All the Wrong Moves

by Lovelace, Merline

  When I did present the print, everyone went nuts over its clarity. So much so that both the FBI and CID wanted full access to all data downloaded from EEEK.

  I wasn’t precisely sure about Harrison Robotics’s proprietary rights or DARPA’s policy vis-à-vis handing over test data but I was kinda out-gunned here. I resorted to a stall to give me time to discuss the matter with All Bent and my supervisor.

  “My guys are processing the data as we speak. We’re talking hundreds of millions of gigabytes. I’ll make it available as soon as it’s downloaded.”

  When the cop party broke up a short time later, I decided on one more shot of tequila. I took it at the bar and ordered a bowl of Pancho’s green chili stew as a chaser.

  Now, don’t go all preachy and judgmental on me. I know my limit. I won’t tell you what it is, but suffice it to say that with a family history like mine it’s a sure bet I don’t overindulge in hard liquor. Right now, though, I wasn’t particularly eager to head back to CHU-ville and another night punctuated by Pen’s equine whistles.

  I was nursing the tequila when the two Border Patrol agents delayed their departure to join me at the bar for a few moments. I’d already had a taste of Jeff Mitchell’s bluntness. Still, the look he lasered in my direction caught me as unprepared as his question.

  “What do you know about the Marine Corps detachment on Fort Bliss?”

  “The detachment? Nada.”

  Interesting how many emotions an elevated eyebrow can convey. Particularly when it hikes up over a penetrating, cut-the-crap stare.

  “I saw your reaction when the subject came up.”

  “What reaction?”

  “You squirreled on your chair like someone just hauled into hard secondary for questioning.”

  Hard secondary being the containment area at border crossings where suspicious characters are taken for further questioning. Having made several jaunts across the Rio Grande to sample the ubiquitous delights of Juárez, I’m a little surprised I have yet to visit the holding pen. I’ve seen a few folks hauled off, though, and squirrel they did.

  “What was that about, Samantha?”

  “Nothing subversive,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “I went out with one of instructors from the school a few months back.”

  Agent Mitchell, it turned out, was more interested in my connections than my currently nonexistent love life. “You’ve got an in at the school? Someone who might talk to you?” he persisted, those gold-green eyes drilling into me.

  “Well . . .”

  “Call him. Set up a meeting asap.”

  Now, I’m only a brown bar. That’s second lieutenant, in civilian speak. Just about every commissioned officer in every branch of the military outranks me. Including, I was surprised to learn, the uniformed officers of the Coast Guard, the Public Health Service and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

  I’ve heard of the Coast Guard, of course, and know the PHS runs the Indian Clinic in El Paso. Don’t quiz me on NOAA, though. I think they’re hurricane hunters or space cadets or something.

  The point I’m laboring to make here is that the U.S. Border Patrol is nowhere in my chain of command. Even if it was, I’ve already confessed I haven’t completely mastered the art of taking orders. So of course I bristled and came within a breath of telling Agent Mitchell to go take a flying leap. He spiked my guns with a terse addendum.

  “Make the meeting off-post.”

  I deflated like the NASDAQ after another sharp spike in crude oil prices.

  “Why off-post? And why,” I wanted to know, “the end run around Mr. Comb-Over?”

  “Who?”

  I jerked my chin toward the now empty back room. “Special Agent Hurst.”

  Tess Garcia smothered a sound suspiciously close to a chuckle. Mitchell merely shrugged.

  “I’ve worked with Andy Hurst before. Or tried to. He tends to view inter-governmental cooperation as a one-way street.”

  “Yeah, I got that impression.”

  I nursed my grudge against Hurst and his notebook until Mitchell abandoned Tess and me for the men’s room. Swinging around on my barstool, I followed his progress.

  I’ll say this for the man. He exhibits all the personality of a warthog at times but he does have one fine butt. When I swung back around, Tess Garcia was watching me with speculative eyes.

  “What?” I asked, feigning an air of innocence that wouldn’t fool a five-year-old, much less a highly trained and heavily armed Border Patrol agent.

  She tapped an unpolished fingernail against her beer bottle, obviously weighing how much to share with an outsider. I was about to check my uniform for a hammer and sickle again when she finally responded.

  “You want to be careful there. Mitch hit a rough patch a few years ago. He’s still working his way back.”

  I’ve seen what rough patches can do to folks. Particularly the dysfunctional whiners and winos I call family. I was giving Agent Mitchell credit for dragging himself out of whatever pit he’d fallen into when I flipped up my cell phone and scrolled through the contacts.

  I’d thought about deleting USMC Captain Danny Jordan from my call list after our one weekend together. He’s hot. Extremely hot. But he’s way too gung ho for a non-lifer like me. I mean, he has his skivies laundered and pressed!

  Yo! This is Dan Jordan. Leave a message. Beeeeeeeep.

  “Dan-O, this is Samantha Spade. I need to talk to you. Give me a call when you get this . . .”

  “Heya, Sweet Cheeks. Long time no see.”

  Or speak. Or touch. Or swallow each other’s tongues.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can you break away tomorrow? I’d like to talk to you.”

  A wary note crept into his voice. “What about?”

  I’d heard that tone before. From my ex, when I wanted to discuss our relationship.

  “It’s not about us,” I informed him.

  “Good to know.” His relief was palpable, which says a lot about Dan the Man. “So what’s this about?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow. How about lunch? Twelve o’clock at the Smokehouse.”

  “Can do. See you then.”

  I flipped the cell phone shut just as Mitchell returned.

  “We’re set,” I informed him. “Noon tomorrow, at the Smokehouse.”

  “Good. Pick me up at the Ysleta Border Patrol Station. Eleven-thirty.”

  “You know,” I said with some feeling, “it might be nice if you asked sometime instead of just dictating.”

  A look of genuine confusion crossed his face. He glanced at Tess, who offered only a bland smile. The light dawned eventually, and he repeated the order/request with exaggerated politeness.

  “Pick me up at the Ysleta Station. Eleven-thirty. Please.”

  I gave him my most brilliant smile. “Will do.”

  Blithely unaware I had just put the lives of my entire team on the line, I settled in to enjoy my green chili stew and shoot the breeze with Pancho.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I drove back to the test site with the late August twilight coming on fast. The Franklin Mountains were a jagged purple smudge in the distance. Night-blooming cacti were getting ready to burst into showy white blossoms on either side of the two-lane road.

  By this time of day, most of the roadkill had been either flattened or picked clean by buzzards so I didn’t have to dodge too many bloated armadillos. I kept a wary eye out for mule deer, though. I’d missed one by a twitch of his tail a few months back.

  When I arrived at the site, the temperature had plummeted from a sole-searing one hundred eight to ninety-six or seven. My internal thermometer rocketed up again, however, when I saw EEEK still outside, pretty much where he’d been unloaded this morning.

  Scowling, I marched to the only CHU with lights showing. A blast of refrigerated air hit me when I opened the door to our D-fac. ’Scuse me. That’s dining facility, which in this case includes a microwave, a coffeemaker, a fridge, a table and f
our chairs. Crowded into the other half of the CHU was a sofa, a couple of chairs and a TV with a satellite dish. Oh, yeah, and the Universal Gym.

  Sergeant Cassidy was on the bench, clanking away. Pen had her shoulders hunched and earbuds stuffed in her ears while she listened to yet another incomprehensible treatise on supernovas or the mating habits of blowfish or something.

  Brian Balboa and Dennis O’Reilly sat at the table, the remains of a microwaved pizza between them and their laptops open. Rocky, I didn’t doubt, was studying the specs on the next item we were supposed to test. Our little twitch of an engineer is as dedicated as he is gaseous. O’Reilly was deep into a computer chess match. I saw an animated knight put a king in check and shut the door with an irritated thud.

  “Hey, guys. What’s the idea of leaving EEEK out where the gophers can nibble on his circuitry?”

  O’Reilly kept his eyes glued to his laptop screen. Cassidy clanked away. Pen hadn’t even heard me come in. It was left to Rocky to explain.

  “We discussed the matter and everyone agreed. Scraping human remains off test equipment isn’t included in our job descriptions.”

  “It’s not in mine, either.” I huffed, although my scant months as a team leader had taught me that argument was totally bogus. Being in charge has its perks, most of which I’ve yet to experience. It also has a definite downside. Whatever idiot coined the cliché about the buck stopping here obviously never worked with my team.

  “Where’s All Bent?” I asked in a desperate attempt to fob EEEK off on the Harrison Robotics rep.

  “He packed up and left right after you took off for Dry Springs.”

  I guess I should have expected that. The man had hit the ground like a dead buffalo.

  Still . . .

  “Benson reminded us that DARPA assumed full responsibility for EEEK when you signed for him,” O’Reilly put in without looking up from his chess match. “He’s your baby until you complete the required tests, oh Queen of Quack Inventors.”

  I knew that.

  Still . . .

  I resorted to bribery and offered comp time for any civilian who volunteered for clean-up duty. When that pathetic stratagem didn’t work, I fell back on the old standby of whining. My team remained unmoved.

  That’s the thing about working with highly educated civilians. They know their rights, darn it.

  Heaving a long-suffering sigh, I pulled rank on the only other military member of FST-3. Sergeant Cassidy at least was obligated by law to follow the orders of the officers appointed over him.

  “Noel! Front and center!”

  I tried to bark the command like a crusty old veteran but it came out sounding cranky and petulant even to me.

  “My psychiatrist isn’t gonna like this,” he grumbled as he disengaged from the steel cage of the gym.

  Cassidy’s delicate mental state was the least of my concerns at the moment. I was more worried about EEEK’s residual stink.

  “We’ll need something to block the smell.”

  While I glanced around the CHU, Cassidy solved the problem for himself by dragging off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and draping it around the lower half of his face.

  I was too grossed out to admire the body-builder torso thus revealed. Although it did make me wonder if your own sweat smelled as rank to you as it did to everyone else. Something to ask Pen about, I decided. Later.

  I retreated to the CHU I shared with her to fashion my own face mask out of a T-shirt liberally laced with Chanel No. 5.

  I’d splurged on the perfume in a moment of sheer madness. I could have trotted across the border and bought a cheap imitation but, no, I had to hit the Post Exchange and shell out mega-bucks for the real thing. Sucker that I am, I actually believed the woman at the counter when she quoted Marilyn Monroe’s famous line. The one where MM claimed all she wore to bed was two drops of Chanel No. 5. I figured what the heck. If it worked for her . . .

  Wish I could tell you it worked for me. The few times I’ve squirted on the stuff out here in West Texas, all I’ve attracted is swarms of gnats.

  A few bugs were infinitely preferable to EEEK’s eau de corpse, however. Tying on the makeshift mask, I grabbed my toothbrush and the spray bottle of disinfectant Pen insisted on washing our sink and toilet with twice a day. Pure spite made me grab her toothbrush as well.

  Sergeant Cassidy and I regrouped outside the lab and went to work. We made quite a pair. Two trained warriors on our knees in the dirt, our faces muffled by perfume-and-sweat soaked T-shirts, cleaning an expensive piece of equipment with toothbrushes by the light of the moon and a strategically positioned Super Brite.

  Happy I was not. For this I had turned in my ruffled panties? For this I’d abandoned the bright lights and big tippers in Vegas?

  Noel wasn’t any more pleased with his demotion from Special Ops to toothbrush wielder. He alternated between glowering at me, at EEEK, at me again.

  Our foul mood lightened a little when Rocky broke down and joined us. He’d swathed his entire head in a bath towel. Peering through a narrow slit in the folds, he knelt beside Noel. I sent a silent prayer winging heavenward that he wouldn’t add to our discomfort by cutting loose with one of his world-class bloopers.

  Guilt or shame or the end of his chess match brought O’Reilly out a few moments later. Our resident nerd wasn’t about to pick up a toothbrush but he did condescend to hold the high-beam flashlight at a better angle.

  Pen was the last to emerge. Tugging off her ear buds, she scanned the scene with a puzzled expression.

  “What’s going on?”

  “They’re digging for clams,” O’Reilly drawled.

  Sarcasm bounces off Dr. Penelope England like bullets off Superman’s chest.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Bivalve mollusks haven’t inhabited this region since the Permian-Triassic period more than two hundred and fifty million years ago.”

  Tch-tching, she poked around in her lopsided bun for a pointy object and joined our little work party.

  I was feeling marginally more charitable toward my team when we finished with EEEK. Despite our meticulous scrub-down, though, he was still too ripe for the lab.

  After much discussion we decided to tuck him back in his shipping container and stash him in the storage shed where we usually parked our ATVs. As I screwed down the lid I could swear I detected a look on his computerized face that promised dire retribution for the day’s indignities.

  WE made the news the next morning. Not me personally. My two dead acquaintances.

  I was identified only as a “military officer conducting tests on an isolated section of Fort Bliss’s range.” That kind of miffed me. You’d think I would have earned at least a few seconds of notoriety.

  I got over my snit real fast, though, when one news spot showed Sheriff Alexander with about a hundred microphones shoved in his face. He answered several queries in his laconic West Texas drawl but let Paul Donati speak for the FBI and do most of the talking.

  The big story was Patrick Hooker, of course. His remains had been positively ID’ed using dental records, although back-up DNA testing was in the works. The media coverage cut between his shell-shocked parents in Michigan and the sleazoid attorney who’d sprung Hooker from pre-trial confinement.

  Naturally the lawyer claimed his client had never brokered stolen arms, much less been present at the shoot-out where U.S. and Colombian troops died. Neither the FBI nor Sheriff Alexander would release the exact details of Hooker’s demise, saying only that the investigation was still ongoing.

  I watched the coverage for a while, checked on EEEK in his container and decided to leave him in situ while my team downloaded the rest of his data.

  They were still hard at it when I drove into El Paso for my meeting with Mitch and Danny Jordan. I dressed up for the occasion in a fresh set of ABUs. Nothing like boots, baggy pants and a blouse with more flaps than a 747 to make a girl feel really special.

  My first stop was the Ysleta Border Patrol Station. The
station is a cluster of buildings in what used to be a primarily agricultural area that had gotten caught up in El Paso’s urban sprawl. The fenced yard was large enough to house a fleet of vehicles, most of which were out on patrol at the moment. The yard also contained a maintenance depot and a nondescript administrative building where the agents stood muster prior to going on shift.

  The Border Patrol’s primary mission used to be to deter illegals and smugglers. After 9/11, priority shifted to apprehending terrorists attempting to enter the U.S. Hence Mitch’s direct involvement in the Patrick Hooker case. That much I knew.

  What I didn’t know was the staggering statistics that smacked me in the face after I showed my ID and was asked to wait in the reception area.

  A Hot Sheet pinned to the bulletin board indicated that on a typical day, Customs and Border Patrol personnel process some 1.13 million passengers and pedestrians entering the U.S.; 70,000 truck, rail and sea containers; and $88 million in fees, duties and tariffs. They also apprehend 2,400 folks and seize more than 7,000 pounds of narcotics. Daily!

  I was multiplying 7,000 by 365 in my head and not liking the result when Mitch appeared. He was also in uniform but his bristled with its usual twenty pounds of communications and weapons gear. Despite the assorted weaponry, he looked darned good.

  Warning sirens went off in my head and I launched into my mantra.

  Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!

  “Sorry you had to wait.”

  The chant wasn’t working so I gave it up and returned his smile. “No problem.”

  “I was going to give you the two-dollar tour. Maybe when we come back.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We walked out to my twelve-year-old Bronco, which earned a disbelieving grunt from Agent Mitchell. Brow cocked, he conducted a walk-around.

  “What did you do? Drive off the side of a cliff?”