Certain Jeopardy (4 page)

LUCY MEDINA LAUGHED AS
she watched her husband tuck the Nerf football under his arm, struggling toward an imaginary goal line and besieged by three tiny players who grabbed his legs and held on to his trousers. Weighed down by five-year-old Maria, six-year-old Matteo, and eight-year-old Jose Jr., Jose Medina staggered a few steps then crashed to the ground like a fallen redwood, careful not to squish any of his children. The kids cried, “Tackle!”

Maria jumped to her feet and shouted to Lucy, “Did you see, Mother? Did you see?”

Lucy rose from the picnic table and applauded. “Good job, children. Your father had it coming.”

Maria clapped her hands and jumped. “We tackled you, Daddy. We tackled you.”

Jose said something that made the kids squeal. A moment later the four were wrestling in the grass.

It’s going to take me a week to get out the grass stains.
Lucy chuckled. “Get him, kids. Make him take us out for ice cream.”

“Ice cream! Ice cream!” The three children chanted in unison and attacked again.

A smooth breeze wafted through her black hair, carrying the sweetness of mowed grass mixed with the aroma of hot dogs roasting on one of the park’s barbecues. The day was perfect, with a high sun shimmering through a clear sky—a great day for a family picnic. There had been too few of these.

She rubbed a hand over her belly and felt her unborn child kick. Lucy was thirty-two, married, with three children and one on the way. Her sister called her “the baby factory.” She once told Lucy, “You should have married a Navy man. They ship out for six months at a time.” But having babies fit nicely with Lucy’s ideal for life, and the man who made her life perfect lay on his back in the grass getting the stuffing beat out of him by his own children.

Lucy watched the hubbub, the earlier smile still etched on her face. But the grin dissolved as the football-turned-wrestling match came to a sudden stop. Jose stood and removed his cell phone. The kids were still chanting, “Ice cream.” She saw him look at the caller ID. He didn’t open the clamshell device; he just stared for long moments. His shoulders slumped and he raised his eyes to meet hers.

Lucy buried her face in her hands.

They had just been evicted from Eden.

* * *

ORLA CARAWAY DIDN’T WANT
to take the call. The caller ID told her all she wanted to know. He had received the letter. He must have. She lifted the office phone and said hello.

“You know I can’t do this, Orla. I can’t believe you would even ask.”

“Hi, Martin. It’s good to talk to you too.”

“Don’t be snide with me, Orla. You send me this letter then expect me to be chatty?”

“I didn’t send the letter, Martin. My attorney did.” She moved several contracts to the side and rested her elbows on the desk. Her “office” was an eight-foot-by-eight-foot cubicle. A dozen other Dilbert spaces filled the open area of the Los Angeles real estate office. She’d have to keep her voice down.

“Same thing. You wouldn’t need more money if you weren’t forking over big bucks to shysters.”

“They’re not shysters. They’ve taken very good care of me.”

“Yeah, by running me into the ground. What about your new fiancé? You two are shacking up. Isn’t he supposed to support you and Sean?”

“After we’re married, but that’s not for six months. And, for the record, we’re not shacking up. I have my own apartment.”

“That doesn’t make a difference.”

“You should know.”

Her comment brought silence from her former husband. He had left her for another woman. Two months after they divorced, his new gal pal left him for another man. The karmic payback brought her no joy. She didn’t want to see him hurt, but she did intend to hold him responsible for his obligations.

“I don’t understand why you need extra money, Orla. You have a good job. Real estate is big business.”

“For one, I live in Los Angeles now and it’s expensive. Auto insurance alone is twice what we paid in South Carolina. Second, I’m just an agent working in a lousy economy. I’m barely getting by. And don’t forget, I have a six-year-old child to take care of, and he’s not getting any smaller. There’s clothes, child care, school expenses, medical—”

“Then hit up your boyfriend. Aren’t you Christians supposed to help the poor or something?”

“He’s not Sean’s father; you are. You can divorce me, but you can’t divorce your responsibility.”

“Orla, I’m just a lowly sergeant. I don’t make that much money. How am I going to come up with an extra thousand a month? I mean, I have to hire an attorney to properly answer this letter. That’ll cost an arm and a leg.”

“I don’t know. But you haven’t been overly concerned about how I manage to support myself and our son.” She heard him sigh, then heard paper crumpling. She could imagine him squeezing the letter into a tight little ball.

“Well, bottom line is I can’t do it. So don’t expect it.”

“You should think that through, Martin. Talk to your attorney. Becoming a deadbeat dad could affect your standing with the Army.”

Hot swearing poured over the line. Orla wished she had recorded the conversation. She might need it if they ever had to go back to court.

“Look. Maybe we can work … something out … Hang on.”

A soft ringing poured through the receiver. She waited, searching her mind for a way to end the call.

“Um, I gotta go.”

“What shall I tell my attorneys?”

His voice tightened. “Tell them whatever you want.”

“When can I expect the child support?”

“Not anytime soon.” There was a clear element of glee in his voice. “I’m being called up.”

The line went dead.

She had been a Spec Ops wife long enough to know what that meant. Her anger cooled, and a few moments later Orla began to pray.

DR. HECTOR CENOBIO SETTLE
D
into the first class section of the Alitalia Boeing 757 and leaned back against the headrest, letting his eyelids close. He felt weary, worn to the bone. The conference of physicists held in Milan had been intellectually thrilling but tiring, and there had been little time to recoup during his guest lectureship in London. As the jet engines came to life, he allowed himself to believe that the craft would soon be winging him home, but such was not the case. This aircraft was flying to Rome where he would attend yet another symposium, this time with engineers who built nuclear power plants. He would share his latest work on “Plutonium and Uranium Reclamation and New Elemental Processing.” His new techniques for reprocessing nuclear waste had made him a star in the science and engineering communities. Outside those ingrown groups he remained unknown—and that was the way he liked it.

He looked at his watch. His family would be in the air by now, flying from Toronto over the United States to Caracas. Venezuela was still home, though he had not visited the country of his birth in nearly fifteen years. He wondered how much had changed. It didn’t matter. Four more days and he would be landing in his home country and he could show Nestor and Lina the old neighborhood. It would be the first time out of the country for the ten-year-old twins.

Twins.
The word made him smile. No two children could be more different. The fraternal twins were miles apart emotionally and in their interests. Lina, whom he assumed would be a studious girl, was rambunctious, loud, and seldom read. She lived to play soccer and send countless text messages to her friends. Nestor, on the other hand, cared nothing for sports and spent as much time with his nose in a book as possible.

Hector kept his eyes closed and imagined himself with his family. Every time he traveled he vowed that never again would he be gone more than a couple of days at a time. This was his second week away.

One dark cloud shadowed his thoughts about the trip to Venezuela: He had been invited to attend a formal dinner with President Hugo Chavez, something he didn’t want to do. Chavez’s bluster and arrogance toward the United States annoyed him and reflected badly on the country. Of course, these days everyone criticized the Americans. It had become an international sport.

What he dreaded most were the questions he knew would come. “Why does an imminent scientist such as yourself not live in his own country? Why live in Canada?”

“You see, Mr. President, it is where I teach. I have tenure and research facilities at the university there.”

“We could provide such things,” the president would say.

“I’m afraid I have been gone too long for my family to feel comfortable with a move.”

No doubt Chavez would make some comment about how a family goes where the man goes, and things would descend from there. Still, as much as he hated the idea of attending, one did not snub the president of the country—especially when that president is Hugo Chavez. Perhaps Hector could simply lie and say he would consider moving back, but Hector was uncomfortable lying.

A brown-haired beauty took her position at the front of the first class cabin. She opened the metal door of a small compartment and pushed a button. A moment later a video played reminding the passengers how to buckle their seat belts. Hector snapped his belt in place and pretended to watch the instructional movie. What he was really doing was praying for his family.

* * *

ERIC MOYER PULLED
HIS
red ’64 Ford Mustang, a gift from his grandfather, through the gate of Fort Jackson and worked his way along its paved streets. Fort Jackson was more city than military base, with more than a thousand buildings dotting its fifty-two thousand acres, and harbored everything from weapon ranges and field training sites to a family water park. Thirty-nine hundred active-duty soldiers and their fourteen thousand family members called the place—and nearby Columbia, South Carolina—home.

Moyer had started his military career here by surviving basic and advance individual training. Every year forty-five thousand men and women civilians became warriors on these grounds. Drill sergeants trained here; chaplains trained here; recruiters trained here; even polygraph technicians trained here.

Of the nearly twelve hundred buildings on the compound, only one interested Moyer at the moment: a plain-looking, windowless, three-story cement building dubbed the Concrete Palace. Several buildings made up the Palace, but one held special interest for him. The architects had done a masterful job of making it look as nondescript as possible.

He parked in an open stall and stepped from his car onto the hot macadam of the parking lot. South Carolina knew how to put on the heat.

“Isn’t it about time you gave that car to a real man?”

Moyer locked the car door then turned his attention to the large African-American man who’d spoken. “Hey, Shaq. I might, if I knew a real man.”

“What? You’re looking at a prime specimen. ‘C’est moi! C’est moi! I’m forced to admit ’tis I, I humbly reply.’” Master Sergeant Rich Harbison’s dark face split with a wide grin.

“Shaq, I can’t tell you how badly it creeps me out when you quote show tunes. It just ain’t right, man.”

“Hey, even big guys like me have a sensitive side.”

Big was right. Rich stood six foot six with a shiny bald head and the build of a giant redwood. People who didn’t know him assumed him to be a dumb jock. He was neither. He liked sports enough, but culture interested him more. Over the last three years, Moyer had come to admire and respect his second in command, even if there was an actor in there dying to come out. Because of his size few risked poking fun at the man.

Moyer shook his head.

“What? It’s Lerner and Loewe. You know,
Camelot
? Lancelot—”

“If they don’t show it on HBO, I don’t know it.”

They started toward the building. Moyer dropped his keys in his pocket. “What’d they catch you doing?”

“Yard work. I hate yard work. Robyn had me on my knees pulling weeds. The call came just in time.”

“Why? Were you going to tell her to pull the weeds herself?”

“You kidding? A man could get hurt saying such things.”

“Robyn’s been nothing but nice to me.”

“It’s all an act.”

“At least you had time to say good-bye.”

The men walked to a manned gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the compound. Each pulled a military ID from his wallet and presented it to the guards. One of the guards compared the names to those on a list, then held the ID up and moved his eyes from photo to face and back to photo. Moyer waited patiently. The photo didn’t match his present appearance. His longish hair and goatee made him look anything but military. That was part of the illusion. In their line of work, it was important that he not look Army sharp. Not even his neighbors knew what he did for a living.

The guard waved them through, and the two entered one of the most restricted areas on any military base.

“I take it you didn’t have time to go by the house.” Shaq’s tone grew more somber.

“You know the drill. Call comes in, we got one hour to get here. I was on the other side of town. Must have broken every speed law in Columbia. I’m lucky not to be cooling my heels in jail.”

“How did she take it?”

The question lacked specifics but Moyer knew where Rich was headed. “Like the trooper she is. I could hear the concern in her voice, but she didn’t say anything. Except ‘Come home to me.’”

“You know, I don’t think we do our marriages any favors by going out to run an errand and not coming back for a few weeks.” Rich shook his head. “Sometimes I think Robyn is the more courageous of the two of us. Did you get to talk to the kids?”

“No. They’re at school.”

He already missed Gina, his twelve-year-old daughter. The image of her blue eyes and blonde, streaked hair flashed to the forefront of his mind. She laughed more than any child he had ever met. Rob was a different matter. At sixteen he had reached the age where he knew everything and cared for nothing. Unlike many his age, he didn’t want to be a rock star or an athlete or anything. He didn’t fit in at school, and he didn’t fit in at home. Last night Moyer and he came close to blows. This morning he refused to talk at breakfast. Instead, the boy grabbed his backpack and two pieces of toast and bolted through the front door without so much as a good-bye.

The Concrete Palace had no street-facing doors, forcing Moyer and Rich to walk halfway around the building where they stopped at a gray steel door. Moyer punched a six-digit code into the keypad above the door handle. A second later he heard the sound of the automatic lock disengaging. He pulled the door open and followed Rich into the room that only a handful of soldiers entered. The room was small and Spartan. No artwork hung on the walls, nothing to indicate what lay deeper in the building. A gunmetal-gray desk sat in the middle with a uniformed Sgt. First Class, who looked too young for the rank, seated behind it. He also looked too young to wear the handgun on his hip.

“Gentlemen.” He pushed a small chrome box with a red plastic plate forward but said nothing. They either knew what to do with it or they didn’t. The fact that Moyer had been in this building many times and even met this sergeant before meant nothing. He still had to go through the motions.

Moyer stepped to the desk and placed his thumb on the small plastic plate. The sergeant’s eyes never left his computer monitor. “Thank you, Sergeant Major.” He pushed the biometric device toward Rich. A second later the computer cleared him as well. “You are cleared to go back. The colonel is waiting for you.”

They started away from the desk. “Just a moment.” The guard held out a small wicker basket holding several cell phones. Moyer and Rich surrendered their phones.

At the back of the small room was another steel door with another encrypted keypad. Again Moyer entered a six-digit code and pushed through the door to a wide corridor. Unlike the room they’d just left, the walls of the hall wore general military posters, though nothing unit specific. Moyer looked down the hall—every door was closed. Doors were always to be closed and locked. No exceptions. Moyer and his team had access to every door in the building except three. He had no idea what lay in those rooms.

He never asked.

Four doors down they entered a large open space populated by desks and military personnel of varying rank, each involved in some task on their computers. These walls bore more than vague military posters. They portrayed Special Ops soldiers on mission around the world, in China, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

A few steps more and another door later, Moyer and Rich entered the team room and closed the door behind them. Ten desks filled the room. On six of the desks rested laptop computers. At the back of the room were two workstations used to analyze satellite photos and recent intelligence information. Moyer had used them before. On the walls hung art depicting Special Ops forces jumping from an airplane in Afghanistan, ready to capture an airfield in Panama.

Of the ten desks, four were occupied. Pete Rasor sat with his eyes glued to the laptop’s screen. Even from the door, Moyer could tell his communications man was involved in a gripping game of Solitaire. Next to him J.J. Bartley, weapons and demolitions specialist, used a pen knife to clean his fingernails. Medic Jose Medina sat behind J.J. and studied photos of his family. Martin Caraway, two rows over, slumped down with his chin resting on his chest, eyes closed.

“I take it I’m not late.” Moyer spoke a few decibels louder than necessary to make sure everyone heard him. The Solitaire game disappeared, the pen knife was folded and dropped into a pocket, and Caraway’s eyes snapped open as he repositioned himself in the seat. Only Medina continued his previous activity for a moment before looking up from the photos to gaze at Moyer and Rich.

J.J. looked at his watch. “Two minutes early, Boss. If I know Colonel MacGregor, he’ll be here in … eighty-four seconds.” “That should be enough time for you girls to look like you’re interested in the mission.”

Caraway leaned back. “We don’t know what it is yet, Boss. How do we know if we’re interested?”

“You’re paid the big bucks to be interested.”

Several of the men chuckled.

“Big bucks. That’s a good one, Boss.” Rich slipped behind one of the desks, checking, as he always did, that his computer was on and that he had easy access to pen and paper.

Moyer moved to the front of the room and faced his team. J.J. was right; Mac was well known for punctuality. He could almost imagine the Special Ops leader standing at the door with his hand on the knob, ready to plunge into the room the moment the second hand of his watch swept past the twelve.

“Let me have your attention. Is there anything I need to know before the briefing begins?”

No one spoke for a moment, then Caraway nodded. “Yeah, the Yankees stink this year.”

“We all know that, Billy. I’m asking if we’re ready to go. Any problems I should know about?” He thought about what the doctor had told him less than an hour ago, but that was his secret to keep. It made him wonder what secrets his men kept.

“I want a new nickname, Boss. ‘Billy’ just doesn’t fit a man of my skill and training.”