Wrongful Death (31 page)

“But it’s a highly regulated industry,” Kessler said. “How could Argus hide the shipments?”

Sloane explained what Mills had learned about the chemicals being shipped through Jordan or Syria and then through the free-trade port of Aqaba to a middleman who was falsely identified as the end user. The middleman would then load the shipments onto trucks and illegally drive them into Iraq.

“As you know, there were no border checks.”

Kessler asked, “What about the payments?”

Sloane continued to repeat what Mills had learned, explaining that even after the embargo, Jordan continued to import 300 million dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil every year. Syria, too, purchased the oil.

“A middleman could have presented an invoice for food or other supplies approved under the oil-for-food program to a commercial attaché at Iraq’s embassy in Jordan. The attaché would then pay him out of the proceeds from the sale of Iraq’s oil shipments. Similar scams could have been run through Syria, which was making a billion dollars a year from the Iraq-Syrian oil pipeline, all of it outside UN control. Saddam just had to find a way to hide the chemicals.”

“That’s not a problem,” Kessler said. “Iraq is a huge ammo dump. We’d find explosives everywhere. An abandoned granary would have been perfect because it would not normally have been a military target.”

“And Argus couldn’t take the chance of an officially sanctioned military mission,” Sloane said.

Kessler agreed. “If we had found the chemicals, it would have gone a long way toward the administration’s justification for the war, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or at least the capability of manufacturing them. No way Argus could have kept that information from leaking.”

“It would have exposed one of the largest military contractors, and several members of the president’s administration,” Sloane said. “The public outcry would have forced the administration to pull every Argus contract.”

“Billions of dollars,” Kessler said.

“And not even Argus’s friends in the administration could have protected it from a Department of Justice or congressional inquiry. In fact, I suspect they would have distanced themselves,” Sloane said.

Kessler looked stricken. “Griffin used us to target the building to make it look like a military mission.”

Sloane nodded. “James didn’t die on a military mission.”

“But how could Argus fake the transmission? What about Bravo three-sixteen?”

“I think I can explain that,” Sloane said. “The problem is I can’t prove any of it, and without proof, we’re both vulnerable.”

“You didn’t tape Cassidy.”

Sloane shook his head. “That was just a ploy to hopefully keep us alive. They won’t kill us if they think we have evidence to implicate Argus.”

Sloane’s cell phone rang. He checked the number, expecting Charles Jenkins, but didn’t recognize it. He didn’t immediately recognize the voice either.

“Mr. Sloane? This is Tom Pendergrass.”

“YOU SAID YOU
taped Cassidy?”

Aboard the fishing vessel anchored off Three Tree Point’s shore, Mr. Williams cupped the headphones to his ears. Up to that moment, he had heard only music. Sloane and Kessler must have moved to a room closer to the transmitter in Sloane’s jacket. He slid to the computer screen and read their conversation as it simultaneously appeared on the screen while continuing to listen.

“I didn’t have time,” Sloane responded. “You’re the last witness.”

The transmission again went silent. Then Kessler said, “The FBCB2.”

Mr. Williams sat up.

“What about it?” Sloane asked.

“It would have recorded the transmission from Bravo three-sixteen. It would prove that Cassidy told you the truth.”

“But you destroyed it. Your witness statement said you climbed back inside the Humvee and burned the hard drive.”

“But we both know I didn’t write that statement.”

“You didn’t burn it?”

“I didn’t have to. When I dropped back down the hatch, the FBCB2 had been split open.”

“It was destroyed.”

“Yes and no. As I said, it was split open. So I just yanked the hard drive out and shoved it in my rucksack. I didn’t give it a second thought.”

“What did you do with it?”

“After I got shot they put me on a transport to Germany and I spent several weeks in a hospital rehabbing before they sent me back to the States. I had completely forgotten about it. I didn’t realize I still had it until I got back to Fort Lewis and was preparing for discharge.”

“You still have it?”

“They sent my stuff there. It was still in my rucksack.”

“They didn’t confiscate it?”

“I’ve heard stories of guys getting their M16s home, knives, all kinds of stuff. Nobody was going to question something no bigger than a Palm-Pilot. Hell, it would have been easy if I’d been trying.”

“And you’ve kept it? You still have it somewhere?”

“Not remembering bothered me,” Kessler said. “I felt guilty about Ford’s death. I thought someday I might get the courage to listen to it, see if I screwed up. Eventually I guess I didn’t have the courage to find out.”

Sloane’s voice became more urgent. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”

“That’s the problem,” Kessler said. “I put it in the most secure place I could think of.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s in a safe in my office at Argus.”

There was a pause in the conversation. Then Sloane spoke.

“We need that hard drive. We need to get it tonight.”

“I can get in,” Kessler said. “But if Argus is onto me, the problem won’t be getting in. The problem will be getting back out.”

Mr. Williams smiled and picked up the phone. Colonel Griffin answered on the first ring.

“Colonel,” he started. Then he heard a concussive blast and turned to look out the window of the boat. A fireball rolled into the sky.

T
he plate-glass window exploded. The blinds ripped from their hinges. Propelled backward, Sloane landed hard on the floor. Kessler toppled from his chair and landed beside him. They waited a moment, then Sloane shook the cobwebs and scrambled to his knees, Glock in hand.

“Are you all right?”

Kessler nodded.

“Wait here.” Sloane crept to the window, careful to stay below the sill. He had limited ammunition and would have to use it sparingly to hold off Argus. Ideally he wanted one man alive, one chance to maybe get information to prove Argus was complicit in the killings of Ferguson, Thomas, and Cassidy. He slowly rose and peered over the window ledge.

A fire burned on his lawn.

A TRUCK HAD
backed down the easement, a city employee standing in a bucket at the end of an extension arm. The man had
managed to restore temporary power to the area; the lights in the neighbors’ homes and the street lamps again cast an orange hue on the wet pavement. Sloane stood in the easement finishing a conversation with a Burien police officer. A neighbor had called the police upon hearing the explosion from Sloane’s property and seeing the fireball. Sloane had kept to the story Jenkins had earlier told the police.

“While I was living in Northern California someone broke into my apartment and trashed it. There’s a report on file with the Pacifica Police Department. It was ultimately the reason we moved. Seattle was supposed to be a fresh start.”

“And now you think that same person has followed you here?”

“I don’t know,” Sloane said. “I thought I’d put it all behind me. Then I started to receive the threatening phone calls again. I sent my wife and son away and hired Mr. Jenkins.”

When the officer completed his questions, he told Sloane a detective would be contacting him to discuss the matter further. Then he got back in the vehicle and drove off.

Sloane walked down the easement into his backyard. Jenkins stood on the lawn, the binoculars focused on the water. “Boat’s gone,” he said.

Sloane looked at the twisted and charred remains of his barbecue. “That was your plan, shooting my barbecue?”

Jenkins shrugged. “I was making do with what I had. Besides, it worked, didn’t it? They spooked and left.”

“How many came?”

“Too many for us to handle. This way is better. Where’s Kessler?”

“Making phone calls.”

“What do you think the response will be?”

“I don’t know, but Griffin said Kessler was well liked, that his
men were loyal to him.” He looked out over the water. “Does this remind you of anything?” Sloane was thinking of the bluff in West Virginia where the two men had met. Jenkins had explained to Sloane that he was the boy from the mountains in Mexico, and that Jenkins had been partially responsible for the massacre that had orphaned him.

“I was thinking the same thing.” Jenkins turned and looked at Sloane’s house. “Is Kessler up for this?”

Sloane nodded. “He’s a soldier. It means a lot to him, what happened to his men.”

“What about you?”

“No turning back now.”

“You can always turn back, David.”

Sloane thought of Beverly Ford and her four children. He thought of James Ford, Phillip Ferguson, and Dwayne Thomas, whom he never knew, and he thought of Michael Cassidy, a punk drug dealer. Even he had deserved better. He thought of Tina being forced to tread water in a mountain pool while her son watched her slowly drown, a memory the boy was not soon to forget.

“Not always,” he said.

ARGUS INTERNATIONAL

ROBERT KESSLER ROLLED
down the window and gave a friendly wave as the security guard stepped down from his booth.

Didn’t this guy ever go home?

“How are you doing, Mel?”

“What are you doing here this late, Captain?”

Kessler had never seen the guard’s eyes. He was surprised they were blue. “I spent all day at Little League games,” Kessler said. “You know how that goes.”

“Not me, Captain. I’m not married.”

“Still playing the field, huh?”

“Right now I’m dedicated to my job.”

“That’s admirable,” Kessler said. “I better do the same.”

The guard smiled. “No rest for the wicked.”

“I have a presentation to the board of directors tomorrow on how we intend to protect our workers administering that new contract in Egypt. How about you? Don’t you ever go home?”

“I’m working a double shift. I like the long hours.” Mel passed Kessler the clipboard through the window. “I’ll have to ask you to sign in, Captain. It’s regulations after-hours.”

“I know all about regulations,” Kessler said. He scribbled his name and time of entry and handed back the clipboard. The guard pressed the button on his belt, raising the wooden arm.

“You have a good night, Captain.”

The plant was lit bright as day. Kessler parked in his reserved spot closest to the back entrance to his building. The spot was marked by a handicap placard, a man in a wheelchair. Kessler shut off the engine, unlocked the seat, and swiveled to lift himself out of his seat and onto the wheelchair. Getting situated, he pushed a button, the van doors slid open, and the platform lifted him out onto the ground. For all of his rehab, and his determination to live some semblance of a normal life, to be a role model for his kids, he couldn’t even get in and out of a car on his own. He had rationalized his loss as an honorable reminder of his service to his country. Now that, too, had been taken from him. It left him bitter. It left him angry.

He rolled up the concrete ramp to the back door, punched in the code on the security keypad, heard the steel latch slide, and pulled open the door.

Though the halls and cubicles were deserted, nearly every light in the building shone brightly. Kessler rolled inside his office and shut the door behind him, now acutely aware that his office
was bugged. He moved behind his desk and reached beneath the wood chair railing along the wall, feeling for the button. When he pressed it, the map on the wall pulled apart, revealing a wall safe. Unfortunately, it had been installed for a man of average height. Kessler loosened the leg straps and used his upper body to lift himself from the chair, leaning his weight against the credenza. He entered the computerized code and pulled the door open.

As he sat down, the door to his office opened behind him. Colonel Bo Griffin walked in, flanked by two men from Argus’s security forces, each carrying an automatic weapon.

“You’re here awfully late, Captain,” Griffin said.

Kessler settled into his chair. “Did I miss the memo, Colonel? Has Argus hired you?”

Griffin smiled. Then he nodded to the hard drive in Kessler’s lap. “A soldier can be court-martialed for stealing military property, particularly if it contains sensitive information.”

“I’d be happy to go forward with that hearing, Colonel.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“So Sloane was right. It has been you all along. I never would have believed it, Colonel.”

Griffin held out his hand for the hard drive.

Kessler shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t make me take it from you. It would be undignified.”

“You talk to me about dignity? You put me in this chair. That’s right, I know all about that too, how you sent us to target that granary so you could order the air strike. How you expected that all of us would die. How you conducted the investigation to cover it up. I know you were behind it all. The only thing I haven’t figured out is the transmission. How’d you do it? How did you send it so only we could hear it? You didn’t send it from the TOC because it would have been recorded at the base and others in the area could have picked it up.”

“Fortunately, the equipment Argus uses to communicate with its security forces is more sophisticated than what we’d been using,” Griffin said.

Sloane had told Kessler he suspected as much. “You sent it from Argus’s communication center on base. Was it a tape?”

“Bravo three-sixteen had been ambushed two months earlier. They never reached the building,” Griffin said. “The forces loyal to Saddam remained stronger then.”

“And you couldn’t call in an air strike because they didn’t reach the building. Sloane was right. He figured it all out.”

“Sloane is a very bright man, and resourceful. But it won’t get him anywhere. He has no evidence to prove anything, and he never will.”

“We’re still debating that now, aren’t we, Colonel?”

“Not much of a debate, Captain.”

“Then tell me why,” Kessler asked. “Why put good men in harm’s way? Why not just blow the building?”

“You know why. We heard you talking it over with Sloane tonight in his home. If the military had found the chemicals, we would have had to go public with the information. It was too valuable to bury, and you can’t keep information that big from leaking, especially with the press embedded over there and so many soldiers keeping private blogs. It would have come out eventually.”

“And a formal military mission would have raised too many questions about the nature of the target in the pre-mission meetings,” Kessler said.

Griffin agreed. “They would have wanted to know why the hell we were concerned with a granary.”

“But the men, Colonel, how could you do that to us?”

“There’s a war going on, Captain. Casualties are a part of war. You told Mr. Sloane that in this very office.”

“Those were American soldiers.”

“I did it for the American soldier.”

“What?”

“I saw it in Vietnam,” Griffin said, bitterness creeping into his voice. “Do you know how many men died over there because we couldn’t get the political support we needed to do the job? We lost fifty thousand men. What would have happened if the American public and the politicians found out that some of the chemicals we were looking for in Iraq were manufactured by American companies and shipped while members of the president’s administration held offices in those companies? The American public would have abandoned the cause just as it did in Vietnam, and the soldiers would have suffered for it. You erode support for a war’s justification and you erode support for those fighting it. That’s how they end up getting killed. How many men would have died as a result?”

Kessler shook his head. “Spare me the patriotism speech, Colonel. You didn’t do this for the country or for the men. You did it for the money. Houghton Park’s only motivation was to save his ass. Argus was facing a public relations nightmare. They stood to lose billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts, not to mention the potential liability from lawsuits. The company stock would have plummeted, and its officers would have faced significant jail sentences. They paid you, handsomely I would guess.”

“Believe what you want, but I would have done this for free.”

Kessler scoffed. “Then you’re even crazier than I thought.”

“I’ll take that hard drive now.”

“Sloane knows everything. He’s not going to let this go. He’ll keep at it.”

“Sloane is a lawyer. He knows he has no evidence—that’s why he sent you here tonight. Without that hard drive he has no case. He can’t prove what happened that night. We both know that’s why you risked coming here tonight. Mr. Sloane won’t be a problem. You are.”

Griffin nodded. The two men stepped forward.

Kessler pulled his hand from the pocket of his jacket, fingers wrapped around a grenade. The two men stopped.

“He’s bluffing,” one said. But neither man moved.

Kessler pulled the pin.

“You can’t get out,” Griffin said. “You know that.”

“What does it do to a man, Colonel?”

“What?”

“To his psyche? What does it do to a man to suddenly find himself confined to a wheelchair?”

Griffin’s eyes widened.

“He becomes bitter and angry and he begins to believe he’s entitled to more than the military will give him.” Kessler smiled. “You misjudged me, Colonel, again. This isn’t just about the hard drive anymore. You killed my men. You tried to kill me. You put me in this chair for the rest of my life. Did you think I’d let you get away with that?”

Beads of sweat glistened on Griffin’s upper lip.

“You want to call my bluff, Colonel? You have the guts when it’s your life on the line? Come on, I’m giving you the chance to die for something you just told me you believe in. Give the order. Give the order for them to shoot and we all die, and nobody ever finds out what happened. Argus walks away.”

One of the men looked as though he might take that step.

“No!” Griffin ordered.

Kessler smiled. “I didn’t think so. You’re a coward, Colonel.” He gestured to the two men to stand to the side. Griffin told them to comply.

“Put your weapons on the floor,” Kessler instructed. They set the rifles down. “Now step away from them.”

Kessler rolled to the door and motioned the men to move further into the office. He rolled forward, picked up the weapons, and
laid them across his lap. Then he rolled backward down the hall, watching them. “I release my grip and the funnel blast down this hallway will kill us all.”

“You have nowhere to go, Captain,” Griffin said. “Your vehicle has been disabled.”

Kessler entered the code on the keypad. The red light lit. The door unlatched. He pulled it open. “You’re wrong, Colonel. I’m going back to Iraq.”

He tossed the grenade down the hallway and let the steel door slam shut behind him.

KESSLER KNEW HE
had only a few seconds’ head start before the men realized the grenade was disabled. He tossed one of the automatic weapons in the darkness and kept the other across his lap. It wouldn’t do him much good at present. He needed his arms to push and steer his chair through the dirt roads, his progress slowed by the potholes, debris, and darkness. His advantage was that he knew the streets intimately. He’d designed them. He hoped that would be enough of an edge to make it out. He wheeled past the burned-out shells of vehicles and the scarred walls of the courtyards surrounding the Iraqi houses, eerily similar to the real thing. Behind him he heard the metal door to the warehouse open and slam closed, echoing in the shell. His pursuers would move faster than he could roll, but he also had the advantage of knowing where he was headed.