncovered eye opened for just a second or two, and then closed. He sensed that the lid was just too heavy.

  “Harriett,” she said.

  Jonathan scowled as he scoured his memory.

  “I don’t understand,” Jonathan said.

  This time, Gail didn’t waste energy on her eyelid. “How is Harriett?”

  Dom whispered, “Gail was trying to save her. She didn’t make it.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Jonathan said, stroking her hand with his thumb as his fingers gripped a little tighter. “You worry about getting well.”

  “She was my responsibility,” Gail said. “Did she get out?” As she spoke, the rhythm of the blips on her heart monitor increased.

  There were some things about which Jonathan could not allow himself to lie. “No,” he said. “She was killed.”

  Gail’s chest heaved as she took a huge breath. “My fault,” she said.

  Jonathan wanted to correct her, but didn’t. If Gail had not gone to the Crystal Palace, lots of people would still be alive. The fact that most of them deserved killing didn’t remove the burden of the one who didn’t.
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  “Digger?” Gail said.

  “Right here.”

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He leaned across the bed rail and did just that, pressing his lips gently against hers. She did her best to kiss him back.

  As he pulled away, he stroked her hair. “I love you,” he said. It was the first time he’d ever spoken the words aloud to Gail.

  Gail winced. “I wanted to quit,” she said. “You talked me out of it.”

  “That’s because you’re too good at what you do,” he said. They’d had this conversation a thousand times.

  “This time for real,” Gail said. “I quit. I can’t hurt anyone else.”

  “This time, I won’t say a word. You do what you need to do.”

  Gail nodded slightly, but even that tiny movement seemed to hurt. “More,” she said. “I need you to quit, too.”

  Jonathan didn’t care all that much about the details of what became of the Crystal Palace Cathedral, but from what he’d gathered from the news, Jackie Mitchell and her executive committee would spend the rest of their lives in prison if they didn’t end up on the wrong end of a needle in the death chamber.

  The government’s case against Felix Hernandez— and, by extension, their case against Trevor Munro—died with Maria Elizondo.

  And without a case against him, Munro still remained poised to advance within the Agency. It was the nature of their business in Langley to cross ethical lines. Convincing people to betray their own country to provide intelligence data was a dirty business—certainly no dirtier than abetting a drug trade in return for special favors. Besides, Uncle Sam had the ATF and the DEA to take care of drugs and weapons. And occasionally the Army.

  The levels of cynicism and general dysfunction within the U.S. government had sickened Jonathan for years. Over time, he’d learned to look away, wrapping himself in his own cloak of cynicism. It’s the way of politicians and bureaucrats to feed on the blood of others in order to advance their careers. He’d learned to live with it.

  Until now. Until Trevor Munro. He was a peculiar brand of mass murderer who killed randomly and efficiently without ever pulling a trigger or throwing a bomb. He did it with full deniability.