Area 51

CHAPTER 17

“I’ve told you my reasons for being here and helping you. How about telling me your reasons?” Kelly asked.

They were holed up in Johnny Simmons’s apartment.

Turcotte was less than thrilled about being there, given that it looked as if Simmons had been picked up by Gullick’s people. But Kelly had argued that no one knew about their connection with Johnny, so there was no reason for someone to come looking for them here in Phoenix. Besides, they needed to stay somewhere en route to Dulce, and a motel was out of the question. The apartment was on the second floor of a modern complex, and it did not appear that anyone had been inside for several days.

Turcotte had expressed misgivings about stopping at all. He wanted to push on to Dulce and try to infiltrate it this evening. But Von Seeckt had told them of the planned rendezvous with Professor Nabinger the next morning at this location, and Kelly had agreed that they ought to wait. Turcotte had reluctantly accepted their decision. Turcotte was slowly accepting that they all needed each other: Von Seeckt held the knowledge to get them out of their predicament; Kelly was to be the voice to the public that would ensure their safety once they acquired the information they were after; and he held the expertise to keep them safe and acquire more information.

“My story will have to wait until tomorrow,” Von Seeckt said. He was seated near the window, looking down two stories at the parking lot. “Professor Nabinger will have the same questions, and I do not wish to tell it twice. It is difficult to tell and covers many years.”

Kelly looked over at Turcotte. “Well?”

“I’ve already told you what happened. I just arrived in time for the Nightscape mission.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t come out of a hole in the ground prior to that,” Kelly said. “How did you get sucked into working at that place? You said something earlier today about an assignment.”

“I was in the army, and they cut orders assigning me there.” Turcotte stood up. “I’m going out to the store. Anyone want anything?”

Without waiting for an answer he walked out and headed for the stairs. Kelly was two steps behind him.

“You’re not getting away that easy. There’s something you aren’t telling. Why’d you help Von Seeckt? You were one of the bad guys. Why’d you change sides?”

Turcotte went down the stairs, Kelly at his side. “I told you. My commander wanted me to apprehend some civilians in Nebraska. I didn’t like that. Also, they tried to kill Von Seeckt. I don’t approve of kidnapping or murder, even if the government is the one sanctioning it.”

“Yeah and pigs have wings,” Kelly said. “I don’t buy it. You—”

Turcotte whirled and faced her, the action so swift that Kelly stepped back, startled. “I don’t give a damn what you buy or don’t buy, lady,” he said. “You ask too many questions. You let Von Seeckt have his secrets. How about letting me have mine?”

“Von Seeckt is going to tell us his when Nabinger gets here,” Kelly countered, stepping in closer to Turcotte.

“Come on. You didn’t just arbitrarily decide to go against your orders and your training. You must have had a reason. And I do have a reason for asking. I’ve been set up before by the government and I’m not going to naturally assume that you’re telling me the truth. We only have your word about what took place in Nebraska. For all I know it never happened.”

Turcotte looked off past her toward the western horizon, where the sun was balanced on the edge of the planet. “All right. You want to know about me? I got nothing to lose anymore and maybe if we survive this mess, you can print it somewhere and people can know the truth.

“I was involved in an incident at my last assignment before coming back to the States,” Turcotte said. “That’s what they called it: an incident. But people died in this incident.”

He shifted his eyes back to her and the look was not kind. “You’re a reporter. You’ll like it. It’s a good story. I was assigned to a CT — counterterrorist— unit in Berlin when it happened. Everyone thinks it’s all great over there since the wall went down, but they still have a terrorist problem. Same as it was in the seventies and early eighties. In some ways worse because there’s bigger and better weapons available to the bad guys from all the old Warsaw Pact stockpiles, and there’re a lot of people in those countries who’d sell anything to get their hands on Western currency.

“The only difference between now and back in the eighties is that we learned our lessons from those old days and now we preempt terrorism. And that’s why you don’t hear about it so much anymore — not because the assholes have gone away. People are so naive.”

“Preempt?” Kelly asked.

Turcotte gave a short, nasty laugh. “Yeah. When we were getting held hostage by every two-bit terrorist or wacko with a bomb, someone high up in the workings of NATO got the bright idea that instead of sitting around and letting the terrorists hit us, we’d seek them out and hit them first. The only problem was that it wasn’t quite legal.” He looked down the street and spotted a cafe. “Let’s get some coffee.”

They walked over and took a corner booth. Turcotte sat with his back to the wall, watching the street outside. There was a constant clatter of dishes and utensils overlaid with the murmur of conversation from the other patrons. After the waitress had brought them a cup each, he continued, speaking in a low voice. “So, anyway, we fought fire with fire. To stop the law-breakers we broke the law. I was on a joint U.S.-German team. Handpicked men from the U.S. Special Forces DET-A out of Berlin and the Germans’ GSG-9 counterterrorist force.” Turcotte poured a load of sugar into his coffee and stirred. “Ever hear that slogan: We kill for peace?” Kelly nodded. “Well, that’s what we did.

“I didn’t mind doing it either. We were wasting people who’d put a bomb in a train station and didn’t care who got caught in the blast. We pretty much broke the back of the remnants of the Baader-Meinhof gang in less than six months. I was in on six operations.” Turcotte’s voice was flat. “I killed four people on those ops.

“Then we got word that some IRA fellows were in town, trying to buy surplus East German armament that some former members of the army had stashed away for a rainy day when the wall came down. The word was these Irish guys were trying to get some SAM-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.

“We don’t know what they were going to do with them, although the best guess was they’d sit outside Heathrow and take out a Concorde just after takeoff. That would make the news, which is all those scumbags want. I know they signed a peace accord and ceasefire and all that happy shit, but that don’t stop the guys who pull the trigger. They have to be on the edge. A lot of those people do what they do because they like it. They couldn’t give a shit about the so-called goals they shout at the cameras. It’s just an excuse to be a sociopath.”

He paused when the waitress came by to take their order. Kelly ordered a bagel, Turcotte a glass of orange juice.

“Anyway, everything about the mission was rushed because the intel was late. The IRA had already purchased the missiles and had them loaded in a car and were heading for France when we were alerted. We were airlifted ahead of them and picked up some cars. The terrorists were taking back roads — staying away from the autobahn — which played right into our hands.”

The angry undercurrent in Turcotte’s voice grew. “We should have just stopped them and taken them into custody. But we couldn’t do that, you see. Because that would have caused too much controversy — the trial and all. And it just compounds the problem to put them in jail, ’cause that gives every blood relative they have a reason to grab some hostages and demand their release. And the whole cycle starts again. So instead we were supposed to kill them. Make it look like we were terrorists ourselves, and that way no one looks bad except the local cops.

“So.” Turcotte took a deep breath to steady his voice. “We were all set to hit them outside a small town in central Germany. They were heading up to Kiel to load the weapons on a freighter for transshipment to England. But the IRA guys — they were Irish after all — they had to stop in a Gasthaus for a few brews and lunch before making it to their rendezvous at the port.

“I was the team XO — executive officer. The commander was a German. We set up on the north side of the town — the way they would have to leave. We had a good spot on a curve in the road.

“When the car didn’t show after an hour, my CO — let’s call him Rolf — got spooked. Surveillance told us they’d stopped in town. But maybe they’d left by another way. Rolf asked me what I thought. How the fuck was I to know?

“So Rolf and I went into the village and spotted the car outside a bar. We’d been told there were three of them. So old Rolf he decides, hey, fuck it, let’s take them out right now and right here. You and me. He was still worried that they might have spotted the surveillance team that had been following them and that they might take a different route out of town to lose the tail and bypass the ambush our team had set up. Or that they might even be doing a dead drop with the missiles in the town and we might lose track of the ordnance.

“So I said, hey, yeah, sounds good to me. We had MP-5 silenced subs slung inside our long coats and pistols in our shoulder holsters. Rolf ordered surveillance to close up tight around the bar to make sure no one escaped and to pick us up when we were done.”

The waitress brought the bagel and orange juice.

Turcotte took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled as she walked away.

“We walked right in the front fucking door. The place is packed, people eating dinner and drinking. Must have been twenty, twenty-five people in there. But we spot our suspects right away and guess what? There’s only two of these bozos seated in a booth, drinking. So Rolf looked at me like, hey where’s number three? So again, like how the fuck do I know? Probably taking a piss. I started to the bar to order a brew, scanning the room as I went, but Rolf hesitated.

“I can’t blame him too much. Shit, we had silenced submachine guns under our coats and we were there to kill.”

Turcotte gave Kelly a twisted grin. “Contrary to popular fiction and what they show on the movies, we weren’t stone cold killers. We were good at our job, but we were also scared. Most people are in that situation. If you aren’t, you’re crazy — and I have met some of those crazies. Anyway, one of the IRA guys in the booth he looks at Rolf standing there with his thumb up his ass and you could just tell that the Irish guy knew who we were. Rolf wasn’t exactly the greatest actor in the world, and I’m sure I wasn’t giving off the best vibes either.

“So the guy reached under his coat, and Rolf and I hosed the two of them down lickety-split. We each fired half a magazine — fifteen rounds each — and there was nothing left in that booth but chewed-up meat. And the most amazing thing was that after the first shot there wasn’t a single sound other than the sound of our brass falling to the floor. Everyone in the place just fucking froze and looked at us, wondering who was next. Then someone had to scream, and everything went to hell.”

Turcotte’s eyes had taken on a distant look as he went back into that room. “The smart ones just hit the deck. That’s what Rolf and I yelled at them in German to do after the scream. But about half the people rushed for the doors, and that’s when we spotted the third guy. He was in the middle of a group of four people, running for it. He might have been taking a leak. He might have been around the corner at the bar. I don’t know. But there he was.”

Turcotte shook his head. “And Rolf — fucking Rolf — he just fired them all up. I don’t know what short-circuited in his head. Hell, the third guy couldn’t have gone anywhere. Surveillance had to have been sitting on top of his car outside by now and could have taken him out once they got an open shot outside the Gasthaus. But Rolf just lost it.”

Turcotte’s voice briefly broke.

“The only good thing was he just had fifteen rounds in the mag. He got the IRA guy, but he also hit some civilians. I didn’t know how many at the time. There was just this pile of bodies; at the very least the three that had been around the IRA man, plus some others who’d been in the line of fire. Rolf was even flipping his taped-together magazines, putting a fresh one in when I grabbed the gun out of his hand.” Turcotte pulled out his right hand and put it in front of Kelly’s face. The skin on his palm was knotted with scar tissue. “You can still see where the suppressor on the barrel of Rolf’s sub burned my hand. At the time I didn’t feel a thing, I was so freaked.

“So I took his weapon and grabbed him by the collar and made for the door. One thing for sure — people really got the hell out of our way now. Surveillance had a car waiting for us and I threw Rolf in and we split.”

Turcotte took a drink of coffee. “I found out later that night that Rolf had killed four civilians, including a pregnant eighteen-year-old girl, and wounded three. The news was playing it up like an internal IRA hit and the whole country was in an uproar to catch the killers. But they couldn’t catch the killers, could they? Because the country was the killers.

“For a while I even thought they might give Rolf and me up as sacrificial lambs, but then common sense kicked in. I was stupid for even thinking that. If they gave us up, the whole counterterrorist operation would be out in the open and those in power certainly didn’t want that. Might lose a few votes at the polling booth. So you know what they did?” Turcotte looked at Kelly with red-rimmed eyes.

Kelly slowly shook her head.

“They held an inquest, of course. That’s proper form in the military. As a matter of fact the head man I met down in the Cube, General Gullick, he was one of those appointed to look into the whole thing. For security reasons we never saw those who questioned us, nor did we know their names. They talked to us and then talked to each other, and guess what they decided? They gave us fucking medals. Yeah, Rolf and me. Ain’t that great? A medal for killing a pregnant woman.”

“You didn’t kill her,” Kelly quietly remarked.

“Does it matter? I was part of it. I could have told Rolf to wait. I could have done a lot of things.”

“He was the commander. It was his responsibility,” Kelly argued, remembering what her father had told her about the army and covert operations.

“Yeah. I know. I was just following orders, right?”

Kelly had no answer for that.

“So that’s how my career in the regular army and Special Forces ended. I went to my American commander and told him where he could shove his medal, and they had me on the next thing smoking back to the States. But I had to stop in D.C. first. To meet someone.” He proceeded to tell her about meeting Dr. Duncan, her orders to him, and the phone line out of commission.

“Why were you chosen?”

“Right person, right time,” Turcotte said with a shrug.

“There aren’t that many high-speed dudes like me who have top-level clearances and can fire a gun.”

Kelly shook her head. “You were chosen because you told them to shove the medal. It showed somebody, someplace, that you had integrity. That’s even rarer than a top-level security clearance.” Kelly reached across the table and squeezed his hand, feeling the rough flesh in the palm.

“You got screwed, Turcotte.”

“No.” Turcotte shook his head. “I screwed myself the minute I started playing God with a gun. I thought I was in control, but I was just a pawn, and they used me up like one. And now you know why I turned on my commander out there in Nebraska and killed him and why I rescued Von Seeckt and I don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not. Because it’s between me and all these high-speed assholes who pull strings and cause people to die. Fuck me once, shame on me — fuck me twice, I fuck back.”