Hoda and Jake

by Richard Booth

  Esteban dutifully disappeared, and Jake asked for directions to the supply center. Gillis gave them; it didn’t sound complicated. The camp was laid out like the spokes of a wheel, with HQ in the center. He thanked her and began walking. And looking. Lots of long huts, which he assumed were barracks. Four guard towers, not too tall but certainly enough to give a view out into the perimeter, where the vegetation had been cut back for a couple of hundred yards: field of fire. There were personnel holes every so often, and four or five embrasures where a crew-served weapon went. Sandbags. It looked more like a Special Forces A camp than a training one.

  A bell on the door tinkled as Holman entered the supply center. A sergeant major and staff sergeant behind the counter turned when they heard it.

  “May I help you, sir?” said the sergeant major, instantly catching Jake’s warrant device.

  “I’m your new boss,” Holman said. “Mister Holman. The XO just assigned me.” Was that relief he saw flicker across the sergeant major’s face? Whatever it was, it vanished in a flash.

  “Welcome, sir. We have all the requisite paperwork ready for you to sign anytime you’re ready.”

  Jake could imagine. Like any big bureaucracy, the U.S. Army ran on paperwork—woe betide he or she whose was behind or incomplete—and he’d have to sign as the officer responsible for everything in the building. His soul would be in hock. Fortunately, as only a CIA shill, he wouldn’t be staying; he could afford to gloss over some details.

  “Let’s get started, sergeant major.” Jake noticed his name was Ortiz. The staff sergeant was Ortega. “Oh, and one thing first.”

  “Yessir?”

  “Do you both happen to be Puerto Rican?”

  “Yes sir,” Ortiz said, his eyebrows knitting slightly. “Good guess.”

  It wasn’t a guess; many Puerto Ricans used the service as a way out of poverty. “Don’t speak Spanish to each other. English only, at least on duty. Am I clear?”

  “Yessir.” They did not exchange looks, but Jake knew they’d infer he didn’t speak it; that’s what he wanted. Word would surely spread. In fact, his Spanish, while far from fluent, was fair, and he was sure it would improve day by day here in Limon.

  They got out the manifests, and Jake spent the day with them, doing an inventory. They didn’t finish until after the evening meal. The enlisted men didn’t like it, Jake could tell, but neither did either make any overt gesture. Finally, Jake signed all the several forms. The supply building was his.

  “Okay men, you’re off duty,” Holman said. When they left, he went back through some items he wanted to double check, the kind most useful to people with bad agendas. If anything was missing, he couldn’t discover it.

  Back in his quarters—which Jake was grateful he didn’t have to share—he got a water bag from his duffel and went to the latrine. He filled the bag from the tap and returned to his room, where he made wudu, the ritual Muslim ablution, washing feet, hands, arms and face. Finding Mecca with his compass, he made up the daily prayers. This took some time. Then he packed everything away. He hoped he could continue, but didn’t want his religion to become common knowledge; being “outed” as Muslim would make him stick out. On the other hand, he wanted to be faithful to Allah—and Hoda. He missed her. He tried ruthlessly to shake her from his mind. Distraction. It was hard. He smiled: what a distraction!

  The next morning a knock roused Holman. Hurriedly calling to wait, he donned his pants and answered the door in a teeshirt. It was a local, not Esteban. “Package on morning aeroplane,” he said, accented thickly. There was a box beside him.

  Jake gave him $10—it came from his per diem anyway—and slid the big box inside his door. With his Kershaw he carefully slit the tapes, opening the top. It was filled with electronics. Rummaging, he found what he most wanted, and set to work.

  Moments later the satellite phone was set up, complete with folding umbrella. Jake pointed it at the geosynchronous satellite, and waited for tone. Then he dialed his own house, checking his watch. Hoda might already be gone.

  Sure enough. The machine picked up. He left a message and rang off. Then he broke down the phone, hiding threads in the box opening to tell if anyone opened it in his absence, and booted his laptop, which had been in the box. He wrote a report on it, did the 128-bit encryption, and mailed it out to a special address in Langley.

  Time for his workout. When he finished, Jake showered in the latrine and dressed. Now for breakfast and work; he was on time. Turning down the street to supply, he saw the dilapidated Ford truck outside it. Closing, he saw it had been cleverly converted into a canteen. It evidently didn’t have refrigeration, but its fat owner did serve hot Latin food, and he did have ice. Jake bought a good-looking, succulent fruit, and ate it on the spot. The owner jabbered in Spanish, but when Jake didn’t respond gave up.

  “Holman!” Jake turned to see who was addressing him without “mister.” His faced brightened. “Alex Greenwald! As I breathe!” The men closed, and clasped hands. “They told me CID was down here,” Jake said, “but it never occurred that I’d know one of them.”

  “So you didn’t forget your old Jewish friends,” Greenwald said.

  There was no graceful way around it. Jake would have to confront the fact of his marriage. He wasn’t surprised Greenwald knew of Hoda; he’d probably already been briefed. But Jake also had faith Greenwald was joking. Or at least, he hoped so. Greenwald’s next salvo left him less sure.

  “Salat going okay?”

  “Rest it, Alex. Change happens.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Alex, I haven’t given up my old acquaintances. But I can make an exception. Now are we going to work together here or not? What do you know?”

  “I’m keeping our case on the deaths under wraps. It’s ours. But the XO tells me you’re checking into the missing LAWs.” Jake nodded imperceptibly, looking around to see if anyone appeared interested in their conversation. “Let’s walk while we talk,” Jake said. That would require eavesdroppers to move with them, and be easier to spot.

  “Jake, I understand you’re running the supply building. If the subject of marriage comes up with that sergeant major, and it might, shut it down. Especially if he asks you how yours is. And he might.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he’s going through a brutal divorce. Custody, the whole thing. And he’s obsessed with it. Turned misogynistic. This doesn’t have anything to do with your rockets, but it might with your leadership in supply.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “He must be doing something right, though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He and Tammy Gillis see a lot of sundowns together.”

  “The colonel’s Gillis?”

  “One and the same.”

  Jake said nothing, but it was interesting. With literally a hundred American men, at least, on a base with almost no women, for Gillis to choose the one woman hater as her paramour was noteworthy.

  “I gotta go to work,” Jake said, jerking his thumb back at the supply building.

  “Don’t let your day job get you down,” Greenwald said. “The community wants to know where those rockets went. It would be a shame if they ended up with Al Quaida.”

  Jake doubted that; there were enough RPGs, rocket propelled grenades, coming out of Russia and its erstwhile satellites to light up half the world. They didn’t need the M72. Local bandits might, though. Or rebels.

  The men parted and Jake strode into supply. “Where’s the sergeant major?” he asked Ortega.

  “Down back, checking in a shipment with Sergeant Gillis.”

  I’ll bet, Jake thought. “Ortega!” he called, his voice a thunderclap. It was several seconds before Otiz appeared, and several seconds after that before Gillis showed. Was she flushed? She wasn’t normal, Jake was sure. But neither uniform looked out of place.

  “Sergeant Major Ortiz,” Mister Holman said icily. “Kindly do not let anyone outside we three behin
d the counter in this building. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Sergeant Gillis, you are dismissed.”

  “Yessir,” and she hurried out past Jake. She didn’t salute, and Holman didn’t say anything.

  ***

  They worked a regular morning, and at noon Jake told the sergeants he might take a long lunch. What could they say? He was their senior.

  For the first time since arriving, Jake made noon prayer on time. Then he wrote a long encrypted e-mail to Robinson, and a much shorter, and intimate, one to Hoda. Robinson replied in less than ten minutes, saying he’d assign people to Jake’s requests. Hoda’s reply, sent from her iPod, said only, “I love you. Hurry home.”

  After work—what Greenwald had called his ‘day job’—Jake checked his possessions, finding none tampered with. Then he prayed, and booted his laptop. There were two mails, one each from Hoda and Robinson. He read Hoda’s first, a chatty description of her day. He wrote five sentences, stretching it as long as he could without giving anything away, and sent that mail en clair. Then he settled down to the more important Robinson’s.

  He went for everything Jake wanted. And attached was a summary of Sergeant Major Ortiz’s financial situation done by one of the agency research analysts. It looked like he (or she) had enlisted the help of the Internal Revenue Service. Ortiz was in over his head, all right.

  Jake’s next step was a visit to Mason’s office, but not to see the colonel. He wanted to ask Gillis if she had a personnel roster, together with a list of addresses for everyone on post. Which of course she did. Sergeant Gillis had no way of knowing the address Jake wanted was hers.

  ***

  Hours later, Tammy Gillis heard a rap on her door. Thinking it was Raphael, she answered with a smile. It vanished into surprise when she recognized the new supply warrant standing on her step.

  “May I come in?”

  “That depends.”

  “Officer and a gentleman. Scout’s honor.”

  “I guess it’ll be all right.” Before closing the door, Gillis checked the street to see if anyone had noticed his arrival. Apparently not.

  “Sergeant Gillis—Tammy—I’ll come straight to the point. I’m not who you think I am. I’m an Army detective, sent here to find out about the missing rockets and the dead soldiers.”

  “But I thought CID was handling all that.”

  “They are. But I’m helping them, and I’m independent. Now you have two choices, and not much time to think about them. You can do the right thing, and tell me what you know. Or you can be charged as an accessory, and spend a lot of your life in a federal stockade. You might possibly face the death penalty.”

  “What are you talking about?” Those words “death penalty” jarred her—as Holman intended.

  “If what I think happened did, I’m talking about four murders and stolen government property worth tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe even treason, depending on who got the LAWs. Ortiz is in this up to his chin, and you’re into Ortiz up to yours. Do the math.”

  Gillis sank to the couch, face in hands, and began sobbing. It was then Jake knew he was right, that the case was solved. But knowing and proving were always two different things, and he had to turn Tammy Gillis from victim—Ortiz’s victim, and accomplice—into a witness.

  “Was Ortega in on it?”

  Tammy shook her head, but didn’t look up.

  “How’d they get the rockets out?”

  “The canteen truck.” Face still buried. Sobs. Shivering shoulders.

  “Who helped?”

  “Locals.” Jake didn’t care about the locals; they’d never convict, and it would cause Uncle Sam a black eye in more ways than one.

  “And you did the command paperwork.”

  Nodding. Sobbing.

  “Who planned it?”

  “Rafe. Raphael. Sergeant Major Ortiz.”

  “To get money for his divorce.”

  “Yes. Yes, oh, leave me alone. What have I done?”

  Jake sat on the couch, engulfed her in one of his arms. “I think we might make this work for you, Tammy. You didn’t know about the murders, did you?”

  “No. Rafe never said anything about killing.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “He must have. He said they needed an umpire for a survival game, and he volunteered. The trainees found the canteen truck in the jungle, off an old road. Some rockets were still in it, and they put two and two together. I didn’t want to believe Rafe would do that, but I guess it’s true.”

  She went back to sobbing, saying between breaths, “Oh, what am I going to do?”

  “You leave that to me, Tammy.”

  ***

  Next morning the daily plane brought another shipment for Jake Holman. Marked only with his name and deployed address, it was a palette of wooden cases. The two supply sergeants arrived with a forklift and six-by-six truck, and spirited the cases to the all-important bastion of supply. Once they were back there, Ortiz asked Holman the question Jake was waiting for.

  “Sir, where’s the paperwork for this? What’s in these crates?”

  “Sergeant major,” Jake said evenly, “these are a present from a friend in Washington. And there is no paperwork. These crates don’t exist.” Technically, that was almost true: Robinson had arranged the shipment, in response to Jake’s e-mailed request.

  “Begging your pardon, Mr. Holman,” Ortiz said, “but that doesn’t answer the question about what’s in them?”

  “They’re clearing out old storage at college ROTC in the states,” Holman said, “and believe it or not there are a lot of old M-14 rifles around. These crates contain one hundred of the US Rifle NATO, caliber 7.72 millimeter, M-14.” He used the weapons’ official designation by way of emphasis. “And did I mention four magazines per?”

  Ortiz whistled softly. Jake looked back and forth between his and Ortega’s faces. Jake had staked his life on his instincts many times, and it seemed to him Ortiz was greedy, or desperate, and Ortega just plain frightened. Both hid it well, though: corruption was endemic in Puerto Rico. If you didn’t have a hustle, you might starve.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Ortiz asked.

  “Well, Costa Rica may be pretty stable. But it’s halfway to places where any number of factions might find firepower useful. Granted, they’re not M-16s or the ubiquitous”—Jake used that word on purpose—“AK-47. But they’re useful if you plan to take on the local militia. They come with keys to switch on full automatic.” In other words, make them light machine guns. Although for that, they’d need more than four magazines per.

  “You got a buyer, sir?” Ortiz asked.

  “Not exactly. But the window was closing. I had to get them out of the states. And working here is the perfect cover. In point of fact, sergeant major, I was hoping you might help me out on that score. For a piece of the action, of course.”

  Ortiz turned to Ortega and said in Spanish, “Go get us all some coffee at the mess hall. And see that you take your sweet time.”

  “Sergeant major,” Holman snapped in English as Ortega walked out the door, “where is he going?” And Ortiz told him.

  “I asked you not to speak Spanish.”

  “Sorry, sir. Slipped out.”

  “Well, see it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Yessir. You say there’s no paperwork with these weapons?”

  “None. It’s been made to vanish.”

  “Well, they’ll have to have some new ones. If they’re discovered in transit, that would be a red flag, and the whole thing would collapse.”

  “Yes. I was hoping I could rely on the help of someone who really knows the supply chain, And its interminable bureaucracy. Am I clear, sergeant major?”

  “I think I’m getting your drift. I may be able to help you out. What’s the asking price?”

  “That’s something else I need help with, I’ve never done this before.” In fact, Jake Holman had been the middle man
in a good many gun running schemes, for American enemies and friends alike. He knew pricing and availability, as they say in retail, as well as most people in the shadow world.

  “We should check one of them out,” Ortiz said. “We wouldn’t want to be caught with the wrong stuff.”

  “I agree. Let’s do.”

  Ortiz fetched a flat, J-shaped steel strip for opening crates, and the two men walked to the sally port of the supply building, by the garage doors. With the skill of long practice, Ortiz snapped open one of the boxes and moved aside some packing. There they were. Jake had to admit, he had a soft spot for the M-14: beautifully designed refinement on the classic Garand M-1 of World War II, it was much more aristocratic than the toy-looking M-16. The M-16, somebody once said, looked like a BB rifle. Not the M-14: smooth wooden stock, full length and high-power, chambered for the 7.62 NATO round or its civilian equivalent .308. He owned one, though he didn’t keep it at the Maryland condo.

  The supply sergeant was apparently familiar with the weapon himself, though too young to have ever had any truck with M-14s in his service time. They’d been superseded by the M-16 in the Vietnam War. Ortiz picked one out, worked the bolt to check it was clear—standard firearms practice—before looking down the muzzle. He dry-fired it once, but no more.

  “You say there are magazines, sir?”

  “One of these crates is all magazines. I have that on good authority.”

  The weapons weren’t much good without them, and Jake was sure Ortiz would confirm that as soon as Jake was out of sight.

  “It will take a .308 civilian round. Hunting bullet,” Jake said. Ortiz nodded. Ammunition availability on the civilian market enhanced the selling price.

  Ortiz carefully replaced the rifle and packing, returning the crate lid to its place and rapped the staples home with his tool. When he finished he said softly, “Sir, why don’t you let me make a few phone calls. I might be able to help you out with this project.”

  That was it. He was committed. Except in the unlikely event Ortiz was trying to play Jake, on behalf of CID, their deal was sealed. Sergeant Major Ortiz was going down for the theft, anyway. But murder was something else.