Dead Zero (10 page)

Behind them, crouched in the darkness of the cargo area this side of a black curtain, were two elderly gentlemen named Dr. Faisal and Professor Khalid. Both were educated men, unused to roughness in transit. One was a university lecturer, the other an engineer of some renown. They had never met before this little adventure, but they immediately recognized in the other a kindred spirit. They could not stop talking excitedly about politics, literature, spirituality, poetry, science, history, and the law, and it seemed each knew everything about these topics there was to know and like men everywhere, of every creed and kind, upon discovering such a commonality of spirit, each wanted to totally destroy the other. The arguments! They were driving Bilal, an earthier sort, crazy with this kind of endless aggression.

“Old buzzards,” he said, “shut up. We need to concentrate.” It turned out that of the several languages spoken by the passengers in the vehicle, the only one all four shared, if imperfectly, was English.

“The young,” said Dr. Faisal. “So rude these days.”

“He is such a pig. Bilal, you are a pig, you have no manners, no respect,” said Professor Khalid.

“These two,” said Bilal. “They know everything about nothing and nothing about anything.”

“At a certain age,” said Rodriguez, “they all go off a little like that. It should be right around here.”

“You should know I do not like this ‘should be,’” said the testy Bilal. He was a rangy man around thirty-five, all sinew, extremely shabbily dressed in a hand-me-down tweed jacket over a frayed black sweater, jeans, and beat-up Nikes. He was a Mediterranean type of the sort usually called “swarthy,” for darkness of skin, eyes, and hair, and perhaps eternal melancholy, except that if you could get him to smile, you saw that he was quite handsome. He had a mop of unkempt hair dark as any wine-dark sea; a vague sense of coffeehouse revolutionary to him; and quick, furtive eyes that missed little. He was one of those uncomfortably intense men most people find a little unnerving, as if his rhythms were a little too rapid, or perhaps he was too quickly wired through synapse, or bore too many unforgivable grudges, or was too quick to haggle to the death over a nickel.

“It’s the desert,” said Rodriguez. “It changes continually.”

“I know something about the desert,” said Bilal.

“Then you know that the wind moves mysteriously and covers and uncovers rocks, reshapes cactus, sometimes seems to move—there it is!”

His flashlight beam penetrated the dirty windshield to illuminate a certain crack in the earth that widened eventually into a full gully. This time of year there was no water and even the mud had turned to crushed pottery. The gully would run like a superhighway for about two hundred yards, and reach the border fence and open a channel beneath it. With a little industrious snipping, the gap in the fence would be wide enough to drive the van under. Then it was another hundred or so yards of rough but not impossible transit to a long, straight road that ran to a major highway. A left turn at that junction and into the belly of
America you flew.

“Hold on,” said Bilal. “You, old dogs, cut the chatter. It’s rough and dangerous through here.”

Alas, Dr. Faisal did not hear him. He was making an exceedingly important point about the Greek myth of Prometheus, bringer of fire, and how he had been punished by Zeus. It was his carefully considered opinion that the tale was out of something the Jew Jung had called “the collective unconscious,” and it wasn’t really fire that Prometheus brought, it was the foreknowledge of the arrival of Muhammad and the fire was the destruction of the West.

Professor Khalid thought this rather a stretch.

“I agree,” he said, “that many of their myths suggest that in their view of the ethos they are unconsciously aware of something missing, something yet to come, something yet to rule, something yet to proclaim truth, but I wonder, truly, if one can be so explicit in assigning meanings.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” shouted Dr. Faisal. “You can! Have you read the original Greek? I have read the original Greek and I tell you there are meanings—”

“
Shut up
!” screamed Bilal. “It is very dangerous here. You fools have no idea what is happening. Keep those old yaps shut until we get across and up into Arizona. Then you can talk all you want.”

“It’s almost time to pray,” said Dr. Faisal.

“Prayers are canceled today,” said Bilal, “with Allah’s permission. I guarantee you, Allah understands.”

The van puttered shakily along the rough track, rolling over rocks, grinding through vegetation, knocking down this or that cactus. It was not completely beneath ground level, as the gully was only around five feet deep; a foot and a half of van top stuck out, and when they reached the fence itself, most of the lower strands had to be cut.

“What was that?” said Bilal.

“You are seeing things,” said Rodriguez.

“Oh no,” said Bilal. “See, there, there in—”

Something poked him in the ribs. He looked and saw Rodriguez
had a shiny automatic pistol in his hand, pointing apologetically at Bilal’s middle.

“So sorry,” the Mexican said, “I must inform you of a slight change of plans.”

Two men came from out of the dark, illuminating the van in their flashlight beams. They wore red cowboy bandannas around their heads, almost like turbans, and carried AK-47s with the easy grace of men who’d spent a lot of time with gun in hand. Bilal could see that each wore a shoulder holster under his jeans jacket, with another shiny gun. They had the raffish, ignorant insouciance of Israeli paratroopers.

“Out, you and the old ones, and we shall see what is so important that you must smuggle it into Los Estados instead of merely driving through the border posts.”

“What is he saying?” said Dr. Faisal. “Why does he have a gun? Bilal, what is going on?”

The door of the van was slid open roughly and the bandits grabbed the two old men, shoving them to the ground.

“Now you,” said Rodriguez, “don’t make no trouble. I am reasonable, but my two amigos are locos. Bad ones. I think I can control them, but you must show them you respect me, or they will get very angry. And I know you have more money, señor. I know you would not be going for a long trip in America with these two geezers without no money.”

“I have money,” said Bilal. “Lots of money. I can pay. No need for anything unpleasant to happen.”

“See, that’s the attitude. My friends, the young man here will cooperate, he understands.”

One of the two huskies came over, grabbed Bilal by the lapel of his decades-old sports coat, and threw him hard against the side of the truck.

He opened the coat, looked up and down, then backed off, nodding.

“You tell me where the money is,” said Rodriguez amiably. “Emilio doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He is an impatient person. You tell me where it is, and I will get it. Oh, and another thing. We must have a look
at what treasure behind the curtain is so important to get into Los Estados. Oh, it must be something very interesting to go to all this trouble.”

“It is religious tracts. Booklets on the true faith.”

“Oh, yes, I believe that one. You must think I’m a fool. Besides, the true faith is our lord Jesus and his immaculate mother, heathen.”

“Sir, I—”

Rodriguez struck him hard in the face.

“Money, then treasure, monkey asshole.”

“Yes, of course, sir.”

Professor Khalid called, “What is happening, Bilal? Why did he strike you? Who are these men?”

“Tell the old one to shut his yap,” said Rodriguez, “or Pedro, I’m afraid, will kick in his teeth.”

“Professor, it is not a problem. Just another few minutes and we will be on our way.”

“Indeed,” said Rodriguez, “now tell me where—”

Bilal hit him with five bunched fingers in the center of the throat, crushing the larynx. He began to make unpleasant sounds and quickly lost interest in his firearm. Bilal pivoted, way behind the two AKs coming up, but he had hands faster than Allah’s, it was said in the training camps. He got the .380 Ruger LCP taped inside his left wrist into his right hand and in the next second it became evident that the nasty boys Pedro and friend had yet to cock their AKs before firing, an amateur’s mistake that Bilal or any of his cohorts would not have made, and each bolt was at the halfway point when Bilal fired the tiny pistol twice, putting a .380 into each head. He was a superb shot, even with so small a gun having all but nonexistent sights. The bullets were so tiny they didn’t deliver much impact, that is, other than the instant animal death they generated by pulping the deep central brain, and one of the men began to walk around strangely, blood pouring down his face, as if he were trying to remember how a chicken dances. He disappeared into the blackness, clucking. The other merely sat down disappointedly and sagged off into an eternal nap.

Rodriguez sat against the wheel of the van. He was coughing blood
as well as expelling it copiously from his nostrils, holding his ruptured throat as his lungs and all other available vessels filled with liquid, drowning him. Bilal had not been trained to recognize any kind of mercy, as the camps were not an environment that emphasized mercy as a value, but the look of pain was so extreme that without willing it, he shot the man in the temple.

Professor Khalid came racing over.

“I have to get away from him! If he tells me he read the myth of Prometheus in the original Greek one more time, I will strangle him, and then where will we be?”

Dr. Faisal was not far behind.

“What can you do with the uneducated? The fool knows nothing. He is all hot air and opinions without a single reliable fact. I cannot continue this trip with such a fool!”

Somehow, Bilal got them into the truck and on their way.

TGIF NUMBER 133

915 BRAVERMAN AVENUE

JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

2030 HOURS

Anything would do. Did they still sell breakfast at this time of night? Maybe eggs and bacon. But eggs and bacon wouldn’t work without coffee, and he couldn’t drink the decaf and he couldn’t afford a sleepless night in the motel, even if, on the FBI per diem, the Hilton was an upgrade from many of the places he’d stayed.

Swagger had a headache, the beginnings of a cold, and a serious case of exhaustion. This “investigating” was debilitating. You had to be “on” all the time, your mind alert. And even after fifteen hours of it, you got nothing.

“Have you decided?” asked the waitress.

“Double Jack neat, please, with a side of water.”

“Sir, we don’t—”

“I know, I know, my idea of a little joke, ma’am, peculiar, I know.”

She smiled. She had the look of some kind of marine wife or girlfriend here a couple of miles off the main entrance to Lejeune, and maybe her husband or boyfriend was deployed somewhere and she needed the dough, serving old coots such as himself to keep going with two kids and not enough allowances. It was sometimes harder on the ones left behind, and there were no guarantees the man wouldn’t come home in a box.

“Okay,” he said, “I guess I’ll have the Caesar salad and this grilled fish special.” No meat; that would make Julie happy.

“Anything to drink? We do have wine and beer.”

“Ma’am, water’s fine.”

She left, and he pulled his briefcase up to the table. It contained the notes he’d taken today during a full day of interviews on Camp Lejeune in 2nd Recon Battalion headquarters, a Xerox of Cruz’s career-long
201 file, and preliminary reports from field agents and NIS canvassing of previous duty stations for information and background, still woefully incomplete.

He got his yellow notepads out from today, recording his conversations with Colonel Laidlaw; Lieutenant Colonel Simpson, his successor as 2nd Recon commander; Major Morton, former S-2 of 2-2, now at Division S-2 while he waited to get out and head off to law school; Sergeants Kelly and Schuman, both snipers who’d served in Sniper Platoon with Ray Cruz; and Lance Corporals Sigmond and Krahl, who’d been friends with Lance Corporal Billy Skelton.

It was pretty much the same all the way through. You couldn’t find a bad word about Ray Cruz on this planet, much less the South Carolina sector of it.

Colonel Laidlaw: “I didn’t know Cruz except by report and reputation. I’m not one of those meet and greet leaders. I just can’t stand it when the boys get hurt or killed: I keep my distance so I can do my job. I’m way too old for combat, I know. Anyhow, I found him to be a quiet, intense professional. I was aware of the many times he’d been offered commissions and his opportunities outside the corps but I understood his commitment to his job. He was one of, hell, maybe he was, the best.”

Lieutenant Colonel Simpson: “At any time, he could have written a ticket out of there. He didn’t have to keep going on the missions. I said to him, ‘Look, Sergeant Cruz, I’m getting tired of writing commendations and listening to you call me sir when I should be calling you sir. Will you go be the next commandant or something?’ He’d smile, and say he was fine with it the way it was. He liked
saving
people. He believed that’s what a sniper does. If some unit got in a firefight, Ray was the first one on the track to get out there; he’d work his way around, taking incredible chances, and bring fire on the hadjis, and after he dropped two or three, they’d be gone. It must have happened a thousand times. A sniper dings a kid and Sergeant Cruz saddles up and slithers out. A few minutes later we hear a shot and a few minutes later, Cruz is back, checking on the kid. And note: we didn’t have to go
to Hellfire and blow up a house or go to Apache and blow up a neighborhood or go to F-16 and blow up a town. One shot, one kill. Everybody’s happy.”

Morton, the intelligence whiz: “Look, I’ll be frank with you. When you brief or debrief these guys, you do become aware of the limits of their minds. Some aren’t what we’d call ‘smart’ in an intellectual way, but their strength is doing exactly what they’re told and then reporting back exactly what happened. Not Cruz. He was smart
smart,
if you know what I mean. He got it. He’d seen through all the follies of the corps, he knew Simpson was sucking up like a whore to Colonel Laidlaw to get the battalion, he knew that Kelly was smarter than Schuman but that Schuman was more reliable under fire, he knew that Skelton was one of those college guys in the marines who hide from some issue in civilian life but was still the smartest and the best of the spotters. Cruz knew what was bullshit and what was real. Yet still: he risked. He risked so much, even knowing that in the end it would all be decided by assholes in suits sitting at tables. To me, to have that kind of IQ—what was it?”