(2012) Political Suicide

by Michael Palmer

  “I thought I was doing pretty well.”

  “What kind of doctor are you?”

  Easy …

  “Trade. I’ll tell you if you tell me what I was doing wrong.”

  “You changed lanes without signaling. We frown on that in West Virginia.”

  Damn. So much for wikiHow tips.

  “I’m an emergency doc in D.C. Eisenhower Memorial. I promise you, I always signal when I change surgical instruments.”

  “That’s funny. Lucky for you I like funny. Well, Doc, this is your lucky day twice over. Believe it or not, but you might have saved my mother’s life last year. Somebody in your ER did. She had a coronary while she was on a Silver Belles bus tour of D.C. Needed to get a shock in the ER for fibrillation. I don’t remember if I ever knew the name of the doctor who gave it to her, but the people at the hospital told me it saved her life.”

  “Were they able to get a stent in her?”

  “Two.”

  “And she’s doing okay now?”

  “She’s doing terrific. That was very nice of you to ask.”

  “I would have asked even if you weren’t about to add a bunch of points to my insurance record.”

  “Well, because you’re a nice guy and you asked about my mom, and you might have saved her life, I’m just giving you a warning. Also because you’re not one of those pompous doctors with MD plates.”

  “Thank you, Officer.”

  “Lemon. Judy Lemon. Here’s my card, in case you find yourself in these parts again.” She fished one out from what seemed like a stack of fifty. “Also, you might want to slow down. You were five mph away from getting nailed for that.”

  “You got it, Officer Judy. Slow.”

  Now, just leave me alone.

  “No sense in speeding, either. There’s a mile backup ahead. Construction.”

  Lou felt his pulse jump. A mile backup. His brain began working through the possibilities. At that moment, he glanced across the road in time to see the Mantis Range Rover approaching from the other direction, headed back toward Hayes. No silver BMW in sight.

  Had the king separated from his Palace Guards?

  Cautious not to go too far overboard, Lou put himself into modest flirt mode. “Listen, Officer Judy, it’s not the best of circumstances, but I really do appreciate just getting a warning.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You were just doing your job.”

  “Sounds like there’s something more you’d like to say.” Her smile oozed pheromones.

  “With that construction you told me about, getting stopped has made me hopelessly late for an appointment.”

  “So?”

  “How about another trade: If you could guide me past the holdup, I promise you dinner at the restaurant of your choice. Believe me, I’m good for it and I’m good, period—especially if I get the position I’m interviewing for.”

  The trooper gave Lou’s offer some thought—perhaps a nanosecond’s worth. “You know what they say about scorning a woman with a gun,” she said, playfully patting her hip.

  “I don’t know, actually, but I think I can guess. No scorning. Promise.”

  “I like steak.”

  “You got it. The biggest, juiciest one in the county.”

  “Deal. Follow me, cowboy.”

  Lou thought he saw a skip in her step as Officer Lemon hurried back to her cruiser. He wondered how many business cards would be left in her stack by the end of her shift. No matter. It seemed fairly certain that this scenario was not among any of the twenty-five million hits in Google.

  Judy Lemon’s blue strobes flashed on, and in ten minutes they were an odd, two-car caravan, cruising in the breakdown lane past a long, frustrated line of slowly moving motorists. After half a mile, Lou spotted the silver Bimmer, pulled on his faded Redskins cap, and slouched down in his seat until he was peering between the bottom of his steering wheel and the top of the dash. Clearly, Brody felt the backup tail from the Palace Guards was no longer necessary.

  A quarter of a mile past the construction, Lou slowed, pulled off the road, and gave Officer Judy Lemon a thumbs-up and a good-bye wave. Fifteen minutes later, Wyatt Brody sped past. His jaw set with anger, he was paying no attention to anything other than the road ahead.

  Traditionally, Lou’s Camry could handle seventy before it began to shimmy. Brody was hitting seventy-five. Lou did what he could to maintain both distance and contact, but it was a struggle. He thought about the irony of having Brody get pulled over by Judy Lemon, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, he caught a glimpse of brake lights and a flash of sun on silver as the Mantis commander turned hard left, following a sign toward Billingham.

  With one car between them, they headed west, parallel to a swell of foothills. Eventually, the wooded landscape gave way to a more industrialized section of Billingham. Auto repair shops lined both sides of the road, tucked between a few fast-food joints and a number of warehouses, many of them corrugated steel. Brody’s Bimmer signaled to make a left turn, and Lou slowed to watch the car glide into the parking lot of a large self-storage facility.

  Lou got a fix on the unit Brody was interested in, and kept his distance. The outdoor facility was divided into rows, with garage-sized storage structures on either side. Lou guessed there were fifty or so on the premises, each of them featuring a green roll-up door.

  He cruised down the access road parallel to the one Brody had taken, then shifted to Park and moved ahead on foot. He was in adrenaline-fueled, high-level, ER mode now, and he loved the tension. Ambulances were on their way in with multiple victims from a major crunch. Keyed up and ready for anything, he worked his way along the side of the last storage unit in the row, inching closer and closer to the corner.

  The silver BMW, without a driver, stood idling beside an open storage door. Moments later, a white, windowless panel truck—maybe seventeen feet, no markings—backed out. Brody, looking calmer and more energized than he had when leaving the construction site, pulled the truck over and replaced it in the garage with his Bimmer. Then he used a pull-cord to lower the door and replaced the heavy padlock.

  Lou raced back to the Toyota and waited until he heard Brody accelerate. Then he shifted into Drive, inched into the open, waited for a battered pickup to insert itself between him and the van, and followed.

  CHAPTER 33

  The ride south would have been quite beautiful had Lou taken more than a few seconds at a time to appreciate it. The Monongahela Mountains seemed to be constantly shifting against the pale early-afternoon sun. The road was winding, and he was forced to stay closer to Brody’s van than he would have liked. On one narrow stretch, the side of Lou’s Camry barely avoided a huge, jagged rock. Lou had been following the man for almost two hours. It seemed more as if the Mantis commander was on a schedule than in any particular rush.

  A gas station would have been an oasis here. There were no cars to provide any sort of camouflage, and Lou had to back way off his tail. His initial adrenaline rush was gone, replaced by the tension of losing the white van at any turn or, even worse, of being spotted.

  He was considering simply taking his chances by speeding up, when he eased around a sharp bend and spotted Brody’s truck several hundred yards ahead. The brake lights were on, and seconds later, the van turned right. As soon as it was out of sight, Lou accelerated. The road, if it could be called such, was an unmarked path cut into the woods—twin ruts that ran upward along the side of a foothill. The frozen snow, an inch or so of it, was much more of a problem for the Camry than it probably was for the truck.

  Violent jolts from rocks and holes snapped Lou’s teeth together more than once. The Toyota skidded sideways in places and completely lost traction in others. A quarter of a mile … half. Lou was forced to slow. Then, just as he seemed to have regained control, he veered off the rutted road entirely and slid down an embankment to a parallel pathway on the right—this one actually more navigable than the one Brody was on. It occurred to him that the b
est he might be able to hope for was leaving the Camry and walking out of the forest. Then he got a break.

  Looking upward and to his left, he saw the van brake and then stop in something of a clearing, perhaps a hundred yards ahead.

  Cautiously, Lou backed up until the road he was on flattened and widened for a brief stretch. Backing all the way out to the highway or even turning around were now possibilities. In fact, there was enough room behind a huge boulder to pull his car over to the side of the road and conceal it. He opened his door, cringing at the creaks, and eased out into the chilly mountain air. From above and to the left, he could hear that Brody was keeping the truck idling. It appeared he was still behind the wheel.

  Lou decided to chance the slope to his right. If he could get high enough, he would be looking down on the van. Pulling himself up by icy tree trunks and rocks, it did not take long for his hands to go numb. Twice he slipped, sliding several feet down on his stomach. It seemed certain that only the reverberating engine noise kept him from being discovered. Twenty-five feet above the van, Lou was able to crawl out onto a rocky bluff that featured enough brush for some concealment. He breathed into the sleeve of his parka and waited.

  Five minutes and he heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle. He briefly lamented not having brought binoculars, but gave himself a pass. A second van, identical to Brody’s, jounced down the hill and skidded to a stop almost nose to nose with the van. From his vantage spot, Lou could just make out his Toyota on the road below and fifty yards behind the two trucks.

  The doors to the new arrival flew open, and two men stepped out. Moments later, the back of the truck creaked open and three more men emerged, dressed for the cold. All were olive-skinned, with either shaved heads or thick waves of ebony hair. Latinos. Maybe Mexicans. Brody climbed out of his truck. One of the men saluted him.

  “Manolo,” Brody said, his voice carrying clearly to Lou.

  The other four arrivals circled to the back of Brody’s panel truck and pulled the doors open. Lou noted the lack of small talk. The moves were practiced, choreographed, business. Made perfect sense, he thought. If Brody made this drive nearly every Wednesday, they’d done this dance many times before. Two of the men jumped up into the back of the truck, while two others positioned themselves to receive the cargo within. Brody stood silently beside the man named Manolo: heavyset with a carefully waxed handlebar mustache and a thick neck featuring 360 degrees of tattoos. Lou sensed what the crew were offloading even before he saw one of the wooden cases pried open.

  Guns. Sophisticated military weapons, and lots of them.

  Brody stood a few paces away as Manolo inspected the cargo.

  “These are good,” he said to Brody, hefting one of the rifles. “Very good. Our people in Juárez will be pleased, amigo. All M4s?”

  “Easier to get now that we’ve scaled back in Afghanistan.”

  Brody spoke mostly English, but used fluent Spanish when he had a mind to. Lou was never a Spanish scholar in school, but he could still handle the simple stuff. He held his breath and stayed low.

  Hello, Reddy Creek, he was thinking, mentally dropping one piece of the Brody puzzle into place. Brody ponies up sophisticated weapons to a Juárez cartel in exchange for … for what?

  Soon after the weapons inspection concluded, Lou got an answer—at least a partial one. Manolo signaled to one of his men, who opened the rear of the second panel truck and lugged out a huge cooler. Then another.

  As Lou watched from above, transfixed, Manolo set one of the coolers on the ground at Brody’s feet and opened the top. White vapor from dry ice billowed upward.

  “This is the best batch we’ve cooked yet,” Manolo said, extracting one of what looked like a number of large plastic freezer bags. “Seven hundred capsules per bag, Señor Colonel. Counted and recounted. Filling the capsules and counting them took my men many hours.”

  “I’ve told your boss over and over again,” Brody growled in English, “don’t screw with the formula.”

  Formula … Lou tensed.

  “We make it better,” Manolo said.

  He whistled loudly using two fingers, and a man, thin as the leafless branches overhead approached.

  “Sí?”

  This time, Lou could only ferret out a few words—one of them, Pedro.

  Brody brought a thermos from the passenger seat of his van and poured a clear red liquid into a small plastic cup.

  “Why don’t you want to tell me what that drink is?” Manolo asked.

  “Do you tell your wife the name of your mistress?” Brody responded. “It is enough for you to know that what you make for me does not work properly without what my other source makes for me. It is better that way, sí?”

  “I suppose so. My wife and my mistress. I like that one, Señor Colonel.”

  The man, Pedro, took the cup of crimson liquid, studied it for a few seconds, and then swallowed it in one gulp along with the capsule.

  Manolo checked his watch. “Give five minutes to have an effect,” he said to Brody.

  “How long has this man been taking the formula?” Brody asked.

  “A month, more or less. Every day.”

  “Give it fifteen minutes at least. I can wait.”

  “I told you, this stuff is good.”

  Manolo went to the front seat of his truck and brought back what Lou thought might be a portable electrocardiogram machine. Pedro unzipped his jacket and unbuttoned his work shirt, exposing his bare chest to the elements without the slightest trace of discomfort. As Manolo pasted on several electrodes to Pedro’s chest, the rest of the crew formed a tight perimeter to watch. Pedro’s stoniness did not come as a surprise to Lou. Even without a drug in his system, the man seemed the sort who could wolf down a breakfast of nails and glass without so much as an orange juice chaser.

  Manolo gave Brody the cardiogram machine to hold. “You’ll see how good, amigo,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  Pressed onto the leaf- and snow-coated ground, Lou watched from above as Manolo pulled a huge revolver from the waistband of his pants. He chambered a round and made it a point of showing Brody the weapon now was loaded with a single bullet. Then he flicked his wrist and locked the cylinder back in place. Finally, dramatically, he spun the cylinder fast enough to make the sound of a whirling roulette wheel.

  Then he handed the gun to Pedro.

  Lou did not need his Spanish to interpret Manolo’s instructions.

  The younger man stared off into the distance as calm as if he were bird-watching, and slid the muzzle of the weapon deeply into his mouth. The crew around him were shouting words of encouragement. Brody seemed to care only about the readout on the cardiograph. Lou sucked in a breath and held it, stunned by the barbarity of what he was witnessing. Every fiber demanded he try to stop the madness. But he knew better. Pedro shouted something from his throat and, with no more preparation than that, pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Empty chamber.

  Lou silently released his breath.

  Smiling, Pedro handed the gun to Brody who, making no eye contact, fired at a tree twice before a shot rang out and splintered wood. Then he handed Pedro an envelope, passed the revolver to Manolo, and continued studying the machine.

  “Unbelievable,” he said. “This reaction time is spectacular. What did you guys do?”

  “Like I said, Señor Colonel, we made it better,” Manolo said. “Better, purer ingredients.”

  “The meth?”

  “New cook. New recipe.”

  Brody simply nodded.

  The transfer continued in silence. The man, Pedro, who had cheated death, went right back to offloading weapons. Brody returned the plastic bag to the dry ice and checked to be certain the coolers were secure in his van. Then, without another word, he climbed into the cab of his truck, reversed direction, and headed down toward the highway. Lou had no chance to follow, but he had learned most of what he needed to—except who these men were, and where they were head
quartered. Manolo, the mustachioed leader of the group, turned his truck around without difficulty and headed back up the mountain.

  Lou remained crouched on the bluff until the engine noise had been replaced by a heavy silence. Then he clambered down to where the exchange had taken place and cautiously began following the van tracks uphill. The sun was beginning its descent, but the midafternoon chill was tolerable.

  Guns for drugs.

  Mantis and some sort of Mexican cartel.

  Was this the knowledge that had gotten Elias Colston killed? Was there more?

  Lou had his suspicions about how Brody was using his portion of the deal, but at this point nothing was certain, including the role of the secretary of defense.

  About thirty minutes up the hill, the woods thickened and the snowpack became deeper. Achy and chilled, Lou trudged ahead, sticking to the edge of the road and keeping a sharp eye out for guards. A clearing up ahead drew his attention. Sunlight, peeking out from behind a cloud, cast a spotlight on a dilapidated-looking structure.

  The ramshackle building, a drug cartel version of a still, Lou guessed, was made of corrugated steel and framed with rough wooden beams. It seemed to have more chimneys and smokestacks than it did windows. White smoke, thick and heavy with the pungent odor of ammonia, wafted out from the stacks and stung Lou’s lungs. The white truck was parked to the right of the building, alongside a gray SUV—possibly a Honda. Pedro and three others from the weapons exchange were taking guns from the back of the truck and carrying them around to the other side of the still. Lou watched from behind the trunk of a large pine.

  Drugs for guns.

  Some sort of super amphetamine for M4s.

  A classic barter, no more elegant than a quart of moonshine for a Colt .45 in the Old West. Manolo emerged from inside the still and peeled off a paper surgical mask. This time, however, he was not alone. Leashed to his wrist was the largest German shepherd Lou had ever seen. The dog’s keen ears were bent back. Its eyes seemed to be focused on the air itself. Lou watched the animal’s nostrils flare and its head dart about.