into the bush. And, if you’re lucky enough to have hostages, you take them with you. So the good news was that Brodie’s and Taylor’s lives were now worth more than the bolívar. The bad news was that those lives were going to become a living hell. Just like Kyle Mercer’s life had been for two years.
That was the small picture—a snapshot of him and Taylor. The bigger picture was no less disturbing. Long before Al Simpson happened to spot Kyle Mercer in a Caracas whorehouse, Brendan Worley and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and probably the CIA, knew that Kyle Mercer was in Venezuela for the purpose of killing Colonel Worley. And they hadn’t shared that fact with the CID, whose job it was to apprehend Army personnel who’d committed or were about to commit a crime. There were other pieces of this disturbing picture that were now falling into place—the torture and murder of CIA Officer Robert Crenshaw, Operation Flagstaff, and now an interesting piece supplied by the fugitive himself: the helicopter ride to Bagram that, had it taken place, would have ended this case—one way or the other—before it began.
In cases like this, after you answer the question of Why? you need to ask the more legalistic questions of Who knew what, and when did they know it? Starting from the top: What did Army Chief of Staff Mendoza know? How about Provost Marshal General Hackett? And Colonel Dombroski? And then there was the chain of command in Afghanistan. Mercer’s CO, Major Powell, knew enough to warn Captain Mercer about his suspicious helicopter ride. Apparently the people with the least information were Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor—and she knew more than he did.
Brodie had no doubt that a lot of people were involved in Operation Flagstaff to one degree or another. Some people at the bottom, like Maggie Taylor, were just useful pawns. Some, like the guys on Mercer’s team who carried out the pacifications, were just following illegal orders that they liked. People at the very top—the generals—were masters of willful ignorance, and they surrounded themselves with credible deniability. It was second-tier management—people like Colonel Worley—who were the movers and shakers of things like Flagstaff. In any army, the colonels who want to be generals are the hardest-working and most dedicated and devious staff officers. And if they happen to be Intel officers, like Worley, with connections to the CIA and other civilian or military agencies that are tasked with fighting the enemy in new and unconventional ways, then those guys are going to push the envelope, and when things go bad they have to cover their asses.
Meanwhile, no one had bothered to contact CID with the information that Captain Mercer might be in Caracas. But when Al Simpson did the right thing and reported his sighting to the Army, there was no choice but to make the search for Kyle Mercer official. And anyone who was tainted by Flagstaff could only hope that the CID failed in its mission so that Brendan Worley and his friends in the Intel community could succeed in theirs—which was to find and silence Captain Mercer. Tangled webs indeed.
Taylor said, “Are you thinking about how to get out of here?”
“I know how to get out of here. I’m thinking about how we got here.”
“I didn’t mean to blame you.”
“I blame me for not figuring all this out sooner.”
“It’s sort of moot, Scott. But you did think there was more to this than finding and apprehending a deserter.”
“Right. And you made believe there wasn’t.”
“Sorry.” She added, “Now that I know you better, I realize you’re smarter than you look.”
“You too.”
She took his hand, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
Brodie returned to his thoughts. His instincts had been telling him from the beginning that there was more to this case, and that bringing Kyle Mercer before a court-martial was the worst possible outcome for a lot of people. And now he understood why.
So, what did that make Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor?
Unwanted characters in a long-running play where everyone else knew their parts. Or, to be less NYU and more CID, he and Taylor were a perfunctory legal response, sent on a mission that was presumed fated to fail. Sent for the sake of appearances.
Well, if that was the thinking in the Pentagon or in Langley, they should have sent someone else. Not to be egotistical.
But Dombroski, who Brodie truly believed had no knowledge of the bigger picture, had sent his