The Abduction (36 page)

Captain Smith nods and disappears into the night. Thirty minutes later, he returns.

“They got him, Major. Heading north.”

“Goddamnit!” The major stands. “Saddle up.”

They head back to the ambush point, their minds playing out the consequence of violating one of the three absolute rules drilled into every SOG team member from day one: never let yourself be captured by the VC.

They track the VC through the jungle and into a hamlet. Entering the hamlet, it is apparent the VC were here; the fear shows on the peasants’ faces. The Americans sweep the hamlet, searching every hut and hiding place for signs of Dalton or the VC. The peasants huddle together; mothers clutch their children. They are cooperative but tense, as one would expect when confronted by eleven big and heavily armed American soldiers in the middle of VC territory.

“No VC! No Yank!”

In the center of the hamlet, an old man stands next to a big pot cooking over an open fire; it is the community pot of
nuoc mam
, a pungent fish sauce the Vietnamese pour over rice. He stirs the sauce with a long wood utensil. He seems scared to death and is barely moving his utensil. The Americans find neither Dalton nor VC.

Captain Smith’s voice rings out. He’s picked up the VC’s tracks leading out of the hamlet and into the adjacent jungle. The Green Berets give chase, aware they’re probably running directly into another ambush or booby traps or—

“Holy shit!”

—Dalton.

Ben Brice brings up the rear and comes upon his teammates standing shoulder to shoulder, their backs to him. One thought captures his mind: it must be Roger. He prepares himself to face death again, then he pushes his way through to the front. And in that moment, his life is forever changed. His romantic West Point notions of war and warriors are forever dispelled. His childlike vision of good and evil is forever altered. His innocence is lost. And so it is, when one confronts the evil in man.

Lieutenant Roger Dalton, U.S. Army Green Beret, hangs from a tree by his ankles, naked and disemboweled, his intestines hanging down into the small fire the VC built so the Americans could better see their handiwork. His genitals are missing. As is his head. The only sound is that of the fire sizzling with each drop of his bodily fluids. They know it’s Dalton by the fresh Viper tattoo on his left arm and the dog tags intertwined in the laces of the boots sitting below the body, a typical precaution in case you stepped on a land mine and had a leg blown off; the dog tags allowed the medics to rejoin man and leg, if not literally at least for the body bag. But it was not a precaution against decapitation by the VC. The major’s face is grim.

“This is why we kill gooks.”

After a long moment, Warrant Officer Nunn asks in his Southern drawl, “But where’s his head, Major?”

The major’s expression changes as if he had a revelation.

“Goddamnit!”

He pivots and runs back toward the hamlet. His men exchange confused glances, then they chase after their leader. Ben Brice looks at what remains of his best friend and throws up.

The major and nine angry, armed, adrenaline-charged Green Berets arrive back at the hamlet and run directly to the old man at the community pot of
nuoc mam
. He heard them coming; he is crying, for he knows his fate. The major shoves the old man aside and grabs the wooden utensil. He stirs in the pot then uses the utensil and his razor-sharp eleven-inch Bowie knife to fish an object out: Roger Dalton’s head, his eyes wide open, his mouth wider and stuffed with his genitals.

The major’s face contorts in rage and he lets out a feral scream that echoes against the jungle walls surrounding the hamlet. Then he turns to the old man and yells, “No VC? No VC?” His hand flashes past the old man’s face, as if he were going to strike him but missed. The old man’s face registers surprise, then blood appears along a thin line across his throat. He falls. The major slit the old man’s throat with the Bowie knife.

Lieutenant Ben Brice is using his Bowie knife to cut his best friend’s body down and blaming himself—if he had obeyed the major’s orders and taken the old woman out, Roger would still be alive—when he hears gunfire from the hamlet. It’s as if God whispered in his ear: he knows instantly what is happening.

He leaves his friend and runs backs to the hamlet, fighting his way through the hot steamy jungle, until he comes upon a massacre he cannot stop and a china doll he cannot save.

John’s tears stained the smooth Alpaca beige leather.

He had pulled the Land Rover off the highway shortly after Ben had begun retelling the massacre at Quang Tri. Now his forehead rested on the steering wheel.

“The major was the greatest man I’ve ever known,” Ben said. “Brilliant, natural born leader, completely without personal fear, an absolute belief that America was destined to defeat Communism in the world. He could have been one of the greatest soldiers in history.”

A deep sigh.

“Maybe when a man fights evil every day for so many years, he becomes evil. Maybe a man can’t be around that much hate without hating. I fought the hate. The major … the hate consumed him. He became the evil he was fighting.”

“Where is he now, the major?”

“He’s dead.”

“We were ordered to war but not allowed to win the war. We were ordered to kill but court-martialed for killing. We were ordered to defeat Communism in Southeast Asia only to see Communism win at home.

“Thirty years of Communist rule over America and what has our once great nation become? An immoral society that is unworthy of its military. Civilians who demand freedom for free. Politicians who promise peace and prosperity at no cost, an all-expense-paid life devoted to the pursuit of happiness. Politicians who refused to do their duty but now call on the military to fight foreign wars when their political ambitions are thereby served. That is America today.

“Each of us—soldiers in the United States Army—took a solemn oath to defend this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And defend it we did—the Cold War is over, the Evil Empire is no more, Communism is defeated. But now the threat to America comes from within. From domestic enemies. From those among us who want an America subordinate to the United Nations, subject to international laws and courts, who want to dismantle the American military—because we are the last defense of America. We cannot allow that to happen. I will not allow that to happen. Not while I can still pull the trigger.”

Seven Days in May
starring Major Charles Woodrow Walker.

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson was viewing an old grainy videotape of the court-martialed war criminal Major Charles Woodrow Walker. He was handsome, a charismatic speaker, and the leader of a plot to overthrow the United States government. He commanded a personal army of former soldiers. He was operating under the radar, back before 9/11, back when the Bureau’s domestic radar screen was filled not with Islamic extremists but with homegrown hate groups—Aryan Nation, National Alliance, the Order, the Klan, skinheads, the right-wing militia movement: a bunch of dumb-ass white boys who so hated blacks and Jews that they had retired to the mountains of Idaho and Montana to live without electricity or running water or blacks or Jews. But while the Bureau concerned itself with weekend warriors who couldn’t overthrow their own town councils if their lives depended on it, completely undetected were Walker and his soldiers, real warriors trained by the U.S. government to overthrow other countries’ governments. Walker was a clear and present danger to America: a pissed-off Green Beret can be a nation’s worst nightmare.

And the Bureau might never have learned of Walker’s plot until the military coup began if this videotape had not been sent to the FBI twelve years ago with an anonymous handwritten note that read:
Patty Walker said if I don’t see her for three months, the major done killed her, and I better mail this. So I am.
The package was postmarked Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The Bureau put a team in Bonners Ferry. They alerted local law enforcement and hospitals. They searched for Walker’s secret mountain compound but without success. So they waited to get lucky.

Two years later, they did.

Walker strode into the hospital in Bonners Ferry with his dying son in his arms. The hospital treated the boy and called the Feds; the FBI arrested Walker without incident and airlifted him to the maximum-security prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, to await trial for treason.

A trial that never took place.

Walker’s men took a high-ranking government employee hostage and threatened to send the hostage back in pieces unless Walker was released. FBI Director Laurence
McCoy refused—until he received the first installment. McCoy released Walker, who then disappeared into Mexico. And there his life ended. Three weeks later, Major Charles Woodrow Walker died of a heart attack.

Washington had overnighted the entire file on Major Walker—the videotape, photographs, and background reports of Walker and his followers. Their military careers were classified just like Colonel Brice’s. There was no mention of Viper team or a Viper tattoo. The last item in the file was a copy of his
New York Times
obituary
.
Jan sat back. Her revenge theory didn’t wash.

Major Charles Woodrow Walker had been dead for ten years.

Bonners Ferry, Idaho, population 2,600, sits along the south bank of the Kootenai River twenty-four miles from the Canadian border, 1,800 feet above sea level, and nestled among three mountain ranges with peaks reaching 8,000 feet into the big sky. The original inhabitants of the “Nile of the North,” as this fertile river valley became known, were members of the Kootenai Nation, whose local residency dated back to prehistoric times. The white man came to this part of Idaho on his way to Canada during the gold rush of 1863; he stayed to harvest the tall timber that covered 90 percent of the land. A century and a half later, the Kootenai tribe owns the town’s only casino, the descendants of the gold rushers grow Christmas trees, and northern Idaho has become a haven for racists, neo-Nazis, and right-wing antigovernment zealots.

Only the latter fact did Ben know when he parked the Land Rover in front of the Boundary County Courthouse. He and John stepped through the icy slush and walked into the three-story white stone structure. They located the sheriff’s office; inside, a plump middle-aged woman sat at a desk behind a waist-high wood partition. Behind her desk was a door marked SHERIFF J. D. JOHNSON. On the wall next to the door were framed photographs in each of which appeared a tall rugged man with progressively less and grayer hair—and one photograph when the man had a full head of black hair, in a place Ben knew all too well.

“Here to pay a fine?” the woman asked.

“No, ma’am,” Ben said, “we’re—”

“File a complaint?”

“No, ma’am—”

“Service of process?”

John planted his hands on the partition and leaned over. “Cripes, lady, we’re looking for the freaking Nazis that kidnapped my daughter!”

The woman stared at him over her glasses. “O-kay.”

The door behind her opened, and the man in the photographs appeared, wearing a uniform like he had worn one all his life.

“Louann,” the man said, “I’m
occupado
tonight. Tell Cody he’s in charge.”

He noticed Ben and John; he glanced back at the woman.

“Sheriff, these gentlemen are here about some Nazis,” she said as if it were a routine request.

The sheriff gave Ben and John a law enforcement once-over—they probably appeared ragged, almost twenty-four hours on the road—then came around the partition. He walked with a slight limp. Ben stuck out his hand.

“Sheriff, Ben Brice. And my son, John.”

The sheriff’s hair was combed neatly and he smelled of cologne, as if he had just freshened up in his office. He shook their hands.

“J. D. Johnson. What’s this about some Nazis?”

Ben held out Gracie’s photo. “My granddaughter’s been kidnapped.”

The sheriff studied the photo. “The girl down in Texas.” Then he answered Ben’s unasked question. “NLETS, law enforcement Teletype.”

“We think she’s up here,” Ben said.

“Thought the abductor hung himself?”

“He was the wrong man.”

“FBI seems to think he was the right man.”

“They’re wrong.”

“Unh-hunh.”

The sheriff scratched his square jaw; his fingernails sounded like number-six sandpaper on his day-old beard.

“And you figure some Nazi-type brought her up here?”

“We were told a lot of them live in this area.”

The sheriff sighed. “That is a fact.”

“She was in Idaho Falls on Sunday evening, positive ID, with two men wearing camouflage fatigues, heading north five hundred miles in a white SUV with Idaho plates.”

“Well, that’d put them right about here, wouldn’t it?”

“Look, Sheriff, if you could give us a few minutes of your time, look at a few photos …”

The sheriff shrugged. “All right, Mr. Brice. First thing in the morning.”

“Could we do it now, Sheriff? It’s an emergency.”

“It’s also my anniversary. Taking the wife to dinner, and I gotta pick up this little bracelet I got for her …” He turned for the door. “Oh-six-hundred, Mr. Brice.”