The Abduction (43 page)

Little Johnny Brice wanted to be a man like Ben.

Ben sat down and nodded at Bubba. “Can’t abide a rude drunk,” he said.

Bubba drained his beer, belched, and said, “Me either.”

“Your tattoo,” Ben said. “Highlands or Delta?”

“Delta. You?”

“Highlands,” Ben said.

“Green Beret?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, kiss my ass. How long was you in-country?”

“Seven years.”

Bubba shook his head. “I only got two tours. Would’ve stayed the whole damn war, but I got into a little trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Killing the wrong people kind of trouble.” Bubba paused. “Seventy-one, night op south of Cao Lanh, free-fire zone. We rocked ‘n’ rolled.”

Free-fire zone meant anything that moved was fair game, man, woman, or beast. Rock ‘n’ roll meant putting your weapon on full auto and firing indiscriminately.

“Sun come up, we see we didn’t kill no VC, only women and kids.” He shrugged. “Shit happens, man, it was a shooting war. Army discharged my ass ’cause of all the bad publicity over Quang Tri and My Lai.” Bubba sighed heavily and said, “Best years of my life.”

“What’d you do after the Army?” Ben asked.

“Went back home to Mississippi, but it weren’t the same, all that civil rights bullshit, niggers acting like they owned the goddamned place, Feds fuckin’ with us. So I come out west, hooked up with these boys, been here ever since. We got us a camp out on Red Ridge. Full squad. All Green Beret except Junior.”

Twelve men. “That the Junior kicked you out of the camp?”

Bubba frowned and nodded. “Asshole. He ain’t never even been in the Army. But it’s his mountain.”

“So what are you boys doing bunkered up in the mountains?”

Bubba leaned in close; his breath was hot with the tequila.

“We’re fixin’ to change the world, podna. Big time.” Bubba looked past Ben and said, “Your friend wants more.”

Ben glanced at the mirror behind the bar and saw the big brute approaching almost at a sprint; he was wielding a beer bottle like a club. When he raised the bottle above his head, Ben spun to his right. The bottle smashed on the bar instead of Ben’s head. Ben drove the heel of his boot into the outside of the man’s right knee; a sharp
pop
signaled the snapping of ligaments. The man collapsed, hit the floor hard, and writhed in pain. Ben sat back down next to Bubba, who snorted at the drunk on the floor.

“He won’t be running track no more.” He held out a meaty hand. “I’m Bubba.”

Ben shook Bubba’s hand. “I’m Buddy.”

Bubba’s face brightened. “My daddy’s name was Buddy, how ’bout that? What brings you to Idaho, Buddy?”

“Hunting.”

“Well, Buddy, we got some damn good huntin’—deer, mountain lion, bear. Killed me a fine buck yesterday. Junior, he’ll let me come back in a day or two, once he calms down about his little bitch. You wanna come out, do some huntin’, meet the boys?”

Ben gave Bubba the biggest smile he could muster.

“Bubba, nothing more I’d rather do than meet your boys. How about another shot there, podna?”

John was driving the Land Rover. Ben was in the back seat with the big dude from Rusty’s; his given name was Archie, but he went by Bubba. He was puking out the window.

Bubba had been totally shit-faced when they had finally left Rusty’s. Ben had poured a bottle of tequila down Bubba but had never so much as licked his fingers himself. Bubba had no place to sleep other than the bar, so Ben had suggested he stay with them. Bubba had accepted and climbed into the Rover.

Bubba pulled his head back inside and said, “Fuck me,” then his head fell back, his mouth gaped open, and he started snoring.

An hour later, they arrived at the Moyie River Bridge spanning the deep gorge they had seen that morning from the helicopter, where Dicky had flown in circles for five minutes, bringing John dang close to barfing his guts up.

“Pull over,” Ben said.

John stopped the Rover and cut the engine. No other traffic was on the road at that time of night. Ben got out and walked around to Bubba’s side and opened the door. He slapped Bubba semi-conscious and yanked him out.

“We there?” Bubba asked.

“Gotta hit the head,” Ben said. “How about you?”

Bubba grunted. John went around to their side of the car while Ben helped Bubba over to the bridge rail. Bubba leaned against the low railing, found himself, and starting peeing on his foot. He let out a groan of relief. Down below, white water crashing over rocks was visible in the moonlight.

“What doin’ … out here?”

The cold air was reviving what was left of Bubba’s brain.

“Bubba, what kind of weapons you boys got at the camp?” Ben asked.

“Stingers … grenade launchers … napalm …”

Bubba’s words came out slurred and slow, and he was swaying slightly as he spoke.

“How’s the perimeter booby trapped?”

Bubba’s head rolled around, and he laughed. “Explosives … trip wire …”

“Girl at your camp, does she have blonde hair?”

“Unh-hunh … pretty little thing.”

“Why does Junior want her?”

“Says she … belongs with him … Says she's his …” Bubba was finishing his business. “But she’s … just pussy.” He let out a drunken laugh. “Tried to get me some, too … li’l bitch kicked me right in the … goddamn balls.” He turned around, his eyes only slits in his fat face but his mouth grinning and his penis in his hands. “Junior, he wants her for himself, but ol’ Bubba’s gonna get some of her, sure enough.”

“I don’t think so, Bubba.”

In a sudden, sharp movement, Ben drove his fist into Bubba’s Adam’s apple and knocked him back into the rail. Bubba gagged and his hands flew up to his throat. Ben grabbed Bubba’s legs and lifted hard, flipping Bubba over the rail. John’s mouth fell open as he watched Bubba’s big body drop four hundred fifty feet and disappear into the gorge below. He couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed.

“Cripes, Ben! You freaking killed him!”

Ben was looking down; he nodded. “Unless he bounces real good.”

“We gotta call the FBI!”

“We get the law involved, John, and those men will kill her. Or the FBI will kill her trying to kill them.” Ben looked up from the gorge and at John. “Son, the law’s not gonna save Gracie. We are.”

Thirty minutes later, they were stopped on the side of the highway again; they were searching the area around a dirt road leading up the mountain. John didn’t have a dang clue what they were looking for. Ben was up the road, far enough that John could only see the light of Ben’s flashlight. Ben’s light suddenly came bouncing toward him at a fast pace. Then Ben came into view.

“This is it,” Ben said.

“How do you know?”

Ben held his hand out. John shone his flashlight on Ben’s palm, on a small white object, tubular, a single word printed on the wrapping:
Tampax.

“I told you. She’s a smart girl.”

The moonlight reflecting off the snow provided sufficient visibility for Ben and John to work their way up the steep mountain; they were crisscrossing at angles to the slope through a thick forest of tall pine trees, large boulders, and deep ravines.

They wore black knit caps, black greasepaint on their faces, black gloves, and black thermal overalls; they could stand still and blend in with the trees. The sniper’s rifle was slung over Ben’s shoulder; a .45-caliber pistol was strapped to one leg and the Bowie knife to the other. His backpack was loaded with ammo, the Starlight Scope, and a power pack, an enclosed car battery used as a portable jump-starter that he had transferred from the Jeep to the new Land Rover in Albuquerque. John was carrying a sleeping bag.

Ben’s eyes searched the ground, but his thoughts were of an American soldier, nineteen years old, drafted right out of high school, walking patrol in a Vietnam jungle and thinking about his sweetheart back home instead of the ground in front of him. He swings his foot forward as he steps and just as he realizes he has tripped a wire hidden in the undergrowth, he learns his fate: a bamboo mace swinging down into him with great force; a crossbow directly in front of him discharging an arrow aimed at his chest; boards studded with fecal-infected nails springing up and slamming into his face; or a huge spiked log rigged up high in the trees hurtling down on him.

Ben spotted the trip wire fifty meters outside the security perimeter. Normally, the wire would have been all but impossible to see in the woods; but it stood out against the white snow.

“Sit,” Ben whispered to John, who immediately dropped to the ground. “Don’t move. I’ve got some work to do.”

Ben left his son and followed the trip wire through the trees.

The seven dead Vietnamese Communists are laid out in a neat row like sardines in a can; a clean black V has been burned into their foreheads with the red-hot branding iron. Lieutenant Ben Brice will never forget the smell of burning human flesh.

Ben now had the same branding iron in the cross hairs of the Starlight Scope: employing ambient night light, a battery-powered intensifier produced an image seventy-five thousand times brighter than the human eye. A sniper could detect enemy movement up to six hundred meters away. Once Starlight Scopes were deployed in Vietnam, the night no longer belonged to Charlie.

John had buried himself in the sleeping bag; he was exhausted after the two-hour hike and freezing in the zero-degree temperature. Ben was standing behind a tree, using the scope to scan the camp and to locate the best shooting position. A white SUV was parked outside the main cabin. The branding iron hung on the door of the next cabin over. Two old pickup trucks sat in front of the other cabins, blocking his line of fire to the cabin doors from his present position. Tree cover was available on the east, west, and north sides of the camp.

Satisfied with the layout of the camp, Ben swept the scope up and searched the area above the camp on both sides. A ridge about five hundred meters west of the camp would be the ideal sniping position if sniping were his only mission; but this was a rescue mission. He needed to be closer to the camp. He was about to put the scope down when he noticed something on that ridge: a movement. Not noticeable to the naked eye, but noticeable through a Starlight Scope. Maybe an animal. He focused in on the location again.

That was no animal.

Pete O’Brien was pissed off.

Low man on this totem pole meant Saturday nights on the mountain. Shit rolls downhill in the Bureau and nowhere faster than in HRT. He put the night-vision binoculars to his eyes.

Pete O’Brien, a five-year man with the FBI but the rookie operator on this seven-man sniper team, had caught the overnight shift again. The team leader and the senior operators had taken the Humvee down to Coeur d’Alene for the night; at that moment, they were sleeping in warm beds next to strange women, while Pete was up here on this damn mountain freezing his ass off. At least the wind had died down. The night was so still and quiet he could hear his heart beating. If anything moved on this mountain, he would know it.

Pete thought of the girl.

And he thought of HRT’s motto:
Servare vitas.
To save lives. And of HRT’s mission: to rescue U.S. persons held by hostile forces. If he had a daughter and some hostile asshole abducted her, he’d damn sure expect the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team to save her life or die trying, not to take pictures while she was being raped or killed. But Pete O’Brien was under strict orders to conduct visual surveillance of the “crisis site,” i.e., the cluster of cabins, and shoot 35-millimeter black-and-whites instead of .308-caliber slugs at the bad guys holding the girl.

She’s a hostage!

And we’re the Hostage
Rescue
Team! Not the Hostage Photography Team! Not the Hostage Hope You Get Out Team! Not the Hostage is Probably Being Raped but We Got More Important Shit to Worry About Team!

This is bullshit!

What could be more important than that little girl’s life? We ought to blow the door to that cabin and save her life! Or die trying.

Pete was pissed!

Pete O’Brien had signed on to save lives. But after killing a mother at Ruby Ridge and letting those children die at Mount Carmel in Waco, HRT had been cut off at the knees. They couldn’t take a shot or a shit without an okay from a suit at Headquarters. And then the World Trade Towers dealt a body blow to the Hostage Rescue Team: HRT had been created for the specific purpose of rescuing airplane passengers held hostage by terrorist hijackers. But if the terrorist hijackers were willing to fly the plane, themselves, and their hostages right into office buildings, what the hell good was HRT? That realization had sent morale to such depths that highly trained and high-testosterone snipers were chasing pussy instead of shooting bad guys on a Saturday night.

And that was what graveled Pete’s butt. HRT was better trained, better equipped, and better funded than any other civilian law enforcement unit in America—
we fly around the country in our own C-130 transport, for God’s sake!
—but we never shoot anyone! We never rescue anyone! We never do anything!