Any Minute Now (3 page)

“We were warned that el-Habib had connections.”

“No fucking kidding.”

Cutler's green eyes seemed to flare. “What did I just tell you? Nothing's going to get settled when you're too hot to handle.”

“Why shouldn't I be hot? It's a fucking miracle we weren't all killed. Not only did Seiran el-Habib's people ambush us inside the compound, but his patrol outside the perimeter knew our exact escape route, and were lying in wait for us. That meant they not only knew the day and time of the raid, but the details of the brief as well. But how could they have known? This is the question that's been eating at me ever since I watched the hellish landscape drop away as the helo took us out of there. There's only one answer. We need to go mole hunting.”

Cutler held up a fistful of black-jacketed files. “Here is everyone who had knowledge of the Seiran el-Habib brief. I've already started vetting them—movements, travel, mobile phone records, bank accounts, family, friends, acquaintances, the whole nine yards.”

“Yeah, well, everyone's already been vetted up and down the yin-yang, so don't forget to look in all the dusty, unremarked corners of their lives.”

Cutler cut across his words. “That includes Orteño and you, hotshot.”

“Maybe it was Sandy.” Whitman's tone hung heavy with sarcasm. “Maybe he was shot on purpose to keep him from blabbing.”

“That's enough.” Cutler put down the files. “We need to move slowly and carefully. NSA and DARPA personnel are involved.”

“Fuck them.” Whitman jumped up, held out his hand, fingers wiggling. “Let me see those files.”

“Were you suddenly elevated to CEO?”

Whitman, looming over the desk, appeared not to hear him. “It's my right. My team—my freaking right.”

“Sit. The. Fuck. Down.”

The two men, engaged in a staring contest, were immobile. The atmosphere in the room turned gelid, as if the clash of their respective wills had sealed them in amber.

Whitman, possibly coming to terms with the futility of his position, finally fell back. “Okay, okay.” Slowly, deliberately, he sat back down.

Cutler, seeming to relax a couple of notches, shook his head. “This is typical of you, Gregory, you know that? I've got very powerful people perched on my shoulder like owls, their claws digging into my flesh. I've got the politics to consider, you don't. It's imperative to think things through clearly and completely.”

“What's to think?” Whitman inched forward until he was on the edge of his chair. “Like other security contractors, we're hired by the NSA. Like other security contractors, we hose the government, but also give them access to services their own people cannot provide. We do the real overseas dirty work for the United States government. But unlike other contractors you have us—or at least you did. We did the real down and dirty work no one would trust even normal contractors to do. But there's nothing normal about what we do; it's the kind of crap that if it ever saw the light of day would surely topple the current administration, no matter how much plausible deniability they believe insulates them from the sewer Red Rover works in on every brief.”

“What is this?” Cutler spread his hands. “A pitch for a raise?”

“Yeah,” Whitman said sourly. “I want Sandy's salary as well as mine.”

The edge of Cutler's hand sliced through the air, cutting through Whitman's sarcasm. “Your job, in case you forgot, is to return Red Rover to operational level. Assemble your team, Gregory. Leave the mole hunting to me.”

The staring contest resumed as if it had never been broken off, while the tension in the room ratcheted up another couple of notches to strangulation level. Cutler's phone rang, but he ignored it. His assistant, Valerie, could be heard briefly outside his door, as she told someone in her not-to-be-brooked tone that the boss could not be disturbed. While inside, the staring match continued unabated.

“Listen, listen,” Cutler said at length, apparently feeling it was his turn to back off. “It's not just Red Rover that's gone to hell in a handbasket, it's the entire world.” His tone had lost its hard edge, was even a touch conciliatory, unusual for Cutler. But then Whitman was his most prized operative. The Red Rover team would have been inconceivable without him. “Do you think you can settle yourself enough to hear what I have to say?”

Whitman didn't reply, but neither did he get up and walk out. Cutler took this as a positive sign, because he continued. “Iraq, Syria, Lebanon—a Devil's triangle. After a decade of fighting overseas, battling Taliban, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda cadres of all stripes and nationalities, after losing men left, right, and center, we are back where we started. Al-Qaeda has retaken Fallujah, where our boys fought them back tooth and nail. For what? Post-American Middle East is worse than ever. A power vacuum has arisen, as all the major players have left the field. In their place a whole host of Islamic jihadists have rushed in, fire-bombing, massacring, destroying whoever does not conform to their particular brand of cruel sectarianism. In both Iraq and Syria, extremists of all stripes have parlayed their foothold into majority stakes.

“And now we have Islamic State to contend with, a terrorist organization so extreme al-Qaeda has distanced itself from them. Does the president give a shit? Doesn't appear so.”

Cutler's hands were restless, roaming over the tops of the files, as if eager to get to work digging deep. “So who are the big fish in this wretched pond? The two who have always stood as the major antagonists: Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. Both countries are fanatical in their own way; the rational concept of coexistence is anathema, let alone an accord. The falling apart is a renewed call to the ancient enmities of clan and sect. It echoes loud and clear across the rubble and the corpses, calling forth battalions of teenagers eager to martyr themselves for the cause of jihad.”

Throughout this speech, which sounded like a history lesson he had already absorbed countless times, Whitman moved from one buttock to another, restless in his barely stifled rage. “Is there a point to all this?”

Now Cutler did glare at him, and Whitman was smart enough to stifle whatever else was about to come out of his mouth.

“The point,” Cutler said, leaning even more forward and interlacing his fingers in a gesture that seemed vaguely ominous, “is this: while you were away at the party the Saudis announced an aid package of French weaponry to the Lebanese, in order to counter the alarming inroads the Shiite Hezbollah has made in that country in recent months.”

“How much was the package?”

Something flickered in Cutler's eyes. “That's the first intelligent thing out of your mouth since you stalked in here.” He sighed. “The answer to your question is three billion dollars.”

“Almost twice the annual Lebanese military budget.” Whitman's eyes narrowed. “But still, that's not gonna get it done for Lebanon. The effect, if any, will take years. Meanwhile, Hezbollah is making mincemeat of the Lebanese army.” He spread his hands. “So, I mean, why bother?”

“It's a shot across our administration's bow,” Cutler said. “The Saudis don't like our new nonintervention policy in Syria, and they're furious over our reaching out to elements inside Iran. If, in fact, the Saudis push the Lebanese army to confront Hezbollah it will blow up the army along sectarian and political lines. The result will plunge the country into utter chaos.”

“And that affects us how?”

“The NSA isn't sure. Last night I was at a briefing with Hemingway, where I was updated. Though the administration is in a muddle over this development, the NSA isn't. Hemingway is extremely concerned. He wants eyes on the ground in Lebanon. Eyes he can trust. He believes the threat posed to America's interests abroad is imminent, and he wants Red Rover in-country ASAP.”

“I told you, boss, there is no Red Rover.”

“Okay, come off the Captain America kick, Gregory. You had a loss. It isn't the first time, it won't be the last.”

“It will, if I have to say anything about it.”

“Be that as it may,” Cutler broke in, clearly enunciating each word, “you will immediately determine Orteño's condition. You will find a new armorer and, if need be, a replacement for Flix. Is that clear?”

Whitman rose. “Any clearer and I could see my reflection in it.”

 

2

Felix Orteño's fear of hospitals dated back to the death of his mother. She had been admitted for an emergency appendectomy, and had been wheeled out by people from the chief medical examiner's office. There ensued three years of trials, appeals, retrials until Orteño's father at last prevailed against both the hospital and the surgeon, thus gaining his pound of flesh. It was not a bargain he relished, though Orteño figured his father must have felt at least the same measure of satisfaction he did. But maybe not: soon after, his father turned to drink. Drunken rages became the norm, and because Flix reminded him of his dead wife, and thus kept his misery burning like a bonfire in his gut, he did whatever he could to drive his son out of the house. Finally, Orteño packed up and took his sister Marilena with him to San Luis Potosí, where his grandmother, Mama Novia, had been born and raised until, at fifteen, she had come across the border, pregnant with their mother. Upon returning to the states eighteen months later, brother and sister discovered their father had shot himself in the head. The suicide drove the siblings even closer together.

The U.S. military was happy to take in the orphan, who enlisted when he was sixteen. He looked older and he altered his birth certificate to make his ruse complete. He took to training and war like a duck to water. For the first time, he felt alive, as if he were making a difference he could see and feel each day. All the money he received he gave to Marilena, who was pregnant. The father, who should have provided for them, was something of a deadbeat.

Orteño never felt more alive than when he was in-country, in the thick of it in Iraq and, later, Afghanistan, where he came into contact with one of Cutler's people, who recommended him to his boss. If Flix liked being part of the military, he loved working for Universal Security Associates. Snafus were kept to a minimum and red tape was virtually nonexistent. Best of all, he never again had to deal with idiot officers impeding his way like so many clowns exiting a Volkswagen Beetle.

He had joined Red Rover five years ago, handpicked, as Sandofur had been, by Whitman. From the first, he fit right in. He was fearless rather than reckless, his skills were splendid, and, best of all, he lived to stick it to America's enemies. Though he was Mexican by heritage, he bled red, white, and blue. Born and raised in the San Antonio area, he spoke like a Texan, but thought like a Mexican. Neither Whitman nor Sandofur had thought less of him for it.

He was sitting up in bed, watching a football game on TV when Whitman entered his room. An IV was stuck in the crook of his left elbow. His heart rate, oxygen intake, and blood pressure were being electronically monitored.

“Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes.”

“How you feeling, señor?” Whitman dragged a chair to the side of the bed. Personally, he hated when people loomed over you while you were flat on your back and in pain. Bad enough the doctors and nurses did it.

“Good news! The doc says I'll be able to play the piano,” Flix said.

“Yeah? You couldn't play it for shit before.”

The two men laughed as only comrades who have shared real danger can.

“But seriously,” Whitman said when they'd had their fun.

“What can I tell you? It only hurts when I shrug.”

“Not so bad, right?”

Instead of answering, Flix pointed to the shallow wardrobe against one wall. “My wallet's in the back right pocket.”

Whitman crossed to the wardrobe, fetched Flix's wallet, brought it back to him. Opening it, Flix took out a photo, showed it to Whitman.

“Beautiful girl,” Whitman said. “Who is she?”

“Lucy. My niece.”

“I didn't know you had a niece.”

“I don't,” Flix said. “At least not now I don't.” He took the photo back, stared down at it, his eyes growing dark with painful memory. Being shot, lying here immobile had made him contemplate his own mortality. He had needed something to combat that. Showing what had been hidden to Whit now somehow helped dispel his morbid thoughts. “She left home, ran away when she was fifteen. Before I knew you. This was taken a week before she disappeared. It was the one we showed around, the one I took with me when I searched for her.”

“You never found her?”

“Far, far away,
compadre
, you get me?”

Whitman nodded. “She didn't want to be found.”

“You'd have liked her. She was smart, feisty, lawless … Shit.”

“Don't talk about her as if she's dead, Flix.”

“Why the fuck not? She's been dead to me and my sister for years.” He glanced up briefly, but it was clear that taking his gaze from her photo for even a moment caused him pain. “Why'd she do it? I wish I knew. I wish she were here now. I wish she weren't dead. Family, you know?”

Whitman nodded again, touched his friend's hand. “Family's a bear.”

Flix, smiling faintly, finally put Lucy's photo back in his wallet, lay the wallet in his lap.

Whitman, figuring it was time to change the subject, held up a metal-jacketed file. “I took the opportunity of liberating your chart from the nurses' station.”

“Fuck you.” Nevertheless, he leaned forward in anticipation.

Whitman flicked it open, scanned the pages. “Blah, blah, blah. Yadda, yadda, yadda.” He slammed the chart closed. “Another couple of days here, then they'll ship you down to PT. You'll be good to go in a week.”

“A week is a year in this place. Listen, be a pal. Get me the fuck outta here now.”