Liberty (60 page)
Authors: Stephen Coonts
Read on for an excerpt from
BY STEPHEN COONTS
Available in paperback in August 2009 from St. Martinâ²s Paperbacks
OCTOBERâIRAQ
“Ragheads dragged the driver out of the vehicle and took him away,” the sergeant told the lieutenant, who was sitting in a Humvee. “They shot the woman in the car. She's still in it. Iraqi grunt says she's alive but the assholes put a bomb in the car. They're using her as cheese in the trap.”
“Shit,” said the lieutenant and rubbed the stubble on his chin.
The day was hot, and the chatter of automatic weapons firing bursts was the musical background. The column of vehicles had ground to a halt in a cloud of dust, and since there was no wind, the dust sifted softly down, blanketing equipment and men and making breathing difficult.
U.S. Navy Petty Officer Third Class Owen Winchester moved closer to the lead vehicle so that he could hear the lieutenant and sergeant better.
He could see the back end of an old sedan with faded, peeling paint sitting motionless alongside the road about fifty yards ahead. Three Marines and three Iraqi soldiers were huddled in an irrigation ditch fifty feet to the right of the road. On the left was a block of houses.
“Let me go take a look,” Winchester said to the lieutenant.
“Listen, doc,” the sergeant said, glancing at Winchester. “The ragheads would love to do you same as they would us.”
“I want to take a look,” Winchester insisted. “If she can be saved ⦔ He left it hanging there as distant small-arms fire rattled randomly.
The place was a sun-baked hellhole; it made Juarez look like Paris on the Rio Bravo. The tragedy was that real humans tried to live here ⦠and were murdered here by rats with guns who wanted to rule the dungheap in the name of a vengeful, merciless god, one who demanded human sacrifice as a ticket to Paradise.
The lieutenant had been in Iraq for six months and was approaching burnout. The wanton, savage cruelty of the true believers no longer appalled himâhe accepted it, just as he did the heat and dirt and human misery he saw everywhere he looked. He forced himself to think about the situation. A woman. Shot. She would probably die unless something was done. So what?
No, no, don't think like that
, he thought.
That's the way they think, which is why the Devil lives here.
After a few seconds, he said, “Okay. Take a look. And watch your ass.”
No, no, don't think like that
, he thought.
That's the way they think, which is why the Devil lives here.
After a few seconds, he said, “Okay. Take a look. And watch your ass.”
The sergeant didn't say another word, merely began trotting ahead in that bent-over combat trot of soldiers the world over. With his first-aid bag over his shoulder, Winchester followed.
They flopped into the irrigation ditch directly opposite the car, where they could see into the passenger compartment. There was a woman in there, all right, slumped over. She wasn't wearing a head scarf. They could see her dark hair.
Fifteen feet from them was the rotting carcass of a dog. In this heat, the stench was awe-inspiring.
An Iraqi soldier joined them. “She has been shot,” he said in heavily accented English. “Stomach. I get close, see her and bomb.”
“How are they going to detonate it, you think?” Winchester asked, looking around, trying to spot the triggerman. He saw no one but the Iraqi soldiers and Marines lying on their stomachs in the irrigation ditch, away from the dog. The mudwalled and brick buildings across the way looked empty, abandoned, their windows blank and dark.
“Cell phone, most likely,” the sergeant said sourly. “From somewhere over there, in one of those apartments. Or a garage door opener.”
“Saving lives is my job,” the corpsman said. “I want to take a look.”
“You're an idiot.”
“Probably.” Winchester grinned. He had a good grin.
“Jesus! Don't do nothin' stupid.”
With that admonition ringing in his ears, Winchester ditched the first-aid bag and trotted toward the car. From ten feet away he could see the woman's head slumped over, see that the door was ajar. He closed to five feet.
She wasn't wearing a seat belt, and a bomb was lying on the driver's seat. Looked like four sticks of dynamite, fused, with a black box taped to the bundle. The woman moved her head slightly, and he heard a low moan.
Winchester ran back to the ditch, holding his helmet in place, and flopped down beside the sergeant.
“There's a bomb on the driver's seat,” he told the sergeant, whose name was Joe Martinez. “And she's still alive. I think I can get her out of there before they blow it. Takes time to dial a phone, time for the network to make the phone you called ring. Might be enough time.”
“Might be just enough to kill you, you silly son of a bitch.”
“The door is ajar and she isn't wearing a seat belt. I can do this. Open the door and grab her and run like hell.”
“You're an idiot,” Sergeant Martinez repeated.
“Would you try it if she was your sister?”
“She ain't my sister,” the sergeant said with feeling as he scanned the buildings across the road. “What do they say? No good deed goes unpunished?”
“I will go,” the Iraqi soldier said. He laid his weapon on the edge of the ditch, began taking off his web belt. “Two men, one on each arm.”
“She's
my
sister, Joe,” Owen Winchester said to Martinez. He grinned again, broadly.
my
sister, Joe,” Owen Winchester said to Martinez. He grinned again, broadly.
The sergeant watched as Winchester and the Iraqi soldier
took off all their gear and their helmets, so they could run faster.
took off all their gear and their helmets, so they could run faster.
“You fuckin' swabbie! You got balls as big as pumpkins. How do you carry them around?” Martinez laid down his rifle, took off his web belt and tossed his helmet beside the rifle. “I'll get the door. You two get her.” He took a deep breath and exhaled explosively. “Okay, on three. One, two, threeeee!”
They vaulted from the ditch and sprinted toward the car. The sergeant jerked the door open. The other two men reached in, Winchester grabbing one arm and the Iraqi the other, and pulled the wounded woman from the car, then hooked an arm under each armpit. Joe Martinez picked up her feet, and they began to run.
They were ten feet from the car when the bomb exploded.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The limo pulled up to the front door of the Hay-Adams Hotel after a short jaunt across Lafayette Park. A Secret Service agent standing there opened the passenger door. The president got out and walked into the hotel, accompanied by two agents. He didn't look right or left, just walked straight across the lobby to the elevators and went into the first one. One agent joined him. Together they rode in silence to the fourth floor. Another Secret Service man was standing there by the elevators when the door opened.
At the end of the hallway, the agent with the president rapped on the door. When it opened, the president went in. The agent stayed outside in the hallway.
“Thanks for coming,” the man who greeted the president said. He was in his early fifties, with graying hair and a square chin, still trim and fit and apparently as vigorous as he had been when he played cornerback for Boston College.
“Sorry about your son, Hunt,” the president said. He held on to the other man's hand, grasping it with both of his own. The president had had plenty of practice at this and knew damn well how to do it.
Huntington Winchester nodded, extracted his hand from the president's grasp, and led the way to a portable bar. “I know you don't drink, but I'm having one. You want a Coke or something?”
“Club soda with a twist.”
With the drinks in hand, the two men sat in easy chairs near the window. The White House was visible through the bare treetops of Lafayette Park.
Winchester took a sip of whiskey, then spoke: “The Marines tell me Owen, a sergeant named Martinez, and an Iraqi soldier named Abdul Something tried to pull a wounded Iraqi woman from a car with a bomb in it. They knew it was there and tried to rescue her anyway. Martinez said it was Owen's idea, and I believe it. That was Owen; that was the way he thought. If there was a way, he would have tried it.
“The bomb exploded when they were only a few feet from the car. Killed Owen instantly, mangled Martinez's arm. The Iraqi soldier escaped with only a concussion. The woman they were trying to rescue died in the helicopter that took her and Martinez to the hospital.”
The president didn't say anything. Sometimes there isn't anything to say.
Winchester took another pull on his drink, which looked like Scotch or bourbon. Then he said, “They're trying to save Martinez's arm. He may lose it.”
After a while, Winchester added, “You know the amazing thing? I don't personally know anybody else who has a son or daughter in the military. None of the people on my staff, none of my executives, none of our friends, none of the people at my clubs, no one.”
The president sipped at his club soda.
“Kids from our socioeconomic group aren't supposed to join the military,” Winchester continued. “They never think of it, and if they do, their parents demand that they change their minds. And having a draft wouldn't change that. I was too young for Vietnam, but all the older men I know managed to avoid the draft back then some way or other, or if they did get drafted, they wound up on a general's staff in
Europe or Tokyo. Caught the clap three or four times and had a marvelous time. Not one of them actually went to Vietnam and risked his precious ass.”
Europe or Tokyo. Caught the clap three or four times and had a marvelous time. Not one of them actually went to Vietnam and risked his precious ass.”
The president shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was old enough for Vietnam, yet somehow ended up in the National Guard, which in those days rarely got called up for active service overseas. Today, in the absence of the tens of thousands of young men a military draft would bring in, the National Guard and reserves were getting called up for extended active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just how he managed to land that Guard billet when the waiting list had hundreds of names on it was a question that he had asked his father, who merely shrugged. “I didn't call anyone,” his father the senator had said, and the president had believed him. The truth was the senator didn't have to callâhis influential friends would take it upon themselves to ensure that the senator's son didn't have to join the common herd in the Army and risk life and limb in combat. And no doubt that is what happened. That's the way it has always worked in America for the scions of wealth and privilege.
Of course, the president had known all that even then. The question to his father was the sop to his conscience. He didn't want to go to Vietnamâno one he knew didâand since he was his father's son, he didn't have to. Being mortal clay, he had let it go at that. Still, the memory of that little compromise with fate wasn't anything to be proud of.
“Owen enlisted in the Naval Reserve three years ago,” Winchester continued, “after his sophomore year in college. He was in premed, knew he wanted to be a doctor, help people. Signed up to be a corpsman. Took all the training, did the drills on weekends, all of it, and then four months ago his unit was called up and sent to Iraq. He was in his first year of Harvard Medical School.
“His mother didn't want him to join the military three years ago, and she threw a fit when his unit was called up. Demanded that I pull stringsââcall you and our senators and Admiral Adams.” Adams was the chief of naval operations.
“Yeah, I know Adams, too. We've bird hunted in South Dakota together.”
“Yeah, I know Adams, too. We've bird hunted in South Dakota together.”
He sighed and took another slug of his liquor. “I refused. Told her this was Owen's choice, and I was proud of him. The truth was that if I had pulled strings and denied him his opportunity to serve, an opportunity he sought, he would have felt betrayed. I couldn't do that to him.” He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly.
“When the news came last week that he was dead, Ellen told me she was divorcing me. She's moved out, hired a lawyer. The process servers are probably looking for me right now.”
“I'm sorry, Hunt,” the president said. He put the club soda on the stand beside the chair; he didn't want any more of it.
“Owen was our only child. God fucking damn!” Winchester finished his drink. “So here I sit, dumping all this shit on you, as if you weren't carrying enough of a load as it is.”
“You're my friend, Hunt. Have been for twenty years.”
“You have a lot of friends,” Huntington Winchester said. He went to the bar and poured himself another, came back and resumed his seat. He eyed the president carefully.
“The real problem is that people in my class view the war on terror as a nuisance, something that doesn't really affect us. Blue-collar kids join the military and risk their lives and limbs; not
our
kids, who are getting first-class educations and going to med school, or law school, or getting a finance degree and joining some Wall Street firm. We sit in our big houses with maids and chauffeurs and modern art collections and all the rest of it, reading in the newspapers about suicide bombers murdering people and watching the mayhem on television. We think it is someone else's fight. It isn't. That's what Owen understood. It's
our
fight.”
our
kids, who are getting first-class educations and going to med school, or law school, or getting a finance degree and joining some Wall Street firm. We sit in our big houses with maids and chauffeurs and modern art collections and all the rest of it, reading in the newspapers about suicide bombers murdering people and watching the mayhem on television. We think it is someone else's fight. It isn't. That's what Owen understood. It's
our
fight.”
“We are fighting the terrorists, Hunt,” the president said. “The best way we know how. Is it going well? Depends on whom you ask. But we're doing our best. I assure you of that.”
Winchester wasn't buying. “Our enemies are not the thugs who kidnapped that man from that car in Iraq, murdered
Owen and that woman. Our real enemies are the people who put them up to itâthe imams who preach hate, who are defending a fossilized religion that has been unable to come to grips with thirteen centuries of change, and the people who are financing terrorism, the scum who enjoy seeing other people suffer or who want to buy peace for themselves.
Those
people are the enemy.”
Owen and that woman. Our real enemies are the people who put them up to itâthe imams who preach hate, who are defending a fossilized religion that has been unable to come to grips with thirteen centuries of change, and the people who are financing terrorism, the scum who enjoy seeing other people suffer or who want to buy peace for themselves.
Those
people are the enemy.”
He picked up the daily paper, which was lying on the couch. “Look at thisâanother ignorant, illiterate holy man hiding in Pakistan has exhorted the faithful to attack Americans, anywhere they can be found.” He tossed the paper across the room. “Car bombs in London, shaped charges in Iraq, nuclear threats from Iran ⦠âDeath to America!'”
“Trying to silence individual voices won't do much good, Hunt. The war will be won when Muslims classify these people as lunatics and ignore them.”
“By God, those bastards want a fight,” Winchester snarled. “We should give them one. How many innocent people have to die to satisfy these fanatics' thirst for blood before that wonderful day comes?”
The president didn't reply. He glanced at Winchester's drink, wishing he could have a sip of it.
“
I
have some friends,” Winchester continued, staring at the president's face, “some of them Americans, the rest Europeans. We've talked about this for years, about the fact that we owe civilization more than paying taxes and tut-tutting at the fucking golf club.”
I
have some friends,” Winchester continued, staring at the president's face, “some of them Americans, the rest Europeans. We've talked about this for years, about the fact that we owe civilization more than paying taxes and tut-tutting at the fucking golf club.”
“You've given your only son, Hunt. Sounds to me as if you've put more than your share into the collection plate.”
“My friends and I are businessmen, bankers and shippers. The thought occurred to us that locked somewhere in the records of our daily businesses are the money trails that terrorists leave behind whenever they move money or material across borders. We do business worldwide. We can help find the people who are moving the money, and behind them, the people who are financing the terrorists. From there we can work backward to the preachers of hate who are firing up the fools.”
“Who are your friends?” the president asked.
Winchester gave him names and companies.
“And after you identify these people?” the president asked.
“We'll put up the money to finance assassination squads to kill them.”
The president didn't say a word. He didn't really want to hear this. Any of it.
“I want your help,” Winchester continued, his eyes holding the president's. “We have money, enough to fund an army, and we're willing to spend it. But we need some help data-mining our records. It's all there if we can just dig it out. And we need some hard men who can pull the trigger and thrust in the knife. I want you to find the people who can help us.”
“If this ever comes out,” the president said frankly, “the least that can happen is your companies get a black eye for violating privacy statutes. Customers may sueâ”
“Damn them!” Winchester exclaimed. “Terrorists have no privacy rights, and everybody else can just go hang.”
“Oh, there's more,” the president added. “If you do anything beyond giving information to the government, you'll probably go to prison. Conspiracy to commit murder, murder for hire, money launderingâmaybe they'll even throw in a terrorism charge.”
Huntington Winchester didn't say a word.
The president rose and went to the window. He stood there with his arms crossed looking at the war protesters in Lafayette Park, at the trees, at the top of the White House and the Washington Monument beyond. He thought about the last few years, about the politicians and promises and coffins and kids brought back on gurneys, maimed for life.
Finally he turned and faced Winchester. “I'll think about it.”
Winchester wanted more of a commitment than that, but he held his tongue.
“If this blows up in your face, Hunt, I'll make sad noises. Nothing else. There will be no presidential pardon, so don't even entertain that possibility in the back of your mind. You
and your friends want to play a very dangerous game, and your lives and your fortunes and your freedom are the stakes.”
and your friends want to play a very dangerous game, and your lives and your fortunes and your freedom are the stakes.”
“âWe pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.' Wasn't that the way the phrasing went?” Huntington Winchester asked softly.
The president wouldn't let it rest. He walked forward until he was three feet from Winchester and scrutinized his face. “You aren't proposing business as usual, Hunt. This isn't doing market research for a Wall Street tender offer, buying an oil concession from some impoverished dictatorship or launching a new brand of toothpaste. I want to make sure you understand precisely how big the pile is that you and your'friends' are shoving out onto the table.”
“I
do
understand. Goddamnit, man, Owen was my only son! What do you think he gave to his country?
What the hell do you think Ellen and I gave?”
do
understand. Goddamnit, man, Owen was my only son! What do you think he gave to his country?
What the hell do you think Ellen and I gave?”
“Owen was wearing a United States Navy uniform. You aren't. There's a huge difference.”
“I understand. I'll not ask you for anything else. Ever.”
The president made a gesture with his right hand, one hundreds of millions of people had seen him make countless times. “Who knows, if you help us find a few of those bastards, it might actually do some good.”
He stuck out his hand. Winchester rose from his chair and took it.
One firm shake, then the president headed for the door. “I'll think about it,” he said, almost to himself. He opened the door and passed through and closed it behind him.
A WEEK later Huntington Winchester received a call from the president. He was at home, in his empty house. The cook left after dinner, and the maid and butler had the evening off. He answered the ringing telephone. There were no social preliminaries. “The Java Hut in Marblehead. A man will meet you there tomorrow morning at ten. He knows what you look like.”
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