Collateral Damage (37 page)

Shortly after two in the afternoon Doc eased the boat out of its slip, fully loaded with the six other survivors of Team Charlie and Detective J.D. Duncan. They idled under the Seventeenth Street Bridge, passed Port Everglades, and turned east to transit the inlet. The sun was high and hot, the seas calm, not even a breeze to ripple the surface. Doc put the powerful boat on plane and headed for the Bahamas.

The evening was winding down. The plates had been cleared, the last of the wine drunk. The men were reminiscing about their tour with Team Charlie, telling stories of the good times, the days when they had stood down and weren't hunting and killing the enemy, remembering the drinking bouts when they tried to wash away the reality of what they did for a living. Laughing, ribbing each other about real or imagined foibles, never touching on the killing and what it did to them.

Jock and Logan were standing with a small group of the old soldiers, involved in their memories. I sat on the sofa, the voices swirling around me. I was sipping a beer, my first and only one of the evening. J.D. sat in a chair next to me, immobile, quiet, pensive, an empty wine glass in her hand. It had been a tough three days for her.

I was still a bit unsettled. The solutions to our puzzle seemed a little too pat, too tidy. If the Asians involved were Vietnamese and were somehow tied to the destroyed village, where did Nigella fit into the picture? She was clearly working with Stanley, and if our discovery of his operation was merely a misdirection ploy and not part of an overall plan of retribution by the survivors of Ban Touk, what was a Vietnamese woman doing with Stanley?

Then there was the Evermore Foundation. I wanted to get Doc alone before I raised that issue. Why was he funneling money to a man in Vietnam who happened to have a name very similar to the man who set up the second attempt on my life? What was the connection?

Doc's theory that the attempts to kill me were not serious rang true, but could that be because Doc was behind them? If so, why? Why would
he ask me to look into the murder of his son and then try to scare me off? It didn't make sense.

Was this meeting on a Bahamian island with the members of Team Charlie, the secrecy surrounding it, and the disappearance of J.D. from Longboat Key all another misdirection ploy? Was Doc somehow involved in the murders, in the drug trade? Where did his start-up money come from, the cash he used to buy up engineering firms in half the states of the country? Was his approach to me just part of an effort to steer any investigation away from him? Maybe he hadn't counted on my relationship with Jock and Jock's ability to see through layers of obfuscation because of his ties to the intelligence community.

But then, as far as I knew, there was no investigation targeting Doc. He'd come to me because his son had been murdered and the law couldn't find the killer. If he had pointed me at Stanley's group it didn't make sense that Doc was part of it. Maybe Doc was involved in another drug smuggling group and he wanted me to disrupt Stanley's outfit.

And why had someone pointed me toward J.D.? Why the attempt to make it appear she was part of the conspiracy involving Stanley's group? The puzzle was getting more out of focus, the pieces dissolving into different shapes, refusing to fit together. I could not see through the fog of deception that had been surrounding me for days.

The old soldiers were tired. It had been a long day of planning, thinking, and, in some cases, grieving. They were milling about the room, finishing their drinks, saying good night. J.D. was still sitting in her chair, staring at me. “What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking about you as Sir Galahad, rushing off to rescue me.”

I laughed. “You don't need rescuing. I knew you could take care of yourself.”

“Probably, but I'm glad you came.”

“You're not going to make a habit of this are you? Disappearing, I mean.”

“Are you afraid you wouldn't be able to find me?”

“Yeah. I'd miss you.”

She looked at me for a moment, quietly. There was a seriousness about her that I had seldom seen. “I'd miss you too, Matt,” she said and rose from the chair. She came and sat on the sofa next to me.

I was only sure of my friends, J.D., Logan, and Jock. I looked around and realized that other than those three, I could not trust anyone in the room. It was a sobering thought, and one that raised the hairs along the back of my neck, sending a tingle through my brain, a warning that all was not as it seemed, and that my friends and I needed to be very careful.

I leaned into J.D., whispered, “I want you to sleep with me tonight.”

She drew back, a shocked expression on her face. “Matthew,” she said.

I chuckled. “Let me rephrase that. I want you to sleep in the same room with me tonight. There are two beds in there. I've already told Jock and Logan to bunk in together as well. I'm not sure I trust these guys, and it'd be better if we stick together.”

She smiled. “Well, shoot,” she said. “I thought maybe you were just getting a little frisky.”

“And if I were?”

She was quiet for a moment, staring at me. “I couldn't settle for just frisky.”

I felt a lurch in my chest, down where my heart is. She was opening a door, I thought, a door to a relationship. Maybe. But now was not the time to explore it. “I couldn't either,” I said. I looked at her for a beat, smiled, and left the sofa.

I pulled Jock out of the group he was chatting with, got him out of earshot. “We need to find out the names of the two CIA guys Team Charlie killed, Opal and Topaz.”

Jock looked at his watch. “It's late. I doubt the night-shift wonks can pull anything for me.”

“What if the director lit a fire under them?”

“That'd get the job done. Is it that important?”

“I think so. If there are men in the CIA who've gone rogue and are pursuing this, we may be able to backtrack and find out who Opal and Topaz were buddies with in Saigon.”

“I'll call him, but I have a question.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Why do I have to sleep in the room with Logan while you get J.D.?”

“Because I'm the guy making the room assignments and Logan snores. A lot.”

Jock grinned and went to make his phone call. I walked out to the patio in search of Doc. I found him talking to Fleming. “Excuse me, Flem,” I said, “but could I have a word with Doc?”

“Sure,” said Fleming. “I'm on my way to bed. See you guys in the morning.”

“Doc,” I said when Fleming had gone, “tell me about the Evermore Foundation.”

I saw his face change, a look of surprise crossing it. He was silent for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Not much to tell, really. I set up the foundation to funnel money to the survivors of Ban Touk.”

“Explain it to me.”

“Several years ago, I began to make more money than I'd ever dreamed of. I didn't just want to spend it on bigger and bigger houses and cars. I'd never been able to get those dead women and children out of my mind, the Ban Touk people. I assumed that some villagers had survived, mostly the men who had been taken into Laos by the people who set us up.

“I began to make inquiries. I wanted to see if I could find any of those who might still be alive. I hired a lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City, using a false identity. He came highly recommended by a couple of the executives in a company I'd recently acquired. They'd been involved in some infrastructure projects in Vietnam and had used this guy.”

“What was his name? The lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City.”

“Tuan Nguyen.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just that I was aware of a massacre that had taken place at Ban Touk and I wanted to see if any of the people were still alive.”

“And?”

“This lawyer had some sources in the Vietnamese intelligence agency. He found some of the records concerning the massacre. They didn't say
that it'd been set up by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, only that some Americans had killed all the women and children. Many of the men from Ban Touk were still alive, and Nguyen found some of them still living in the same area where the village had been. They had rebuilt and started new families. A few of the women and children of the village had survived, those who were somewhere else when the men were moved into Laos. None of these people knew that their families had been staked out like goats for the slaughter. They just knew the Americans killed their families.”

“Why did you want to remain anonymous? You were doing a good thing.”

“The only reason I would even know about the massacre was if I was there. It was never made public. I didn't want anyone to tie me to it, so I set up the foundation with a couple of layers of insulation. I'm surprised you figured it out.”

“Jock can do wonders.”

“I guess.”

“You've been putting two hundred thousand dollars a year into the foundation until this year, when you didn't pay into it until after Jim was killed. Then you put in an extra hundred thousand. Why?”

Doc massaged his forehead, taking a minute to think. “I just didn't have the money in the spring. I had bought two more engineering concerns and it took all my cash. I knew a big influx of money was only a couple of months away, so I e-mailed Nguyen and told him the foundation would not be able to make the donation in April as usual, but that a larger donation would be sent during the summer.”

“What does Nguyen use the money for?”

“He gets a small percentage as a fee, but the rest of the money is doled out for all kinds of things the villagers need. Generators for electricity, wells for running water, sewage disposal, and scholarships for the village kids. Just enough to help out, but not enough to sap their work ethic.”

“Are you sure Nguyen is using the money like you want?”

“Yes. The foundation gets copies of all checks and I have an accountant in Ho Chi Minh City who follows up and makes sure the money is being used properly.”

“Doc, I hope this is on the up-and-up,” I said.

“It is. My way of giving back something to those I took so much from.”

A low buzzing sound filled the room. The men were instantly alert, all movement stopped. “We've got visitors,” said Doc. “That's the perimeter alarm. Grab your weapons.”

The men moved quickly, their age not slowing their soldier reflexes by much. They picked up rifles that were stacked in a corner of the great room. I hadn't noticed them before because a tapestry was draped over them, giving the appearance of just another piece of furniture. I unzipped the duffel and passed the M4s and Glocks to Jock and Logan.

The men and J.D. moved to prearranged positions. Apparently they'd planned for this before we got to the island.

“What's going on?” I asked.

Doc picked up the TV remote control and pointed at the large flat-screen monitor hanging on the wall at the end of the room. Pictures came up, greenish looking squares covering the screen. “Those are the security cameras operating with night-vision technology,” Doc said. “Each screen covers a quadrant of our little island. They overlap so we don't have any blind spots. If the intruders get closer, they'll cross the next line of defense and a siren will go off and floodlights will come up.”

“What do you want us to do?” Jock asked.

“Sit tight for now. We've got all the lines of fire covered. If we need to shoot, we're in good shape.”

Nothing moved on the screen. Maybe it was some kind of animal, an innocent incursion. Then I saw movement, a man crawling up from the beach. He was wearing black and in the eerie glow of the night-vision lenses, it looked like neoprene. A wet suit. He must have swum in and now was moving quietly toward the house. I pointed him out to Doc.

“I see him,” said Doc. “Everybody stay quiet. There's only one man. Somebody is probing our defenses. Let's not give anything away.”

We watched for a couple more minutes as the man made his way closer to the house. The old soldiers stood quietly, positions manned, rifles at the ready. It was the infantryman's lot. Hurry up and wait. The fire discipline ingrained in them so many years before was still there. They watched the man on the beach come onto the lawn slithering through the grass.

“We need to find out who he is,” said Jock.

Doc nodded. “He's getting close to the point that sets off the lights and siren.”

“I'll go,” said Jock. “I don't want the alarms to spook him.”

“Want company?” I asked.

“No. Better if I go alone.” He moved to the door on the opposite side of the house from where the intruder was working his way toward us. He pulled a black windbreaker from a peg at the entrance, put it on over his jeans and white shirt, zipped it to his chin, and let himself quietly out the door.

I turned back to the TV monitor. The intruder was still making his way slowly toward the house. Moments passed. The room was quiet, all attention focused on the man in the wet suit. He was crawling toward a depression in the lawn, a swale, used to direct excess rainwater toward the sea. He had just reached the lip of the swale when an arm reached out and encircled the man's throat. He was pulled violently into the depression, Jock's forearm never leaving his throat. Within seconds the intruder went limp. Dead? Knowing Jock, I doubted it. He'd want information.

Jock hoisted the limp body onto his shoulders in a fireman's carry and walked toward the house. Doc went to the nearest door and let him in. Jock brought the man to one of the sofas and tossed him like so much linguine onto the cushions. I got a look at the intruders face. He was Caucasian. I was surprised that he wasn't Asian.

“He'll wake up in a few minutes,” said Jock.

“He's not Vietnamese, that's for sure,” said Fleming. “Any ID on him?”