ROGUESTATE, page 26
Carl Elsing was the owner of theGay Chance. Parvez found him two days ago in one of the seedier homosexual bars littering Virginia Beach. He expressed the desire to see the ocean in a personal and intimate fashion. Parvez promised lust and decadence, but he had to see the boat first. Carl eagerly took him down to the slip and proudly displayed his boat. It was the last thing Carl ever did. Parvez lured the intoxicated man aboard his boat and quickly sunk a six-inch combat knife between the second and third ribs. While Chechens are not orthodox Muslims, they still hold to the sanctions against homosexuality and unnatural acts. Besides, he was soldier operating deep inside enemy territory.
Carl was wrapped up in a blue tarpaulin, and lashed between the gunwales.
Five miles out from Wreck Island, Parvez weighed the tarpaulin with bricks and rolled Carl over the side. He banged against the fiberglass hull, and then splashed on the Atlantic waves.
It was the first mistake Parvez made in America, and it would give the Bureau an edge. Parvez had spent the last ten years running over rocky ground, hiding inside concrete bunkers, and cowering behind blackout curtains. He understood snow, cold, and deprivation. He had suffered knife, bullet wounds, and the odd piece of shrapnel from a grenade or car bomb. He knew hunger and thirst; but he did not understand oceans.
Chechnya is a landlocked republic hemmed in by Georgia, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. In it is an unforgiving land of oil pipelines, mountains, and Russians. It is a land where the sky stretches forever and the ground is a muddy brown. Birds have been replaced by attack helicopters and strike aircraft. The streams and ponds have been poisoned by dead horses and unburied Russians. The southern cities have been reduced to gray black smudges. The wealth and power taken for granted in America was a paradise no one believed possible.
Carl’s wrapped body slid under the waves. It was enough to satisfy Parvez. He worked his way back to the bridge and checked the GPS coordinates against the handwritten ones he had been given. He never questioned the names of Ship Shoal and Wreck Islands or how they gained such monikers. It never occurred to him he was sailing away from the meeting of the Labrador Current running south along the Canadian and American eastern seaboards and the warmer Gulf Stream Current that starts to run to the northeast along the Carolinas. The mid-Atlantic seaboard is littered with wrecks whose masters did not understand the dangerous currents.
Twenty feet below the surface, the currents started to tumble Carl’s stiff corpse like a surfboard. The ropes used to bind the tarpaulin were tugged mercilessly by the cinder blocks that were supposed to act as anchors. Less than an hour after Parvez dumped Carl, his corpse floated free and began a haphazard journey towards the Virginia coastline.
Parvez shoved the throttles wide open and bounced over the increasingly violent waves towards the rendezvous point. The headwind and southerly drift he was experiencing slowed his progress, but he reached the coordinates according to his GPS around dusk. His lips tasted like a mixture of diesel fuel and salt brine.
Winter was crawling south, and blustery, gray clouds preceded his appearance. Twilight brought a marked drop in temperature and comfort aboard theGay Chance. Parvez switched on the running lights and descended to the galley. He turned on the electric baseboard heaters and felt slightly sick. Other than earthquakes and bombs, the ground in Chechnya did not move. The pitching deck caused the Chechen rebel to lose his lunch.
He ignored Carl’s stateroom. It was adorned in lavender and pink hues, metal-studded leather, and whips. The scene only reinforced the decision to rid the world of the infidel. Parvez did make use of Carl’s liquor cabinet, and poured himself three fingers of Jim Beam Bourbon. He was Chechen after all, and while he was not the strictest Muslim, he appreciated the vehicle Islam provided in achieving violent revolution.
The Russian conscripts might have had a grandmother or great aunt who observed Christmas and Easter, but seventy years of communist rule and ten years of decadent exuberance had wrung any sense of a higher power out of the Russian psyche. Parvez remained ambivalent regarding the Prophet Mohammed, Jesus, or Buddha. God was a remote and vengeful being, and any concept of mercy he might have learned growing up in Chicago was shredded by ten years of drug running, car jacking, and open warfare.
Carl was nothing more than a means to an end. He remained focused on the mission the Ayatollah Kambiz Abbasi assigned to him last spring.
Parvez spent April, May, and June in a camp south of Qum and north of Kashan. Former members of the Shah’s SAVAK (Ministry of Security) ran the camp. They were the survivors who recognized the Shah’s untenable positionvis-à-vis Ayatollah Khomeini’s triumphant return from France. They offered their Israeli and American training expertise to the emerging turban-wrapped masters in late 1978.
The turbulent changes envisioned by the black-garbed mullahs were obvious to everyone except the American Defense Intelligence Agency and Jimmy Carter’s State Department, which continued to assure the thirty-ninth president of the Shah’s continued presence. Abbasi pursued a more practical course. He salvaged intelligence officers, analysts, and trainers. It is estimated that the SAVAK caused between twelve and fifteen thousand people to vanish during 1978—the last full year of the Shah’s reign.
Sixty-one SAVAK officers were executed by the ever-present firing squads. Abbasi lost count of the thousands who found themselves up against a wall and subject to summary execution. The sins of the Shah were swept away under a tidal wave of blood spilt by the revolutionary guards.
Abbasi soon learned of the SAVAK’s mendacious nature. The men he saved hatched a plot to seize the United States Embassy. They recruited and trained the student revolutionaries to overrun the Marine guards. It became the defining moment in Khomeini’s return. In a brilliant stroke, Abbasi provided an enemy for the people to hate and an icon for the new regime to blame.
The Embassy crisis, the abortive rescue attempt, Jimmy Carter’s refusal to light the National Christmas Tree, and the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance became the stories that dominated the American psyche for over a year and contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan. Virtually overnight, Iran went from American partner to a rogue state capable of unimaginable atrocities. It secured Abbasi’s position inside the new Islamic Republic as Iran plunged back to the thirteenth century and war with its ancient foe, Iraq.
Of course, Parvez did not envision himself as merely a cog in a larger scheme revolving around the hated Great American Satan and the godless Russian state. He believed the technical assets and material assistance provided by Abbasi in the sinking of theKursk and the Ostankino fire came out of a genuine belief in Muslim brotherhood. Iran could only benefit by rending the growing strands of cooperation between Russia and America.
Parvez adjusted theGay Chance ’s position a couple of times. The humpbacked, gibbous moon sprinkled silver patterns over the cresting waves. The freighter arrived a little past midnight. It was a black, oily hulk flying a Liberian flag. Over the next two hours, the skiff and three men transported one hundred sixty shaped charges, three M-72 Light Anti-Tank Weapons (LAW), detonators and wires, a master switch, and a display pager to theGay Chance. At twenty-five miles, they were outside the recognized territorial boundaries and hopefully, beyond the interest of the under-funded Coast Guard.
* * * *
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia
Jim Harper hung back between the trees and white headstones. General George Carnady had intervened with the Commandant of the Marine Corps and secured a space at Arlington for Darby Hayes. While many of his exploits could not be publicly acknowledged, Darby had been a member of the Marine Corps Force Recon for almost twenty years, and he had been involved in three super-secret operations for Louis Edwards. Blood and sweat, honor and bravery qualified Darby for a final resting place on America’s most hallowed ground.
Many arrived for the burial ceremony. There were several Marine officers, a couple of generals, including Carnady. Louis Edwards, Jonas Benjamin, and his new wife Maggie stood next to Brian Stillwell. They were Darby’s family. Darby had been orphaned and raised by his grandmother. She instilled honor and discipline in his young life and kept him from the streets. By the time Darby was seventeen, his grandmother’s frail eighty-year-old frame surrendered to the waiting arms of a loving God.
Opportunities in the late seventies were pretty scarce in an economy still reeling from the oil shock and double-digit inflation. He enlisted in the Corps—honor and duty—where the twin themes his grandmother had proclaimed still resonated. Darby found comfort inside the Corps and easily accepted its traditions. He became one ofa few good men.
Harper desperately wanted to be part of the men and women at the gravesite, but he was running free. He had a photograph of Kurt Martin and a tracking method based on the ID chip embedded in Martin’s cell phone. General Carnady would have a fit when he discovered Harper was using national technical means to satisfy a personal vendetta.
Harper had already run afoul of his Lynn.
“Where are you?” she asked last night.
“Out east,” he replied cautiously. He figured the Bureau was still tapping his phone and reading his mail.
“I see. You’re not going to tell me exactly where you are.”
“No,” he answered sheepishly.
Lynn was a soldier’s wife, but there were limits to her understanding. The last six months had sorely tried her patience. “Are you coming home soon?”
Harper had no idea when he would return home. He could tell from her voice she was tired of playing mother and father to their two daughters. “I’m not sure.”
Lynn sighed impatiently. “You’ve been gone three weeks, and before that you were gone most the summer. I get a late night call to come and find you in a hospital bed at Walter Reed all burned and beat up.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. He had failed her again, and failing Lynn pierced him deeper than any bullet could ever reach.
“Yesterday you call and tell me Darby was shot in the subway. What’s next? Do I get another call asking me to come and identify my husband? Maybe they’ll give me a flag and a medal,” she said in biting syllables.
“I know its been rough,” he answered and closed his eyes.
“Rough! You’ve two daughters growing up! They’re not little girls anymore and what do I tell them? ‘Daddy is off saving the world again’? They need their father, not a dead hero! They’ll be all grown women before you know it.”
Harper stared at Kurt Martin’s photograph. He owed Darby justice. He understood Lynn’s anger—he had ignored one of the most important things in her life—her family. “I know,” he whispered.
“Is that all you have to say?” she demanded.
He did not know what to say, but he plowed ahead anyway. “I need to find the guy who killed Darby.”
“Uh-huh and who might that be?”
“He’s a dirt bag named Kurt Martin,” hissed Harper.
“You’re on a one-man crusade to catch this fellow. Why don’t you let the police do their job?” she asked reasonably.
“This isn’t a job for the police,” he managed to say.
There was silence for a moment before Lynn said disappointedly, “Oh, Jim.”
He knew she would never approve of his actions. At one level, he understood he was embarked on cold-blooded execution, and in his saner moments, he realized he was little more than a vigilante.
“Jim, you need to come home. This isn’t you—this isn’t right,” she added quickly. Her disappointment was hammer blows to his confidence, but he could not forget Darby’s confused and pleading eyes while he lay on the cold concrete at L’Enfant Plaza.
They both knew the words fell hopelessly between them. Lynn closed her eyes and prayed fervently for her husband, and Harper stared at Kurt Martin’s photograph. He wanted to say this was the last time, but he knew those words were a lie. He could not turn away from what he had become—a monster to some, a weapon to others. All Lynn wanted was a husband and father. National security, honor and duty rang hollow as cold wind blew between them.
“It’s something I have to do.”
She was losing him again to the violent darkness he had lived with for over twenty years. “Jim, please don’t do this.”
Harper could see her green eyes, pert nose, and luscious lips. He wished he could reach across the phone line and hold her, but his world was a distant and unforgiving realm. Her world was a place he desperately sought to find; his world gripped him tighter and tighter. Blood demanded blood, and he managed to call it justice. Revenge was the proper term, but his blood lust was close to consuming him.
“He killed Darby. He shot him down in cold blood, he’s going to do it again!” Harper exclaimed.
Lynn realized she had lost him again. All she could do was to pray for him and those he would meet along his solitary journey. “I’ll pray for your safety, and for this other man you’re going after.” There was nothing else she could do.
“If you pray for this dirt bag, then pray he finds Jesus before I find him.” He ended the conversation and hung up the phone. Blood pounded in his ears, and his skin itched from the healing process. The nausea was less these days than it had been a month ago. A lightheaded dizziness caught him from time to time. It was not enough to deflect him from his self-assigned mission to find Kurt Martin. He had failed his sergeant once; he was not going to fail him twice.
Watching Darby’s funeral, he realized there were probably stupider things to tell Lynn, but he could not think of any off the top of his head. The color guard raised their M-16 rifles to their shoulders and fired a volley.
He wiped a tear from his eye and moved from his vantage point. “Semper fi,” he whispered.
He moved around theUSS Maine MastMemorial. The gray and white mast stood defiantly against the gathering clouds, and the mist in his eyes. Names etched in granite and iron recorded those lost to a foolish breach of security. It was hard to believe it had happened over one hundred years ago in Havana Harbor. Cuba was still the American tar baby in this hemisphere.
Teddy Roosevelt had led his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill and into history because a soldier’s blood demanded honor. It had taken a nation one hundred years to recognize the act as a supreme act of bravery and reward the first President of the twentieth century with the Medal of Honor. Harper wanted to believe Teddy understood the clarion call he was answering.
TheChallenger Space Shuttle Memorial found him next. Seven men and women were blown apart, because the weather was too cold for the rubber O-rings. Reagan captured the essence of a shocked nation when he concluded his memorial service address with, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
Harper knew he was not embarked on a great moral cause as he came upon the last memorial before the amphitheater. The Iran Rescue Mission Memorial called out to him. The failed rescue mission and a morning in April when the nation woke up to find their President had ordered a belated mission to free American citizens held by student demonstrators in Tehran. It was too little, too late, and it would be another nine months before freedom became a reality.
Harper was not embarked on a noble cause in a no-name place to rescue the helpless. He was strictly interested in a tricky thing called vengeance. Even knowing the truth, he buried the ugly reality and pressed forward on a self-destructive course. The gun volley was a distant echo in his ears. He made his way down the hill to the Visitor’s Center and across the Memorial Bridge.
He ran from Darby’s funeral and Arlington’s ever-present memories.
It was not for honor.
It was for vengeance.
It was a time for killing.
* * * *
Jonas Benjamin watched the color guard fold the American flag draped over Darby’s coffin. He saw Brian Stillwell wipe a tear away more than once. Stillwell had fled from the Republican Guard with Darby through the darkest part of the night. Men tested together under fire produce a bond beyond the verbal.
He owed his very life to Darby as well. Had it not been for Darby and Harper, Jonas would have taken up permanent residence inside or beneath the Panama Ports Company. While he had tried his hand at operations, Jonas came to understand it takes a certain kind of person who dares death and prevails.
From time to time, Jonas surveyed the surrounding ground. Instinctively he knew Harper was close by. Harper would not miss the burial. The man had a peculiar loyalty that purposely charged into the Reaper’s outstretched arms and embraced the cold grave.
He knew Harper had crossed over into anothercountry . He had gone hunting for Kurt Martin. It was a problem, because Harper moved beyond the law into a renegade realm. Jonas had shared with Harper the technical means they were using to track Martin. Judging from General Carnady’s queries after Harper’s whereabouts, he was more than mildly concerned. No one wanted to readthis story in theNew York Times.
Louis Edwards pointedly refrained from asking any questions. Harper was a creature fashioned from a Cold War alchemy designed to destroy the country’s enemies. Unlike an inanimate machine fashioned of steel, silicon, and powder, Harper was a man who could not easily be placed on the shelf. Over the last several years, they had needed his services again. It was inevitable circumstances that would conspire to create a situation where the old habits would come to the fore.
Jonas saw the movement next to theUSS Maine ’smast. There was no mistaking the tilt of his shoulders and the predatory nature of his gait. He seemed more shadow than substance as he made his way towards the amphitheater. Jonas hoped Harper would stop with Martin, but intellectually he knew the hunter would continue tracking his true enemy. The problems Adrian Bridger and Damon Layne posed were far greater than the simple parlay of justice Harper intended.
