The Cornwalls Are Gone Read online

  “Was there an old man in the house?”

  “No.”

  “Then someone came in and took him.”

  The bitch asks, “Who is the old man?”

  The chicken is gone, Antonio thinks. It was supposed to be easy. A quick exchange. The old man was going to be peacefully turned over to an American who was to say a phrase, and then the three of them could go home over the border.

  “Somebody that my boss wanted us to protect.”

  “Who is he?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “What? For real?”

  Stupid puta, he thinks. “Our jefe…our boss. If he tells us to guard someone, we guard him. It could be a priest, a child, a farmworker, a billionaire. We don’t care. We don’t ask. It’s…a chicken, that’s all. To be kept well and alive until the exchange.”

  “But he is somebody important.”

  “Quite. We were told never to hurt him, or cause him concern, and to protect him.”

  “But you were to give him to someone else? Is that true?”

  “Yes. We were told it would be peaceful. No need to be alert. No need to be suspicious.”

  “But who were you going to turn him over to?”

  Antonio is thinking through even more. Yes, if he reveals the details to this woman, then he can still find a way to use it to his advantage.

  The deal was supposed to be peaceful.

  It didn’t happen that way.

  That certainly wasn’t Antonio’s fault. In fact, the jefe will be pleased to know that he has survived, to tell what really happened. Or at least what happened that would put Antonio into the jefe’s favor.

  “A man,” he says. “We were to turn him over to a man, after he told us a code word. Then…we would leave and go back over the border.”

  Antonio moves his hands a few centimeters. Close. He could still slap away the woman’s weapon and take charge.

  “Who is the man? Do you know who he is?”

  Antonio shrugs. “An American. Named Tom Cornwall.”

  CHAPTER 65

  ROSARIA KEEPS her face firm and placid, but she blinks hard at hearing those two words.

  Tom Cornwall.

  “Who’s Tom Cornwall?” she asks, although she certainly knows who he is. “Why were you to hand over this old man to him?”

  The cartel gang member just stares at her with hate and contempt. “I told you before. Can’t you hear? We do our job. That’s it.”

  That’s it.

  Rosaria thinks that’s the perfect phrase for now.

  That’s it.

  She draws back quickly, kicks the door open, and is now outside, holding her pistol on the man with one hand, her Galaxy phone with the other.

  “I’m out of here,” she says. “You were cooperative, so I’m not calling the police. But you better get going…”

  He sits there, slowly lowers his hands, and mutters a long, nasty string of expletives, and Rosaria says, “I never knew who my mom was, so that’s a waste of breath.”

  Then she backs away from the truck and does her best to move quickly in reverse, keeping an eye on the vehicle. She scrambles inside her rental car and drives out, remembering only five miles later that she’s still terribly thirsty.

  Antonio goes to the driver’s side, starts up the truck, and then runs into the brush, looking for his revolver. He kneels down, scrambling around, scratching his hands, until yes, there it is.

  He grabs it and then starts back to his truck. Get in and get out.

  That’s all.

  Then call his jefe, but only after he’s back over the border.

  “Hey!” comes a sharp voice.

  Standing to either side of his truck are two cops, wearing white cowboy hats, neckties, and white shirts, both holding pistols in their hands.

  “Drop the weapon, buddy, drop it!” the one on the left says.

  Antonio smiles, thinks, Just like Clint Eastwood, then quickly brings up his heavy revolver. Before he can get a single shot off, he’s hammered hard in his chest and falls back, everything going dark in seconds.

  CHAPTER 66

  CLOSE TO two hours after I’ve driven out of Three Rivers, Texas, I’m just past the city of Victoria, and I’ve pulled off Highway 59 at some scraggly motel with half of the neon letters on its sign burnt out, and I know when I drive out at dawn, I’ll have forgotten this little place of refuge within ten miles of driving.

  It’s a typical one-story stretch of motel rooms, and in the small office, a chubby young Pakistani man holds a controller in his hands and is playing some sort of shoot-’em-up video game. He pauses the game only twice: once to pass over a registration card and key, and then to take my American dollars. I fill out the card with a fake name, address, make and model of vehicle, and license plate number, and the young man doesn’t even give the card a glance before going back to his game.

  I step out into the thick night air and go to my Wrangler, which is parked in front of the office and where I could keep a close eye on things, and my older charge is calmly sitting there, slightly wrinkled hands folded in his lap, seat belt still in place. I get in and drive my Wrangler down to the end of the bumpy parking lot and park in the rear. My headlights pick up a scrawny creature that races into the underbrush, a starving dog or coyote, I can’t tell.

  The room has two twin beds, worn-down green carpeting, a small bathroom that smells of bleach, and a television on a low counter, kept in place by a thick chain and combination lock.

  I drop my bag on the floor, motion to the bathroom. “All yours. Have at it.”

  He nods and goes in, shuts the door, and I hear water running.

  I sit on the edge of the bed, lower my head into my hands.

  The shakes begin.

  A cool, comforting voice tries to tell me, You didn’t go in there to kill, you went in there to get this old man, you went in to save your family. It was bloody, horrible, and awful, and you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life, but what choice did you have?

  What choice?

  I could have gone to the police. I could have gone to my superior officer. I could have gone to the CID. I could have gone to the FBI.

  But I have no time.

  No time.

  The shakes continue.

  The smell of burnt gunpowder, the yells, grunts, the way the pistol jumped in my hand, the frantic run through the small house…

  The run to the Wrangler, dragging this old man along with me.

  I’ll never, ever forget it.

  It’s in my memory, my skin, and my bones. And it’ll be there forever.

  What choice?

  I hear the toilet flush, more running water, and then the slight old man comes out into the motel room, looking at me.

  “Still not talking, eh?” I ask.

  He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even make a gesture. He sits down on the edge of the other sagging bed, his hands on his knees.

  “How long were you in that house?”

  No reply.

  “Who was keeping you there?”

  Silence.

  “Why are you so important to someone on the Gulf Coast of Florida?”

  Quiet.

  I notice my hand is throbbing deeply, and I can’t figure out why, until I remember punching that big tattooed guy twice in the throat while holding an empty metal canister of pepper spray.

  “Do you know my husband, Tom Cornwall? He’s a journalist.”

  Stillness.

  I shift around on the bed. It’s sagging deeply in the middle. I’m thinking I might take a blanket out of the Wrangler and sleep on top of the covers, leave my charge to his own devices.

  I say, “Why me, and why you? I have nothing to do with Texas, Mexico, or drug dealers. No offense if you’re Mexican, but the two men back at that house didn’t look like Mormon missionaries from a small town in Utah. And Tom…I don’t think he’s ever been to Mexico. Or Texas. He covers the Middle East. Saudi Arabia. Syria. Iraq. Parts of Africa and
Afghanistan.”

  Something whispers to me there, some sort of idle fact, and I try to think it through and it slips away.

  “But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  I can only hear the drone of the traffic from the nearby interstate. In between our single beds is a scratched and dinged-up nightstand with a lamp and a telephone. There’s a drawer underneath and I slide it open, revealing a Gideon Bible and a very thin phone book. I pull the phone book out and show it to my new friend.

  “See this?” I ask. “Old-time New York cop once taught me this…long time ago, when things were stretched thin and even retirees in the Reserves were being called up. You take a phone book, even a skinny one like this, and you can beat a suspect with it until he’s crying and begging for mercy, and for some reason, it doesn’t leave a bruise. No evidence you were tortured to get information.”

  The old man stares at me with dignity and calmness, like one of those old Christian martyrs in the Coliseum, kneeling before a hungry lion to meet his fate.

  I toss the book back into the drawer.

  “Not the way I operate,” I say. “Before this little misadventure began, I was being investigated for doing something like this to an alleged farmer, all the way over in Afghanistan, ending in his death.”

  I close the drawer hard, making a loud bang in the room.

  I say, “I didn’t do it over there, and I’m not about to do it over here.”

  CHAPTER 67

  MAJOR BRUNO Wenner, executive officer to Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Denton of the 297th Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is preparing for his 0800 morning meeting with the colonel when the intercom in his office buzzes. He picks up the phone and it’s Mrs. Bouchard, the colonel’s civilian secretary, and she says, “The colonel wants to see you right now…and I’m sorry, Bruno, he’s in a pissy mood.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Mrs. B,” he replies, before hanging up and grabbing a legal pad, his iPad, and the folder with the colonel’s schedule and other necessary paperwork for the day.

  The usual morning meeting is set to begin in nineteen minutes, he thinks, as he hustles his way to his boss’s office. What could be so important?

  Then a little chill settles around his heart, about something he did yesterday for Captain Ted Cooper, one of the intelligence officers assigned to the battalion. What he did wasn’t particularly illegal or against Army regulations, but still…the colonel likes to claim he runs a tight ship, and what Wenner did yesterday could be considered mutiny, even if this is an Army outfit and not the Navy.

  He goes into Denton’s office, gets a sharp grunt as a greeting, and he sits down, carefully balancing the folder, legal pad, and iPad on his lap. Denton is reading a sheet of paper, shaking his head as he does so, and that little cold chill around Wenner’s heart starts getting chillier.

  Denton looks up. “Bruno.”

  “Sir.”

  “It’s the little things that can cripple a unit, that can hurt a commanding officer, don’t you agree?”

  He has no idea what Denton is going to say next, but the safest thing is just to play along. “Certainly, sir.”

  “The minor things, the items and information that can slip through the cracks…They often can come back and bite an officer right in the ass, even if he had no knowledge of them. Even if they weren’t his fault. But because something untoward happened to somebody under his purview, he takes the ultimate responsibility. And the ultimate fall.”

  Crap, Wenner thinks. Denton has found out about what he did for Captain Cooper. One of Denton’s big commandments for the officers and soldiers in his battalion is staying free of too much debt, and if he ever finds out anyone in his battalion is behind in car payments, mortgage, or credit card bills, he will throw a tantrum and possibly cripple an officer’s career. In the overall scheme of things, Denton is right to be concerned, because overdue bills make someone vulnerable to blackmail or extortion, but the way he always goes at it…

  Captain Cooper had earlier come to him, pleading for help to stave off an imminent car repossession, and Wenner had lent him the necessary funds—with the typical tearful promise to make it all good with the next pay period—but Denton will be ripshit if he knows Wenner did this behind his back.

  Wenner feels like his heart is now encased in a heavy block of ice.

  Denton picks up the offending sheet of paper. “It’s like this, Bruno—I don’t like being surprised by…unexpected developments.”

  “Sir,” is all he can come up with.

  Denton purses his lips and says, “I have information here concerning our missing Captain Amy Cornwall.”

  “Sir,” he says again, but this time, the word is full of relief and relaxation. So this will have nothing to do with his loan to Captain Cooper.

  “Tell me the latest you know about her location.”

  Wenner goes to his paperwork. “Yesterday she was at a Bank of America ATM in Kenedy, Texas, at 6:03 p.m. EST, where she withdrew four hundred dollars. Prior to that, she took part in a river rescue near a bridge on US 59. The Jeep Wrangler she was driving was bearing stolen license plates. Earlier…well, you’ll recall her assault on the Tennessee state trooper.”

  Wenner pauses. He certainly recalls it well, for when he told the colonel that bit of nasty news yesterday, Denton exploded, yelling, face red, hand pounding the desk and then sweeping paper and folders to the floor.

  “Go on,” Denton says.

  “That’s all I have now, sir. CID out of Quantico is still working to find her. I’ve got a good working relationship with one of their XOs over there.”

  Denton rubs at his eyes. “Then all they need is to go online and check the news out of Texas.”

  “Sir?” Wenner feels a little worm of worry drop in for a visit. Something bad has happened in Texas, something bad enough to make the news.

  “Two Mexican nationals were shot and killed in Three Rivers, a town adjacent to Kenedy,” Denton says, speaking in a low and surprisingly calm voice. “There was no immediate identification of the shooter, but a black Jeep Wrangler was seen leaving the area.”

  Wenner can’t help himself. “Shit.”

  Denton goes on. “So far our intelligence officer’s possible involvement in this horror show hasn’t made the news. But when and if it does…there’ll be a hammer coming down on the 297th Military Intelligence Battalion that will make the Abu Ghraib prison scandal look like a fraternity prank gone awry. Do you understand? I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone, and probably every line officer in the unit. The investigation into that Afghan prisoner Cornwall supposedly killed? Forget it. The American media don’t care about one more dead Afghan.”

  He pauses. “But have something violent happen in this country, by what appears to be a rogue American military officer, brutally killing two innocent Mexican nationals…holy God, the media, the bloggers, the columnists…they’ll camp out at the base’s gates until I’m crucified, and you’ll be right there next to me. It’ll be more than a story, it’ll be a sociological event, representing the evil American military empire, the vicious nature of our intelligence services, blah blah blah. All because of one bitch who’s gone crazy.”

  Wenner doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing. He knows he should probably stand up for Captain Cornwall, but this is neither the time nor the place, not with his commanding officer so spun up.

  Denton asks, “Have I ever told you about my uncle Willard?”

  Say what? Wenner thinks. “No, sir.”

  “He was a nineteen-year-old draftee, sent to Vietnam, assigned to the Twenty-Third Infantry Division, the Americal Division.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, the one with the platoon that committed the My Lai Massacre. Uncle Willard didn’t take part in that, thank God, but he got there a year later. A terrible time. The policy back then was that troops and officers were rotated out after a year’s service…which meant no unit cohesion. And let’s say you’re a poor kid, you
’ve got a month left in-country, and some hard-charging fresh lieutenant comes in and starts risking your life and the lives of your buddies for stupid missions. What do you do then?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” Wenner says.

  “Yeah. Fragging. Know the term?”

  “Ah…”

  Denton says, “You got a green lieutenant who’s about to get you and others killed, he goes into a latrine, somebody tosses in a fragmentation grenade. Boom. The official story is that he was hit by a VC mortar round or the latrine blew up because of a methane gas buildup, but the new L-T who came in will no longer be a problem, as brutal as it is. And his replacement will catch the news of what happened to his predecessor and will act accordingly.”

  Denton picks up the piece of paper he had been reading from and crushes it in a hand, tosses it in a nearby black wastebasket. The crumpled-up piece of paper hits the rim and falls to the carpet.

  He says, “Fragging. A brutal method, to be sure, but it solved the problem. Now we have the problem of Captain Cornwall, whose desertion and actions are threatening you, me, this unit, and the Army.” He pauses. “It makes you think—dream, actually—that a troubled officer like that can face the same discipline.”

  Wenner can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Sir, really, I—”

  Denton holds up a hand. “Dismissed.”

  “Sir.”

  Wenner gets up and Denton says, “I know who you are, Bruno, and I know your reputation in this unit. You’re a fixer.”

  He just nods.

  Denton says one more thing, like he’s repeating something heard earlier.

  “Fix this,” he says. “Fix it now.”

  CHAPTER 68

  BENITO ZAMORA is from Nogales in Sonora, just across the border from Arizona. He has always worked with tools and his hands, having started out working for his uncle at one of the local trucking companies, doing all sorts of maintenance. He knows he’s considered a simple man with simple talents, which is fine, because it has led him to his latest job, working for a business in Florida.