Wrongful Death (32 page)

He spun the chair down a narrow alley, continuing through the maze, arms burning, breathing labored. He turned again and pushed down another passage that would end near the rolling gate at the front of the building.

HE TOSSED THE
first grenade into the building and was preparing to throw the second when he felt the sharp, stinging pain in his back, just below his vest. It felt like someone had kicked his legs out from under him. He toppled forward onto the ground. Dust and debris from the first grenade rolled over him.

Get up, he told himself. Get up.

But his body was not listening. His legs would not move. He heard Ford’s voice over the handheld.

“Captain, you have to get out of there. Move on my call. We’ll suppress. Over.”

“I can’t,” Kessler said, groaning in pain.

“Captain, they’ve called an air strike on the building. They’re going to blow it.”

“I can’t move.”

“Captain—”

“James, I can’t feel my legs.”

HEAVY FOOTSTEPS SOUNDED
behind him. Kessler looked back over his shoulder.

The two men rounded the corner.

He turned his attention back to the road. Too late. He saw the pothole but could not change his course or slow his speed. He swerved, but the wheel caught the depression and the chair pitched. Kessler fought to remain upright, struggling against gravity, unable to right the chair. He toppled headfirst onto the dirt, the chair on top of him, and reached for the automatic weapon. Finding it, he grabbed the handle. Then a boot came down hard, pinning the weapon to the ground. Griffin.

The two men had also reached Kessler quickly, weapons trained. Griffin bent down and took the gun, pulled the chair off Kessler, and tossed it aside. He held out his hand. “Enough. The hard drive, please.”

Kessler hesitated.

“You’re going to die either way, Captain. We both know that.”

Kessler tossed the drive at Griffin’s feet.

Griffin stepped back and fired several rounds into the drive, shattering the casing. The men jumped backward, fearful of the ricochet. Kessler covered his face. What remained Griffin battered with the butt of the rifle, grinding it to pieces.

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Colonel,” Kessler said.

Winded and sweating from the temperature in the building, Griffin handed the gun to the man to his right and turned to leave. “I already gave you that choice. Now it’s too late.”

The interior of the building began to rattle and shake as if struck by an earthquake.

“I meant for you,” Kessler shouted.

“ROLL!” SLOANE SHOUTED
to the driver. “Roll!”

The treads of the Bradley gripped the ground and the big machine lurched forward. Within seconds it was moving more swiftly than Sloane would have imagined for something so heavy. He watched their progression across the open field on a small screen from the passenger seat. The vehicle bounced onto a dirt and gravel road, turned again, and continued toward Argus, the security booth directly in its path.

The guard stepped from the sanctuary of his perch with a perplexed expression, mouth agape. Then the idiot stepped forward, thrusting out a hand like a traffic guard stopping cars.

“What do we do?” the driver asked through the headset.

Sloane had a feeling about a man who hid his eyes behind sunglasses.

“What do we do?” the driver asked again.

“Keep going.”

The driver shifted. The Bradley geared down, gaining speed.

The guard looked like a statue, frozen with his hand out.

The driver glanced at Sloane. “Sir? Sir?”

Sloane watched.

At the last moment, the guard’s eyes widened, he dropped his hand, took three hurried steps, and launched himself out of the Bradley’s path. The big machine hit the booth at full speed, glass and fiberglass shattering. It snapped the arm of the gate like a twig and ripped through the cyclone fencing as if it were fish netting.

“Where?” the driver asked.

“Third building from the left,” Sloane directed.

In his headphones Sloane heard Kessler and Griffin talking.

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Colonel.”

“I already gave you that choice.”

“I meant for you.”

The driver shouted at Sloane. “The door’s not up.”

Sloane looked to the screen. The rolling gate was still down. Kessler had not reached the switch.

“What do we do?” The driver asked again.

“Can you take it down?” Sloane asked.

“Roger fucking that,” the driver shouted. “Brace yourself.”

GRIFFIN’S EYES NARROWED.
The air-conditioning ducts and equipment hanging from the overhead steel rafters swayed violently. The building exterior rattled and shook. He looked down as the wall exploded inward, emitting an awful sound of metal ripping. The rolling door tore from its runner and waved like the tongue of some giant serpent, crashing to the ground.

The sheer force of the assault knocked down Griffin and his two men. By the time they had recovered, the gunner sitting atop the huge machine had trained the Bradley’s 50-mm gun
on them, and half a dozen armed guardsmen were spilling out the back.

Griffin’s men put up no resistance.

Sloane stepped from the vehicle and helped Kessler to right his wheelchair. The plan had been for Kessler to get out the front of the building and raise the door for the Bradley. “You all right?” Sloane asked.

Kessler nodded as he got back atop his chair.

Sloane looked to the two men getting up off the ground. He recognized one to be Mr. Williams, the fisherman who had come to Three Tree Point and later forced Tina to swim in the mountain pool. Argus had got them out of Mexico unscathed.

Griffin stood defiant. “You’re too late, Mr. Sloane. You have no evidence.”

Sloane reached down and picked up a piece of the shattered hard drive, considering it.

“Are you referring to this? This is the hard drive from my son’s computer, Colonel. Nothing on here but some really violent video games his mother doesn’t like him playing anyway. He’ll be upset, though; he doesn’t take disappointment too well. How about you?”

Griffin looked to Kessler, then back to Sloane.

“We knew you were listening to our conversation at the beach house,” Sloane said. “So we told you what you wanted to hear.” Sloane turned to Kessler. “You look good in my jacket, Captain.”

Kessler wore Sloane’s leather jacket.

“We reset the transmitter, Colonel. Everything you just said in Captain Kessler’s office and this warehouse has been recorded.”

Griffin did not wilt. “It’s illegal. Argus’s attorneys will eat you alive. You’ll never get into court.”

“I wouldn’t make that bet, Colonel. Besides. I don’t have to get it into court, do I? I can just get it to the press and to the local
authorities. And I’m sure the Justice Department will be very interested in it as well.”

“What do you want, Sloane? Park will pay you anything. He’ll pay the widow whatever she wants. Name the price.”

Sloane looked to Kessler before addressing the colonel.

“There is no price. That’s what you don’t understand. There is no amount of money to compensate her for what you took.” He stepped toward Mr. Williams. “I warned you not to come back,” he said. He turned to leave. Then he stopped. “What the hell.” He spun, hitting the man hard across the jaw, knocking him down. “And I warned you about threatening my family.”

“It’s illegal to use the military to conduct a civilian operation,” Griffin said. “How are you going to explain this?”

Kessler wheeled forward. “What civilian operation are you talking about? These men are from my former unit, and I can guarantee you there will be no record whatsoever of any civilian exercise. This was a training mission.” Kessler turned and looked up at the guardsman behind the 50-mm gun. “You appear to have driven off course, Sergeant.”

“Seriously off course, Captain,” the soldier agreed, smiling.

Kessler turned back to Griffin. “You know how a storm can wreak havoc with communications.”

CHARLES JENKINS REMOVED
his headset and turned off the recorder. The re-coded transmitter had worked perfectly; so had Sloane and Kessler’s plan, with a few minor glitches. From the Explorer, Jenkins had watched the Bradley take out the security guard’s booth like a balsa-wood fake, then tear through the gated entrance. It had given him a perverse sense of satisfaction, and he couldn’t help but wish that
Cool Hand Luke
had ended in a similar manner, but the producer and director had gone for a more subtle ending.

During his self-imposed exile on Camano Island, Jenkins had read the biographies of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Lech Walesa, men who had taken down walls of injustice without ever firing a bullet or picking up a sledgehammer. But they were extraordinary people. Sometimes you had to physically destroy the walls. The world needed to see it, as with the Berlin Wall. But those men had been correct in their core belief. Injustice was not built of stone and mortar, or of metal. It was built of greed, inhumanity, and man’s thirst for power.

Jenkins stepped from his car and walked to where the guard booth now lay splintered and ruined. Bits of glass crunched beneath his boots and reflected the overhead lights on the security poles. Something hummed, a high-pitched whine that sounded like a motor straining. He heard a different sound to his right and turned to see the security guard rising unsteadily to his feet, his pristine uniform dirty and ripped at the knee. The guard looked to Jenkins, then back to the booth, dumbfounded.

Jenkins picked up the clipboard lying on the ground with the pen still attached by a chain. He tore off the page with Captain Kessler’s name, and tossed the clipboard at the man’s feet. Walking away, he heard something else crunch beneath the sole of his boot, stepped back, and bent to pick it up.

The guard’s sunglasses.

They were twisted and misshapen, both lenses shattered, just like the boss man’s glasses in the ending to
Cool Hand Luke.
Jenkins smiled. He might just have to start believing in coincidences after all.

BEVERLY FORD OPENED
her front door. Her children stood beside her. “Please come in,” she said.

Sloane stepped in and made the introductions. “Beverly, I’d like
to introduce Captain Robert Kessler, James’s commanding officer in Iraq.”

Beverly stepped forward and bent to wrap her arms around Kessler’s shoulder. “It’s a pleasure having you in our home, Captain Kessler.”

Kessler bit his bottom lip, fighting his emotions. He looked up at her, their faces close. “James was as fine a man as any I’ve ever had the pleasure to serve with.”

She hugged him again, both crying now. They moved into the living room where she had set a pitcher of iced tea on the table. Lucas sat in the recliner holding Althea on his lap. James junior and Alicia sat on the carpet near Kessler’s wheelchair. Sloane stood off to the side. This was not his show.

“I’m sure you all have a lot of questions,” Kessler said, clearing his throat. Beverly poured a glass of iced tea and handed it to him. He sipped it. Then he said, “I don’t know where to begin.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I’d like to know how my dad died,” Lucas said.

Kessler nodded, and took another moment to compose himself. “A hero,” he said, his voice catching. “Your father died a hero.”

SHIMRAN AL MUSLO, IRAQ

FORD LOWERED HIS
walkie-talkie. “He’s hit. Captain’s hit.”

The men sat, confused and uncertain what to do.

Static broke the silence.

Ford lifted his walkie-talkie, then realized it was coming from the radio in his rucksack. He pulled it out. All four men gathered to listen.

“Alfa one-two, this is Talon. I have the granary in sight. Coming in hot. Over.”

Panicked, Ford grabbed the handset. “Talon, this is Alfa one-two. Abort. I repeat. Abort.”

No response.

“Talon, this is Alfa one-two. Abort! We have a man down inside the building! Abort!”

The radio crackled. “Talon, you are cleared hot.”

“No!” Ford shouted. “Talon, you are not cleared.”

Ferguson grabbed his arm. “James.”

“Roger, Alfa. Talon is hot. Understand danger close. Out.”

Ford started again, but Ferguson yelled louder. “James, it’s broke! The mouthpiece is broke.”

Ford looked down at the crushed mouthpiece. They couldn’t hear him. God, they couldn’t hear him. He threw the radio to the ground and yelled into the handheld.

“Captain, you have to get out of there. Move on my call. We’ll suppress. Over.”

“I can’t,” Kessler said, groaning in pain.

“Captain, they’ve called an air strike on the building. They’re going to blow it.”

“I can’t move.”

“Captain—”

“James, I can’t feel my legs.”

Sweat rolled down Ford’s face. Cassidy, Thomas, and Ferguson stared at him.

“I can’t move them, James,” Kessler said again.

Ford slipped the M249 over his head and handed it to Ferguson along with the remaining two-hundred-round canisters. “Lay down suppression on that rooftop.”

“What are you going to do?” Fergie asked, alarmed.

“I’m going to go get the captain.”

“You’ll never make it.”

“Have to,” he said matter-of-factly. “You heard. They’ve ordered an air strike on the building.”

“James—”

“I’m not going to leave the captain,” Ford shouted, then regained his
composure. “We’re getting out of here. All of us. That includes the captain. Now give me your rifle.” Ferguson handed Ford the M16 and two thirty-round magazines. Ford handed one back.