enters the top-floor suite, with its curtained floor-to-ceiling windows, balconies overlooking the rest of the complex and the nearby Gulf of Mexico, luxurious furniture and big-screen televisions, as well as cool, air-conditioned air, so unlike the hot and humid basement. Two of his men are sitting at a low table, heads bowed, cleaning two American-made M4 automatic rifles. The table is covered with a work cloth. Good boys.
He looks around, sees two of his other boys sitting on a leather couch, reading magazines. They are magazines about guns and cars, which is fine. No porn lying around, no adult DVDs, no young women lounging about with thong bikinis, laughing and touching too much. Those are distractions he will not allow.
It is through very hard and dangerous work, pure focus and discipline, that Pelayo has gotten here, and he will never, ever forget those lessons, including never, ever sampling the merchandise, whether its smuggled cocaine, opium, marijuana, Fresca soda, or frightened teenage girls from Eastern Europe filled with lying promises about a new life in the New World.
He goes down a short, wood-paneled corridor and then to the left. This room is his own little communications hub, stuffy, the windows taped with thick cardboard against the glass. There are banks of communications gear, keyboards, and computers. One man looks up and Casper goes to him, leaning over, the two of them softly talking.
Casper stands up, a troubled look on his face.
Pelayo says, “Yes?”
“The Cornwall woman has departed. But the phone we left for her…it’s going in the wrong direction. It’s now in New Jersey. She’s going in the wrong direction.”
Pelayo smiles. “No, she’s sending us a sweet message. A nasty one, but a sweet one. She is telling us that she will do the job, but that she is a force to be reckoned with.”
He steps forward, gives Casper a comforting pat on the shoulder, noting a few flecks of blood on the back of his hand.
“But so are we,” Pelayo says.
CHAPTER 15
AS FAR as waiting rooms go, this one in Fort Belvoir is all right. Special Agent Rosaria Vasquez of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has been in some real rat holes in her years of dedication to the service that she loves. Beat-up mobile homes with rusting sides and leaking ceilings. Apartment buildings built near railroad tracks, meaning she would have to pause her interrogation each time a freight train rattled through. Army-issued tents, the sides flapping, wind whistling by, sand getting into everything, the constant drumming roar of diesel generators and passing vehicles threatening her concentration as she diligently asked questions and waited for answers.
In all of those locations, she was doing her job: interrogating various Army enlisted men and women, NCOs and officers, chasing down crimes that are as old as humankind—rape, theft, homicide—as well as those only pertinent to her Army, from mishandling of classified documents to espionage.
Today’s interrogation is one of those belonging to the Army, the death of a prisoner in a foreign land, in the custody of an occupying force, said force being the Army of the United States. A CID unit in Afghanistan is up to its ears re-investigating that end of the case and Rosaria is here on the other end, conducting the first domestic interview with the supervising officer who ended up with a dead Taliban fighter in her custody.
This waiting area is small, with two chairs, a coffee table with today’s Washington Post and USA Today, and framed photos of Army personnel deployed across the world, from Afghanistan to Sudan. A door leads out into a hallway and another leads to the office of the commanding officer of her scheduled interviewee.
Both doors are closed.
Rosaria checks her watch.
It is 0840. Her appointment with Captain Amy Cornwall was supposed to have taken place forty minutes ago. Rosaria thinks a five- or ten-minute delay is reasonable, fifteen or more is insulting, and more than a half hour is a gut punch of insubordination.
Still, she waits. Patience and persistence are two of the many things she has learned in the CID.
Rosaria is a warrant officer in the Army, assigned to the 701st Military Group (CID) at Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia, but is wearing civilian clothing—black slacks with a crisp plain white blouse and black jacket. CID investigators always wear civilian clothing, save for ceremonial duties or if they are in a combat zone.
There will be conflict aplenty during her visit here today at Fort Belvoir, but at least it’s not an official