SEAL's Code (16 page)

“Hold it. Coop, you have anybody to call?” Kyle asked, rolling his right shoulder and cracking his neck.

“I got
the
guy. Remember we got help with Rory’s dad? That guy.”

“Okay, then. Nothing we can do until sunrise in a couple of hours. You guys get back to bed and get more rest if you can. Then you fill Coop in while Jeffrey and I go get you a phone.”

Everyone nodded in Kyle’s direction.

“By the way, I’m not paying for it. I hope you are, Jeffrey, ’cause it sounds expensive.”

“No worries. I got Danny covered this time,” said Jeffrey.

Just as planned,
at oh-eight-hundred Jeffrey was the proud new owner of a state-of-the-art Finnish sat phone, in its own pink case, complete with charged up spare batteries and a Hello Kitty logo stitched in leather on the small backpack case made for a child.

‡

C
ortland Sanders was
an odd duck and he liked it that way. He always caught the unusual cases the Bureau couldn’t figure out who to assign. Because of his boyish appearance, he could go undercover in high school. He was big enough to ride with bikers if he shaved his head and grew a beard, albeit a scraggly one. He had designs covering both his legs from the knees down and a large dragon tat covering most of his back. He was saving his chest and belly for something really special. He hadn’t found it yet.

There weren’t many things that scared him. He wasn’t afraid of getting fired because he knew too much about too many people, and he could read enemies better than anyone else could. He wasn’t afraid of any of the assortment of bad guys he hunted down. But he hated one category of criminal with a passion so great, it was all he could do not to waste the MFers when he caught them.

He hated child molesters. They were subhuman detritus of society, throwaway people who could never be rehabilitated. No lifelong living in a cell, even in a maximum security prison cell or mixed amongst a dangerous prison population, was near punishment enough. They all deserved to have the flesh peeled from their muscles in one-inch strips. Indeed, he’d often visualized doing just that. It’s what he thought of at night when he couldn’t sleep.

Better than counting sheep.

He knew some day he’d do it. And that’s what scared him most of all. Someday, when the sun was just right, when the combination of adrenaline and emotional pain became too much to bear, he’d cave, and that would be the end of what little shred he had of his own humanity. There’d be no paperwork. He’d go out in a blaze of glory and leave the forms to some other asshole who wouldn’t know how to structure the report so it didn’t read like science fiction to the superiors at the Bureau. When he was ripe, done, and ready to roll out of this realm, he’d do it like no other in the history of mankind. He’d be remembered.

Stationed in Los Angeles, where he could blend into whatever crowd he fancied each day, he frequented the dungeons and playrooms of the counterculture, the ones without safety codes or where the vetting was lax, looking for unwilling or unsuspecting underage participants. He didn’t have a problem with consenting adults old enough to know what the hell they were getting into. But the sight of an underage young girl or boy, drugged up or otherwise bridled, perhaps bound and gagged, would make his blood boil.

When he found them, he was careful not to blow his cover so he could continue to use these dangerous rooms as his personal form of bait to catch the bad guys. They were nearly all men. But his hatred extended to women who would sell their own daughters or grandkids for drugs or other habits.

When Sanders was called and asked to lead the investigation of the missing girls on the Navajo reservation, his apprehension surprised him. He’d related so well to colorful characters in history like Sam Houston who used to go native. In fact, he’d thought when he checked out some day, that’s where he’d run. He’d run to a sovereign nation with its own government and tribal police that didn’t know dick about anything in his white man’s culture.

He didn’t need to know too much about them to live amongst their
People
, as they called themselves. He liked the fact that they’d never be understood by the white man, his own ancestors, people he couldn’t relate to either. He also liked the idea of being a blond hair transplant on a Native American warrior’s scalp—something that would hurt like hell to remove, but would always just hang on and look different no matter how the hair was cut, braided, or beaded. He’d hide in plain sight.

A further complication to the investigation was the fact that another FBI undercover agent had not been heard from in nearly two weeks. Why they’d waited so long to get someone else on board was a mystery to Sanders. It was a niggling question which gave him heartburn. Loss of one agent was certainly bad news, but could be explained away by some mistake or slip-up on the part of the undercover agent. But when special agent Logan also went missing, it meant something else entirely. It indicated to Sanders there was some kind of organization in place. He was anxious to get to the bottom of it. He didn’t like dangling questions.

He interviewed several of the family members, nice decent women and men who walked a gentle path he never had the luxury to experience. The local tribal police were not much help, considering it a hate crime against their nation, which Sanders knew was dead wrong. It wasn’t until he bumped up against Assistant Sheriff Payette that his nose began to sniff out something which started to make him salivate. Somehow he knew Payette was involved. That little pimple of a man with his big guns and brand new Tahoe with the shiny lights had no idea who he’d soon be messing with. Squeezing that one would be just as satisfying as the zits he squeezed in high school. But that was a whole other story.

He didn’t look Payette in the eyes because he was half afraid some ancient preternatural spirit would come out and flash red eyes at him and tip the guy off. Sanders wanted to catch him as close to red-handed as he dared allow. He wanted to dictate the manner and time of this asshole’s demise.

The Bureau assigned him a kid straight out of school named Lyle Parker. He was headed over to a café just off the res owned by a local Muslim business man, who’d bought the whole strip center from a Mexican-American family. They even built a mosque there, of all places. Sanders trusted Muslims just a little bit more than he trusted Payette. But he had no evidence they were up to evil. Didn’t mean he had to socialize or trust them, though.

“Cortland,” Lyle said in his whiny, nasal tone, oblivious to the fact that it made Sanders want to grab the guy by his neck and wring it. “You like anybody we’ve interviewed for this?”

He didn’t want to tip his hand just in case there was a secret mission necessary. “Not sure yet. I’ve cleared all the women so far and most of the tribal men.”

“Which leaves me,” Lyle said pointing to his own pigeon breast of a chest, “and the group from Gallup and Phoenix.”

“Very good,” Sanders said.

“What’s your theory?” Lyle didn’t seem to mind that he was on Sanders’ short list.

“I smell money.”

For being so clueless, Lyle knew when to stop pushing for answers. That made him a perfect assistant. “Whew. Well, that rules me out, since I don’t have any.” His half-hearted attempt to crack a joke fell flat at first. Then Sanders bellowed as if it had taken him a long time to catch the subtlety of the joke. He never left an opportunity unused to demonstrate how slow he was. It gave him an advantage over everyone if they thought so of him.

To their own peril.

“You hungry, Lyle?” he said as he pulled up in front of the Trading Post Café Deluxe.

“Does a chicken have lips? Does a snake chew gum?” Lyle scrunched up the side of his face, obsessed with his own cleverness.

“That fuckin’ doesn’t even make any sense, Lyle. The answer to those questions would be no, so I guess you’re not hungry. You want to wait in the car then? It’s only one hundred and six today.”

“Well, I’ll take some pie for lunch. The lady who bakes here is supposed to be the best in the whole state. Her name’s Emma.”

Sanders started to relax. Maybe someday he could just have an ordinary twenty-four hours, so he could walk into a diner, sit down at the counter, and order a piece of pie without seeing body parts splayed over everything and sensing the dark thoughts of every male in the place. He thought women were the only thing that made men human.

He used to tell his friends he thought God figured out right away that he’d fucked up when he made Adam, or the First Man like the Navajo’s believed. So he made a woman to balance him off and distract him into behaving nicely, just like leaving a little trail of pills for a junkie to find. Once he was trapped, the woman would tie him up and eat him little bites at a time. Like a frog in water that was brought to a slow boil, men would think they liked it, until it killed them and their manhood. Even good women did this to men all the time, he thought. He didn’t want to change, had no intention of changing anything for anybody except himself.

So, Sanders was going to stay free forever. He’d live alone and die alone. He’d make sure not one piece of his DNA was left behind afterwards. He wanted to be remembered for the impact he had on the cycle of life and death, how he played the game, not the life-long friendships and satisfying work everyone else was seeking. If it were Halloween, he’d dress up as the Grim Reaper.

Every day.

They scooted into the polished, red plastic tuck and roll bench seats with a black Formica table between them. A desktop jukebox was intact and brightly lit, but several others were either missing, or hanging at an odd angle by a few thin wires.

He wondered if he should tell Lyle about the missing agent, and decided he’d hold that back for a little while. He’d have to tell him eventually, and probably pretty soon. But not this morning.

“Morning, fellas,” the chubby older woman with the round face said to them. She laid down sticky plastic menus, leaving behind two small glasses of ice water, and moved behind the counter, picking up an order and delivering it to the booth next to them. Her white thick-soled shoes squeaked as she whisked by.

Lyle was flipping the menu back and forth. “Hm. They don’t list the pies here. And no specials, either.”

“I doubt they get enough business to have specials, Lyle. And I’m guessing whatever you want in pie is here. Look at that case.” He’d pointed to a lit revolving glass display filled chock-full of gigantic pieces of pie.

Sanders thought perhaps the waitress owned the café, but not the building. He read her nametag, “Emma, sweetheart, we’re going to have pie, and you came highly recommended.”

The short Navajo woman gushed. “That’s my specialty.”

“You got any sour cherry pie. I mean really sour?” Sanders asked.

“No, sir, I do not, but I got some early apricot, and that’s pretty damned tart, if I do say so. Nearly took my fingertips off trying to cut up those nearly green slices.”

“Perfect,” he heard himself say. “Lyle? You want one too?”

“Noooo way. I’m partial to lemon meringue. You got that, Emma?”

“Absolutely. Coffee?” she asked.

They both nodded and Emma went about her mission.

Sanders’ cell phone rang with a number from Washington, D.C. “Hallo.”

“Is this Special Agent Cortland Sanders?” asked the efficient voice at the other end of the line.

“You know it is.”

“I’m calling on behalf of a friend of the Bureau here, a guy who does dangerous things for us overseas.”

Sanders tried to sound less interested than he really was. “I’m listening,” he said as he got up and walked outside to make the conversation private. Since he was never asked to do special favors for anyone, this call intrigued him.

“Seems our friend is from the reservation and he’s concerned about the scope and nature of the investigation. He’s got a woman and child alone there he’s worried about.”

“That’s how I’d feel, too,” Sanders grunted. So one of the ladies had hooked herself a Special Forces man. Good for her.

“Anything I can relay?”

“I’m not seeing this as an especially long or complicated case. I’ve laid down the flypaper. Just need the fly to step in it. You can tell your friend he doesn’t have to worry about suspecting his relatives just yet.”

“I don’t think he cares about that, Cortland. He just wants the asshole caught.”

“Well, if you knew anything about me, you’d hate to be the bad guy. I have a hunch, but I jinx it by telling anyone. So I’m going to sign off and you tell him I got his six.”

“Six?”

“His back. I got his back, you tell him that. Nothing is easy about these cases, but I think it’s a simple motive. Supply and demand sort of thing.”

“Okay. So now what if his relative is part of the supply?”

“As in she’s one of the missing girls?”

“The last one, yes.”

Sanders fisted his right hand, noticing a sharp pain radiating up his arm from an old biking accident. “I don’t see murder is the motive, or even snuff stuff, but I couldn’t rule it out. She a feisty one, a fighter?”