Political Suicide (18 page)

Go ahead, big guy. Keep shooting … keep shooting.

Lou neared the lake’s edge. The huge rock was on his shoulder now. In order to make an effective throw, he had to venture onto the ice again.

But not too far.

Lou needed to close the twenty-foot gap between them by at least half.

“I hit you yet?” the man yelled, oblivious of the figure closing in behind. “I’ve got a lot of ammo, bitch.”

He inserted a fresh magazine and snapped off several more shots. Five feet.

The killer, whom Lou could now see was about his height and build, finally sensed something was wrong and began to turn. Lou brought the rock over his head and heaved it with all the strength he had. The momentum sent him sprawling backwards and landing heavily on the ice. He felt it crack beneath his weight, sending frigid water seeping up around him.

The gunman was spinning toward the commotion behind him when the rock landed precisely at his feet. The ice beneath him gave way instantly and before he could raise his weapon to fire, he vanished. Lou heard the splash, but scrambling for the shore, he could do nothing to help the man. The killer cried out once. Then there was silence. Desperately cold, Lou reached the bank and staggered along the wooded shoreline, tripping over roots and stumbling through skeleton-like, densely packed, leafless bushes.

He was alive, but only long enough, he knew, to freeze to death. He pulled himself to his feet and pushed ahead, unable to pull in a useful breath. Leaning against a tree trunk, he risked a glance behind him. He had put some distance between himself and the rotting boathouse, but what difference did it make? In the childhood debate with friends about the worst way to die—burning, drowning, or freezing—he had always argued for burning. Now, he wasn’t at all sure.

Gasping for air and shaking violently, Lou sank down on a fallen tree. He bent forward to check his injured ankle, and was rolling down his sock when he felt the muzzle of a gun press firmly against the back of his neck.

“Don’t turn around,” a youngish man’s voice said. “Put your hands up and get facedown on the ground. Do it now, or I shoot!”

Teeth snapping like castanets, Lou did as instructed.

Strong hands wrenched his arms behind his back.

The last thing he felt before he lost consciousness were handcuffs being secured around his wrists.

CHAPTER 24

Lou came to slowly, carried into awareness by a pounding headache. He was handcuffed to a stretcher in a van equipped as an ambulance. His sodden clothes had been replaced by military fatigues, and he was covered by a pile of blankets. He guessed his core temperature to be somewhere in the eighties.

The van jounced over a rutted road, each dip firing off a howitzer shell in his head. The young man sitting next to him wore a red cross armband. The driver, considerably more grizzled, had one that read
MP
. Neither man seemed in the mood to speak with him. There was no reaction when Lou told them who he was and how he came to be in this situation.

“I’m telling you one of your own guys was shot,” Lou said. “Hector Rodriguez. He could still be back there someplace. Don’t you care?”

“What we care about is our orders,” the driver said finally, “and our orders are to bring you to the base. Whatever story you have to tell, you can tell it there.”

That’s not going to help anybody,
Lou thought.

Lou had little doubt that Brody sent men to kill him and Hector—perhaps members of the Palace Guard Hector had spoken about. Somehow the contents of the missing CD had to have gotten back to him. No other explanation he could think of made sense. The ambulance slowed and came to a stop at a security checkpoint manned by a team of heavily armed marines.

The MP and medic flashed their security clearance, and a razor-wire gate slid open on a narrow track. A minute later, the van was on the move once again. When Lou craned his neck and looked back, he saw the fence closing. He wondered if he would ever be getting out.

They traveled along some dirt streets, past two long buildings Lou assumed to be barracks. Off to the right there was a target range lit by a series of powerful floodlights, and to the left was the start of what appeared to be an obstacle course. They came to a hard stop at a dirt courtyard that housed three single-story buildings—clapboard siding, tiled roofs. The largest of them was up on short stilts with a porch running across the length. A sign at the center of the group read:

M
ANTIS
C
OMPANY

W
HATEVER
I
T
T
AKES

“Just remember, I’m a civilian,” Lou said as the men released him and guided him out of the van. “I’ve got rights.”

“Not when you trespass on military land, you don’t,” the MP replied.

The men took hold of Lou’s elbows and escorted him into the center and largest of the three buildings. They stopped in front of a shuttered wood door, upon which, painted in perfectly rendered black lettering, were the words:

M
ANTIS
C
OMPANY

C
OL.
W
YATT
B
RODY,
C
OMMANDER

The fierce praying mantis painted beneath the lettering looked as if it could eat a cow. The MP knocked and waited until being invited to enter. Then he set Lou’s soggy wallet on the austere wooden desk. Only a few neatly arranged files were set atop the unvarnished surface. Wyatt Brody glanced at the wallet disdainfully. The dimly lit office was rustic, with exposed beams and wooden bookcases filled with memorabilia and military tomes. No photos, no artwork, no awards, no certificates of merit.

The most impressive aspect of the office was two huge, beautifully crafted glass display cases covering the wall behind Brody’s desk, and the one opposite it. Inside the well-lit cases was a museum of polished handguns—more than Lou had ever seen in one setting. The guns were mounted on green felt, and labeled with brass placards detailing the make, model, and year of the weapon, as well as some text. Through a partially opened door behind the commander, Lou could see more cases and more handguns.

“Impressive, isn’t it, Dr. Welcome,” Brody said from his seat behind his desk. “Several of them are one of a kind.”

Lou wasn’t startled to hear his name. The MPs obviously searched his wallet and called ahead.

Brody nodded toward the door, and the two men left.

“One of your men has been shot,” Lou said as soon as the door clicked shut. “He may be badly injured.”

“I’ve already got a search party looking for him,” Brody said. “Just as I had several looking for you.”

Lou scanned the man’s expressionless face, but could not fathom a guess at his level of truthfulness. Brody, dressed in a beige shirt and tie underneath an olive green jacket, was in his late fifties, distinguished in every way, with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair that rested high on a creaseless forehead. There was a Slavic quality to his appearance—narrow face, aquiline nose, pronounced cheekbones, glacial blue eyes. Yet of all Brody’s features, it was his mouth that troubled Lou the most. His thin lips seemed to frown and grin simultaneously, as if to suggest he derived the same satisfaction from administering pleasure as he did from inflicting pain.

“Take a seat,” Brody said, motioning to the plain wood chair set in front of his desk.

“I prefer to stand,” Lou said.

“It wasn’t a request. I haven’t arrested you for trespassing yet,” Brody continued, “but all that could change with the push of a button. The cells in our brig become unbearably small after just a few hours. Now, take a seat.”

Lou hesitated, then acquiesced.

Brody interlocked his fingers and assessed Lou with his ice blue eyes. When he finally spoke, Lou sensed how Brody’s dominating voice, stern yet without much inflection, could have a hypnotic effect on the men under his command.

“Why don’t you tell me what you were doing trespassing on the property of the United States Marines,” the commander began.

“I’m a taxpayer. Doesn’t that make me a part owner? How can I trespass on my own property?”

“Look, Dr. Welcome, and yes, the MPs radioed ahead, and I had my people run you. Where you work. What you do. Even where you box. Let me be clear about something: Cute and evasive is the fast track to getting yourself locked in one of those cells. So let’s try this again. Why were you on Mantis property?”

“Is running for my life a good enough reason?” Lou said. “There were at least four guys trying to kill Hector Rodriguez and me. And I think I know who they were, too.”

“And exactly who where they?” Brody asked.

“Have you ever heard of the Palace Guard?” Lou asked. “Rumor has it they work for you.”

He studied Brody’s cryptic face, looking for an extra blink, a slight tic that might tell him something. A corpse would have given him more information.

“Never heard of them,” Brody said, his smile conveying many meanings. “Are they a gang of some sort? Members of nearly every major gang have been identified on military installations throughout the world. It’s pervasive in all branches and across most ranks, especially the junior enlisted men.”

“So, do you want to explain why your men tried to kill me and Hector?”

“My men? We don’t hunt civilians. We go after the other side—the bad guys. If you were attacked, it wasn’t anybody directly connected to Mantis.”

Brody’s eyes never wavered from Lou’s face, and Lou wasn’t at all sure he would enjoy facing those eyes in the ring.

“Well, why don’t you tell me,” he said, “since you seem to be an expert on gangs in the military, why the Palace Guard, or whoever those men were, would want me dead?”

“I told you, Doctor, I don’t know who this Palace Guard is. I can tell you that gangs have their own agendas. Maybe it wasn’t you they were after. Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Maybe I could accept that if you could explain why they would want to kill Hector.”

Brody continued to size Lou up. “If you have to know,” Brody said finally, “Hector Rodriguez was not the most well regarded soldier on this base. You’ve heard of the Thin Blue Line?”

“In association with the police, sure,” Lou said.

“Well, we have a line of our own here in the military, and Hector Rodriguez had crossed it many times over. He was about to get kicked out of Mantis, in fact, for performance reasons, and as retaliation, he started spreading lies about the company, about me, and about guys in his own platoon. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Staff Sergeant Rodriguez stepped on the toes of the wrong person with the right connections. So, Doctor, that’s your answer. Now it’s time for you to do the answering. What were you doing talking with Hector Rodriguez in the first place?”

Lou tried for an inscrutable look of his own, but felt certain he missed. He thought of bobbing and weaving with the man à la Muhammad Ali, but finally decided to hit him with a couple of straight-on body blows, just to see what he might jar loose.

“I came here to speak with Mark Colston’s best friend,” he said. There, he’d put it on the table—the first hint that his visit to Hayes had something to do with Elias Colston’s murder. But there was no reaction from Brody at all, not one tell, as poker players called it.

“And why would you be doing that?” Brody asked.

“Well, some things have come to light, and I’m following them up as a favor for the guy accused of killing Congressman Colston.”

“Tragic what’s happened to that family,” Brody said.

“Funny thing is,” Lou continued, “the more digging I do to help out my friend, the more your name keeps coming up as a possible reason the congressman is dead.”

“Me?” Brody’s laugh was unrevealing. “I can only tell you what everyone knew—that Elias Colston and I were never the best of friends.”

“Funny how his son’s death didn’t bring you two closer together.”

“Mark Colston was one of the bravest men I’ve ever had the privilege to lead,” Brody said. “But it’s no secret that I stood in strong opposition to the congressman’s agenda. He wanted to cut our funding, and naturally I wanted to expand it. That sort of conflict is commonplace in our government. It’s a form of checks and balances. And while we may have had our political differences, I don’t go around killing people, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

The body blows had been like punching a stone wall. It was time to try a Cap’n Crunch—a straight-out jab to the face.

“I confess the thought has been crossing my mind,” Lou said.

Lou felt the room charging up, like the moment just before a thunderstorm.

“You listen to me, Welcome,” Brody said, his face now crimson. “I wasn’t the one sleeping with Colston’s wife. And I wasn’t the one who was at their house drunk when he was killed.”

Crunch!

“The timetable for that isn’t at all clear,” Lou said. “It only takes a second to walk up to someone and pull a trigger. Any person could have avoided the security cameras by coming through the woods out back, and shot the congressman before or after Gary McHugh was there.”

As quickly as it had arrived, the thunderstorm passed, and Wyatt Brody was ice once again. “Well, that person could not have been me. Not that I have to make any excuses to you, but I was at the Marine Day parade on the day Colston was killed. So there are a thousand or so witnesses who can attest to that.”

“Arranging for someone to be murdered is no different from pulling the trigger yourself.”

“Keep that in mind, Doctor.”

Are you threatening me?

Lou swallowed the melodramatic retort at the last moment. Of course he was being threatened. “I keep everything in mind,” he said, “including what it felt like to see that boy get shot.”

“And I think we’re done here,” Brody said with a dismissive wave. “You’re free to go.”

“Great. So, are Tweedledum and Tweedledee going to give me a ride back to Hayes?”

The corners of Brody’s mouth tightened. “My men are busy searching for Sergeant Rodriguez,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to make it back to Hayes on your own.”