Wrong Town: A Mark Landry Novel (15 page)

Forty-three

Frank Tagala whistled as he walked into the Boston ATF office just after 11:00 a.m. with a cup of coffee in one hand and the
Boston Herald
in the other. He had awakened with a hangover that would send most people to the emergency room, but he had learned long ago how to self-medicate and get through the pain by keeping nips of vodka and a large bottle of extra-strength acetaminophen on his nightstand. That made the pain bearable as he answered each “Morning, Frank” with fuzzy eye contact and a slight raise of the chin.

On his way down the final corridor to his office, Frank paused at the glass door to the conference room. Ashton Brown and three others sat huddled at the far end of the long table. Brown noticed him immediately, glanced at his watch, and shook his head like a father disappointed that his child had broken curfew. Frank forced a wide, toothy grin and waved.

Whatever, asshole.

He continued down the hall and stopped in front of the office adjacent to his, where four members of the administrative support staff usually had barely enough room to breathe. When he popped his head in the door, he noticed that half the people and half the furniture were gone, but he thought nothing of it.

“Good morning, ladies. What’s going on in the fishbowl?” he asked, cocking his head in the direction of the conference room.

Both women looked up from their desks at Frank, then at one another. The younger of the two immediately returned her attention to the task at hand; the older one paused for a second before answering in a low voice.

“Nobody knows. It’s not on the schedule and the director said to keep it that way. Invite only.”

“Oh well, not the first time I wasn’t invited to a party,” Frank replied wryly.

He sipped his coffee, walked next door to his office, and froze in the doorway, thinking he had made a mistake. His nameplate had been removed from the door. The formerly spacious though modest room was now packed with desks, filing cabinets, and other office furniture. Two nervous women stood when he entered. Again, the elder one took the lead.

“Frank, this was not our idea,” she said with hands held high.

He looked around the room and nodded approvingly.

“The more the merrier!”

“We were just going to lunch anyway, so you’ll have the place to yourself for a while,” she said. The younger woman took her cue, gathered her things, and left the room as if the fire alarm had just gone off.

Frank placed his coffee and newspaper on his desk, now tucked into the back corner. He rolled his head from side to side to relieve the tension and looked out the window. The older woman watched from the doorway and spoke again.

“We can always do our work somewhere else if it makes things easier.”

Frank turned around and gave her a dismissive wave.

“Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s only for a few more weeks, and I don’t plan on spending much time in the office anyway. Not a big deal. Just pull the door shut and enjoy your lunch.”

He booted up his computer to check his email. Nothing. Then he glanced at his in-box. Empty. After sitting quietly for several minutes, he removed the keys from his pocket and opened his bottom drawer. It was empty too.

No problem, Ashton. If you want to cut me out of the loop completely, just don’t expect to see much of me. It’s always happy hour somewhere.

Forty-four

“Slow down for a minute, Mark. While this may seem like nothing to a man in your chosen occupation, my more sedentary lifestyle is not as conducive to such endeavors,” said Andy O’Rourke as he dropped his large frame onto the rock wall adjacent to the trail to catch his breath.

Mark stopped and made a quick 360-degree check of their location before sitting down on the wall a few feet from his friend. The trail to the summit of Holt Hill was just as he had remembered it: thick, colorful, serene. The trail was well beaten, but they had seen no other hikers during their walk.

“My friend, you haven’t even broken a sweat,” said Andy, taking a long chug of ice water from his plastic bottle and offering it to Mark.

“I’m good, thanks. It’s all for you.”

“You must be part camel. It’s hot as hell today and I’m sweating buckets.”

Mark smiled and kept an eye on their surroundings as they sat in silence for several minutes and Andy caught his breath.

“Oh, nice, perfect,” Andy said as he retrieved a camera from his small backpack and snapped a picture off to their left.

Mark followed the direction of the lens and furled his eyebrow.

“Are you hallucinating? There’s nothing over there.”

“Perhaps not to the untrained eye. Look again, young Jedi,” Andy answered professorially.

Mark scanned their left flank from side to side, up and down.

“Nope. Nothing.”

Andy extended his arm and pointed a beefy finger toward a pair of large trees, each with its own pronounced V-shape.

“You see where those two Vs come together to make a W?”

“Yeah.”

“Just to the right of that, the ground is flat for a few feet. Then it starts to slope upwards, making a natural amphitheater of sorts. It’s perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” asked Mark.

“A public execution.”

Mark turned to face his friend.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing at all, I assure you. It’s for one of my lectures on early town history.”

Andy stood, took a few steps from the rock wall, and turned to face his pupil.

              “Imagine the accused standing under those trees on a raised platform, executioners at his sides, the hillside packed with eager townspeople waiting to hear his last words while vendors sold refreshments.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s called Saudi Arabia.”

“That’s true,” said Andy, motioning with a hand to continue the short climb to the summit. “But this happy little tradition of being in someone’s presence at the moment when they expire was, and is, the closest any living human can get to the afterlife. The condemned’s final words represented their last chance to affect their own legacy, and those words were thought to contain nuggets of divine wisdom. Public spectacles kept people in line. Never underestimate the power of a good shaming, Mr. Landry.”

“I can’t argue with that. I saw a few of those spectacles in different parts of the sandbox earlier in my career.”

“I assume the sandbox to which you refer is the Middle East?”

“Not necessarily. As long as the terrain’s shitty and the majority of people are fucking crazy, it qualifies. Somalia, Libya, Iraq—they’re all the same sandbox.”

The trail weaved through the thick trees and eventually emptied into an open field at the top of the hill.

“Here we are. Take a look, Landry!” boomed O’Rourke, pointing his finger toward the Boston skyline some thirty miles to the south. “In April of 1775 the townspeople stood right here and witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill. They say you could feel the heat from the flames when the Brits set fire to Charlestown.”

Both men sat and relaxed for a few minutes, discussing how much the landscape must had changed over the course of more than two centuries. “Regardless, the flames must have been enormous to be seen from this distance,” added Andy. He drank the rest of the water, and Mark pretended to listen as he launched into an impromptu lecture on the American Revolution.

“So roughly a third of the folks were in favor of revolution, about a third were loyalists to the crown, and the other third were apathetic and couldn’t have given a shit either way. Not that different from today, really.”

“I’m hungry,” Mark replied.

The pair descended the trail until they reached the small, gravel parking lot where Andy had left his white, open-top jeep. A police cruiser was parked at the entrance, facing the sparsely traveled main road. Officer Charlie Worth sat inside with both hands gripped tightly around his radar gun, sunglasses propped up above his forehead. When the two friends emerged from the forest, Charlie turned his head and nodded in their direction.

“Morning, Charlie!” boomed Andy’s voice from across the lot.

“How you doing, Coach?” he answered before returning his attention to the empty street.

Andy and Mark climbed into the jeep and buckled themselves in. Mark waited until they were half a mile down the road before speaking.

“How long have you known that guy?”

“Who? Charlie? Since he arrived on the force a few years ago. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. Something about him rubs me the wrong way. Actually, everything about him rubs me the wrong way, but I can’t place my finger on it.”

“Allow me to help. He’s a jackass. But he’s a harmless jackass and he means well. He seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way. That’s one of the many reasons why Luci replaced him as community policing liaison.”

The jeep’s tires hugged the sharp curves of the narrow road as both men swayed back and forth in their seats.

“What were the other reasons?”

Andy brought the jeep to a stop and looked both ways before turning left to exit the state forest and head toward downtown.

“Who knows? Like I said, he can be an ass. From what I hear, there were no official complaints but a lot of the young Latinos avoided him like the plague. The guys felt bullied, the girls found him creepy. Not a good combination for a liaison. Regardless, Luci was a no-brainer for that position. She has all the right skills and most people love her.”

“Most people?”

“You’re never going to please everyone, Mark. Some of the townies don’t care for her, but that’s nothing new. You could take half the stories I tell about the early days of the town, change the names and dates, and have a pretty decent snapshot of modern times. Don’t get me wrong—we are much more enlightened these days. But some of the primal instincts and fears are identical. Where do you want to eat?”

“Wherever.”

“Do you still suck at pool?” asked Andy with a raised eyebrow.

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Then we’ll hit the Witch Hunt and shoot a few games over lunch. Loser buys.”

Forty-five

“Eight in the side.”

“Clean?” asked Mark.

“Clean. The eight ball always has to go in clean. House rules,” he replied without looking up.

Andy gently tapped the cue ball with a warped stick, sending it straight into the eight ball. The eight ball rolled slowly forward across the faded felt for several inches before unexpectedly rolling sharply to the left and dropping into the side pocket without touching the other balls. It was an impossible shot unless you knew the uneven intricacies of the beat-up table.

“Play here much?” asked Mark.

“Once or twice.”

“I’ll get two more beers.”

Mark leaned his pool cue against the wall and approached the bar, where Lee Carter stood waiting with hands on his hips and a towel draped over his shoulder. Mark placed two empty mugs on the bar as Carter leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

“FYI, the whole table rolls toward that side, but you gotta hit real soft to see it.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember that next time,” answered Mark with a smile.

“Two more?” asked Carter, already walking backwards toward a freezer full of chilled mugs.

“Please.”

Mark leaned back against the bar and casually scanned the room. A dozen or so regulars were drinking and eating, including a heavy-set man who sat with his back to the bar. Mark zeroed in on the bulge behind his right hip. As the man leaned forward to smother his cheese fries with salt and ketchup, his t-shirt rose up and exposed the butt of a Glock pistol. When he leaned back, he craned his thick neck to the side and glanced at Mark with his peripheral vision, a slightly haughty expression on his face. Mark was unimpressed.

Whatever, dude.

When Mark returned to the pool table with two fresh beers, Andy was fixated on the television mounted in the corner.

“Hey, Lee. Can you turn this up, please?” asked Andy in a raised voice.

Lee nodded and came out from behind the bar with a small stool.

“I can’t find the remote, so we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” he said as he slid his hand up and down the side of the television, feeling for the volume control.

“We have breaking news right now from Los Angeles, where earlier today two police officers and several bystanders were killed in an explosion. Warning: the footage you are about to see, taken from a nearby surveillance camera, is very disturbing.”

The video clip opened with a wide shot of an inner-city street as several pedestrians went about their business. A police cruiser entered the scene in slow motion. When it neared the center of the screen a bright flash of light emanated from underneath the vehicle. A fraction of a second later, the entire scene was engulfed in a mixture of flames, smoke, and flying debris.

“Authorities have cordoned off the area and are trying to get a handle on the extent of the damage and casualties,” the broadcaster continued. “Federal investigators and counterterror professionals are at the site, and the Governor has already elevated all law enforcement entities under his authority to the highest alert levels. Was this some sort of freak accident or a deliberate act of terrorism? Who is responsible? Are there more bombs? Are the streets of America no longer safe? Is this the new normal? In just a few moments, we will attempt to answer those questions and more with two very special guests who have very different perspectives, Senators Johnson and McDermott.”

Andy took an enormous sip of his beer and turned to Mark.

“The new normal? I really hate that expression.”

Mark drank from his mug as he watched the video play over and over on a continuous loop in the corner of the screen. “Looks like an IED,” he said in a low voice.

“How can you tell?”

“I’ve seen a few before. I could be wrong.”

“Think the cops had bad luck or something? Couldn’t any car have tripped the bomb? How does this shit work?”

“Depends. It may not have been planted on the street. It could just have easily been attached to the vehicle.”

Both redirected their attention to the television, where a female broadcaster sat in the midst of a bright red, white, and blue set. The words “Terror Alert” flashed boldly across the bottom of the screen.

“I’m joined now in the studio by Republican Senator Johnson of North Carolina, Chair of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, and remotely by Democratic freshman Senator McDermott of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Thank you both for joining us today. Senator Johnson, we’ll go to you first. What do you make of this apparent attack in Los Angeles?”

“First, let me say that my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims,” said the Senator, a distinguished looking man in his late sixties or early seventies. He wore an expensive-looking dark suit, a white shirt, a bright blue tie, and an oversized American flag lapel pin. His gray hair was neatly groomed and his demeanor was confident and smooth as if he had done this kind of thing hundreds of times.

“We are at war. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get folks on the other side of the aisle to recognize this very clear fact and get on board with winning it. There are people around the world and inside our own borders who are hell-bent on destroying the United States of America. And they are not stupid. They are well trained and they are patient. Is this the new normal? It doesn’t have to be. But we need to have a united front in this war. It is simply not possible to locate and eliminate potential terrorists within the United States when the Democratic Party unwittingly runs interference for them by consistently sabotaging our efforts. The good men and women of our intelligence community and armed forces deserve better. Additionally, we need to ratchet up our efforts abroad so we can locate and kill terrorists before they enter our country. Ours is not an easy task, but it isn’t rocket science either. Polls indicate that the American people support a much more aggressive approach to these issues, but too many people in Washington just don’t seem to get it. Until they do, innocent people will continue to die. It is that simple.”

“Amen,” came a deep voice from behind Mark and Andy.

Both remained focused on the broadcast.

“Thank you, Senator Johnson. And what about you, Senator McDermott? What’s your reaction to this attack as well as Senator Johnson’s remarks?”

Senator McDermott cleared her throat and stared into the camera confidently. Her dark hair was short, cut just below the ear, and her modest outfit downplayed the fit body of a woman in her mid-fifties. A Mothers Against Gun Violence pin was proudly displayed on her lapel.

“This is yet another tragic incident, and there is absolutely no excuse for this type of violence on American soil, or anywhere else for that matter. But beating the drums of war is not the answer to this problem—it’s simply the continuation of a disastrous, interventionist foreign policy that helped create the problem in the first place.”

Senator Johnson started to interrupt, but she cut him off.

“Hold on, Senator Johnson. Hold on for a moment, please. You had your time. Now I’d like mine … but allow me to preempt your tired old talking points about ‘blaming America.’ I am not blaming America for anything. The blame for senseless acts of violence sits squarely on the shoulders of the perpetrators. We can all agree on that. But to think our own actions have nothing to do with the threats we face is naïve. Every time we intervene in another country, we create more enemies. Every time a not-so-smart bomb or drone strike kills innocent people, we create more enemies. You have been a United States Senator for more than three decades and have voted for the use of force every chance you’ve had. It’s not working, sir. It’s time to start using our other available tools, not just our hammers. One more thing and then you can have your turn: I have no idea what polls you are referencing. My office is inundated with calls all day long from constituents who are vehemently opposed to military action unless it is absolutely necessary. I hear the same in my travels from coast to coast. Americans are tired of perpetual war and the blowback we never seem to learn from. It needs to stop now. No more.”

“I wish some patriot would shoot this bitch in the head before she gets us all killed,” said the same deep voice behind Mark and Andy.

This time they both recoiled and half-turned their heads to see who was talking. It was the portly man with the Glock. He was close enough that they could smell his thick, boozy breath.

“What? Just sayin’,” he went on, looking back at Andy and Mark, before Lee Carter jumped in.

“William, you’re free to think whatever you want, but don’t say stupid shit like that in my pub. That woman’s been through a lot, and even if she hadn’t I don’t want any talk like that around here. Got it?”

The man reluctantly nodded without taking his eyes off the television.

“Senator Johnson, would you like to respond?” asked the broadcaster.

“Yes, I would. Senator McDermott is a good person and no doubt an inspirational woman. We are all well aware of what she’s been through, and I personally admire her strength and resilience. But those experiences do not give her any special insight into the intricacies of foreign policy, counterterrorism, intelligence gathering, and the way the real world works. And let me be very clear here. I do not like the way the real world works, but we need to see things the way they are, not the way we want them to be. Liberal idealism is a death sentence for the United States as the world’s only superpower. And if we aren’t fulfilling that role, someone else will step in to fill the vacuum, and it won’t be Sweden or Canada. The result will be a much more unstable and dangerous world than the one we have now. There is nothing pretty or clean about war but—”

McDermott saw an opening and jumped in.

“How would you know, Senator? You went from law school straight into politics. It’s the only job you’ve ever had. And this is part of the problem—lawmakers who are quick to start wars they know they won’t have to fight themselves. You’ve got no skin in the game, sir.”

Senator Johnson took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before replying.

“You’re partially correct, Senator. A man of my advanced age has zero chance of finding himself on the battlefield. The closest I get to combat is D.C. traffic. However”—his eyes narrowed and he paused briefly before continuing—“let me remind you that I am the senior United States Senator from the great state of North Carolina, home of numerous military bases including Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune. These good folks are not just my constituents; they are my brother and sister patriots, dedicated to preserving this republic for all of us. I do not take sending them into harm’s way lightly. I also have a niece who lost a leg and a good chunk of one of her arms on the battlefield in Iraq. That was a war I voted to send her to, and a decision I have to live with every day. I have plenty of skin in the game, and tragedy does not discriminate, Madam. It strikes families on both sides of the aisle.”

“I’m sorry I have to cut this conversation short,” said the broadcaster, “but many thanks to Senators Johnson and McDermott for taking time out of their busy schedules to be with us today. Next up: the growing threat of cyberterrorism. Have terrorists already taken over your computers and smartphones? Be sure to stay right here with us—what you learn may save your life.”