Payback (20 page)

Please
God, let that little girl live long enough for them to find us.

A cry
erupted from deep within and she bent over to her side, vomiting with shame.

FBI Washington Field Office, Washington, DC

Master Sergeant Mike “Red” Belme sat across from a clearly terrified
man he had come to think of as “The Urinator”—at least until his identity had
been established. Tutu Magoro. Not a citizen yet, but in the process of getting
it. He was a legal immigrant with a valid green card and worked as a taxi
driver for the past two years as well as the nightshift manager at a drycleaner.
Clean record, no wife or kids, just a young man struggling to scrape out a life
for himself.

A
poor man in a rich country.

He often
wondered if immigrants thought of this fact. In their own countries they might
be poor, but they were equal to most of those around them. Any opulence or
excess was usually limited to the ruling class, the other 99% living in true
abject poverty—not Western style poverty.

But in
America, or any other Western democracy, if they came here with no relevant
skills, they quite often were relegated to minimum wage jobs that barely paid
enough to live on, and didn’t in the big cities where immigrants tended to
congregate. When Walmart’s own employees cost the taxpayer over six billion
dollars in government assistance every year, there was clearly a problem.

Minimum
wage in high cost of living areas simply didn’t cut it.

Which
meant those occupying these low paying jobs, quite often immigrants, were poor.

Dirt
poor.

Surrounded
by opulence and excess.

Ignorance
is bliss.

He often
thought it had to be worse knowing you were poor compared to most of those
around you than actually being just as poor as everyone else and never knowing
any better. If you were safe with your belly full, happy in your ignorance, was
emigrating really the best thing to do? If you never knew what a flat screen
television was or had lived all your life not knowing that high speed Internet
access and McDonalds drive thrus were the norm elsewhere, were you really any
worse off not having them?

Fleeing
war, oppression, hunger—those were always legitimate reasons. Trying to provide
a better future for your children? Always. But to come to America just to be
poor in a rich country? He saw so many people simply scraping by but unwilling
to improve themselves—both American and foreign born. He knew people who would
work two, three even four jobs to try and make as much money as they could to
support themselves and their families, trying to set a little bit aside so that
one day they might start their own business, buy a small home or put their kids
through college so they wouldn’t suffer the way their parents had.

He
admired those people.

Greatly.

Like
this man sitting in front of him. He was working two jobs, keeping his nose
clean, even had accumulated several hundred dollars in a Chase savings account
despite sending a sizeable chunk of his weekly paycheck back to Sierra Leone to
help support his mother.

A
poor woman in a poor country.

The
uncooperative, confrontational manner displayed by their other suspect, Ahmadou
Ballo, contrasted sharply with Magoro. Red had been trained to read people, and
all his training and intuition was telling him that this man was either
completely innocent, or an unwilling participant.

He was
betting on the former since unlike the others, Magoro came from Freetown.

“You
know why you’re here?”

The man
shook his head, his eyes darting away for a moment, the sweat beaded on his
forehead trickling into his eyes.

He
squinted, the salty liquid clearly causing his eyes to burn.

Red
turned to the FBI guard standing at the door. “Why don’t you get our friend a
glass of ice water and a towel?”

The
guard nodded and stepped outside, returning a moment later having apparently passed
on the request. Red made a show of reading over the file on Magoro, using his
pen to highlight several points of little interest, merely toying with Magoro’s
mind, making the man think there were things in the file that were of concern.

There
was a knock followed by the guard opening the door, a pitcher of ice water with
two glasses carried in on a tray by the poor lackey not senior enough to pass
the request down to an underling. It was placed shakily on the table, the man
clearly never having spent any time as a waiter, then the towel, held over his
arm almost giving him a touch of class, was handed to Magoro.

The man
tentatively took it, almost scared to look at the man.

“Th-thank
you.”

The
delivery boy didn’t say anything, instead leaving with a bit of an annoyed
glance at Red. Red merely smiled and nodded, pouring out two glasses of water.
He put one in front of Magoro then took a long drink from the other.

He gave
a satisfied sigh, the sound enough to encourage Magoro to drink from his own
glass then towel off his face.

“Better?”

The man
nodded, still averting his eyes.

“Good.
Now, you said you don’t know why you’re here, but I think we both know that’s
not true. I
highly
recommend you simply tell me what you know. If you’re
guilty, we’re going to find out anyway, so not telling us simply makes things
worse for you in the end. But if you’re innocent,
not
telling us will
get you in trouble that you don’t deserve to be in. And if you get a criminal
record for not cooperating with Federal authorities, then you can kiss your
Green Card goodbye, because you’ll be on the first flight back to Sierra
Leone.” Red leaned forward slightly. “So what’s it going to be?”

The man
gulped, the sweat already returning to his forehead. “I-I want—”

He
stopped then looked at the door, shifting in his chair uncomfortably.

“Listen,”
said Red, his voice lowered. “Between you, me and the lamppost, your friend,
Mr. Ballo, the one who threatened you, is going to prison for a very long time.
Any threats he made against you are worthless, he’ll never be able to touch
you.”

“He has
friends.”

“Good,
that’s good. If you tell us who they are, they too won’t be able to touch you.”

Magoro
shook his head. “They’ll kill my family back in Sierra Leone.”

“Not if
we take them all down, and believe me, we will. Nobody commits a terrorist
attack on our soil then lives to tell about it for very long.”

Magoro
leaned forward, his head dropping as he stared at the floor. “I don’t know what
to do. I have nothing to do with this, all I did was go to the center to get
the name of an immigration consultant who could help me with my citizenship application.
Then you showed up.”

“That
sounds completely innocent to me.” Red leaned back in his chair. “Then what do
you think Mr. Ballo was talking about when he told you to say nothing?”

Magoro
shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He
didn’t sound convinced.

“Oh, I
think you do. Perhaps you overheard something?”

Magoro
tensed, his sudden, momentary inhalation catching Red’s ear.

Bingo.

“What
was it you overheard?”

“Nothing,”
Magoro mumbled.

“Listen,
this can all be over very quickly if you just tell me what you overheard.
They’ll never know you told me anything, and we can put you in Witness
Protection if you want.”

Red
wasn’t sure if that last part could actually be done—he didn’t have the
authority. But lying to witnesses withholding information on possible terrorists
gave him a lot of leeway. And judging by Magoro’s interested expression, it
might have just been the right inducement.

“I heard
them talking in the back when I came in.”

“What
were they saying?”

“They
were talking about the kidnapping of the Vice President’s daughter.”

We
have a connection!

“What
did they say?”

“Nothing,
really. I heard one of them yelling that they should kill her now so the
Americans—I guess you—stop looking for her. That’s when they heard me talking
to Camara in the front and they got quiet. This Ballo guy came out to see who I
was, then you came in.”

“And you
heard nothing else?”

Magoro
shook his head. “No, nothing. I don’t know these people. I’ve only gone there
maybe three or four times since I arrived in America. I didn’t join the center
because I wanted to become American, not a hyphenated American.”

Hyphenated
American. I think I like this guy.

“So you
can’t tell me of anyone else who might go there?”

“No,
except my friend who got me the job at the drycleaner. He’s the one who told me
about the center.”

Red
pushed his pad of paper and pen toward Magoro. “Write down his name, address
and phone number. We’ll want to talk to him.”

Magoro
hesitated, his mouth open but no words coming out.

“We
won’t tell him about you, we’ll just say he was seen at the center while it was
under surveillance.”

Magoro
seemed satisfied, quickly scribbling the information down, pushing the pad
back. “When can I get into that Witness Protection thing?”

Red
rose, picking up the pad and files. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

He left
the room, leaving Magoro alone with the guard. Spock was in the hall waiting
for him.

“Anything?”

Red
nodded. “Not much, but we know for sure they’re connected to the kidnapping of
the VP’s daughter.”

But how
that helped them he wasn’t sure.

Somewhere in Sierra Leone

Sarah took Tanya by the arm and led her into the office area where
their electron microscope had been set up. Closing the door, she quickly swept
the room with her eyes, making sure they were alone.

“What is
it?”

“It’s
Koroma’s daughter.”

Tanya
gripped her chin between her thumb and forefinger. “Oh no! Did she test
positive?”

“Yes. I
moved her into Zone Two a little while ago.”

“Does he
know?”

Sarah
nodded. “Yeah, but he said not to give her any special treatment.”

Tanya’s
eyes popped wide. “Are you kidding me? We have to do everything we can to save
her! She could be our ticket to survival for the next few weeks!”

Sarah
sighed in relief, happy Tanya was thinking the same way she was, it making her
feel a little better that she wasn’t alone in her morally questionable thoughts
of self-preservation. “I agree. That’s why I put her in the very first bed on
the left side. We’ll always treat her first to limit the risk of further
exposure. I hung a sheet to give her some privacy and additional protection.”

“Why? Is
there any doubt she’s infected?”

Sarah
felt a knot in her stomach at the thought of a false-positive. But the test had
been conclusive. “I just want to make sure she doesn’t accidentally pick up
another strain, you know how this thing is mutating.”

Tanya
nodded slowly, squeezing her chin harder, the tanned skin turning white. “Yes,
yes, we need to do everything we can to save her.” She tugged at her chin in
frustration. “But we don’t have the supplies we need to save any of them!”

“I know.
We’ll keep her well hydrated and fed, but if the infection takes over, there’s
not a whole lot we can do without IV supplies.”

“Can
they get them?”

“I asked
that Mustapha guy and he said he would look into it, but I’m not confident.”

Tanya
dropped into a nearby chair, her death-grip on her chin released as she lowered
her head between her knees, her long, curly blonde hair dangling toward the
floor, hiding her face. Sarah sat across from her, in front of the microscope,
looking at her friend. Tanya’s skin was a healthy looking golden brown, or at
least what used to be considered healthy looking in the West. Now the paranoia
of skin cancer was scaring too many people into avoiding the sun. She glanced
at her own hands, the California sun she lived under having turned much of her
regularly exposed skin light brown. She had to confess she loved the look and
other than avoiding getting a sunburn, she made no effort to shun the sun when
she had the chance to get outside of the ER.

And in
the Ukraine, the skin cancer scare hadn’t taken hold yet, Tanya on her rare
time off basking under the African sun, soaking up every ray she could, her
skin after two months California gold, her naturally blonde hair even more so.

She’s
a beautiful woman.

Sarah
wasn’t one to obsess about looks, but she did take care of herself and
according to her husband, who could be faulted for being a little biased, she
had “a crackerjack ass and a great rack”. At least that’s how she had overheard
him describe her to one of his buddies on the phone recently when discussing an
upcoming high school reunion. She had felt disgusted and titillated at the same
time, and while cooling her jets in the bathroom, found herself looking at her
body in profile, smiling at her pleasant bumps.

And
forgave him, putting her “crackerjack ass and great rack” to good use as soon
as he got off the phone.

He
didn’t know what hit him.

She
smiled at the memory.

“What?”

Her eyes
returned their focus to Tanya who was now looking up at her. “Huh?”

“You’re
smiling.”

“Was I?”
She paused as her daydream quickly faded, trying to hold on to it for one more
moment. “Just thinking of home.”

“Me too.”
Tanya sighed, leaning back in her chair. “If we can keep this little girl
alive, it might give them time to find us then we can both get home.”