The Jury Master

by Robert Dugoni

  The handgun materialized in Madsen’s hand like a rabbit from a magician’s sleeve—the trained soldier returning to the task at hand, setting aside the unexpected turn of events. “The package, Mr. Sloane.”

  Sloane unzipped the jacket he had taken from Tom Molia’s closet, bulky and too large for his frame, and removed the file he’d stuffed inside. “Let her go.”

  Tina stood shaking her head, mumbling through the tape, eyes wide with fear.

  “Throw it on the ground.”

  Sloane tossed the file on the ground.

  “Who says you never get second chances in life?” Madsen said.

  Then the smile disappeared, and he pulled the trigger.

  82

  IT WAS THE cry of utter despair and anguish, of hope lost, and futures shattered. It exploded from Tina with such force that the tape tore from her cheek and flapped like a Band-Aid that had lost its grip.

  “No!”

  Her cry united with the explosion of the gun, a shimmering echo of violence that permeated the peace like a blast inside a metal drum, clattering and horrific. She watched as Sloane fell backward. Her legs collapsed as if broken from a fall from a great height, and she dropped to the ground, lifeless and languid, sobbing hysterically, unable and unwilling to move.

  Then she felt Madsen’s hand grip her by the hair, and the pain at her scalp as he yanked her to her knees, pulling the combat knife from the sheath on his belt.

  SLOANE LAY ON the ground, a throbbing pain radiating from his chest—a center-mass shot that left a gripping knot of agony pulsing through him. Thunder rang in his ears. Blood overpowered his taste buds. A burning fire consumed his being, leaving his limbs without life. He felt the cool dampness of dew and the sharp sting of the pebbles and rocks against the back of his head. Darkness unlike any he had ever experienced enveloped him. Had it not been for the ringing in his ears and the taste of bile in his mouth, he would have concluded that Madsen’s shot had blown away his head.

  His eyes fluttered open and closed, fighting the desire to drift away. He turned his head, watching. The woman lay on the ground, sobbing hysterically, her body convulsing in agony and torment. Her executioner reached down and grabbed her by a tuft of hair, pulling her to a sitting position as he unsheathed the blade from his belt.

  “Your dreams may not be dreams. They may be real.”

  Tina.

  Not a dream.

  Real.

  Madsen.

  AT THAT MOMENT any remnant of the carefully crafted image of the politician disappeared, and the person within, the man who, during a military career of over thirty years, had become a hardened killer, escaped from whatever prison Madsen had locked him in. He burst free in a sardonic mask of evil and perverse enjoyment that came with the rush of absolute and unadulterated power. This was why General Parker Madsen had never left the fields of battle. This was why he never left the men he trained and led. This was why he never left Talon Force. It had nothing to do with loyalty to his soldiers or to duty and honor. It was a selfish, perverted fulfillment of his own desires. There was nothing that equaled the rush of war, the thrill of killing, having the power within one’s hands to give and take life. It was omnipotent, the closest thing he could imagine to being almighty. It was intoxicating. His addiction. His weakness.

  He grabbed the woman’s hair with his right hand and pulled her from the ground to a sitting position. Then he reached across his body with his left hand and unsheathed the blade from his belt. Tonight he would finish the mission he had left unfinished in the mountains that morning thirty years ago. History would repeat itself. And in the end, Parker Madsen would stand on top, as always.

  The woman no longer fought him, no longer struggled, shocked or resigned to her fate. Madsen raised the blade.

  He heard the sound no soldier who had served in Vietnam would ever forget, the sound of salvation in the darkest of moments, distant but rapidly approaching—the whir and chopping sound of a helicopter coming at full speed. He looked up at the night sky, and in an instant his trained eyes distinguished the moving white lights amid the stationary stars.

  “Too late!” he said out loud, nearly shouting his defiance. “You’re too late.”

  83

  TOM MOLIA FOCUSED on the instrument panel, trying not to look out the window or think about how high they were off the ground. He felt chilled to the bone, as numb as the day he picked up the phone and heard his mother’s voice tell him that his father had passed away. Perspiration rolled down his temples and under his arms. He kept talking, distracting himself with conversation, trying to avoid that moment when he knew the pilot would need him to look out the window and find the flattop where they had found the body of Joe Branick. He hoped he didn’t faint.

  Charles Jenkins had folded himself into the back next to Alex Hart, and the big man seemed to be in considerable pain. Brewer had assured him that more men would be sent, but none would arrive before him and Molia.

  “How much longer?” Molia spoke into the mouthpiece of his headset, shouting above the whir of the blades and hum of the engine. He was fighting to hold it together. He had almost collapsed when Jenkins told him they’d have to take the helicopter.

  The pilot checked his instrument gauges. “Maybe six minutes.”

  “Can this Mosquito go any faster?”

  “Maybe four minutes.”

  “Do it.”

  Molia turned his attention back to Jenkins. “What I don’t understand is why the CIA was so interested in a kid. How much power can a kid have? Hell, I can’t even get my son to lead the dog outside to pee at night.”

  Jenkins responded in an amplified voice that sounded like someone driving with the windows down. “He was not just any kid, Detective. Some in the villages were convinced he was much more than that.”

  “Much more how?”

  “Special. Someone who would lead Mexico’s poor and indigenous peoples out of centuries of poverty and despair—a gift from God.”

  “A kid would do all that?”

  “You weren’t there. You can’t understand the circumstances at that moment. You did not see it like I did. You didn’t experience it. You didn’t feel him inside your head and your chest.”

  Molia turned in his seat and looked at the large man. Despite his size, Jenkins had a soft quality to him, a sincerity and kindness. “Inside your head and chest? You believed it?”

  “I don’t know what I believed in the end.” Jenkins touched his heart. It appeared an unconscious act. “It was like sitting in a soothing bath and having warm water flow over you, washing away your concerns until all you wanted was to hear his words. Did I believe it? I don’t know. But I know that after what I witnessed in Vietnam I wanted to believe it. I wanted to feel the peace and comfort his voice seemed to give. And that was when I came to realize that what is important is not what is true, but what people believe is true and what they’re willing to do for that belief. He could control that. Regardless of how he did it, it was an incredible gift. Our concern was not how he would use it, but how others would use him.”

  “And that’s why Peak gave the order to kill him?”

  Jenkins nodded. “Because of what I wrote in my reports. Because I convinced him that the boy was real, and that the threat that others, most notably el Profeta, were using him for the wrong reasons, was real.”

  “He figured that if you believed it, so would everybody else, and he had a potential revolution on his hands when he was supposed to be keeping the peace—bye-bye political career.”

  Jenkins nodded. “Exactly.”

  “And that’s why you feel responsible for what happened to those people.”

  “I’ve thought about it every day for the last thirty years.”

  The pilot tapped Molia on the knee. It was time to look out the window and face a completely different kind of horror. He hoped he could do it, for Sloane’s sake.

  84

  THE SHOT ECHOED across the canyon, making it impossib
le to determine the direction it came from, but there was little doubt of the target. Parker Madsen had been staring up at the sky when the bullet pierced his chest just below the pit of his raised left arm. It bent him sharply to the side, as if snapping him in two, and he stumbled backward on legs no longer truly functioning as limbs but serving only as supports to keep his body erect. The bullet, a Remington Golden Saber brass-jacketed hollow point, entered the body subtly but continued on a path of heavy destruction. It passed between the ribs, tearing cartilage and muscle, boring its way through both lungs, until it exploded out the other side.

  Madsen’s right hand lost its grip on the tuft of hair, and Tina fell back to the ground. His left hand dropped the knife to reach across his body and feel the warm flow of his own blood soaking his fatigues. His face registered what his body already knew, what no man, no matter how well trained, could accept willingly. He had not just been hit; he had been mortally wounded. He cocked his head, searching for the source of his demise, as if almost amused at his circumstance.

  Sloane sat on the ground, his left leg straight out in front of him, his right leg bent at the knee, hands shaking slightly, still clutching the Colt, locked on target.

  “Too late,” Madsen whispered again, blood now dribbling from his mouth, his hand reaching for his firearm.

  “Not this time,” Sloane said, and squeezed the trigger again.

  85

  HE CRAWLED TO her across the uneven ground, every part of his body screaming in pain. Tina sat slouched over, head slumped to the side, hands bound, shoulders heaving.

  The second bullet had struck General Parker Madsen square in the chest, driving him backward like a sledgehammer blow. He lay five feet behind her, the soles of his thick black combat boots visible in the grass. As Sloane reached out to Tina, her eyes widened in confusion and joy. She pawed at his face, caressing it, as if merely touching him would convince her that he was in fact alive, that her mind was not playing tricks on her.

  He picked up the knife from the grass, gently cut her hands free, and pulled her to him, clutching her, feeling her tremble with life.

  Alive. She was still alive.

  “It’s all right,” he soothed, speaking the words as much for himself as for her. “It’s all right. It’s over now. It’s over.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes disbelieving. “But how?” she asked, confused. “I watched him shoot you, David. I saw him shoot you.”

  Sloane grimaced and opened his shirt beneath Tom Molia’s jacket. The detective’s Kevlar vest had stopped the bullet, but the impact had been violent. His chest hurt with each breath. Maybe this was how it felt to be run over by a truck. Sloane had been unable to pierce Madsen’s exterior, to truly know the man, but it had not been necessary. He knew men like Parker Madsen. Madsen didn’t stop to consider for a moment that Sloane might wear a vest, because the general was relying on the psychiatrist’s report in Sloane’s file, the one that said Sloane had suicidal tendencies and was prone to making rash and spontaneous decisions. But what the psychiatrist did not know, what was nowhere to be found in his report, what no one except Sloane and a private first class named Ed Venditti would ever know, was the real reason Sloane took off his flak jacket that day in Grenada. It wasn’t because of the oppressive heat. It wasn’t because of a desire to move faster. And it wasn’t because Sloane had a death wish. Venditti, a twenty-year-old husband and father of two, had, in the rush of combat, left his flak jacket on the helicopter that dropped them into battle. And when he realized what he had done, he looked to Sloane with the same fear that Sloane had seen that night in the faces of Tom Molia’s relatives. It was the fear that they would never see their loved ones again, and the hollow emptiness of worrying that their family, their children, would be forced to go on without them. Sloane had pulled Venditti behind a rock cluster, taken off his own vest, and ordered him to wear it. Sloane didn’t have the same fear of dying and leaving others behind. No one’s life would have changed if he had died that day. After he got hit, Sloane knew the Marine Corps would court-marshal Venditti for his negligence—the military had no leniency for mistakes. Since Sloane had already decided that killing wasn’t for him, being denied officer candidate school was a small price to pay.

  He kissed the top of Tina’s head and smelled the sweetness of her hair, soft against his cheek. “It’s over, Tina. No one is going to hurt you. Not now. Not ever.”

  “What about you, David?” She spoke in a whisper, her head against his chest. “Is it over for you? Did you find what you needed to know?”

  “Not entirely,” he said. “But enough. I found you. I found that I love you and that I can still have a good life if I just keep focusing on that love.”

  “Then just keep focusing on it,” she said, embracing him. “Just keep focusing on it.”

  They looked up at the sound of the helicopter. Sloane shielded her face and raised an arm to block the wind kicking up dirt and disturbing the grass like an oncoming storm. It touched down on the flattop. In the front seat, illuminated in blue by the glow of lights on the instrument panel, but still looking ghostly white, sat Tom Molia.

  86

  THE TWO MEN stood in silence, content for the moment to look out over the water, decompressing after having faced their worst nightmares. The moon and stars glittered on the darkened surface as if a long school of fish were darting just beneath the surface. Sloane was struck by the beauty of nature and by the ugliness of men. In the span of a week this place had been marred with two killings.

  “He could have killed you,” Molia said. “Not exactly the smartest thing for a guy with your apparent IQ.”

  Sloane pressed the handkerchief to his mouth. The impact of the bullet had caused him to bite his tongue, and it continued to bleed. “I knew he’d take a center-mass shot. It’s his training. Madsen couldn’t deviate from his training.”

  Molia turned to him, chuckling. “Bet that gives you a lot of comfort now, huh?”

  Sloane smiled and touched the blossoming red welt on his chest that was already becoming an ugly bruise. “Sorry about your jacket,” he said, fingering a hole in the fabric.

  Molia shrugged. “Never liked that jacket anyway. Maggie’s mother gave it to me. I had to put it on once a year. Thought it made me look fat.”

  Sloane laughed. He’d chosen it for that very reason. Its bulk hid the vest.

  “Besides, it’s Maggie you’re going to have to worry about. She’s going to raise hell. That was her favorite lamp.”

  “Is it anything like when you ruin her pot roast?”

  Molia put a hand on Sloane’s shoulder. “That, my friend, is like comparing a cool summer breeze to a tempest.”

  They turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. Charles Jenkins was as Sloane remembered him: larger than life, though at the moment his arm was in a sling, and his face bandaged and bruised.

  “I’ll wait over by the Jeep,” Molia said. “I’m not letting you leave without me this time, because I sure as shit am not getting on that helicopter again.”

  “But you did it: You faced your fears,” Sloane said.

  “Yeah, well,” Molia said, looking over at the winged beast, “like I said, facing your fears is overrated.”

  Sloane looked up at Charles Jenkins. Two grown men, each with a lot of water under the bridge, forever linked by a single event—one that Sloane had been unwilling to remember, and Jenkins unable to forget. Maybe that would change for both of them now. Or maybe facing one’s fears was overrated, as Tom Molia said.

  “This is where they found him?” Sloane asked.

  Jenkins nodded. “According to the detective, this is it.”

  “You knew him?”

  Jenkins nodded. “Yeah, I knew him.”

  “What kind of man was he?”

  Jenkins looked back out over the water, contemplative. “A good man. A family man. Honorable. The kind of man who’d lay down his life for another if he thought it the right thing to do. If you’re feel
ing guilt, David, don’t. Joe wouldn’t want you to. I’m sure he felt great guilt over the years about what happened to you. We both did. He was just man enough to do something about it. That’s why he kept the file. I struggled for a long time about why he would have, but I understand now. He couldn’t keep you. That would put you in too much danger. And he couldn’t visit you, for the same reason. But he wanted to keep you somehow, so that perhaps someday he might have the chance to find you, and explain to you what had happened and who you are.”

  Sloane felt a tear roll down the side of his face. He understood now that Joe Branick had done just that.

  Jenkins handed Sloane a three-inch-thick file. “You’ll find a note in the front. Joe meant for you to have this. Hopefully it will answer some of your questions.”

  Sloane took the file. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “You sure you want to hear this now?”

  He turned and looked at Charles Jenkins. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to hear it, Mr. Jenkins. But I don’t have a choice. I have no idea who I am.”

  Jenkins knew the feeling. “Maybe we’ll both find out,” he said, and started.

  HE ARRIVED AT dusk, soaking wet from a rainstorm and sweating beneath a heavy wool poncho in the sweltering humidity. He fell in step with a group coming from the west, entered the village, and saw a crowd he quickly estimated to be 700, far larger than they had suspected. He looked for men carrying weapons, but if any of the crowd were soldiers, he could not detect them.