We drive past a few pickup trucks heading in the other direction, each hauling a trailer carrying a fishing boat that would probably take a year’s salary of mine to purchase.
I go on. “He got a literary agent interested in him last year. The agent was looking for a blockbuster book. Turned down about a half dozen ideas of Tom’s. Then Tom hired a hacking firm on the dark web to get access to Army intelligence unit activities, and then my name popped up, what I was doing…and somehow, that led him to two competing drug cartels in Mexico, both of them looking to significantly expand their territory.”
I give Archie a sideways glance. “Cartel number one was offering you as an information source to Tom. Out of the goodness of their dark hearts? Hardly. They were using you as an informational tool to take down cartel number two…with Tom’s knowledge and assistance. All for a blockbuster book. But cartel number two apparently found out about it, kidnapped him and Denise, and is using me to bring you to them.”
I drive on. At some point I’ll need to get this cursed little task force onto a highway.
“But for God’s sake,” I say, “what is the possible connection between Central Asia and Mexico? What could they possibly have in common?”
And he turns and gives me a look that expresses…
Intelligence?
Awareness?
Knowledge?
“Oh, damn it, it was right in front of my face, all the goddamn time!” I yell, and I pull over the Wrangler in a used car lot, and fumble through my leather bag.
In his cubicle at Fort Belvoir, Lieutenant Preston Baker is in a good mood. A while ago he had a nice talk with his mother back home in Washington, and unlike previous calls that ended with sobs and cries of despair, this one ended with a cheerful “Good-bye, Pres, love you,” because at long last there’s progress in helping out Dad.
The good mood lasts exactly three more seconds.
His phone rings, he answers, “Baker,” and there’s a static-filled call coming in.
“Hello?”
The familiar woman’s voice comes through. “Baker? It’s Captain Cornwall.”
Preston swivels in his chair so no one strolling by can see the shocked look on his face.
“C-captain Cornwall?” he stammers. “Ah…how are you, ma’am? Where are you?”
Her voice sounds strained and tired. “Lieutenant, I need for you to do something for me, straightaway.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I need you to retrieve the investigative file on that prisoner you helped me interrogate at FOB Healy. The one named Mohammed.”
He tries a joke and fails. “They’re all called Mohammed, you know how it is.”
She ignores the attempt at humor. “The one who claimed he was a farmer. The one who ended up dead.”
“Ah, sure, ma’am, I remember that one,” he says, closing his eyes in frustration. Just a few seconds ago everything was falling into place—the promised large deposit into his checking account had come through, Mom had gotten a meeting set up for a long-term care facility for Dad, and now…this.
“Good,” she says. “I need you to get the investigative file and retrieve something for me. It’s vitally important. Can you get to the file? The sooner the better, Lieutenant.”
Preston looks at his desk. The thick file on Mohammed the farmer is sitting right there, because he knows there’s some sort of CID investigation going on with that death and wanted to be prepared when the interrogator arrived, whoever he or she might be.
Carefully he says, “I think I can get to it in a while. What do you need?”
He thinks he hears a tone of relief in her voice. “That’s great, Lieutenant. That’s great. Ah…when we first interrogated him, we found a business card in his belongings. There was an international phone number on the card, that’s all. The name of a company as well. Something Holdings. Begins with the letter M. Remember? The joke was that maybe it was the guy’s bail bondsman.”
“Sure, Captain, I remember that.”
“Good,” she says. “At the time the number was checked out and was found to be a fake…but I want you to recheck it, okay? Really dig into it, see what you can find.”
He reaches over to the thick file folder, opens it up, and like some talisman or sign, right on top is the creased and dirty business card in a plastic envelope.
“Ah, Captain?”
“Yes?” comes the same tired voice, but now impatient.
What to say to her?
He knows what his instructions are with his anonymous male caller—present certain information to him in exchange for financial assistance and tell him if Cornwall contacts him. The deal has been shaky, underhanded, and he is desperately afraid to get caught. But he knows his caller is in the military, having met him one night on base in a darkened Humvee, and is convinced that his actions aren’t going to hurt the country.
Preston is a trained intelligence officer and knows this isn’t how things are done, but the man convinced him that in certain times, regulations have to be ignored for the greater good. And although Preston has his doubts about Cornwall’s guilt in that farmer’s death, the man also showed him video evidence on an iPad that in a moment of fear months ago, Cornwall smoked an entire Afghan family with a Hellfire missile against orders.
What now?
This superior told him not to offer any information to Cornwall if she were to call, but Cornwall…
Lots of memories come back from his tour at FOB Healy with the captain. Her sharing candy and snacks from her packages from home. The time he lost all his socks after washing them, and how she shared her socks with him. And twice when he and she had gone to the shelter when Taliban units had sent mortar fire into the small base, and how scared he was, oh God, and the captain had just put her arm around him and that bit of comfort had seen him through that shelling.
“Lieutenant, what is it? I don’t have much time.”
He takes a deep, reassuring breath.
“Call me back in ten minutes, Captain. I’ll have what you need,” he says.
CHAPTER 77
HER WRISTS are still sore, but Rosaria Vasquez is holding the steering wheel firmly as she is driving east to Florida. Why Florida?
Because Senior Warrant Officer Fred McCarthy told her to go there.
She winces, recalling the sharp and cutting words he used as weapons against her, all the way from calling her a useless ROTC officer who went into the Army for three hots and a cot, up to calling her a stupid coward.
“A library!” he shouted. “You got ambushed in a goddamn library?”
Nothing she could have said would have turned back that anger, so she had taken it in silence, until finally there was a quiet moment and he said, “Gulf Coast of Florida. Get your sorry ass out there as soon as possible.”
“Then what, sir?”
“Then you’ll have actionable intelligence, and you act on it, Vasquez, and when the day is over, I want one of two things in your hand: Cornwall’s dog tags, or Cornwall’s dog tags and a copy of her toe tag. It finishes today, it finishes now. Got it?”
Rosaria nods in memory as she speeds east on Interstate 10, going through a strip that boasts gun shops, dollar stores, gas stations, hairdressing outfits, and everything and anything else a high-speed traveler needs on his or her way to the beaches of paradise.