William Christie 02 - Mercy Mission

by William Christie

  Nelson bounded back into the room carrying a framed three-and-a-half-by-five photograph. He handed it to Scanlan, and she burst into laughter. Welsh looked over her shoulder and groaned. The photo had been taken at night. The flash captured several Marine Corps second lieutenants, wearing full dress blue uniforms, in the process of urinating on a large granite stone inscribed: Camp Barrett, The Basic School Albertson was among them. Rich Welsh was the solitary figure perched unsteadily atop the stone, straining to direct his stream away from the surrounding throng.

  "It was after a mess night or something," said Nelson. "I think we were a little drunk."

  "I fly here for this guy's wedding," said Welsh. "I'd never met Donna. So I get here, and whenever I'm introduced to her friends and family, the first thing everyone says is: 'Oh, you're the guy in the picture!' Couldn't ask for a better first impression."

  "It was the only snap I had that showed the real you," Nelson said innocently.

  "I don't suppose this sort of behavior was encouraged," Scanlan said between giggles.

  "If they'd heard about it, they would have thrown the book at us," said Albertson.

  "They wouldn't have thrown it at us," said Welsh. "They'd have beaten us to death with it."

  Scanlan was still studying the picture.

  "It was a cold night," Nelson said defensively.

  "That's our story," said Welsh. "And we're sticking to it. The guy shows this picture to everyone, and I still haven't gotten a wedding photo from him."

  "You haven't sent Rich a wedding picture yet?" Donna said to Nelson.

  Welsh smiled at Nelson's guilty expression.

  "I've been meaning to get around to it," Nelson sputtered. "I wouldn't think he wanted one—we both look drunk in every frame."

  "The fact that we were drunk probably accounts for mat," Welsh replied.

  "Well, what was there to do in that hotel room all day except drink beer and watch USC lose at football?" said Nelson, the loyal alumnus.

  "The best man," Donna said to Scanlan, aiming her thumb at Welsh. "Nelson's exaggerating their condition. It was probably better he was a little tranquilized anyway."

  "He kept trying to make a move for the door," Welsh volunteered. "But Donna wouldn't go for the fake."

  Scanlan yawned abruptly.

  "I guess you had to be there," Welsh said to Nelson.

  "You're boring her," Albertson said. "You've always had that problem with women."

  "No, you're not," Scanlan insisted, blushing. "I'm just so tired."

  "Why don't you get some sleep?" said Welsh. "Nelson and I have to get caught up."

  "I'll get you some bedding," said Donna. She and Scanlan went off.

  Nelson and Welsh took their beers into the spare bedroom, which had no bed. One wall was occupied by a machine that wrapped guides on fishing-rod blanks. Nelson was an artist whose métier was custom-fishing-rod design. Another wall held a desk and computer. The third wall was all fishing rods and graphite blanks. The rest of the space in the room was taken up by fishing, hunting, and camping gear, and cardboard boxes.

  "She's really something," Albertson said.

  "No, she's not," said Welsh. "She's incredible."

  Albertson gave him an appraising look, and then began to pantomime landing a large fish on a rod and reel, even providing the whirring sound effect of the line running out. "He's hooked!" he called over his shoulder to an unseen crew. "They said no one could do it, but he's hooked!"

  Welsh turned bright red, and looked into the doorway to see if Scanlan had heard. "Quiet there, you."

  "Just like a mackerel," Albertson sang.

  "I'll smack you one," Welsh warned halfheartedly.

  "There's just one thing I can't get a handle on," Albertson said with a grin. "Are you trying to say that she was better than me in the bush?"

  Welsh started laughing again. "You never would have made it, old buddy. We didn't have jungle hammocks, Top Ramen noodles, or one of those little backpacker espresso machines."

  "I've actually got one of those around here someplace."

  "I'm sure you do. Actually, to be fair, you making it through the jungle wouldn't have been the problem. A day or two of listening to you bellyache about the conditions and I would've had to shoot you."

  "Oh, now that really hurts." Albertson turned serious. "Speaking of shooting, you want a piece?"

  Welsh smiled. "Are you sure you can spare one?" It had taken both of them several trips to move just a small portion of Albertson's personal collection of rifles, pistols, and shotguns into the Basic School armory.

  "Well, maybe one."

  "No, thanks, pal. The way things have been going I might have to use it, and I wouldn't want the serial number coming back to you."

  "It won't."

  "You've got something unregistered?"

  "Gun-show piece. A 1911."

  "You can never have enough .45's," said Welsh. It was the answer Nelson had given years before, when another Marine, looking through the collection, had asked why anyone would need more than one Model 1911A1 automatic pistol. "But unregistered?"

  "In L.A. criminals might as well be an endangered species. They catch you shooting one and you have to spend every dollar you'll ever make on lawyers."

  "You've always been broad-minded," Welsh observed. "But I will take you up on it."

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Welsh woke up, and the moonlight was shining through the sliding glass windows to the balcony. Scanlan was snoring quietly on the smaller couch, diagonal to the one he was lying on. Penny the cat was sitting attentively on the coffee table, no doubt waiting for him to fall deeper asleep and then curl up on his face.

  Welsh eased himself off the couch and tiptoed to the bathroom. Long time between beers. It was the second bathroom in the apartment, across the hall from Nelson and Donna's bedroom. A half bath, but only because the tub was being used as an overflow storage area. Not wanting to wake himself up, Welsh shut the door and prepared to take care of business by the small night light.

  He'd just begun when something shot by his legs, crashed into the closed door, and began to howl.

  If he'd been a little more awake Welsh would have pissed all over himself and the bathroom. It was Nickels, the neurotic cat. With characteristic intelligence, it had picked a rarely used location like the bathroom to hide in. Now, trapped inside with Welsh, the hysterical beast was howling like a mountain lion and trying to claw its way through the door.

  The whole apartment building was going to be up in a second. Welsh was in mid-stream; it was no time for sudden movement. He couldn't reach the door. And throwing something would only make it worse. "Shut up!" he hissed. "Shut the fuck up!"

  That only made Nickels howl louder and tear at the door like a demented weed-whacker. The noise was unbelievable; Welsh had never heard anything like it. He was finally able to stop, lunge across the room, and wrench the door open. Moving deceptively fast for its size, Nickels shot out before Welsh could launch the kick he'd been thinking about.

  Welsh stuck his head out, expecting to see Maggie, Nelson, and Donna arrayed before him in the hall, demanding an explanation. But the hall was empty. He went back in the bathroom and sat down, seriously stressed out. Fucking cats. They did it just to screw with him.

  He told the story in the morning and got a big laugh.

  Donna went to work. Welsh and Nelson left on errands; Scanlan settled down to watch TV. The two men returned with shopping bags. Nelson changed into his pilot's uniform, kissed Scanlan, shook hands with Welsh, and left again.

  Welsh broke open the packages of new flash drives and began setting up the laptop to make copies.

  "You've got some friends," Scanlan said.

  "Marine Corps buddies. Most people never know if their friends are really going to be there for them when it's needed. In the military you do dangerous stuff all the time, and you find out about people pretty quick. If I was in a Guatemalan prison, one day the wall would blow in
and the boys would be standing there, looking at their watches, going, 'Hey, Rich, any day.' And I'd do the same for them."

  "I don't have any friends like that."

  "Yes, you do," said Welsh.

  The next thing he knew he was being pinned to the floor and kissed. He almost passed out before she let him get some air.

  When the embrace ended, Scanlan took charge of the copying while Welsh fired up the Albertsons' computer and composed a memorandum to go along with the recordings.

  Scanlan came in the spare bedroom while he was working. "Just listening to these thugs is making me sick," she said. "I'm trying to figure out the Marine who did the taping, Corporal Richardson."

  "Don't bother," said Welsh. "Something like this, it's hard enough to figure out what happened, let alone why."

  "But that's what I want," Scanlan said, in a fake whiny voice.

  "Everyone wants to know why someone does something. The truth is, people do what they want to do, and only after do they sit down and think up a reason, or an excuse. Why did Corporal Richardson get involved with the Guatemalans? Because he was typical for the age in having no sense of right and wrong? Because of his father? Was he just another innocent abroad? Or did he just want to?"

  "Like my brother."

  "Richardson wasn't trying to help anyone but himself. He fell in with the sharks, thought he was smart enough to run his own game on them, and they had him for breakfast."

  "What are your motives for doing all this, Rich?"

  "Not to die of a well-deserved heart attack after forty uneventful years behind a desk."

  "That doesn't sound like the real reason."

  "There you go," said Welsh.

  Scanlan smiled and shook her head. "I wonder how much money it took to buy him."

  "Richardson? Booker said it was a nice piece of change. You know, Maggie, the one thing they didn't do was try to get me to take a payoff. I wonder why."

  "In Guatemala their first instinct is always to kill you. It's a lot cheaper too. By the way, after we get done with the taping, how are we going to overcome our cash problem and get out of here?"

  "I'm just going to say what's on my mind right now," Welsh told her. "I have to get back to Washington to finish this and see what's hanging over our heads from Guatemala. I'd really love to have you come along; I think we've got the beginning of a beautiful friendship here. But if you want to head back home and close out this portion of your life, I understand. No hard feelings."

  Scanlan was waving her hand like a propeller, as if trying to find the words she needed. "Do you always just…"

  "Yeah," Welsh replied, nodding. "I say how I feel about something, you say how you feel, and we try to find some common ground. Saves a lot of misunderstanding. And hopefully no one ends up feeling resentful, the way we would if we were silently working off different assumptions."

  "You're a very strange guy, Rich."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "I want to go to Washington with you. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship too—Louis."

  Welsh leaned over and kissed her. "You have no idea how much it turns me on when you quote from Casablanca. And now that we're across the border, the rules have changed. If you buy an airline ticket with cash, whoever sold it to you turns you in to the nearest anti-terrorism task force to collect the reward. You also have to show ID to get on a plane. So we can use our credit and ATM cards. We just have to get out of town as soon as we do."

  "Great, I'll pay for the plane tickets."

  "That's right, you are a millionaire, aren't you?"

  "Yes," said Scanlan. He was staring at her. "What?"

  "If it's at all possible," he said, voice low and mock-romantic, gazing deeply into her eyes, "you've become even more gorgeous since you reminded me of that."

  Scanlan's mouth dropped open. Welsh rolled off the chair onto the carpet, shaking with laughter. She leaped on him and began pummeling him. Welsh covered up and rode it out, and soon they were both weak from laughter.

  The copies of the recordings were just good tactics. Welsh kept the originals and mailed the copies and explanatory memorandum to the home of Supervisory Special Agent James MacNeil of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  "Another buddy of yours?" Scanlan inquired.

  "Sort of," said Welsh. "It's every career-minded bureaucrat's worst nightmare to regularly have to do business with a non-career-minded loose cannon. A bastard like that is liable to do anything, guaranteed to get you in trouble sooner or later. To MacNeil, I am that bastard."

  "All right," Scanlan said slowly.

  "He's also a pro. And the FBI has never had any qualms about jamming it to the CIA."

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The plane landed in Philadelphia on a Friday afternoon. A light rain was falling, and the sky was an angry pewter. They were shivering as soon as they stepped out of the terminal.

  "Good grief," Scanlan moaned, digging in her suitcase for a sweater. "My blood must have gotten thin."

  Welsh had his collar up and his hands in his pockets. "Not very inviting, is it?"

  "Whatever you do, don't bring up omens again."

  Just like San Ignacio and the bus stations in Belize City, Washington, D.C., was where the Guatemalans would expect Welsh to eventually show up. If they hadn't abandoned the chase. But it would be reckless to assume they hadn't. So Dulles and National Airports, and Union Station, were out as arrival points.

  The rental car was waiting for them. Before they started driving, Welsh removed Nelson Albertson's parting gift from the bag he'd checked at LAX to keep from having it X-rayed. It was a Springfield Arms version of the Model 1911A1 .45 automatic pistol.

  The pistol had Nelson's firearms-loving touches all over it. The feed ramp and barrel throat were polished. The trigger was set at about 4.5 pounds, and smooth as silk.

  Nelson had included three top-of-the-line Wilson eight-round magazines, a concealment holster for the pistol and double pouch for the magazines, and two boxes of Remington Golden Saber hollow-point ammunition. Nelson probably had a storage locker full of it.

  As they turned onto Route 95 South, the pistol was riding on Welsh's hip in Condition One: a round in the chamber, hammer fully cocked, and the thumb safety engaged. He was going to be keeping his jacket on.

  Almost every national chain motel was clustered around the Springfield Mall in Springfield, Virginia. How to pay for a room by credit card and not be registered under that name? Scanlan paid for the room. Her husband was going to be getting a lot of business calls. Could they put his name on the room? As long as they had an approved credit card slip, the motel didn't care. Scanlan made up a name.

  Once they got up to the room, Welsh laid out his plans.

  "I understand you wanting to cache the recordings in a safe place," she said. "Am I coming along, or do you still not trust me?"

  Ah, a test, Welsh thought. "You can come along and hold the flashlight, or you can stay here and watch TV and when I get back I'll tell you where I put them."

  The cloud passed away from her face and the sun came out. Then she thought about it. "You're going to bury the recordings in the woods?"

  "Yup."

  "I'm all wooded out. I'll hold down the fort here."

  "Whatever," said Welsh.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Welsh had chosen the motel because it was laid out so that guests didn't have to go through the lobby, as long as they had a plastic key card. On his way back to the room, up the first-floor stairway, he ran into a maintenance man coming out of a storage closet. He said hello as they passed, but the guy said, "Hey, wait a minute." Puzzled, Welsh stopped.

  "The cops were looking for you," the maintenance man said quietly.

  Stunned, Welsh demanded, "What was that?"

  "They had your picture, man. Be careful." The maintenance man continued down the stairs.

  Welsh's stomach clenched up. He quickly put the "how" out of his mind and started concentrat
ing on what to do. He'd be lucky if they were really cops. He had to get up to the room, get Maggie, and get the hell out of there.

  "Oh, fuck!" Welsh muttered fiercely. He drew the .45 and held it at his side, under the edge of his jacket. Then, very carefully, he started up the stairs.

  The hallway of his floor was empty. Welsh had the key card in his left hand; the pistol stayed in his right. He went down the hall quickly, turning and looking.

  When nothing happened he allowed himself an optimistic thought. Maybe they didn't want another firefight in a hotel, and were waiting for the two of them to come outside together. If that were the case, he and Scanlan could barricade themselves in the room and call the FBI to get them out.

  Welsh reached the room. He wasn't going to duplicate the mistake those two guys in Santa Elena made. He'd go in fast; Maggie was young, her heart could take it. Don't stand in front of that door when you open it, he told himself. Wood didn't stop bullets very well.

  When he slipped the key card into the lock Welsh heard a muffled female scream that was immediately cut off. He pushed the door open and dropped to one knee: They wouldn't be looking low. With the frame protecting his body, he exposed just one eye and the .45 into the doorway. Then across the hall a door swung open very fast. Welsh whirled, there was a loud hollow pop, and an unbelievably powerful blow hit him in the side, took him clean off his feet, and threw him against the wall. He blacked out.

  Chapter Forty

  Welsh came to in a haze. His head felt thick and congested. His mouth was tacky and parched, and he knew he'd been drugged. As his senses slowly cleared, he felt himself sitting in a chair, and without any clothes on. His arms were secured behind his back with what he thought were handcuffs. His ankles were fastened to the legs of the chair. Voices behind him were speaking Spanish.

  The terror came on like a wave of sickness, and he had to consciously tighten his muscles to keep his sphincter from opening. It took every bit of concentration to regain control. Welsh opened his eyes a slit to try and see where he was, and was shocked to find himself in his own apartment. He wondered how they'd gotten him in, then saw the answer: a hand truck and a large cardboard box with the name of an appliance manufacturer on the side.