Better off Dead

Chapter 9

Fenton fiddled with her phone then held its screen up to a scanner below a sign that read Carlisle Smith, Wheelwright. The door clicked open. I followed her inside. I couldn’t picture any hard manual labor taking place in there now. The room was all pastel colors and throw cushions and nostalgic black-and-white photographs. Plus the standard hotel stuff. A bed. A couch. A work area. A closet. A bathroom. Everything you could need for a comfy night, except for a coffeemaker. There was no sign of one of those. But there was a suitcase, neatly squared away, sitting on its own by the door. Fenton saw me looking at it.

“Old habits.” She wheeled the case across to the bed. “Always be ready to move.” She turned to look at me. “I figured I would be moving again today. I hoped it would be with Michael. But really I knew. There was no chance. I was always going to be leaving alone. I just had to be sure. It wasn’t a surprise. But still, back there, at The Tree, it hit me. Harder than I expected. Pushed me close to the edge for a second or two. I’m sorry you had to see that. It won’t happen again. Now, let’s focus. Come on. Make yourself at home.”

I figured it was a minute after 3:00 p.m. I was hungry. Breakfast was a long time ago. I’d made an early start, back in El Paso. I didn’t know if Fenton had eaten at all that day. But she must have burned plenty of adrenaline. I figured food would help both of us. I suggested we order some. Fenton didn’t argue. She just pulled out her phone. “Pizza work for you?”

Fenton took the chair from under the desk and tapped away at her screen. I sat on the couch. I waited until she was done summoning up our food, then said, “I told you why I’m here. Now it’s your turn.”

She paused, like she was marshaling her thoughts. “It started with Michael’s message, I guess. We were always close, like most twins are, but we lost touch. He wasn’t the same. Not after he left the army. I guess I should explain that. He was in a thing called a TEU. A Technical Escort Unit. They’re the guys who are experts in bomb disposal and chemical warfare.”

“I’ve heard of them. If another unit is clearing an area and they find chemical ordnance, they call in a TEU.”

“They’re supposed to. But that doesn’t always happen. A grunt doesn’t always know what a chemical artillery round looks like. In Iraq the enemy didn’t have any, remember. Not officially. So they’re not marked properly. Or they’re deliberately mismarked. Plus they look like other shells. Signal shells, especially, because they also have a separate chamber for the precursor material. And even if the guys know chemicals are involved they sometimes try to handle it themselves. They don’t want to wait. With the best will in the world it can take twelve hours for a TEU to respond. Sometimes twenty-four. That’s up to an extra day of exposure to enemy snipers and booby traps. And an extra day they’re not clearing other areas. That leaves other caches for insurgents to find and raid, or for civilians to stumble across, maybe getting hurt or killed. So quite often Michael’s team would arrive at a scene and find it contaminated. Like the first one they ever responded to. It was a brick chamber, underground. Some infantry guys literally fell into it. They busted through the ceiling. They started poking around, then got cold feet. The shells in there were old. They were in bad shape. The guys must have cracked one without realizing. It contained mustard gas. One of Michael’s friends got exposed. It was horrible.”

“Did he make it?”

“By the skin of his teeth. They medevaced him. The hospital induced a coma before the worst symptoms set in. That saved him a lot of agony. And probably saved his life.”

“Did Michael get exposed?”

“Not on that occasion. But he did later. You see, however they come by chemical shells, the TEU has to dispose of them. If the area they’re found in is inhabited, they have to move the shells before they can blow them up. And if there’s some unusual feature, they have to recover them so they can be studied. That’s what happened to Michael. He was transporting a pair of shells that the pointy heads wanted taken back to the Aberdeen Proving Ground. He had them in the back of his Humvee, heading to an RV with a Black Hawk. One of them leaked. It made him sick. He managed to get back to base but the medics wouldn’t believe his symptoms were real. He had no burns. No blisters. No missing body parts. He was accused of malingering, or treated like a drug addict because his pupils had shrunk. Anything to put the blame on him, not the army. He had spasms. Chest pain. He couldn’t stop vomiting. His whole GI system was messed up. They finally sent him to Germany. To a hospital there. It took him weeks to recover.”

“That’s harsh.”

“It was. The way they treated him was bad enough. But the real kicker? Michael, and his friend with the mustard gas, and a whole bunch of others who got hurt – the army refused to recognize them. There was no Purple Heart for them, either. You know why? The poison didn’t leak out during an active engagement, so their injuries weren’t deemed to have been caused by enemy action. It was like the army was telling them they did these awful things to themselves. And you know what? In the exact same circumstances, the Marines do decorate their guys. It just wasn’t right. Michael was demoralized. He left the army at the end of his next tour. He drifted for a few years, and I guess he went off the rails. I kept trying to reach out to him. But then I had problems of my own.” She patted her leg. “And I was busy with my work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a lab technician. In a place near Huntsville, Alabama.”

“That the job that sent you to Afghanistan?”

She nodded. “I went to supervise some sample collection. Stuff we had to bring back and analyze. My boss knew I was ex-army. He thought I’d be OK. I was out of action for a while, afterward. Surgery. Physical therapy. And then I was a bit down. A bit self-absorbed. But when I got Michael’s message it shook me up. It was something I just couldn’t ignore.”

“What did it say?”

“ ‘M – help! M.’ It was handwritten on the back of a card from a place called the Red Roan. It’s a café here, in town.”

“So you dropped everything and came?”

“I dropped everything. But I didn’t come here right away. Old habits die hard. First, I did some digging. I got in touch with his friends. Some contacts of my own. Tried to find out what he might have been into. Where he might have been. Everyone said they didn’t know. A few promised to ask around. Then a buddy from the Sixty-sixth told me about a guy, kind of like an agent. If you were a vet and you wanted work, and you weren’t too particular if it was legal, he could hook you up. I got in touch. Leaned on him. He admitted introducing Michael to Dendoncker. Indirectly. I pressed him some more and he admitted to placing a few guys with Dendoncker over the years. Sometimes Dendoncker just wanted anyone ex-military. Sometimes he wanted people with specialized skills. The guy recalled placing an ex-sniper who was an expert in .50 rifles. Michael got hired because he knew about land mines.”

“Sounds like Dendoncker could be smuggling weapons.”

“That was my first thought, too. So I came down. Poked around. But couldn’t find any sign of Michael or smuggling rings or other kinds of criminals. I became desperate. That’s when I got back in touch with the agent guy and asked him to hook me up with Dendoncker. I expected an argument, but he was super cooperative. Said I was doing him a favor. Dendoncker was in the market for another recruit. No particular MOS. Just had to be a woman. I was worried about what that could mean. But I figured my brother’s life was on the line. So I said, all right. Set it up.”

“And you got the job, just like that?”

“No. My background was already legit but I made up a few false references to embellish it a little. Then I had an ‘interview.’ With Dendoncker’s sidekick. A huge, creepy guy. He took me out into the desert and had me prove I could shoot and strip down a gun and drive and so on.”

“Didn’t Dendoncker connect you with Michael? You have virtually the same name.”

“No. We have different surnames. His was Curtis. Mine was, too, obviously. Then I got married. I took my husband’s name. And I kept it after he was killed. In Iraq.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

Fenton looked away. I waited until she turned back to me.

I said, “Dendoncker wanted Michael because he knew about land mines?”

“That’s what the guy told me.”

“How’s that connected to the catering business?”

“I don’t know. My best guess is Dendoncker’s some kind of procurer. He smuggles in whatever his customers want and sells it to them. He probably needs experts from time to time to evaluate the merchandise.”

“But Michael stayed on?”

Fenton nodded.

“You didn’t come in contact with him, even when you were on the inside?”

“No. I tried, but I had to be discreet. Then two days ago I saw a woman I recognized. Renée. She was working at Dendoncker’s catering business, like me. With a different partner. She had different shifts. And she’d been there longer. She knew the lay of the land better.”

“Where did you know her from?”

“I didn’t know her. I’d seen her in photos. Ones Michael had of his old unit.”

“She was at the place where the containers get loaded for the planes?”

Fenton shook her head. “No. At the Red Roan. The place Michael sent the card from. I followed her when she left. Cornered her at her hotel. She admitted Michael was in town and still working for Dendoncker. But on some special project. She swore she didn’t know what it was. Just that it involved Michael doing tests in the desert from time to time.”

“Land mines?”

“Maybe.” Fenton shrugged. “So I asked this Renée to set it up for Michael and me to meet. She refused. Said it was too dangerous. She seemed genuinely terrified. So I asked her to at least give Michael a note for me. She agreed to that.”

“What did you write?”

“I kept it simple. I said, ‘I’m here. Contact me. I’ll do whatever you need.’ And I gave him an email address. One I’d set up specially. No one else knew it.”

“This was two days ago?”

“Right. She said she might not be able to get the note to Michael right away. Then an email came this morning. I knew Michael was in trouble the moment I read it. I feared the worst. But I had to find out for certain.”

“How did you know?”

“From the way the message was addressed. I had signed my note Mickey. That’s what people who knew me as a kid call me. The email that came, which set up the rendezvous at The Tree? It was written to Mickey.”

“So? Michael obviously knew you when you were a kid.”

“You don’t understand. When we were growing up we were always playing soldiers and spies. We started doing that thing from the movies where you only use the other person’s real name if you’re in danger. The note used my real name. So either Michael was in danger, or my note got intercepted and whoever replied didn’t know our routine.”

“What happened to the woman who took the note?”

“Renée? I don’t know. I went to her room at the hotel this morning, as soon as I got the email. Some of her clothes had been taken from the closet. All her underwear was gone. So were her toiletries. I think something spooked her. After she gave Michael the note. I think she ran for her life.”