Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

  Cam would be a very rich man.

  By two p.m. he had headed back to the craters by the river to pick up more. And so it would go for the next week. He would reload the cans, and return to Kuwait to make more deposits. The bank president was pleased, especially after taking his cut.

  A win-win for everyone.

  By the time he returned the Humvee at the end of the week, Cam had transferred some of his money to a bank account stateside. Only a little at a time—he would continue to siphon off the money in a conservative way. There was still close to $2 billion in cash buried in the craters, and he often thought about the GPS coordinates, and the possibility of picking them up. But his emergency pass was over, so it would be a while. He couldn’t raise suspicion—he’d already made up one story that could easily be checked. No need to tempt fate.

  But the money was there, waiting for him. After his deployment was over, he would go back and arrange for transport (with a generous cut for the transporters).

  The money that would make it all possible.

  Next stop: the White House.

  CHAPTER 25

  It had been a long day. At eight thirty this morning, Cam had spoken at a press conference and fund-raiser—three to four hundred people who cheered after his short speech and could be relied upon to open up their checkbooks. On the drive to the fund-raiser, he’d had a policy briefing on the calamity du jour—Syria again—and spent some time working with his speechwriters on his prepared statements. He had something for everybody: brief comments—usually they took only five minutes—and the lengthier policy speeches. Meanwhile Duncan was working the phone, making sure everything ran smoothly as they were limoed from pillar to post. He worked with military precision. Duncan had been in the military, himself—air force mission support. An administrative position.

  Duncan was the one who had coined the term “to limo.” He said it sounded much better than “driven.”

  Duncan made sure that Cam had a bathroom break before the next speech. This was the rule: Cam never went into a bathroom alone. He always had his body man with him. His body man was an extension of himself, his Man Friday, who handled public restrooms, clothes, the mail, paid the bills, and ran interference. He practically held his dick for him.

  Cam was getting used to it, and he wondered what it would be like if he lost in the primary and had to go back to depending on himself.

  He’d still be a senator. He could still run for reelection. But the band would have passed him by . . .

  “Focus!” Steve Cray, his campaign manager, said. “The remark about the air force base, remember? You went off topic again! You weren’t supposed to mention the air force base. They’re gonna close it, so you don’t want to talk about that. Remember, you voted to close it. Focus!”

  “Fine, I’ll focus,” Cam muttered.

  They reached their next destination, a Chamber of Commerce meeting at a major law firm. He could sit down, get off his feet, relax a little as he worked the small but exclusive room, getting commitments from bundlers and for fund-raising events—massaging the best-connected people in the state. He offered one of them, an investment banker and social climber, the position of “finance chair,” an honorary job.

  The man practically kissed his feet.

  Finally—lunch, although he wouldn’t taste it, and the food would be crappy if he did. Hotel food. He had to avoid anything “ethnic,” especially dishes cooked with garlic or onions or curry—there was a whole list of foods to avoid. He could not have it on his breath. He couldn’t smoke: hence the Nicorette gum. He could drink, but very little—just enough to be sociable but never enough to be drunk. And so the food ran the gamut from tasteless to unpalatable, and the liquor was a pale shadow of what Cam had been used to before he became a presidential candidate.

  He would shower again or at least strip-wash, and change clothes. He changed clothes two to three times a day. Besides his body man, deodorant was his best friend.

  At two p.m. he was back in the hotel making calls again.

  Cam had a half hour before another meet and greet, so he kicked off his shoes and lay on the hotel bed while his wife took her shower. Duncan sat in the corner by the window, entering something or other into his laptop.

  Cam switched from news channel to news channel. He was still under the radar, still in the second tier. He desperately wanted to be in the first tier. But he also knew he needed to be patient. Be patient and work hard. He’d known the drill since he was eight years old, when he stuffed envelopes for his father’s campaign for the Apache County Board of Supervisors.

  There was nothing on him today. There never was. The press followed the front-runners.

  Duncan looked over at him. “Don’t worry,” he said, reading Cam’s mind. “They’ll know about you soon enough.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “You don’t want to catch fire too soon. Otherwise you’ll burn out. The front-runner never wins.”

  “I know that.” Cam cradled his one drink, Cutty and soda, on his chest, and felt the chill dampness from the glass leak through his shirt. “I’m sick of this,” he said. He switched the channel to the national news.

  Duncan said, “Seriously, you’re doing great right where you are. You’ll hit at the right time. We’re doing all the right things.”

  He got this pep talk every day at some point. He tuned it out. He was so tired.

  Just veg out and watch the nightly news . . .

  And that was when he saw him.

  The man from Kuwait.

  The man he had run into three times. The first was in Kuwait City, when he’d carted his money into the bank. The guy looking at him had set off alarm bells, but it was just a chance encounter with a bad guy. Cam knew dangerous men when he saw them, but those men had not been focused on him.

  There had been two more times since then.

  The second time he’d been on a stretch of road with his men on the outskirts of Basrah—must have been six months after he’d banked the last of his money. They’d been out on patrol and had come to a checkpoint. Vehicles were lined up waiting to pass through. As they moved up, he saw a Humvee parked along the side of the road. A group of men leaned against it, shooting the shit and watching the vehicles drive by. One of the men, leaning against the door of the Humvee with his arms folded, was the man he’d seen across the street from the bank in Kuwait City.

  Cam recognized the Humvee and its driver—they both belonged to Whitbread Associates, a private security company. The man was talking to his friend, but Cam could tell that behind his dark glasses, he watched everyone who passed. Even though he looked casual, he was not.

  Cam, of course, was in military gear.

  The last time the guy saw him, Cam had been dressed like a civilian—very much like a military contractor. Almost identical to the man leaning against the Humvee with his pals.

  They’d locked eyes. Even behind the shades, it was obvious that the man was looking right at him. The guy tipped his head slightly, spoke sideway to his partner, his eyes never leaving Cam.

  The encounter had worked on his imagination. Running into the guy twice.

  The third time, though, that was the charm.

  Fast-forward a few years. He was a state congressman who had made a name for himself, running for the United States Senate. Because he was brash and had cultivated that quality (brash sold!), he often rubbed people the wrong way. That was okay, because it appealed to his constituency—they appreciated a certain swagger in their candidate. He was already beginning to receive national attention, so he decided it was time to have a bodyguard. This led him to a conversation with Mike Cardamone, head of a private security company called Whitbread Associates.

  It never occurred to him that he would run into the man again.

  But there he was: the first man he met. Cyril Landry picked him up at the air
port.

  Turned out the man was one of Cardamone’s best operatives—Cardamone’s right-hand man.

  The trip from the airport had been excruciating.

  The man had said not one word.

  They had reached the Whitbread offices, and the man had held the door for him, silent as a cigar store Indian.

  He could see it like it was yesterday, Landry standing in the office, arms folded, fit and tall and impassive. Those eyes. Jesus! They were icy blue and pierced right through him. His mouth crooked up at the corner, just a tad, but it wasn’t really a smile. There was no doubt in Cam’s mind that Landry recognized him. Cardamone had talked for the most part, telling Cam that Landry was the best man he had. And Cam had stood there, trying to look impressed, trying to look at Cyril Landry, and his eyes just seemed to . . . slide off the man’s face.

  It was as if the man knew all his secrets. Like the guy knew what he’d done, how he’d gotten to where he was now. This was all bullshit, of course. But he’d now run into him three times, three chance meetings, and each time he could tell the guy had taken note of him. The man had looked at Cam clinically, as if he could see past the jovial smile and the open hand to something underneath.

  He knew about the money. Cyril Landry had seen him, dressed like a private military contractor, loading bricks of money into the hand truck and carrying it into the bank.

  Hold on.

  Why did he think that Landry would know that he stole the money from that house? No way he would know that.

  No way would he know anything—except perhaps by the guilty look on Cam’s face. And yes, he guessed that a guy like Landry could smell fear.

  The guy was a killer.

  After Landry had left, Cardamone told Cam that Landry would be perfect for the security job. Cam said he would prefer someone else.

  “Why?”

  “I just would.”

  “If you think he’d do anything out of line, think again. You can trust him with your life. He doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or a Jehovah’s Witness. He’ll protect you. He doesn’t care what he’s asked to do. He’ll do anything—if you’re in danger, he’ll kill for you or die for you without blinking an eye.”

  Cam told Cardamone he would think about it. He’d walked out of Whitbread Associates, feeling much the way he did when he’d spotted Cyril Landry across the street in Kuwait City and Landry had walked away down the street. He felt as if he’d dodged a bullet. Closing the door behind him, standing on the step outside, he was weak-kneed and trembling. Cam had good instincts and he trusted them. He did not want to get crosswise of the man.

  He hired another personal security company instead.

  Months later, Cam learned what had happened on the island in Florida. The gun battle, the conflagration: a miniwar on the attorney general’s private island. Other than Mike Cardamone, the names of the missing and the dead didn’t ring a bell—until he’d heard the name “Cyril Landry.”

  He was sure in his heart that Mike Cardamone had died at the hands of Cyril Landry.

  Cam was watching one of the cable channels when he saw the photo. It was a bad shot, backlit by the sun, taken on a smartphone. Just a man’s head mostly in profile. He turned up the sound.

  The newscaster was talking about a school shooting. The one that just happened, in LA.

  Cam had been asked about the mass shooting on one of the news shows—and had condemned the shooter, although he’d been careful not to call for any kind of gun control. No need to anger the NRA.

  The photo disappeared as the news channel switched to the latest celebrity’s brush with the law.

  Cam’s eyes remained fixed on the TV screen. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

  Landry.

  He’d always had a bad feeling about the man. That Landry had somehow known what was in his mind. That Landry knew he’d stolen the money. The idea of Landry had grown bigger and bigger over time, instead of diminishing.

  Cam was the type of guy who always followed his instincts. He’d hired a private detective to look into Landry’s death on the island, and the results were inconclusive. No body had ever been found.

  The private detective had sat in his office, reeking of cigarette smoke, his fat fingers laced over his belly, a self-satisfied grin on his broad face.

  “He’s dead, you can take it to the bank,” the detective had told him. “Don’t you worry about that. No way he could have survived that storm. No way they’d find the body, either. He was just so much shark food.”

  But Cam hadn’t been satisfied.

  He’d paid the guy what he was owed and found someone else. A harder character. Someone who was former military, like himself. Only this guy was the type who knew other hard people—the kind of guy who could make things happen.

  The guy had told him an interesting story about a place that wasn’t on any map. He called it the “Toolshed.”

  Cam remembered their conversation, almost word for word. How hard it would be to find out if Landry was, indeed, alive. “If he’s alive, he’ll be very careful. If he was Special Forces, he has discipline.” Then the guy said, “But there is one way to lure him out.”

  When he told him what it was, Cam recoiled.

  But he’d had second thoughts about that.

  Oh yes, he did.

  He’d had second thoughts.

  CHAPTER 26

  Marcella Rouch knew she’d hear from her sister-in-law, Barb Carey. She knew Barb would feel angry and betrayed. Marcella didn’t have much use for Barb anyway, so that wouldn’t pose a particular problem. Marcella also knew that Barb suspected that Justin had swiped the photo of Joe Till from her phone. She would assume that he’d shared the photo with Marcella, and boom! More family drama.

  Now the photo was all over the news—on TV and the Internet—and Marcella had already ignored two calls and deleted three text messages from Barb. Barb was no dummy. She knew there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of photos that the Gordon C. Tuttle School Shooting Task Force had to go through, and she knew that one way to narrow it down was to rely on sources in law enforcement—from other cops. In other words, trustworthy sources. Marcella was all cop; she worked Crimes Against Persons with San Diego PD.

  Yesterday, Marcella had received a phone call from a member of the Gordon C. Tuttle School Shooting Task Force. An FBI special agent on the task force took her statement. Marcella told him about Joe Till’s odd hours, and her sister-in-law’s own conjecture that Till drove someplace every weekday and returned by early evening. Barb herself had done the math, how he could have driven five days a week to Torrent Valley to familiarize himself with the school and the kids there. She’d suspected as much—that he had gone there day after day, on weekdays, when school was in session. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection. Not to mention, Barb had also said she’d had a bad feeling that day, even calling Marcella to check to see if Joe Till had been injured or killed or—God forbid—jailed when he failed to come back.

  Deep down, Barb knew. Marcella was sure that Barb knew exactly what had transpired. Joe Till knew that there would be a school shooting—knew it would go down. It was her opinion that he had kept that knowledge secret.

  Why, she couldn’t imagine. But she’d always thought there was something wrong with him. Maybe he’d been damaged by the war. She’d had no qualms about submitting the photo to her sergeant.

  But so far, as far as Marcella knew—and they could just be withholding info; in fact, they were probably withholding info—they had not been able to identify the man she knew as Joe Till.

  Then the FBI special agent working the case called her. He’d kept his cards close to his vest, just asked her where she’d obtained the photo and when it was taken. That was yesterday. She suspected that law enforcement might very well converge on her sister-in-law’s place—and soon.
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  She hoped Barb wouldn’t be held as a material witness. She hoped that she wouldn’t be arrested. But justice was justice and the school shooting task force needed to know. She was a cop first, and family, second. Barb Carey wasn’t much of a sister-in-law, and now Marcella was returning the favor.

  If she could prevent this guy from going off again and killing more people, she would be happy. It was the way she rolled.

  Landry awoke in the darkness of the hotel room. It was the middle of the night. For a moment he forgot where he was. He was back in Afghanistan. Or maybe Iraq. No—Afghanistan. The Korengal Valley. It was bad—he’d lost two good friends that day. Then he realized he was in another hotel room, another anonymous hotel room, and nothing had awakened him except his own mind. Jolie was gone, back to New Mexico. His wife and daughter were gone, too, and Gary refused to tell him where they were, except to say they were “safe.” He doubted that. What would a pansy comptroller know about safe houses? Would he fight off the bad guys with a briefcase and a spreadsheet? Fortunately, Landry had made sure that both Cindi and Kristal knew how to protect themselves. If they took their weapons with them, they would know how to use them. If they’d kept up their practice. He hoped they had. They’d also had martial arts training, but he knew Cindi and Kristal would be no match for whoever was coming for him.

  The person behind this had used Landry’s family once to try and draw him out. He would have no qualms about doing it again.

  Right now, though, he could feel that something—or someone—was closing in on him. It wasn’t just the photo on TV, but the idea that someone, somewhere, had turned an eye on him.

  He knew it was personal.

  Again, he felt it in his jaw. He felt it in his whole body, which had tightened up, like a violin string to its breaking point. He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Let the white noise in his head subside into silence. He’d had years of practice letting go of his fears—war had done that for him.