Point of Impact

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The phone was ringing. Nick stopped drying his breakfast dishes and went to pick it up.

“Yeah.”

“Nick?”

“Uh, yeah?” The voice, a female’s, had a familiar lilt to it.

“Nick, it’s Sally Ellion in Rec – ”

“Sure, hi, what’s up?”

“Nick, you’ve got me in so much trouble.” She was whispering.

“Oh. The file.”

“I didn’t know you were on suspension.”

“Ah. Yeah, yeah, it was crummy of me not to tell you. I’m very sorry. It wasn’t honest behavior. I just had this damn case I was really hot to clear. I thought…oh, it was so stupid, I thought in my time off I’d just be able to concentrate on it.”

“Nick, I’ve got a directive to return that file by special courier instantly.”

“Oh, Jesus. I hope you’re not in any trouble.”

“I have to have that file back. You weren’t even supposed to leave the building with it.”

“Yeah, but since I couldn’t stay in the building, I couldn’t read it there, could I? Anyway, Sally, I’m very sorry to have disappointed you. I’m done with it, I’ll leave in ten minutes and have it back to you in an hour. Okay? And could this be our little secret, I mean, the fact that I actually looked at it?”

“Oh, yes. It has to be. I can’t tell them you left the building with it. Please hurry.”

“I’m on my way.”

Nick showered quickly, and put on a gray suit. In a strange way it pleased him to have some mission in life, even if it was only to deliver the file.

He’d been turning over what he’d learned in his head. He remembered the strange message the man who may have been the Salvadoran secret policeman Eduardo Lanzman had crawled into the bathroom to leave for him. ROM DO was the message in the blood, in the split second before it was obliterated. Possibly the beginnings of the words Romeo Dog, which was early-sixties Army radio code for the letters R and D and the Bay of Pigs invasion force call sign in 1962? R and D. Ram and Dyne. RamDyne…

It was almost something. But it was still nothing. Why didn’t he write RA DY, why ROM DO, what was there about the radio codes of the Bay of Pigs? If it was from the Bay of Pigs?

He shook his head, feeling an ache begin in it somewhere. He now believed that he had an indication – but no legally constituted evidence, another matter entirely – that this RamDyne was in some way involved in the murder of Eduardo Lanzman and possibly the murder, therefore, of Archbishop Jorge Roberto Lopez. He knew he’d ventured into very hazy areas, the vaunted wilderness of mirrors, where it was possible to lose your bearings in a second, and become so riddled with paranoia that nothing made sense anymore. Everything in him told him to back off, it was none of his business.

But the idea…those guys running around on their own special mission. Who watched them? Who paid them? Shreck, Payne, the others? To whom did they give their accounts? To some Lancer Committee. Who founded them? Where did they come from in the year 1964, suddenly rich and influential enough to get the deal going with fifteen hundred Armalite rifles. Who were they?

Annex B would tell him.

I’ve got to get Annex B, he told himself.

But what the fuck is Annex B?

“There he goes,” said Tommy Montoya in the van, “that’s my little Nicky.”

Jack Payne, watching through the scope as Nick Memphis walked from his little suburban house to his Dodge, and climbed in, just grunted.

“Take him now, Payne-O?” asked Tommy.

“No. They’re expecting him. Let him return the fucking file, then we’ll nail him on the way out. What I want is someone in his house. He’s got to have a piece in there. If it ain’t a piece, he’ll have a kitchen knife or a razor or something. I want it lifted. We’ll use it when we chill his bones out after our little chat.”

“Jack, man, it’s no sweat, I can do the house,” said one of the other team members.

“Yeah, Pony, that’s fine, you do it. We’ll wait on you.”

“You don’t want to tail him?” asked Mr. Ed, the driver.

“Nah. Let Pony get into the house and pick out a nice toy. No prints now, Pony, you got that?”

“Sí, Jack, sure, got it.”

“Okay, go to it, son.”

Pony stepped out of the back of the Electrotek 5400 surveillance van parked a discreet distance down from Memphis’s house. Jack watched him go. He was dressed like a workman. He went to the house, knocked on the door, then blandly went around back.

“He’ll get in,” said Edwards, always called Mr. Ed. “I seen him do locks. He’s like a fucking genius with locks.”

“Great,” said Jack.

It was true. Pony was back in thirty minutes. His trophy was a little Parkerized Colt Agent.

Payne, wearing plastic gloves, popped it open and gently plucked one round out.

“Ooooo,” he said, “Glaser safeties,” looking at the blue-tipped bullet nested in the brass case and imagining the clusters of lead suspended like bunches of grapes inside the jacket. “These nasty suckers make instant spaghetti,” he said.

“Oh, Nicky,” said Tommy Montoya. “You in the shit now, my friend.”

“Hi, I – ”

“Shhhhhh!” she whispered, her small pretty face knitting in anger. “Put it there,” she commanded in the same conspiratorial whisper.

“Yeah, sure.”

He set the box with the RamDyne file on her desk and backed away. She didn’t look at it directly. He just stood there and could feel the sense of furious betrayal radiating off her neck, which was all he could see.

“Sally, I’m – ”

And finally she looked up.

Her face was compressed with pain. She was trying to show him how much he’d hurt her. Hurt her? He didn’t even know her! The abrupt envelope of intimacy somewhat befuddled him. It occurred to him suddenly that this pretty, idiotic girl conceived herself as being in love with him, one of those crush things, nurtured from afar down through the months. He could not have begun to engineer such a turn of events and now that it was here, it embarrassed him; he felt as if he’d trounced on a fragile secret thing of hers. He felt unworthy. But also irritated. Hey, I never knew I meant anything to you, do you see?

“Did you have any trouble?” she finally asked. “I mean, getting back into the building?”

“No. No, you know it’s funny, even though I don’t have an ID or anything, they just let me back in. You know, what’s his name, Paul on security, he just waved mildly, like he has every day for the past four years. I guess some people didn’t get the word.”

“I’ll say.”

He let the silence sit between them for a while, trying to figure out how to deflate it.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I should have told you. This case was tantalizing me, though. It had nothing to do with my screwups of the last two months. I just hated to let the goddamn thing die, even if the career was shot. You handed me the damned file. I just didn’t have the strength to walk away from it.”

She swallowed.

“I’m sorry for what they’re doing to you. I’m sure it’s not your fault.”

“Ahh, it is. I thought I was so smart, and I just kept blowing it. Look, I have to get out of here before I get you in any trouble. You’ll be okay?”

“I think so. As long as I get it back to them by tomorrow. And I have to sign a form saying it never left the office.”

“So you have to lie for me?”

“Yes.”

“See, I’m great luck for women. Look, Sally, it was a crummy thing to do. I apologize. Could I – I don’t know, make it up? Would you like me to buy you dinner or something?”

“I have a date tonight.”

“Sure, I understand. Okay, I’m sorry again, now I’ll get out of – ”

“I don’t have one tomorrow night.”

“Oh. Uh, well, then. Um, can I pick you up in front of the building here at, say, six? Maybe we’ll go down to the Quarter and get oysters before it fills up with tourists.”

“Six,” she said. “And don’t worry about the lying. It’s no problem.”

“Thanks, Sal. Thanks a lot.”

It was a glorious day out. Nick walked through the tall buildings of downtown New Orleans. He had nothing to do, and nothing but time to fill. So task-oriented all his life, he suddenly felt buoyant. Exhilarated, he thought he might walk on down to the Quarter now, have a nice lunch, then head on back to the house and take a nap. He felt cured of his depression. He had a date with an attractive girl, he was still young enough. He knew people. He’d be all right. Hey, maybe this wouldn’t suck so bad after all. He had enough money to get through another couple of weeks or so.

Live a little, Nick. Don’t have to be a Feeb grind your whole life. Maybe Sally would find him attractive, maybe she wouldn’t. If it happened, it happened. But a world had just opened up. Amazing how good a woman’s smile can make you feel.

It was at this moment in his ruminations – he was lost in the shadows of the tall commercial buildings and jostled by the anonymous lunchtime crowds – that he heard his name called.

“Nicky! Hey, Nicky, Nicky!”

He turned to see his old snitch Tommy Montoya, broadcasting Latino animal magnetism, his neck swimming in gold chain.

“Tommy!” he called. “Tommy, damn, I’m glad to see you. Hey, I was going to call you. Hey, you got a moment? I got some stuff I want to ask you.”

“Sure, Nicky, no problem, man.”

Nick stepped toward Tommy and in an instant three other men were on him, crushing inward roughly.

“Hey, what the – ”

They went for his arms. He thrashed, thought he caught one with an elbow in the face, but as they crunched in upon him, all their huge weight just pressing against him, there came the prick of a needle through his suit coat into his lower back, and suddenly his legs lost their purchase on the earth, he lurched forward through swirls of light, and had the vaguest idea of sleep and surrender while he knew he was falling. He seemed to fall for quite a while and had only the vaguest impression of a van pulling up.

Nick awoke in darkness on the dirty floor of the van. He could hear the sawing of crickets and somehow he sensed a fetid, overhanging jungle atmosphere.

He tried to sit up but handcuffs had him manacled. His head felt as if someone had hydraulically pumped six tons of plastic waste in through his nostrils.

“Payne-O, he’s come to.”

“Oh, great. Hi ya, Nicky, how ya feel? Man, that sodium pentothal hits like a fucking truck, don’t it?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Just working stiffs, sonny. Get him up.”

“Right, Payne-O.”

The name Payne-O. It was so familiar.

Rough pairs of hands lifted Nick. A flashlight beam hit him in the eyes. His head throbbed. He could make out the shadows of four men.

“You know what we’ve been talking about? How fast you’d see things our way and cooperate with us. I’m of the opinion that a good scout like you would see the error of his ways and come clean. Tommy here says you’re going to be a stubborn motherfucker, giving us grief the whole night long. But you know what, Nick? It don’t matter. We got plenty of time and no other place to be. And remember this: everybody always talks. Nobody’s a hero.”

“Tommy’s a piece of shit.”

“Nicky, I always liked you.”

“You piece of shit!” Nick yelled.

“Oh, Nick’s a tough boy, ain’t he,” said the heavyset, smaller man. Nick could see a tapestry of blue ink embossed on his thick arms.

He remembered the RamDyne file. Payne-O.

“You’re Payne, right? The Green Beret. You were at the massacre on the Sampul River. Man, you must be real proud of yourself, you piece of shit.”

“Oh, Nick, Nick, Nick. That was a wonderful job of work. We killed two hundred communists that day, so that fat assholes like you could rest in your fat little country, not a thought in their heads.” He laughed an awful laugh. “Nick, that’s what we do. You know, that’s our job.”

“Payne-O, you oughtn’t to tell him – ”

“Oh, we can trust Nick with all our secrets, can’t we, Nick? Nick’s one of the good scouts, right?”

“Fuck you, Payne,” said Nick, liberated by the drunken freedom of the drug still in his system. “You let me out of these cuffs, man, I’ll tear your fucking heart out. Your specialty is machine-gunning kids. I read the file. Let me tell you, motherfucker, I’d like to match you against an FBI SWAT team instead of women and kids in a river. We’d teach you something you didn’t know about rock and roll, motherfucker.” Nick was really screaming.

Payne laughed. Tommy laughed.

Nick looked beyond him and saw the darkness and the stillness of the Louisiana bayou. God knew where they were. Miles and miles beyond civilization. There was no help or mercy. He saw his own car parked just outside. He knew what that meant. It meant they would kill him in some way made to approximate a suicide and the car had to be there to explain how he’d gotten out there.

“Now, Nick, this can go hard or it can go easy. What’s it going to be?”

“Either way it’s fucking curtains for me, sucker.”

“Not necessarily,” said Tommy. “When we make you see how we’re operating in National Security, you may even want to join us. We do what has to be done. You better be fucking glad somebody in this fucking country is. We’re like the fucking Roman centurions, man. We keep the barbarians away. Isn’t that right, Payne-O?”

“He’s got that right.”

“Shitasses like you always say you’re doing something for the country. You’re the barbarians, motherfucker.”

Then Nick spat in Payne’s face.

Something awesome and rhinolike flared in Payne; even in the darkness Nick could sense the surge of naked rage. At that second Payne wanted to rip his eyes out. But he regained his professional control, and wiped the phlegm off his forehead.

“Payne-O,” said one of the other guys, “he ain’t gonna volunteer any info.”

Payne’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, shit, you’re right. That stretches it out. But it’s fastest up front. So shoot him up.”

Nick felt his jacket sleeve being shoved up.

“Oh, Nick, have we got a tongue loosener for you.”

He felt the prick of a needle, its long slide into his vein, and the odd largeness as whatever was injected into him filled his veins.

“Okay, Nick, just relax, let it happen,” Tommy said.

Nick tried to fight it.

“It’s very sophisticated stuff. Phenobarbital-B, an advanced compound, state of the art for CIA interrogations. Go ahead, fight it. The more you fight, the more you talk.”

Nick felt nothing. Then he felt everything. Lights were going on, then going off. He felt his will shredding. He felt it going away. In his weakness and terror, he yearned only to please.

“Now Nick,” came the voice from very far away, “Nick, Nick, Nick. Tell us a story. Got the tape going, Pony?”

“It’s on.”

“Nick, how’d you first hear of RamDyne?”

Nick tried to find a way to resist, but the point of it seemed quite ridiculous. Why not give them what they wanted? Everybody did.

“I – I – ”

“That’s right. Go on.”

“I was on surveillance with the Secret Service prior to Flashlight’s visit. Um. One of their agents mentioned that RamDyne exported the big surveillance rigs to Central American governments and I’d been looking for some way…”

And with that he was gone. He talked and talked and talked. He couldn’t shut up. It just came out of him. It was like a purging. All the information he’d stored, all his doubts about Bob Lee Swagger’s guilt, all his fears, his terror, worst of all, of his own inadequacy, it all came out of him. He talked for days, for years. In the end, he wore them out. He beat them by talking.

It was dawn. The crickets had shut up, even, he outtalked the crickets. Outside, the sun was rising, turning the day pale and green. Outside, Nick could see, everything was green. It was a wild driven craze of green, a dangerous green. They were near a river or a swamp; there were trees everywhere. The road was a dirt track. He was tired. He was so tired. Now all he wanted to do was rest.

But they had him up.

“I just want to sleep,” he said.

“Nah. You want to go to the bathroom, right?” said Tommy.

“Nah, I wanna sleep.”

“Shit. Walk him around, okay.”

“You got it all, Payne-O?”

“Hey, can you think of anything I left out? This guy would sing the birdies out of the sky now.”

“Ah, let me see. Let me check the list.”

“It’s all checked off. It’s all on the list.”

“Okay, you know the drill. Tommy, he’s your buddy. You handle it. Pony, you stay with him. We’ll leave you here. You wait till he pisses. Meanwhile, I gotta get the tape back ASAP.”

“You got it, Payne-O.”

Still crushed by the drug, Nick could at least put it together. He had no will and he had no pride.

“What are you gonna do to me?” he asked.

“What do you think, fuck?” said Payne. “You crossed the line. You been a-messin’ where you shouldn’t a been a-messin’, and now the boots are gonna walk all over you. Someone’s still got to do the hard thing, you little shit. You didn’t have to find out about it. It was your choice. But now you’re the hard thing, kid.”

“National Security at Risk. Lancer Committee requests no further action be taken. Refer to Annex B,” Nick quoted, but the irony was lost on them.

The two of them got into the surveillance van and drove away. Nick watched as the van disappeared down the dirt road, leaving a skirt of dust in the empty air.

Nick looked around. It was quite a beautiful place, actually. Completely deserted, but a kind of river basin, where the swamp momentarily yielded to a broad yellow-green meadow. A few hundred yards away the trees were dense and the land looked soupy. Here, in the fragrant morning, the land was solid. His car was parked over there, and another one.

Nick turned. Tommy and the other guy were eyeing him balefully. He twisted on his cuffs; they would not give. He could run, but to where? There was no place to run to.

“This is all wrong,” he said. “I haven’t done anything.”

“It ain’t about doing things wrong. It’s about knowing too much. It’s how these things work, man. It’s how they always work,” said Tommy. “You want a Coke or a cup of coffee? We have a thermos, Nicky.”

“No.”

“Nicky, I hate to tell you, you ain’t no superman. You’re gonna have to piss sooner or later. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“What’s with the pissing?” he asked.

“You got too high a concentration of pheno-B in you. You piss, it gets down to levels where it can’t be spotted. See, that’s why we got to wait. Sorry about it. Enjoy the morning. Just relax. It ain’t gonna be nothing.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Nicky, I seen a lot of guys check out. And my time will come soon enough. So let’s just get through it as quickly and easily as possible. Don’t cry or beg or nothing.”

“Fuck you, I’m not going to cry or beg.”

“Usually, they do,” said Pony. “Usually they do.”

Nick waited until his bladder betrayed him. It had to, finally. He fought it. But then Tommy said, “Hey, why put yourself through that? It ain’t gonna matter much, really. I mean, is it?”

So finally he said it. “Have to go. Undo my hands.”

“No can do, pard. You know that. Pony, undo his pants for him. Don’t touch him. Let it be natural.”

God, he hated them! It was the little touches of solicitousness, the softly remorseless way in which they did their job.

Pony, young and muscular and vaguely Latino, undid his pants. He was able to urinate himself dry, a last, long dying are of life in the bright morning light in the blazing green of the swamp.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Fuck you. Get it fucking over with.”

They zipped and buttoned him up and led him down to the river. It lapped against the mud. A dragonfly flashed in the sun, big and prehistoric, like something liberated from a million or so years in amber. Nick was pushed to his knees.

He felt a belt being strapped around his waist. Then his left arm suddenly wore a new manacle, something attached to the belt. Jesus, they had equipment for this! That’s how thought out it was, how perfect. They had a drill. They’d done it a thousand times!

Something was thrust into his hand; his fingers recognized the familiar contours of his Colt Agent. He tried to pull the trigger but it wouldn’t budge; they had something wedged under it. He felt a binding of tape being wound about his knuckles, locking the small pistol in his grip.

“Hold his head back, Pony,” Tommy said. Pony grabbed Nick by his hair, and pulled his head back. It fucking hurt.

“You motherfucking pricks,” he screamed. “God, don’t do this to me, don’t do this to me. Tommy, Christ, please, I was your buddy.”

“No, Nicky. You was just a fed, man. I can’t cut you no slack. I got my job to do, man.”

Nick heard a click behind him, and the first set of cuffs came away, freeing his right arm; but immediately it was ridden into submission by the full force and thrust of Tommy Montoya at his right.

“Okay, Nicky, don’t fight me. Over in a second.”

“Please don’t do this,” Nick begged.

“Okay, Nicky, up we go.”

The man forced Nick’s arm upward in an arc, curving the hand toward Nick’s temple. His own hand was his enemy. Nick fought with all the strength he had, but the two men stood over him in postures that put the complete physics of leverage on their side. He saw his hand rise toward his head, guided by both muscular arms of his murderer. It was clear how it had to go; the arm would rise until the muzzle touched his temple; then Tommy would pull whatever he’d wedged behind the trigger – a RamDyne improvised suicide replication plug, part Number 4332 from the RamDyne Catalog, available to your friendly secret police force, no doubt – and crush Nick’s trigger finger. The gun would blow Nick’s brains out. He’d be found in the weeds by the river, his hand locked around his own pistol, his own car close at hand. There’d be no other physical evidence. They’d thought of everything. It was so fucking professional!

Nick strained against his own hand.

“Oh, Jesus, oh, Christ, don’t do this.”

“Just – ah, almost, there, don’t fight it, goddammit, don’t fight it!” And the gun rose and rose until at last Nick felt it touch the fragile shell of his temple. It felt like somebody pressing a penny against him. Through his strained peripheral vision he could see Tommy laboriously working on the gun, getting his own gloved finger half into the trigger guard, making ready to pull the plug.

“Watch yourself, Pony,” Tommy said, warning his partner to steer clear of spatter, “I’ve almost got it, ah – ”

Tommy Montoya’s head exploded.

The sound of the report reached them.

Across the river a cloud of angry white birds rose as one in clattering agitation, rudely bumped from their perches by the rifle shot.

Nick, freed of half his constraint, turned to the other man, Pony, who stood still stupefied, not getting it.

But Nick got it.

“You’re dead, motherfucker,” he said, and at that precise instant the second bullet found Pony center chest, blowing through his heart. He pirouetted to the ground, the destroyed heart spurting blood as he fell.

The birds cawed and seethed in the air. The wind rose and whistled.

Nick sat back. His arm ached. He wanted to throw away the pistol, but couldn’t, because it was taped to his hand. He figured the key would be somewhere on these two clowns.

He looked around and saw a man wading across the river. He was tall and rangy and tan, beardless now, in blue jeans and a tired blue denim shirt. He wore a baseball cap that said RAZORBACKS on it. He had harsh, gray, squirrel-shooter’s eyes, unmirthful, focused, unafraid. His mouth was grim. He was quite tall.

He carried a fat-barreled Remington 700 rifle with about a yard of scope atop it. He carried it like a man who knew a little something about rifles.

He walked up to Nick.

“Mornin’, Pork,” said Bob the Nailer.