Renegade (2013) (23 page)

Yaqub passed the paper to Sebastian. “Hold this in front of yourself when you speak.” The paper was a current edition, offering proof that Sebastian and the CIA agents were still alive.

The reporter took the newspaper and looked tentative. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Introduce yourself. Tell the listeners that the American spies are all still well.”

Sebastian waited for a moment, then frowned. “Is that all?”

“For now.”

“Don’t you have demands?”

“I will. In time. Not at the moment. For now, we will only open negotiations.”

“Where should I stand?”

Despite the tension inherent in the situation, Yaqub almost smiled at the question. Sebastian would do nicely. The man was used to taking direction.

“Over there. In front of the spies.”

The camera’s light remained focused on Sebastian as he moved. He stood in front of the men. “Can you get the sound from here all right?”

Yaqub glanced at the warrior holding the camera. He was young, one of those who had been to school in the West for a time, and he was good with technology. The man nodded. Yaqub turned back to Sebastian.

“The sound is fine.”

Sebastian started to speak, then pulled off his long coat and set it aside. He straightened his clothing and ran a hand through his hair in an effort to make himself more presentable. Then he began speaking in a well-modulated voice.

“This is Jonathan Sebastian. Currently I’m being held . . .”

THE DEAD RUSSIAN LAY
stripped on a table inside one of the military buildings occupied by Charlie Company. Images in bluish ink tracked his upper body, but some of the tattoos were symbols and Cyrillic words. All of them looked unrefined, not like the art Heath had seen on other people. Some of his father’s criminal clients were walking tapestries for skin artists.

“Man, that’s some ugly ink.” The young Marine assisting the corpsman shook his head. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and stood just behind the woman performing the examination.

Another Marine stood nearby, holding a video recorder and capturing the procedure. The bright light played over the corpse, making his flesh look fish-belly white and the tattoos stand out even more acutely.

“Prison tats.” Pike stood to Heath’s right and spoke up absently. His gaze was on the dead man, but Heath got the sense that Pike’s mind wasn’t totally on the corpse. “Guy got them when he was locked down. In Russia, criminal organizations use tats to mark their allegiance and their history. If you know how to read them, those tats can be a walking confession.”

“Sounds like you know a thing or two about this, Private.” Captain Benjamin Hauser stood to Heath’s left. In his forties, the captain was six feet tall and maybe ten pounds overweight. His hair had turned
prematurely gray, but his ruddy complexion suggested that at one time he’d had fair hair. His hazel eyes carried a gray tint that made them look like chips of dirty ice.

“Yes sir.”

“Maybe you’d care to elaborate, since we’re here in an effort to understand why Captain Zarif saw fit to execute this man.” Hauser had called for the examination after hearing the circumstances of the man’s death.

“Sure. Can I approach the body?” Pike wasn’t asking the captain. He was talking to the young corpsman.

She glanced at Pike, and her eyebrows rose over the surgical mask, indicating surprise. But there was a hint of familiarity in there as well. “Be my guest, Pike.”

Pike. First name basis at that.
Heath checked his iPad, noting the woman’s name. He wondered where Pike had crossed paths with Julie Meadows.

“Prison ink like this always shows up blue.” Pike pointed at the symbols, words, and images. “That’s because when they’re in lockdown, the ink they use is from a ballpoint pen. It’s not the same as tattooing ink. It has a tendency to fade to this color.” He pointed to an image on the upper right side of the man’s chest.

Heath wasn’t quite certain what the image had been. It looked like maybe it had been a flower, but scar tissue from some kind of burn had distorted it.

“This rose indicates the guy used to be part of some Russian Mafia group.”

Hauser took a step closer and peered at the tattoo. “You’re sure that’s a rose?”

“Was a rose. Yeah. I’m sure. Probably his first tattoo. They usually get a rose when they’re accepted into one of the gangs.”

“What’s the significance of the rose?”

“Don’t know. Never asked.”

That statement indicated that Pike knew someone either in the police or in a Russian gang. Given a guess between the two, Heath was pretty certain it was the latter. He felt a little guilty about making generalizations, but he couldn’t help it. Pike was a curiosity, made so because the man didn’t fit into the corps in many ways yet kept coming back activation after activation.

Then there was the violence that Pike seemed to thrive on. Heath had never met another man so inured to the atrocities on the battlefield. No matter how bad things got, Pike seemed to roll right through them.

Back in the law offices, Heath had run a background check on the man, something he’d never done on another Marine under his command. The results had been less than spectacular, and the cool, calm warrior Heath had seen on the battlefield didn’t match up with the paper tiger in the report.

Pike never sought out the company of others. He didn’t walk away from fellow Marines, but he didn’t look for companionship. Except evidently something was in play between Pike and the corpsman Julie Meadows. Heath made a mental note to follow up on that when he had the chance.

Pike continued. “Guy got kicked out of the Mafia, though.”

“How do you know that?”

“Somebody tried to burn away the rose tattoo. The criminal gangs do that when someone betrays them. Guy’s lucky he didn’t get a bullet between the eyes before Captain Zarif parked one there.”

“So he’s ex-Mafia.”

Pike nodded. “That would be my guess. Whoever went after that tattoo used acid. Had to hurt.” He pointed at a cathedral inked onto the man’s stomach. “People think when they see a church on a Russian criminal that it has some kind of religious significance.”

“I gather it does not.”

“No sir.” Pike pointed to the spires above the structure. “Tells you how many years the guy has served on lockdown. This guy’s got six, so he’s been in prison for six years.”

“Then I’d further suppose that the crucifix on this man’s chest doesn’t signify any religious preference either.” Drawn by the story, Hauser had moved in closer. Heath had moved up as well.

“No. A crucifix means the guy was a thief.”

“That’s how he betrayed his gang? He stole from them?”

Pike shook his head. “Thief was this guy’s occupation in the gang.” He pointed to a smaller tattoo on the dead man’s side. It was of a Madonna and child. “The image of the Virgin Mary means that he’d been a thief since he was young. Probably since he was a kid.”

Heath used a stylus to add notes to those he’d already written down.

“Can you tell me anything else about this man’s history?” Hauser glanced at Pike.

Pointing to the stars tattooed on the man’s knees, Pike nodded. “These mean that this guy wouldn’t kneel to anyone. Wouldn’t take any crap.” He indicated the stars on the man’s shoulders. “Those mean that he was a captain. A leader in his crew.”

“I see. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

Stepping away from the body, Pike shook his head. “No sir. The tats are all from a culture you’d have to be part of. I get some of it, but not everything you see there.”

“You mean the Russian culture?”

“I mean part of this guy’s crew. They tend to make up their own languages, their own symbols. Some of the bigger tats, like those I showed you, translate across the board for the Mafia, but not all of them. That’s why the police agencies have trouble figuring them out.”

Hauser thought for a moment. “We have a Russian criminal who
was kicked out of his own gang and who was also working with suspected al Qaeda sympathizers. Do we know what he was doing with those people?”

Heath fielded the question, knowing Hauser intended it for him since he’d been heading up the investigation so far. “The machine shop was churning out IEDs and other explosives.”

“Good thing we shut that down, then.”

“Yes sir. Gunney Towers and Corporal Shaw have been inventorying the premises. They’ve found a significant amount of Russian ordnance.”

“Well then, we know what the Russian was probably doing there, don’t we?”

“Yes sir.”

“But we don’t know why Captain Zarif took it upon himself to shoot this man.”

Pike folded his arms across his broad chest. “We don’t know what Zarif and his boys took out of this guy’s pockets either.”

“Do we know that anything was taken?” Hauser looked at Heath.

Heath shook his head. “No sir. Neither Pike nor Cho saw anything taken from the dead man’s pockets.”

The captain grimaced. “Seems to be a lot we don’t know.”

“Yeah.”

Hauser swung his attention to Pike. “Good job today, Private. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes sir.” Distracted, Pike started to walk away, then remembered he was in the presence of an officer. He fired off a salute and headed out of the building.

“What’s going on with Pike?” Heath sat in the small office he’d been assigned. Gunney Towers and Bekah sat across the desk with their
field reports in their hands. Empty food cartons stood in organized stacks awaiting removal. Dinner had been a working meal.

Outside the building, on the other side of the windows that were hung with Kevlar armor to block potential snipers, night had fallen. Heath could see the darkness through the small cracks around the windows.

Bekah looked up. Fatigue hollowed her eyes. “Nothing that I’m aware of. Why? What have you noticed?”

Heath shifted in his chair. “He seems distant.”

“Pike keeps himself distant. He never fully integrates with the unit.”

“I know.” Heath rubbed his stubbled chin and stifled a tired yawn. “But he seems more pulled back than ever.”

Towers shrugged. “Man’s quiet waters. Runs deep, and you ain’t gonna see nothing till he’s ready to show it to you.” He paused. “Thought he got a little stressed yesterday when we were doing cleanup after that action in the street.”

“Stressed?” That caught Heath’s attention instantly. He’d never seen Pike stressed.

“Yeah.” Towers pulled out a package of Doublemint gum and offered it around. Heath took a stick to help keep himself awake. Bekah passed. “One of the other Marines made a comment that Pike didn’t like. Thought Pike was gonna hit him for a minute; then he cooled back down.”

“That’s not the first time Pike has had to wade through something like that.”

“No, it’s not. First time I seen it bother him, though. Thing that bothered him most was the boy.”

Heath remembered the dead children he’d helped take from the street. The work had been brutal and hard. Seeing people reduced to bloody and charred hunks of meat took a lot out of a soldier.
Especially when those pieces had once been children. In an instant, a soldier could see years of innocence that would never be spent.

“Dead kids hurt.”

“Kid wasn’t dead, though. When Pike found him, he was alive. Still is. But the corpsmen just about had to pry that kid outta Pike’s arms.” Towers chewed his gum. “I seen Marines go through trauma like that before, but I never seen Pike like that.”

“You talk to Pike about it?”

Towers leaned back in his chair. “Tried. He wouldn’t have none of it. Went back to being Pike, closemouthed and surly. I got the message. Left him alone.”

Someone knocked on the door; then it opened and a private shoved his head into the room. “Lieutenant Bridger?”

“Yes, Private?”

“Captain Hauser says you should get to the communications center ASAP.”

Heath stowed his iPad, pulled on his armor, and hooked his helmet up from the floor by the chin strap. Towers and Bekah followed him.

Television reporter Jonathan Sebastian stood in front of a stone wall. He looked worse for wear, but he seemed healthy enough.

Heath stood at the back of the crowd in the communications center, taking it all in and dialing down the feeling that thrummed inside him—the need to do something. This was the CIA’s show at present, but he knew the Marines would be sent in soon. They always were. He wanted to know as much as he could before that happened.

The broadcast was coming in over a link the Marines had to the Kandahar channels. CIA Special Agent in Charge Gerald Benton stood to one side of the large screen that carried the television station. Like Sebastian, Benton looked tired.

“So far we are still alive.” On the monitor, Sebastian gestured to his left.

The camera view tracked in that direction and focused on three men huddled on the floor. A moment passed as the cameraman cycled through the magnification and stripped away the fuzzy softness till the image was clear. Bearded and fatigued, the prisoners sat at the back of the cave. Faded bruises showed on their faces, and one of the men had his arm and hand heavily bandaged.

Another monitor showed the faces of the three missing CIA agents from the agency’s files. It only took Heath the space of a drawn breath to verify the three men with Sebastian were the CIA agents taken by Yaqub in Pakistan.

Sebastian spoke calmly, but tension tightened his voice. “I am told that our good health will continue as long as our captor is certain he has the attention of the United States military and the Kandahar government. This presentation is designed to open a dialogue.”

The camera shifted back to Sebastian, who unrolled the newspaper he was holding. The cameraman zoomed in on the paper and brought it into sharp focus, centering on the date.