False Flag

by John Altman

  She looked at him hopefully. Humiliation tried to curdle into anger. He forbade it. “Stace,” he said, and then had nothing to follow it with.

  “You said it yourself: things haven’t been good for a long time.” She put her hand on his and patted softly—a sister’s gesture, not a wife’s. “It won’t be easy.” Her eyes were dry, her tone flat. She seemed like an actress, and not a very good one, reciting scripted lines. “I’ll miss you. I’ll miss us. But it’s time, Michael. It’s past due. It’s for the best. You know?”

  “Stace.” And again he had nothing to follow it with.

  She made a sad face. Leaned forward and gave him a brisk, efficient hug. She stood, hesitated, seemed about to add something else … and then went to pack a bag.

  * * *

  They went together to tell their son.

  Silas piled into the Hyundai, spilling the contents of a goody bag across the backseat as he worked the seat belt. “Benjamin hurt himself,” he said breathlessly. “He fell down and he wouldn’t stop crying. Oscar’s mommy got scared. But actually Benjamin was okay, he started bouncing again before we had pizza.”

  Michael, behind the wheel, looked at Stacy, who looked away.

  “After pizza we had cake and Rachel dropped hers but then she ate it off the floor. Oscar’s mommy told her not to but she did anyway. And Julia was being mean to me; she didn’t want to bounce next to me. I told Oscar’s mommy but she said it was up to Julia who she bounced with, so I don’t like Julia anymore.”

  Michael waited for a break in traffic, saw his chance, and pulled away from the curb too abruptly, making Stacy’s head rock.

  “So I said okay, then I don’t want to play with her anyway.” Silas was gathering up scattered candy, colored pencils, and plastic toys from the upholstery as he spoke. “When it’s my birthday, I don’t want to invite Julia and I don’t want to invite Brian, but I want to invite Rachel and Victor and Oscar and Isabel. I want to have pizza and cake and then give away goody bags with Star Wars Pez …” He noticed the direction they were heading. “Are we going to Grandma’s?”

  “Honey,” Stacy said. “I’m going to Grandma’s. Daddy’s going back home. It’s up to you where you want to go.”

  “Grandma’s,” the boy said promptly.

  “Buddy,” Michael said. Hands steady on the wheel. “Mommy’s going to stay with Grandma for a while. But if you decide you want to come back home, tomorrow or whenever, you just let me know and I’ll come get you.”

  A long minute passed. Michael stole glances at his son’s face in the rearview mirror. Wheels were grinding inside that five-year-old skull. God only knew what would come out of the mouth next. Sometimes, the boy’s perceptiveness could be downright frightening.

  “Are you getting a divorce?” Silas asked at last.

  Stacy stiffened. “Where did you learn that word?”

  “At school. Are you?”

  “Mommy and Daddy still love each other,” Stacy said, “very much. And we always will. But we’ve grown apart, honey. It’s not your fault. It won’t be easy, but—”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “We’re getting a divorce.”

  * * *

  He ran.

  North on Forty-First Street, where wind stirred the scarlet oaks like helicopter rotor wash. Left on Garrison. Right on Forty-Second, heading toward Wisconsin Avenue, heart thudding, breath raking, sweat dripping.

  He ran through a Saturday night crowd—families going to dinner, couples getting drinks before an evening out—and at the same time he ran up the Hill of Woe outside the eastern gate of Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Florida, sliding back half a step in the sand for every step he gained. He passed through a blast of hot exhaust from a bus pulling away on Wisconsin Avenue, and at the same time he passed through a gust of heat radiating from a smoking ruin in Kirkuk: Ashenmiller scanning the night with the turret gun, choosing who he would kill and in what order, but awesomely, terribly self-controlled, never actually firing.

  His right knee throbbed. Ironically, only the right leg gave him pain. The left flexed regularly and easily. A marvel of engineering. The first year of rehab had been hell, but now he was better than ever. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better, stronger, faster.

  He passed T.J. Maxx, J.Crew, H&M, their lights burning holes in the gloaming; and he passed recruits who had washed out halfway up the Hill of Woe, sprawled in the sand massaging their charley horses. He had started Explosive Ordnance Disposal in a class of thirty and would graduate in a class of eight.

  “It’s time. It’s past due. It’s for the best. You know?”

  On one level, he supposed, she was right. Twenty-eight months had passed since they last made love. Something had to give.

  He ran past newsstands and bus stops and Qdobas, and packs of teenagers posing for selfies with studied duckfaces; and he ran past men wearing Kevlar and two-inch-thick visors and bizarrely protruding air snorkels, yelling, “Stack up! Breacher to the door! Fire in the hole in three, two, one, go, go, go, go, go! You there, hold the fuck still! Don’t fucking move or I swear to motherfucking God I’ll blow your brains all over the …”

  He had been pretending things would get better. But he had been kidding himself. And Stacy had done it right, following the unwritten law of the military wife: stick it out all through deployment, drop the bomb after he had readjusted to life back home. She had actually hung in longer than most, all through rehab and beyond. No one could say she hadn’t tried.

  He returned home dripping, light-headed, knee throbbing, shin aflame. He leaned against the doorjamb for a long minute before letting himself in. As the door opened, Licorice, lying in wait, came whipping out. He scooped her smoothly up, ignoring her protesting meow.

  For an instant, stepping over the threshold, he saw the front room as he might have seen it back in college: a moment caught in time, worthy of a pretentious black-and-white photographic portrait. This was the day Stacy had left.

  He moved past the staircase, past wall-mounted photos of happier times. Taken together, the pictures told a story. Here was young Michael Fletcher, a mere cub, playing with his older brother Seth: building snowmen in the backyard, swimming at the neighborhood pool, licking ice cream from his fingers at Baskin-Robbins. And a slightly older Michael, gawky, yarmulked, with brown hair and brown eyes and long, lanky limbs he had yet to grow into, standing over the Torah before the bimah with old Rabbi Gluck. Here was Michael graduating from Full Sail nine years later: filled out, handsome, cocky, having earned his associate’s in video production; Mom matching his impish grin, Dad stoical, Seth mugging for the camera. Less than a year later, Seth had made aliyah to Israel. Three days after arriving, Michael Fletcher’s only brother had been killed, along with eleven other innocents, by a Hamas bomber on a Jerusalem bus.

  Here were artsy shots Michael had snapped with his vintage Pentax 67 back in those first days after losing his brother, back when he had still believed he would become a real photographer someday instead of just a cameraman. Rain on windowpanes, trash-strewn vacant lots, picturesque urban decay. Suffering, suffering, suffering. Then a portrait of Stacy, looking painfully young, taken at the National Cathedral during their courtship. A stiff posed wedding photo; a snapshot of the newly minted couple, arm in arm during their Niagara Falls honeymoon. But Michael looked somber, distracted, at least half of him somewhere else.

  Then Michael Fletcher, now a young man, striking a pose in uniform before a sand dune. When he decided to join up, he had gone back to Florida, to Eglin. Partly because the state was familiar from college; partly because Explosive Ordnance Disposal seemed a natural choice to a man who had always loved tinkering with cameras. The remaining pictures were, tellingly, only of their son: swaddled like a burrito inside his Isolette at the hospital; frolicking at playgrounds, Chuck E. Cheeses, birthday parties, before the Cocoa Cruiser at H
ershey Park.

  In the kitchen, Michael drew a glass of water, drank it, and set the glass gently in the sink. That dredged up a memory of sliding a fuse gently from a two-thousand-pound bomb on the streets of Hawija: the strange sharpening of the senses, the metallic taste of fear at the base of the tongue. But he had put the fear neatly from his mind, put all of it neatly from his mind, because with a two-thousand-pound bomb you couldn’t afford to be distracted. You had to set up your leads and pulleys and rebar stakes just so. You had to pull out your fuse perfectly straight on the first try so it didn’t hang up, or the bomb would detonate and puncture your soft, compliant flesh with ball bearings and nails and nuts and bolts and chunks of older bombs, all moving at a speed of what those in EOD called “Mach Oh, My God,” which could turn a man into pulp of about the same consistency you might find at your local ShopRite, back here in civilization, floating inside a bottle of Tropicana.

  He moved around the house, feeling as if he were looking at a museum exhibit of someone else’s home. Stacy’s toothbrush was gone. So, too, her favorite sweater, her bathrobe, her Kindle, her lotions, her perfume, her travel bag, her purse.

  But Silas’ room was still cluttered to overflowing with toys, stuffed animals, maps, globes, dinosaurs, action figures, and two solar system mobiles. The sight made something inside Michael Fletcher loosen a notch. Silas would not abandon him. Silas would be back.

  In the master bedroom, the sweat helped him slip the wedding band from his left hand. He put the ring inside a drawer. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and took off his left leg, the pin clicking nine times. He stared blankly at the carpet as Licorice wound around his right ankle. He thought he might cry, or maybe laugh. He thought he might go take a shower. He thought he might have a drink, or maybe half a dozen. Instead, he just sat, breathing evenly, staring blankly at the carpet: whorls, paisleys, baroque interlocking circles, looping forever back into each other, each ending a new beginning.

  North of Andover, VT

  After killing the ignition, Jana approached the house obliquely, picking her way over fallen branches and dried leaves.

  Ancient forest towered high on every side: spruce, oak, elm and aspen, hemlock and maple. She made a cautious circle around the house—an echo of the circle she had walked around the cabin back on Mount Hood. A blue Mazda hatchback was parked before a closed garage with three garbage cans against one wall. A bag of Kingsford charcoal briquettes leaned against a grill. The trim needed paint, the roof some new shingles. She saw no evidence of cameras, sensors, trip wires, or an alarm system. Not even a dog. The lack of security was astounding—and concerning, given what was at stake.

  She crept toward a first-floor window, taking care to avoid stepping on a branch, which might snap and betray her. A bird called from the darkening forest, a clear liquid trill: trr-iiii-lip-lip-lip-lip-loooo!

  She peered over the sill. On the sofa, concentrating on a laptop computer balanced atop his generous gut, sprawled her contact.

  He was older than she had expected, perhaps fifty. And fat—well over 250 pounds. He wore a dirty blue T-shirt and faded chinos, and a salt-and-pepper beard. He looked relaxed, as if he had spent the past three years waiting fatly on this couch with his computer, stuffing himself with American junk food. As, meanwhile, Jana had risked her life, given herself to men who revolted her, surrounded herself with fanatics. Shonda, she thought—disgrace.

  She caught herself. The fat man could not be as careless as his slovenly appearance suggested. Otherwise, she would not have been sent here. Yoni knew what he was doing.

  After a moment, she retreated from the window and deliberated briefly. She might still err on the side of caution—return to her car and watch the house for a few hours. But fatigue was an expanding black sphere pressing against the backs of her eyes. She needed rest, sooner rather than later.

  Before ringing the bell, however, she took a few moments to note escape routes winding into the shadowed forest. Then she leaned briefly against the button. (There was, of course, no mezuzah.) Inside, chimes sounded a descending arpeggio. Waiting, she steadied herself by counting down. Five, four, three …

  A lock worked. She was pleasantly surprised: by his speed and stealth in reaching her, despite his bulk, and by the way his T-shirt pinched slightly near the small of the back when he swung the door open, suggesting a concealed weapon. Not such a fool, perhaps, after all.

  “Are you a friend of Abby’s?” Sign.

  She smiled cheerfully. “No, I think I’m lost. I was just going to meet an old friend.” Countersign.

  He stepped aside. “Yalla.”

  * * *

  The bedroom window gave a view of wooded dark mountains crowding close above the horizon.

  After looking outside for a few moments, she turned, pried off the black wig, and set it on the dresser top. She took out the contacts, then released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Now a hot shower, and then she would get rid of the car.

  But she was too exhausted to do anything at the moment, except spill down across the bed. She had driven two thousand miles with hardly a pause. Five minutes, she thought. Then she would get moving again.

  Next thing she knew, she was waking to accumulating purple twilight, barbed wire tangling across a highway, hovering helicopters. A police jeep blocked off two lanes, channeling traffic into a third. A boy in a checkered kaffiyeh threaded nimbly on foot between vehicles, reaching beneath his loose-fitting robe. She caught the oily whiff of RDX. Then the world blinked and slanted sideways. Her ears rang, a high, quavering note. She saw daggers of fire, puddles of blood rippling in the heat. A severed leg, bits of bone. A disembodied hand holding a Glilon assault rifle. The same hand that had explored her body tenderly, in secret humid darkness, just the night before. And then came the pain, searing her from scalp to toes, and she sank gratefully down into a thick, anesthetizing broth of catalepsy.

  She sat up.

  On the other side of the window, the moon was fat, the color of old bone.

  She left the bedroom. The house was quiet, moonlight falling heavily across furniture. No sign of her contact, who must be sleeping. Initial appearances notwithstanding, his professionalism had impressed her. He had asked for no name, nor supplied any. He had given no indication that he knew anything about her cargo, and didn’t waste her time with senseless chatter. Instead, he had fed her, offered the room and keys and a Wi-Fi password, and discreetly removed himself. He would play his part and keep out of her way.

  She went back to the bedroom. She wanted to collapse again and sleep for a full day. Instead, she plugged in the smartphone, ran through half a dozen encrypted proxies, and connected to Yoni’s server. She checked in vain for a new message containing further orders. Then she brought up Google Maps, switched to a topographical skin, zoomed in, and considered the layout of nearby roads and lakes and ponds.

  From her suitcase she took a flashlight, a dark Gore-Tex parka, and blue jeans. Three minutes later, she was letting herself into the attached garage. Her light picked out clutter leaning against walls. Jumbles of rakes and fishing poles and lawn equipment, bags of grass seed and mulch. Her eyes were drawn to an old lever-action .30-30 carbine, then to a broad-bladed Razorback shovel.

  Before approaching the car, she walked in expanding circles through sweet-smelling forest, looking for a good place to dig. Rags of mist hung in the branches like wisps of burial shroud. Insects buzzed. A distant loon called. She found a suitable spot beside a gnarled yellow elm: accessible but secluded, bare of roots or stumps. The shovel bit into frosty soil. Two minutes of labor left her exhausted. She leaned against the handle, chest burning, trying to catch her breath. Her training was a distant memory. Finally, she hefted the shovel again and plunged the blade back down with a grunt.

  The car was parked in a wooded thicket well off the driveway. She unlocked the trunk and transferred her cargo one arml
oad at a time, covering it with freshly turned earth, then loose branches and leaves and pine needles.

  Before returning the shovel to the garage, she wiped the blade clean against dewy grass. She arranged the jumble of tools just as she had found it. Her gaze lingered again on the .30-.30. Might be wolves out there. Coyotes, maybe bears. She picked up the carbine and worked the lever. Empty.

  Leaving the gun in the garage, she slid behind the wheel of the Grand Marquis. The access panel was still loose. She had stripped the ignition wires back in Salt Lake. Now she bridged the slots, and the engine coughed reluctantly to life.

  Using her phone as a GPS, she struck out. At the end of the unpaved driveway, she turned right. Headlights pushed back the darkness but not the chill. Shivering, she twisted the heater on. She dialed it higher, angling the vents, warning herself not to empty the gas tank prematurely.

  Reaching the fire road, she turned the heater down and consulted the GPS again. No service out here. She was on her own.

  She bumped ahead, craning her neck to see through the gloom. The road followed the contours of the land, rising and falling. She drove ever more slowly across ever rougher terrain, looking for a place she might turn, push through a clearing, and gain access to the lake.

  The first possibility was blocked by a fallen tree. The second seemed promising, then tapered abruptly as evergreens crowded in. The third went all the way up to the water’s edge, the small lake opening before her like a smooth black mirror. But it lacked a slope to roll the vehicle down. She tried parking, leaving the car in neutral, throwing her entire weight against the rear fender. But she couldn’t budge the heavy Mercury even a centimeter. For a full minute she pushed, gritting her teeth, feet slipping and sliding. Then she gave up, climbed inside again, and thunked it into reverse.

  She was considering other options—the next significant body of water was thirty miles away, and the gas tank dangerously low—when another clearing opened to her left. Twisting the wheel, she bounced, rocked, and jounced across rocky terrain. The field steepened sharply near the bank. Perfect.