Friendly Fire (12 page)

“I assume it was for sex.”

She looked up, momentarily confused. “No, that's not what I meant. What happened that made you think they were sold?”

“Oh. Every now and then, the trap door in the ceiling would open, and one of them—usually it was Bill—would stick his head down and call for the other boys to come upstairs.”

“But not you?”

Ethan shook his head. “No. From the very beginning, they said that they had somebody special in mind for me. I have no idea what that meant. Looking back, I figure I was somehow a perfect match for a specific customer. Jesus, those guys were disgusting.” He didn't realize that he was crying until he sniffed.

“Are you okay to go on?” Wendy asked.

“I'm good if you are,” he said. “This is the part where all you shrink types start getting squirmy. Don't worry, I won't go into the gory details.”

“You can go into as much detail as you're comfortable with.”

Ethan suppressed a smirk. Honestly, head doctors were as predictable as sunrises. They put the aggression in passive-aggressiveness. “So the kids would climb up the ladder—hop, actually, because they kept our feet cuffed, and then I wouldn't see them again. In one case, two of them went up but only one of them came back. He told me that there was an Asian guy up there who looked them both over, and then picked the other one. The one they didn't choose was sent back into the hole. He was gone for a long time, though, and when he came back, he didn't say anything. He sat on the opposite side and cried.” Ethan waited to see if Dr. Wendy could read between the lines, or if she would ask the obvious. Her silence won her some points.

“The others, when they went up, they were by themselves, and I never saw them again. It's a shame that the last one—I do remember his name now, it was Pierre, such a weird name—disappeared maybe half a day before I was rescued. Just a few hours.”

Ethan watched as Wendy wrote more notes. He waited for her nod before he picked up the story again.

“Tell me what happened to Joey,” she said.

It was both the best and worst memory of the entire nightmare.

* * *

Ethan couldn't do this again. He
wouldn't
do this again. Joey hadn't taken two steps forward when Ethan launched a shriek from his throat. It was a girly sound, high-pitched and impossibly loud in this small a space. He didn't speak any words. It was just noise, the sound of panic and disgust and hate and pain.

Someone yelled, “Hands, hands, hands!” and then there was a rapid series of gunshots.
Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang.
Bursts of three in less than a second.

The air filled with cussing, yelling. “Hands!”
Bang-bang-bang.

BANG!

* * *

“And I couldn't answer him,” Ethan said. “I just started to sob.” As he was about to do again right now. “It was over. I still couldn't see anything, but the big one slung me over his shoulder like a sack and he carried me up the ladder. He wore all of this equipment. Like a soldier. The stuff on him—ammunition and shit—all dug into me and I remember complaining about that. He told me that it wouldn't be much longer.”

“What did he look like?” Wendy asked.

“I told you. He was big. And I mean
huge
. And he was dressed like a soldier, only all in black. He had night vision goggles on him, too. I mean, I guess that's what they were. They looked like binoculars fixed to a helmet, the same kind that you see in the news reports from Iraq. The guy dripped guns and ammunition. When he finally put me down, we were up on the main floor of the house, and there was some light up there, through the windows, I guess. He put me on a chair in the living room and told me not to move, that he'd get something to wrap me in. A few seconds later, he wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and when he pulled the binocular things out of the way, he still didn't have a face. Everything but his eyes was covered with a ski mask.”

“How long were you on that chair?”

“I have no idea,” Ethan said. “Honestly, it could have been five minutes, it could have been fifteen. I don't think it was as long as an hour.”

“What did the big man do then?”

“He just stood there. He kept his rifle up, like he was ready to shoot, but not at me. Like at anything else. Looking back, it was like being guarded by a big dog.”

“Did he talk to you?”

“No, not really. Not after he put me down and wrapped me up. Every now and then, he'd press a button on his chest and say something—I imagine it was a radio—but he never talked to me. After a while, the other guy came upstairs. He was dressed just like the big one, but he was a lot smaller. His face was covered, too, but I remember he had blue eyes. Not just regular blue eyes, but
intensely
blue eyes. He came over to me and kneeled down directly in front. He asked me if I was okay, and I said yes, and then he told me that I was out of danger, but he wanted to know if there was anyone else in the house. Any other kids. I told him no, that I was the last one. He took the cuffs off my ankles and asked me if I could walk, and when I said yes, he said they could carry me if I wanted, but I said that I wanted to walk. I didn't tell him that it was mostly because of the way their stuff poked at me. So, we left.”

It took a few seconds for Wendy's note-taking to catch up with real time. “Just like that? You just left?”

Ethan answered with an extended shrug because he didn't know what she was looking for.

“How did you leave?”

“Through the front door.”

“Don't be obtuse, Ethan. In a car, by helicopter? How did you leave?”

That was a good question, not a part of the ordeal that he thought about very often. “By several cars,” he said. “First, they hustled me into like a station wagon, a real beater of a car. We were only in that for a couple of miles, and then we switched to a bigger one. An SUV, I think. Maybe a van. Then we drove for a long ways. It was still dark when we pulled into this big empty parking lot. We parked, and then they handed me off to another guy. This one looked normal. Dark hair, wore a suit. He then drove me to another parking lot, where my dad was waiting for me.”

More note taking. She was writing a book, apparently. “Were you frightened during this trip?” She asked that without looking up.

“No.” The strength of his answer startled him.

It startled Wendy, too. Her head snapped up from her journal. “No? Face masks, guns, ammunition, shooting, death, and you're telling me you weren't frightened?”

Ethan felt continually off-balance speaking with this lady. What did she want from him? “When the shooting was going on, of course I was scared. I was startled by the noise, but I never felt in danger once Scorpion had me.”

“Scorpion is the big man?”

“No, he's the littler one. And he wasn't what you'd call little. But next to the other one,
everybody
is little. When they were dropping me off with the guy in the parking lot, I asked him who he was, and he said I should call him Scorpion.” Ethan smiled at a memory. “He said it's ‘a cool name for a scary insect that strikes fast.'”

Wendy wrote some more.

Ethan went on, “So, after my dad picked me up—”

Wendy raised her hand for silence. “No,” she said. “That's all I need for now.”

Ethan gaped. There was a lot more story to tell.

Wendy closed her notebook and clicked her pen closed with a flourish. “It's been a long session. Almost an hour and a half. We'll pick up here next time.”

Ethan's stomach fluttered. He didn't want to go back to his cell. “When will the next time be?”

“How's day after tomorrow?” She stood. This was not a negotiable decision.

Ethan said, “My schedule is wide open.”

Chapter Twelve

L
ike most associations of retirees, former Special Forces operators enjoyed a number of gossip lines. The best ones were heavily encrypted and shared the kind of unvarnished opinions that would cause politicians to shit pickles.

One such encrypted site was a listserv called Do or Die. Through it, Jonathan was able to keep track of the truth behind the worldwide terror threat. Hint: It was way, way worse than the general public comprehended. Jonathan's listserv handle was Detn8or4life, and by tweaking a few known contacts, he was able to find out that Konan's avatar was PipSqueakl. With a little help from Venice, he was able to find an e-mail address for Henry West. Two hours later, Jonathan spoke with him on the phone, and three hours after that, Jonathan was sitting in his BMW M6 in the lot at Edgewater Park in Edgewater, Maryland, awaiting the arrival of a white Lexus with Maryland tags ending in the number 856.

And there it was. The man behind the driver's seat appeared to have changed little, and he waved as he passed. The spot next to Jonathan's was open, but Konan chose a spot two rows over, and probably ten slots down. It was good tradecraft to take one's time when establishing a contact.

Since it was Jonathan's meeting, he moved first, unfolding himself from his sports car and strolling across the paved lot toward a paved path that led to a collection of four baseball fields. Ahead of him lay a squatty white building with a gray roof. He figured it to be restrooms, but by the time he approached closely enough to see the sign on the door, his interest had evaporated. Beyond the building, and between the fields, the park's designers had left a thick grove of trees, which Jonathan imagined were intended to provide a buffer between the noise of the park and the saltbox houses that surrounded it.

Jonathan entered the woods, walked maybe twenty-five yards, then turned and waited. This was the time of year when the Washington Metropolitan Area was at its most beautiful. The brilliance of the autumn leaves had faded, but color remained, and the thermometer registered chilly but not yet cold. Jonathan's jacket concealed a Colt Commander on his belt, making him a felon only ten miles from the other side of the Potomac River, where no one would raise an eyebrow.

Konan took long enough to join him that Jonathan wondered if maybe the man had changed his mind. When he finally did push his way into the woods, Konan greeted his old friend with a big smile and an extended hand.

“Digger Grave,” he said. “Man, it's been a long time.” Henry West had softened a bit since Jonathan last saw him, but he remained an imposing man. At six-three, he still had a broad chest and narrow waist, and his biceps still challenged the fabric of his shirt, but there was just enough jiggle to show that civilian life had reduced his maniacal workout regimen. Plus, he was wearing a white shirt and Republican tie—a look that defied every memory Jonathan had of the man.

“How ya doin', Konan?” Jonathan said, accepting the gesture of friendship. “Actually, it hasn't been as many years as you probably think.”

“Where's Big Guy? I thought you two were joined at the hip.”

“I keep him home sometimes,” Jonathan said with a chuckle. “In public places like this, he sometimes can draw a little bit too much attention.” He didn't like talking about Boxers with others from the Unit. All too often, they allowed themselves to confuse Big Guy's overt aggressiveness and overall quiet tone as a sign of limited intellect, and nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Jonathan made a show of looking at his watch. “I know you have work to do, so—”

Konan held up a hand for silence. “Before you get to what you want to talk about, I want to tell you how much I appreciate all that you do.”

Jonathan's shields came up. He knew that some elements of his post-Army work had made it into the rumor mill, but he didn't know how much was known by how many. The correct answer was as little as possible by as few as possible.

“What's that look?” Konan asked.

“I'm not sure what you're talking about.”

“Yeah, right.” He laughed, but when Jonathan didn't, he dialed it back. “Okay, fine. Play it coy. Certainly neither confirm nor deny, but we all know how you went to bat for Boomer and his family—twice—and that kind of loyalty means a shitload to everyone in the Community.”

Boomer—real name Dylan Nasbe—had gotten crossways with some of the wrong people not too long ago, and Jonathan had reached out in friendship when the rest of the world seemed committed to being Boomer's enemy.

Jonathan remained poker-faced.

“Yeah, fine,” Konan said. “We've also heard rumors about some pretty wild freelance antics that we lay at your feet. If the rumors aren't true, please don't tell me, because I really want them to be. Anyway, you need to know that there's a whole lot of snake eaters out there who'd walk through fire for you. Number me among them. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I need you to bend some laws for me,” Jonathan said.

Konan snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I kinda figured that out when you spelled out that you wanted to meet in the woods in a public park.”

“What do you know about a group called al-Amin?”

Konan cocked his head and tucked his hands in his pants pockets as a smirk grew on his face. “So that
was
you, huh? That business on Route One a few days ago?”

“Jesus.”

“Looking at the elements, you were the first person I thought of when I heard that no one could figure out who the shooters were.”

Jonathan didn't have the energy to go through the whole denial charade again. “So, the bad guys . . . ?”

“Freelancers, as far as we can tell.”

“For whose side?”

Konan chuckled. “Well, that's the problem with freelancers, isn't it? It's hard to know. Tell me who their target was, and I'll give you my opinion on where their allegiances lie.”

Jonathan cocked his head, trying to see the other man's angle.

“What?” Konan asked. He sounded defensive.

“Are you playing straight?” Jonathan asked. “You really don't know who the kidnapping target was?”

Konan drew an exaggerated X on his chest with his finger. “Cross my heart. I figure it had to be somebody important, but we haven't yet been able to figure out who.”

“Then how did you even know it happened?”

“Because guys we were watching ended up dead. Even the local cops have figured out that it was probably a foiled kidnapping. You must have seen that on the news.”

“I haven't watched the news since it became infotainment,” Jonathan said. “But you're right. It was an important person. Mindy Johnson, daughter of William H. Johnson of Massachusetts.”

“The congressman?”

“The very one,” Jonathan said. “Now, what's the tie to al-Amin?”

Konan pointed to the meandering trail through the woods. “Let's keep moving,” he said. “I don't like standing still when I talk about this.”

“There's a lot of that going around,” Jonathan quipped, recalling his stroll through DC with Wolverine.

“Huh?”

“Don't worry about it.” Jonathan glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were alone.

“The connections are all fuzzy, and they're not pointing in an identifiable direction yet. But if you close one eye and look at them is just a certain way, you can talk yourself into seeing something pretty scary.” He looked to Jonathan for a reaction.

“You're not really going to make me ask, are you?”

“Fine,” Konan joked. “Ruin the fun. Now, I caution you that I have analysts working for me who would argue I'm wrong—”

“Oh, for God's sake.”

“It's important,” Konan insisted. “Given the stakes, it needs to be clear where the space is that separates fact from supposition.”

Jonathan decided to let him run. It seemed like the fastest route to the punch line.

“There's been chatter,” Konan said. “Not much that could be considered actionable, but it's interesting nonetheless. For years, we've dealt with fundamentalists from the Sandbox and the 'Stans who dream of bringing the fight to the Great Satan on our own turf, but we've done a pretty good job of keeping a cap on the crazies. When al Qaeda or ISIL start to reorganize, we're pretty good at finding the leadership and droning the shit out of them. Those efforts have kept the worst of the terror threat fenced in between the big oceans.

“Al-Amin, from what we can tell, is a Western Hemisphere offshoot. Our borders are so porous that the bad guys don't even have to fake a passport anymore to get in. They just walk. Or ride, or take a boat. My guys estimate that as much as fifty percent are miscreants of one form or another, and that a solid twelve percent are either terrorists or wannabes.”

“I've heard there are over five hundred known terrorist cells within the US,” Jonathan said.

“That's a low number. Within a two-hour drive of this park, I could show you two al Qaeda cells and three Hezbollah cells. The Fibbies try to watch them and eavesdrop on them, but there are limits to their resources.”

Jonathan said, “I know plenty of people who think those known cells are just noise to distract us from the real threats that we don't yet know about.”

“And I agree with them,” Konan said. “If there's anything that I lose sleep over, it's all the splinter pop-ups that we won't know about until they open up on a county fair or a shopping mall. I wonder sometimes if ISIL deliberately fat-fingers their cyber security so that we can keep such good tabs on them. That's how we've stopped their much-hyped intention to spill blood on American soil.”

Their path through the woods ended on the edge of a baseball diamond where some local kids were engaged in what appeared to be a pickup game. Their ages ran from ten to thirteen, and they seemed to be having a good time. Jonathan and Konan stayed on the far side of the outfield fence as they continued to stroll. Jonathan didn't think any of the kids had enough ass to hit a home run, but he kept an eye on the action anyway.

“So, how does al-Amin fit in?” Jonathan asked.

“We don't know yet,” Konan said. “Not exactly, anyway. They're definitely the new kid on the block, but they're learning from the mistakes of the big boys. Their Internet footprint is virtually zero, and they've learned to communicate mostly via burner phones. They make two, maybe three calls per phone before they toss them. They've got a good technical guy on their side, because they've actually figured out how to mask their phones' locations, so even when they do dial in, the cell towers are confused.”

“What's their mission?”

“We don't really know that, either,” Konan said. “I know you're tired of hearing that, but I'm just being honest. The evidence you bring today confirms that high-profile kidnappings are on the list, but to what end?”

“I know at least one well-placed source who thinks that the end is to raise money and awareness,” Jonathan said.

“But to what
end
? Money is a tool for something else. That's what we need to know. Once they have the money and publicity, what are they going to do with it?”

“I presume they'll take it on a jihading spree,” Jonathan said.

“Well, there's another thing.” Konan had dropped his tone five decibels and had stopped walking.

Jonathan leaned in to hear.

“My team isn't convinced that al-Amin is Islamist. We've heard no serious mention of them from any of our known sources. And these are talkative sources.”

“Who, then?” Jonathan asked, and as Konan opened his mouth to answer, he beat him to the punch. “You're not sure.”

“Bingo.”

Jonathan smiled. “You've kept my interest by guessing so far. Keep going.”

“Take those guys you killed at the motel,” Konan said. “They were as American as you and me. They were also homicidal nutcases who hired out to the highest bidders. Certainly there was no Internet radicalization. God, I hate that phrase. We know of no connection to al-Amin beyond a single phone contact two months ago.”

“A call from a known burner?”

“Exactly. The content of the call wasn't much—in fact they spoke in codes, numbers instead of letters. My bosses didn't think it was high profile enough to put a team of decoders on it, but from the duration, I imagine it was some kind of directions.”

“Why were you watching the guys from the motel in the first place?”

Konan waved him off. “We weren't,” he said. “It was the fact of the phone call that put them on our radar. It wasn't until we floated that data back upstream that we identified Muhammed and Kamta and Amal. Those were their names, by the way.”

“I didn't need to know that,” Jonathan said. What difference would it make to know the names of someone he'd been forced to kill?

“Hereinafter known as Motel Guys, then,” Konan said. “They likewise used a burner phone, but they made the mistake of
a,
not turning it off before they burned it, and
b,
throwing it in the trashcan behind the apartment building where they lived. We looked into them and found out that they had done some work for the Agency in the past, and frankly that cut them a little bit of slack. We didn't let them off the hook, but we didn't watch them as closely as we probably should have.” Interpreting Jonathan's look of horror for what it was, he added, “Limited resources, Dig. My three letters of the alphabet don't have a lot of ground pounders to depend on. Those come from other alphabet agencies, and they all have their own priorities. Shit happens, dude.”