the CID. I could have gone to the FBI.
But I have no time.
No time.
The shakes continue.
The smell of burnt gunpowder, the yells, grunts, the way the pistol jumped in my hand, the frantic run through the small house…
The run to the Wrangler, dragging this old man along with me.
I’ll never, ever forget it.
It’s in my memory, my skin, and my bones. And it’ll be there forever.
What choice?
I hear the toilet flush, more running water, and then the slight old man comes out into the motel room, looking at me.
“Still not talking, eh?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even make a gesture. He sits down on the edge of the other sagging bed, his hands on his knees.
“How long were you in that house?”
No reply.
“Who was keeping you there?”
Silence.
“Why are you so important to someone on the Gulf Coast of Florida?”
Quiet.
I notice my hand is throbbing deeply, and I can’t figure out why, until I remember punching that big tattooed guy twice in the throat while holding an empty metal canister of pepper spray.
“Do you know my husband, Tom Cornwall? He’s a journalist.”
Stillness.
I shift around on the bed. It’s sagging deeply in the middle. I’m thinking I might take a blanket out of the Wrangler and sleep on top of the covers, leave my charge to his own devices.
I say, “Why me, and why you? I have nothing to do with Texas, Mexico, or drug dealers. No offense if you’re Mexican, but the two men back at that house didn’t look like Mormon missionaries from a small town in Utah. And Tom…I don’t think he’s ever been to Mexico. Or Texas. He covers the Middle East. Saudi Arabia. Syria. Iraq. Parts of Africa and Afghanistan.”
Something whispers to me there, some sort of idle fact, and I try to think it through and it slips away.
“But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
I can only hear the drone of the traffic from the nearby interstate. In between our single beds is a scratched and dinged-up nightstand with a lamp and a telephone. There’s a drawer underneath and I slide it open, revealing a Gideon Bible and a very thin phone book. I pull the phone book out and show it to my new friend.
“See this?” I ask. “Old-time New York cop once taught me this…long time ago, when things were stretched thin and even retirees in the Reserves were being called up. You take a phone book, even a skinny one like this, and you can beat a suspect with it until he’s crying and begging for mercy, and for some reason, it doesn’t leave a bruise. No evidence you were tortured to get information.”
The old man stares at me with dignity and calmness, like one of those old Christian martyrs in the Coliseum, kneeling before a hungry lion to meet his fate.
I toss the book back into the drawer.
“Not the way I operate,” I say. “Before this little misadventure began, I was being investigated for doing something like this to an alleged farmer, all the way over in Afghanistan, ending in his death.”
I close the drawer hard, making a loud bang in the room.
I say, “I didn’t do it over there, and I’m not about to do it over here.”
CHAPTER 67
MAJOR BRUNO Wenner, executive officer to Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Denton of the 297th Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is preparing for his 0800 morning meeting with the colonel when the intercom in his office buzzes. He picks up the phone and it’s Mrs. Bouchard, the colonel’s civilian secretary, and she says, “The colonel wants to see you right now…and I’m sorry, Bruno, he’s in a pissy mood.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Mrs. B,” he replies, before hanging up and grabbing a legal pad, his iPad, and the folder with the colonel’s schedule and other necessary paperwork for the day.
The usual morning meeting is set to begin in nineteen minutes, he thinks, as he hustles his way to his boss’s office. What could be so important?
Then a little chill settles around his heart, about something he did yesterday for Captain Ted Cooper, one of the intelligence officers assigned to the battalion. What he did wasn’t particularly illegal or against Army regulations, but still…the colonel likes to claim he runs a tight ship, and what Wenner did yesterday could be considered mutiny, even if this is an Army outfit and not the Navy.
He goes into Denton’s office, gets a sharp grunt as a greeting, and he sits down, carefully balancing