The Abduction

DAY NINE

“ Nam yen! Nam yen! ”

He’s yelling in Vietnamese-Stay down! Stay down! — so the rotating blades don’t take their heads off. They’re crowded onto the Embassy roof where the Huey is perched and panicked because they hear the NVA tanks at the outskirts of the city and gunfire from the battle between the Communists and the last of the South Vietnamese forces at Tan Son Nhut airport. An NVA rocket whistles overhead and explodes on Thong Nhat Boulevard just outside the Embassy walls and their panic escalates tenfold. Six stories below, thousands more South Vietnamese civilians are massed on the Embassy grounds; hundreds more scramble over the high concrete wall surrounding the Embassy only to be entangled in the barbed wire, joined in their desperation to flee their imploding country and their innocent faith that the Americans will save them. The end is near, and they know it. They do not know that this Huey will be the last U.S. helicopter out of Vietnam. Ever.

Wednesday, 30 April 1975: the fall of Saigon.

Since midnight he has stood on the roof of the American Embassy in downtown Saigon and loaded thousands of refugees onto a steady stream of Navy helicopters for their evacuation to the Seventh Fleet ships waiting offshore in the South China Sea-Operation Frequent Wind, his final mission in Vietnam. It’s now morning and time has run out. This chopper flew in from the USS Midway to retrieve the few remaining American soldiers and the American flag flying over the Embassy-“No civilians! Those are my orders!” the pilot said; but he pulled rank and his sidearm on the pilot. So the troop compartment now holds a huddled mass of refugees from Communism leaving everything they possess behind because possessions mean nothing without freedom; the engine is powering up, kids are crying, women are wailing, sirens are screaming, and outside the Embassy a river of refugees are exiting Saigon on trucks, buses, motor scooters, and bicycles; the looting is already beginning. Another rocket explodes even closer and the Navy pilot is yelling to the last American soldier in Vietnam to get his butt in the aircraft, sir!

Instead, he gives the last place inside the chopper to a teenage girl traveling alone, no doubt orphaned by the war; he will stand on the skid for the flight out to the Midway. He hoists her up, her bare feet joining four others hanging out the open hatch, and he recalls kids riding on the tailgates of pickup trucks back in West Texas and wonders if they still do.

He turns and yells, “ Thoi! D? r?i! ” — No more! That’s all! — to those next in line, a young woman and her baby girl, from her features an Amerasian child abandoned by her American father. The woman is the type of Viet the American soldiers favored, slim and smooth-skinned with soft brown eyes and full lips, now a fallen angel; a silver crucifix hangs around her neck. Their eyes meet, and the woman sees the truth in his: the Americans will not return to save her family. Their freedom ends today. As the Huey’s engines rev louder and the blades rotate faster and the machine strains mightily to hoist its human cargo, the woman kisses her baby and holds the child out to him.

He hesitates then takes the child. With his free hand, he rips off the nametag stitched onto his fatigues and the silver eagle insignia of a full colonel in the United States Army and presses both into the woman’s delicate hand so she can find her child if she survives or die knowing that her child will live free in America. He steps onto the skid and reaches into the cabin with his free hand for a hold; the baby is curled up in his other arm, her tiny fingers clutching his uniform, her brown eyes wide and gazing up at him, her head pressed against his chest.

As the chopper rises from the roof, his eyes never leave the woman; tears run down her face, one face among thousands left behind on the Embassy grounds, their arms outstretched to the Americans, to God Himself, praying to be saved, knowing what their fate will be at the hands of the Communists, their fate for trusting the Americans, for being Catholic, for believing in God. As he knows. Looking down at these desperate people that America and God now abandon, tears fill his eyes. Ben Brice came to their country to free the oppressed. He failed. He closes his eyes, ashamed-of himself, his country, and his God.

“Colonel!”

Ben’s eyes snapped open. He was not looking down upon the Viet mother, but upon Misty, Dicky’s buxom girlfriend wearing a tight sweatshirt and a smile and waving at them as the chopper lifted off the ground. The sheriff had been good to his word. They had met him at 0600 and driven to an open field south of town where they found Dicky in mirrored sunglasses and a Caterpillar cap on backward and Misty in her sweatshirt standing next to an old helicopter. Ben’s billionaire son had hired Dicky and his flying machine for the morning.

“Brings back memories, don’t it, Colonel!”

The sheriff turned to Ben from the front seat of the chopper; he had to yell to be heard over the chopper’s engine. Ben nodded from the back seat; John was sitting next to him.

The sheriff laughed. “ ’Cept you ain’t sitting on your pot to keep your dick from being shot off!”

The Viet Cong’s AK-47 rounds had easily pierced a Huey’s aluminum fuselage; they made sport of shooting at U.S. choppers flying by overhead. Thus, the prudent practice during an airmobile assault in Vietnam was to sit on your helmet in the chopper so as to arrive at the landing zone with your private parts intact. Butt armor, they called it.

The sheriff handed a map back to Ben: “Numbered the camps!”

Dicky dipped the chopper’s nose to gain speed. They were soon flying over the magnificent landscape of northern Idaho. Ben looked at John; John looked queasy. He said, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson was sick to her stomach.

She had come in early this Saturday morning to run database searches on everyone involved with the Walker prosecution ten years ago-the judge, prosecutors, and FBI agents-only to learn that most were dead. Federal District Court Judge Bernard Epstein, seventy-two, had drowned three years ago while out alone in his fishing boat on a small lake at his retirement home in northern Michigan when the boat capsized.

Senior Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kelly, fifty-seven, the lead prosecutor on the Walker case, had been killed the same year in a hit and run while taking an early morning jog in his L.A. neighborhood. The car was stolen. No suspect was ever arrested.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Raul Garcia, forty-eight, number two on the prosecution team, had been shot and killed two years ago in an apparent carjacking outside Denver. No witnesses. No suspects.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Goldburg, forty, had committed suicide four years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. Gunshot wound to the head. He had just taken a new job with a law firm. His wife was pregnant with their first child.

Former Assistant FBI Director Todd Young, sixty-one, head of the Domestic Terrorism Unit, had died in a skiing accident five years ago. A skilled skier on a familiar slope, Suicide Six Ski Area in Vermont, Young had lost his way down in a heavy snowfall. He was found two days later; his skull was crushed, apparently from impact with a tree.

FBI Special Agent Theodore Ellis, fifty-five, had died three years ago in a hunting accident in Macon, Georgia. He had been in charge of the Walker manhunt.

FBI agents, federal prosecutors, and a judge, six in all-and all were dead. Different locations, different causes of death, only one common thread connecting these people: Major Charles Woodrow Walker. Who himself was dead. Ten years after Walker’s death, every major government player in his case was dead-except FBI Director Laurence McCoy, now President Laurence McCoy, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Austin, now Elizabeth Brice.

His hand eases around from behind her and cups her breast over her nightshirt. Elizabeth’s first thought is, Has it already been two weeks?

Yes, she realizes, it has been two weeks since she last allowed him sex; he must keep the dates on his BlackBerry. She is not interested, but he is a good father to the children and she does not want him seeking sex from some geek-girl at work who might (a) give him something more than a good time, or (b) decide that getting pregnant with a soon-to-be-billionaire’s love-child might be more financially rewarding than the company’s 401(k) plan, or (c) lure him away from the children.

So she tosses the pretrial brief onto the night table, removes her panties, and pushes her bare butt against him. He likes it from behind, pushing against her firm bottom. He will not last long this way; he never does. She closes her eyes, figuring she’ll be back to her brief in five minutes tops, if history was any indication.

But he doesn’t enter her immediately this time. Instead, he slides his other arm under her and his leg between hers. They are entwined between silk sheets. One hand slides down her side, over her hips and along her thighs; his hand is soft like a woman’s. His other hand is gentle on her breast. Usually he twists her nipples like he’s trying to tune the Range Rover’s stereo; tonight he’s caressing her like he knows what he’s doing. Has someone been teaching her puppy dog new tricks on the side?

The hand on her thigh slides around to the inside and moves up, ever so slowly. Her genitals instinctively clench, anticipating his customary all-out assault: rubbing her clitoris like he’s trying to start a fire with two sticks then ramming a finger up her with all the romance of a mechanic checking the car’s oil. She is surprised when a quiet moan escapes her lips. He did not attack her clitoris tonight. Instead, his fingers swept across it like a gentle breeze. They’re circling around now on her lower abdomen and coming in for another pass. When they do, without conscious thought or intent, she pushes herself against his hand. Heat rolls up her body, through her loins, over her abdomen and breasts, up her neck, and into her brain. She licks her lips.

His tongue is light on the back of her neck, not his usual imitation of a Labrador retriever slobbering all over her, but delicate and teasing. She wants to ask him, Who the hell taught you that? But she doesn’t want him to stop. Her hand reaches behind her and cups his buttock, firmer than she remembered. His entire body is firm, a better body than one would imagine; has her little nerd been working out in the company gym?

Her hand slides down his torso and finds him. He is so ready. To her great surprise, she is ready, too. She guides him into her; a deep moan slides between her lips this time. She rolls over on her stomach then brings her legs up under her. He kneels behind her and pushes into her, retracts, then pushes again, his thrusts building up momentum, until he is driving himself into her with all his strength, deep inside her, and she feels the pressure massing within her and the heat building and the nerve endings firing and it’s about to happen, oh, my God, she’s on the brink of falling into the glorious depths of orgasm for the first time since And her past returns, chasing off the present, seizing control of her mind, and shutting down her body. It’s over for her. There will be no orgasm tonight, no orgasm ever.

She is possessed by her past.

Elizabeth woke with tears running down her face. She began crying uncontrollably. Grace was gone, and she had blamed John. Now John was gone. John who had loved Grace enough to follow a drunk to Idaho, hoping against all reason that she might still be alive. He had left a billion dollars behind to find his daughter. He had put it all on the line for her. He had done what a man would do. She had never given John Brice enough credit as a man or enough love as her husband.

He deserved more.

They had run into each other ten years ago at the Justice Department. Literally. He had come around the corner with his head down and barreled into her, knocking her to the floor and sending her files flying. She had taken one look at him and assumed he was a gofer, college kids the department hired to run errands. No, he had said, I’m a Ph. D. candidate at MIT, algorithms, Laboratory for Computer Sciences. He was down in D.C. working on a government consulting project, something to do with the department’s computer system. He seemed weird but harmless.

Then he began stalking her. With e-mails. The next day and every day thereafter when she arrived at the office, there had been a new e-mail waiting for her. For some reason, she didn’t demand he cease and desist. For some reason, she even started to look forward to them. There was something in his words.

Then evil came for her.

Afterward, she had been mired in despair and thoughts of suicide and homicide. Her Catholicism-even twenty years dormant-would not allow her either avenue of escape: for a Catholic, the former would lead only to eternity in damnation, the latter to a lifetime of guilt. Just when she thought there was no hope, there he stood in her office door. She took John Brice to dinner, she got him drunk, and she used him. And she was pregnant when she asked him to marry her.

He had loved the child more than life itself.

Elizabeth Brice wiped her face and made a decision: she would love her husband. But she could not love him as long as her past possessed her. She sat up. There is only one place to go when you are possessed by evil.

“Idaho!” the sheriff yelled. “All these crazies coming to Idaho!”

They were now circling over the next camp. The first three camps west of town had been long abandoned. Ben was again using the binoculars, leaning out the open hatch and surveying the camp: a half-dozen cabins; beaten up vehicles and a dilapidated bus jacked up on cement blocks; a woodpile; a ratty sofa out front of one cabin and a recliner out front of another; wisps of smoke lifting from a deer roasting over an open pit; and three men, five women, and four children, all straight out of Deliverance.

But no white SUV.

Ben wanted a closer look, so he retrieved the ART scope he had removed from the rifle and put into the backpack. Through the high-powered optic, he could tell whether a man had shaved with a blade or an electric razor that morning; the men at this camp had shaved with neither. They had beards and scraggly hair, no flattops or blond hair, and wore jeans and flannels, not fatigues. No weapons or military gear of any kind were evident. They were not ex-soldiers, much less ex-Green Berets.

The residents below noticed the chopper. The children pointed skyward, and everyone gathered around and gazed up with gaping mouths as if they were witnessing a solar eclipse. Through the optic, Ben observed dirty children, weary women, and missing teeth. They appeared dirt poor. A Confederate flag flapped lazily on the tall pole rising above the camp. One of the men unbuttoned his jacket then his shirt; his enormous belly was covered with tattoos and on his breastplate where Superman wore his S were three large letters in fancy scrip: KKK. He was probably the grand wizard of this little klan.

Dicky yelled back, “Them people remind me of a joke I heard in town: If a husband and wife move from Alabama to Idaho, are they still legally brother and sister?”

“How long you gonna leave her down there?”

Jacko had found Junior sitting at the table, looking like his dog got run over.

“Long enough to break her.”

“She ain’t no horse.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and shook his head. “The hell you expect, she was gonna love you and live here happily ever after?”

Jacko sighed. The son ain’t near the man the daddy was. Maybe Junior would have turned out different if he had had a mama to raise him; she had died suddenly when Junior was only a boy. Jacko had always felt sort of responsible. On the major’s orders, he had put a bullet in her brain and buried her out back because she had become a security risk. Of course, Jacko’s mama had left them when he was only five because of his daddy always getting drunk and beating her up, and he had turned out okay.

“Look, boy, that’s twenty-five million down in that box. You gonna let her die down there, least get the money!”

Junior just glared back at him. Fuck this, Jacko thought. The money would be nice, but the important thing was that the girl, dead or alive, was going to bring Ben Brice to him. Man Jacko’s age, settling old scores was a hell of a lot more satisfying than money. He grabbed the keys to the Blazer off a nail by the door.

“I’m going up to Creston.”

Jacko went back outside and checked the Blazer to make sure no ordnance was still in the back. Last thing he needed was some Canadian Mountie at the border searching the vehicle and finding a nape canister: Shit, officer, that ain’t my napalm!

He got in and fired up the vehicle and headed down the mountain. Once a month he drove the twenty-four miles into Canada. He had angina; too much booze and red meat and tobacco, the doctor said. Not that he was going to stop any of those habits. So he took nitroglycerin tablets whenever the angina flared up, which was most every day. Hundred bucks a month for his prescription but only half that in Canada. So he bought his nitro over the border. It ain’t like a terrorist group plotting to kill the president had some kind of fucking health plan.

“Dr. Vernon?”

“Yes, Agent Jorgenson, I have the file now.”

There was a connection between Major Charles Woodrow Walker and Elizabeth Brice and Gracie Ann Brice’s abduction, FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson was sure of that. But Walker was dead. And only two persons involved with Walker’s case at Justice were still alive: Elizabeth Brice-Jan would talk to her later, face to face-and President McCoy. She didn’t figure on talking to him. So she had called the Idaho hospital where Walker had taken his son ten years ago. Dr. Henry Vernon was still the ER chief and the only other person she knew who had seen Major Charles Woodrow Walker alive.

“That’s not a day I’ll ever forget,” the doctor said, “FBI arresting the most wanted man in America in my ER.”

“Can you describe Walker?”

“Big man, blond hair, blue eyes-I’ll never forget his eyes, the way he looked at me. Sent chills up my spine. Said he’d been out of the country, returned home and found his son like that, rushed him in.”

“His son was dying?”

“Arthropod envenomation. Spider bite. Hobo spider. People always confuse it with the brown recluse because the bite effects are so similar, but recluses are rare up here.” She heard papers being shuffled. “Let’s see, here it is: Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., white male, fourteen, presented as severe headache, high fever, chills, nausea, joint pain, and a necrotic skin lesion consuming one entire finger, eaten down into the bone. Never seen one this advanced. We admitted the boy, put him on an IV, antibiotics, steroids, and dapsone, but the finger had to be amputated to stop the necrosis from spreading. Right index finger. Boy had gone so long untreated, I didn’t think he’d make it. After the FBI took his dad away, I went in to check on him. He was gone. I figured he’d die on a mountain. No record of him being treated here again.”

Major Walker was dead and probably his son, too.

“Doctor, thanks for your help, I… Doctor, what did the boy look like?”

“Big, like his daddy. Same blond hair, same blue eyes.”

Dicky was pointing down and yelling back to his out-of-town passengers over the engine noise: “Elk Mountain Farms. They grow hops for Budweiser!”

Down below Ben could see farmland dotted with patches of snow lying next to a river snaking through the valley. They had flown over all seven of the known camps west of town and were now flying east.

“Best damn fishing in the country!” Dicky yelled. “Cutthroat trout, rainbow, bass, whitefish! Up in the mountains, big game hunting-elk, moose, deer, even bear!”

Minutes later: “Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge! Three thousand acres, couple hundred different species! Summertime, you can see bald eagles!”

The sheriff had been silently shaking his head. Now he turned to Dicky and said, “Dicky, shut up and fly! You sound like the goddamned chamber of commerce! They ain’t tourists come to look at birds! They’re looking for their girl!”

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

Elizabeth Austin had been the junior AUSA on the Walker prosecution. An up-and-comer at Justice and slated for a top spot in the department, she had abruptly resigned only two weeks after Major Walker had died in Mexico. Two weeks later, she had married John Brice and moved to Dallas. It was as if she had been running away-but from what? Or whom?

An answer was brewing in the back of FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson's head, but she couldn’t give it words yet.

She needed to know more about Elizabeth Brice, so Jan had searched through the file for names of co-workers and found the phone number for Margie Robbins in the federal employee database; she was currently employed as a legal secretary at the Department of Agriculture and had been previously employed at the Justice Department. It was Saturday morning, so Jan was trying Robbins’s residence number. After a dozen rings, a soft voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Margie Robbins?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Robbins, my name is Jan Jorgenson, I’m an agent with the FBI. I’m investigating the Gracie Ann Brice abduction.”

“Oh, yes, Elizabeth’s daughter. It’s terrible.”

Bingo. “You know Elizabeth Brice?”

“Her name was Austin when I worked for her. I didn’t even realize it was her child until I saw Elizabeth on TV.”

“You worked for her at Justice?”

“For five years. I was her secretary. Did they find her daughter’s body?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I thought the case was closed.”

“I’m tying up some loose ends. Tell me about Mrs. Brice.”

“Oh, Elizabeth was a wonderful person, a bit serious and a bit sad, actually, like something was missing in her life. She never talked about it, except once she mentioned her father had been murdered when she was only a child, said she had never gone to church again. I remember that. But she was brilliant, and so articulate. We all said she’d be the Attorney General one day. But that was before that case.”

“Major Walker?”

“Yes, the Walker case.”

“Ms. Robbins, are you aware that other than President McCoy and Elizabeth Brice, every member of the Walker prosecution team is dead?” The line was silent. “Ms. Robbins?”

“No, I didn’t know that. I read something about the judge, some kind of boating accident? And Mr. Garcia out in Denver. Who else?”

“James Kelly, William Goldburg-”

“Bill? Last I knew, he went home to Ohio.”

“Todd Young, Ted Ellis, with the FBI.”

“They’re all dead?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s Walker.”

“He’s dead, Ms. Robbins.”

“His kind of evil never dies.” An audible sigh. “That case destroyed everyone it touched, especially Elizabeth. She was never the same.”

“Is that why she left Justice so abruptly?”

“Wouldn’t you? What woman could just go back to work like nothing happened? When they got her back-”

“ Back? Back from where?”

“From Major Walker-she was the hostage.”

“Four-hundred-fifty-foot drop!” Dicky yelled. “People come from all over for white water rafting on the Moyie!”

They had flown over three of the four camps east of town. They were heading to the fourth, up north. Dicky was circling over a deep gorge spanned by a two-lane suspension bridge; white water was visible below where the river crashed through the narrow canyon. Ben located the gorge on the map: the Moyie River Bridge. Dicky pointed the chopper east.

They were soon over the next camp. Dicky brought the chopper down, a hundred meters above the trees, and hovered. This camp was not as large as some of the others; there were only seven cabins, several vehicles, and no white SUV. But there was an order to this camp that immediately caught Ben’s eye. The cabins were arranged like barracks, fronting a gravel area where the vehicles were parked. From the air, a security perimeter was noticeable among the trees, embankments spaced fifty meters apart and forming a semi-circle a hundred meters downhill from the cabins; the embankments would not be visible to a force attacking up the mountain. And at intervals along the dirt road leading up the mountain to the camp, metal plates were laid across wide man-made ditches; when the plates were removed, all vehicular traffic would be stymied by the ditches, except perhaps a Patton tank. Ditched roads were standard Viet Cong tactics.

This camp was battle ready.

Ben viewed the camp close-up with the scope, then he circled the location identified as “Red Ridge” on the map. He knew this was the camp they were searching for because of the camp’s order, the security perimeter, the ditched roads, and a branding iron.

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson jogged out of the federal building in downtown Dallas and across the street to her car in the parking lot. She would spend the rest of her Saturday in Post Oak, Texas.

Major Charles Woodrow Walker was dead. His son was presumed dead. A son who would be twenty-four now, the approximate age of the abductor. A son who had blond hair and blue eyes, just like the abductor. A son who was the size of the abductor as initially reported by the coach.

But there was still a missing finger.

Ben unbuckled his seat belt and jumped out of the chopper before the skids hit the deck. He hunched over to avoid the rotating blades and jogged to the sheriff’s cruiser. He spread the map out on the hood, using the binoculars and the scope to anchor the ends against the prop blast.

The sheriff arrived and said, “I seen a scope like that, on a sniper’s rifle in Vietnam.”

Ben did not respond; instead he pointed to the camp located on Red Ridge and asked, “What’s the drive time to this camp?”

“I’d say an hour maybe, depending on how muddy the road is. You see something?”

Ben nodded. “A branding iron on the door of one cabin.”

“A branding iron? ”

“Green Beret team carried that same branding iron, V for Viper.”

“And?”

“VC were Buddhists and Confucians, ancestor-worshippers. They believed they would spend eternity with their ancestors, but only if they had a proper burial. If they weren’t buried or their bodies were mutilated, no family reunion. So Special Forces teams cut off their ears, removed body parts, marked them in some way. Viper team branded their foreheads. Psychological warfare.”

The sheriff grunted and said, “I be damned.” And then, “How’d they get the branding iron hot in the middle of the jungle?”

“Lit up a block of C-4 explosive. Won’t explode without a detonator.”

The sheriff leaned against the vehicle, removed his hat, and ran his hand over his head. “I heard rumors about that kind of shit, but I figured it was just that.”

“It was true.” Ben turned back to the map. “I was on Viper team.”

The sheriff stood silently for a time. Ben felt the sheriff’s eyes on him. Then the sheriff said, “Still, Colonel, I gotta have more than a branding iron to get a warrant.”

Ben looked up at the sheriff.

“I don’t need a warrant.”

Coach Wally was eating lunch with his wife and daughter at the kitchen table before leaving for his shift at the Taco House. From his place at the table, he looked out on the front driveway through the bay window. He saw the black sedan pull into the driveway. He saw the young woman get out of the car. He saw her put on a nylon jacket to conceal the gun holstered on her hip. Wally Fagan put his fork down and pushed his plate away. He had suddenly lost his appetite.

“I’m Agent Jorgenson, with the FBI,” the young woman standing on his porch said, and Wally Fagan knew instantly that he had chosen the wrong path. She had come for the truth, and he would tell her the truth. And his life would be forever changed.

“Ben, if you’re sure she’s there, let’s go get her now!”

John was sitting across from Ben at a window table in the local snarf-and-barf on Main Street. Ben shook his head.

“John, we’re not going to drive up that mountain, knock on the door, and drive away with her. They’re not going to just give her to us. We’re going to take her. And that’s a night op.”

“Then as soon as it’s dark. Let’s don’t waste time at Rusty’s!”

“Son, we’re going to Rusty’s on the off-chance we might get lucky on a Saturday night, get a little intel on those men. We’ll go up the mountain after midnight, recon the camp, plan our attack, and move in at first light. We need the element of surprise-and we can’t take a chance on a stray shot with Gracie in there.”

John leaned back and sighed. Ben was right; this wasn’t his kind of work. He was such a debbie at man’s work. He remembered his mother’s words: Do exactly what Ben tells you to do, and we might get Gracie back. This is what he knows.

John gulped the foul coffee- haven’t these people heard of Starbucks? Outside, the good citizens of Bonners Ferry were strolling by, oblivious to the fact that at that very moment his daughter was being held hostage in the mountains north of town.

“Ben, do you think Gracie’s okay?”

“She’s alive, John.”

“Do you think those men… you know… did they… with Gracie…”

Ben’s eyes turned harsh. “Don’t say it, John. Don’t even think it.”

“I can’t help thinking it, Ben… or wondering if she’ll ever be the same again.”

“John, listen to me. Whatever they did to Gracie, we’ll get her through it. She’s strong, in her mind. We’ll fix her. I’ll take her to Taos. She’ll live with me until she’s ready to be with people again.”

Ben’s jaw muscles clenched; he turned to stare out the window.

“Ben, I want to kill those men.”

“If there’s killing to be done, I’ll do it. It’s what I know.”

Ben abruptly stood and was out the door before John could open his mouth. He jumped up and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Outside, he looked up and down the sidewalk and spotted Ben, already a half block away. John ran to catch up.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Man up ahead-blond hair, camouflage pants, six foot, two hundred pounds.”

The blond man entered a tobacco shop. John and Ben sat on a bench outside, just two dudes enjoying a fine spring day, not a father and his father searching for the men who had kidnapped his daughter. Ten minutes later, the man emerged with a cigar in his mouth and continued his walk up the sidewalk. They followed.

Two blocks later they stopped in their tracks. Two little girls ran up to the man; he bent over and picked up the smaller child. A woman walked to the man and kissed him.

A family man.

“Mama, I got me a family now.”

Junior stood before his mama’s grave out back of the cabin in a little clearing that he kept real nice. He came out and talked to his mama almost every day. Some days she talked back.

“Well, course I’m gonna let her out, Mama. Tomorrow morning. Two nights in the box ought to break her of running. She’s awful cute, ain’t she, Mama?”

Junior had grown up a mama’s boy wanting to be like his daddy. But the major had left them months at a time-business, he had said. Junior had never gone to school in town; the major wouldn’t allow it. So his mama had taught him almost everything he knew, except what the major taught him about shooting and hunting and hating Jews. Funny, but mama seemed happiest when the major was off on a business trip. Only then could she go into town and see her old friends; she took Junior with her and she laughed and she sang when she was cooking and they sat under a tree and she read poems out loud. Junior and his mama did everything together. She was beautiful.

And then she was gone.

And Junior never read another poem.

“You take this one. I’ll take the one across the street.”

John watched as Ben waited for a car to pass then jogged across the street. John plopped down on the nearest bench. They were staking out every white SUV on Main Street. The three they had seen so far were owned by an old woman, a teenage girl wearing the tightest jeans John had ever seen on a female, and an old coot chewing tobacco.

It was almost five. The sun would soon drop below the mountains, and the fine spring day would turn back to winter for the night. Gracie would be cold.

Gary Jennings had all ten fingers when he had tied one leg of his jail pants around the sprinkler pipe in his cell and the other leg around his neck and stepped off the jail cot.

An innocent man was dead.

Which meant Gracie Ann Brice might be alive.

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson knew now that Gracie’s abduction had nothing to do with Colonel Brice or revenge over the Vietnam War. It had everything to do with Elizabeth Brice and a son seeking to avenge his father’s death. Maybe Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., figured the federal government killed his father, so he’d just kill everyone responsible. But why didn’t he kill Elizabeth Brice, too? Why did he take her daughter instead? And did he have plans for the president?

Jan Jorgenson was in over her head. She needed experience. She needed Agent Devereaux. But his cell phone put her to the answering service for the fifth time today.

“Eugene, this is Jan again. It’s Saturday, almost seven Dallas time. Please call me as soon as possible. Jennings was innocent. And Gracie may be alive.”

She ended the call.

Jan was sitting on the sofa in the Brice study waiting for Mrs. Brice. More questions filled her mind: If the major’s son was the abductor, where is he now? If Gracie is alive, where is she now? The major and the son had lived in Idaho back then; maybe the son still did. And Colonel Brice thought Gracie was in Idaho because of a call-in sighting in Idaho Falls. But Agent Curry had personally interviewed the Idaho source and reported that the source could not ID Gracie or the men or the tattoo. Odd.

Jan needed to speak to the Idaho source. That required the computer printout of leads which was sitting on her desk in downtown Dallas forty miles south of her present location. There wasn’t much chance of anyone being at the office at this time on a Saturday night-except the security guard.

She got Red on the first try. No doubt he was sitting behind the security desk in the building lobby watching TV, where he had been every night the past week when she had signed out after hours. Red was fifty and lonely. He made sweet with her each night.

“Red, this is Agent Jorgenson.”

“Well, hidi there. I saw from the log sheet you’d left.”

“I have an emergency. Can you help me?”

“You want me to come to your place?”

“Uh, no. I want you to go to my office.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I can get up there in a bit.”

Yep, as soon as Wheel of Fortune is over.

Jan Jorgenson possessed the round face, big eyes, and solid stature befitting a Minnesota farm girl. If she were a horse, they’d call her sturdy. Most guys called her cute. She wore her hair short, stood five-seven, and weighed a rock-hard one-thirty. (Muscle weighs more than fat.) Men often took one look at her and assumed she was lesbian-her muscular legs caused her to walk a bit too manly-but she was hetero through and through. She just hadn’t found a man worth letting between her legs. And Red the security guard wasn’t him; but he wanted to be. Jan wasn’t the type to lead men on, but she needed that printout. She whimpered into the phone.

“You know, Red, when this case is over, I’m going to have more free time, and maybe we could-”

“I’ll go up there right now!”

“Alrighty, then. On my desk is a thick computer printout with a bunch of yellow stickums on pages. Look through those for a listing from Idaho Falls, start at the back. When you find it, use my office phone and call me at this number.”

She gave Red her cell phone number, and he was off, probably packing more than a ring of keys in his pants. She made a mental note to change her cell phone number when this was over.

Red called back in under ten minutes. Clayton Lee Tucker, Idaho Falls, Idaho. With a number. Red said, “Bye, honey.”

Gag me.

Jan checked out the Brice’s phone system; ten incoming phone lines. That many lines, they could afford a long distance call to Idaho. She punched a button and dialed direct, hoping Tucker worked late. A man answered on the thirteenth ring.

“Hello? Hello? This phone working?”

“Clayton Lee Tucker?”

“Yep. Didn't know my phone was working again.” Then to someone else: “Be right there!” Back in the phone: “Got a customer.”

“Mr. Tucker, I’m Agent Jan Jorgenson, with the FBI. I’m investigating the Gracie Ann Brice abduction.”

“They come by yesterday.”

“Colonel Brice and the father?”

“Yep.”

“What time?”

“Right after I got in, about eight.”

“Do you think the girl you saw was Gracie?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it now, after looking at her pictures.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“From when?”

“From when the FBI agent showed you those pictures?”

“Like I told them, ain’t no FBI agent been here.”

What? Jan tried to think that through, but Tucker interrupted her.

“Got me a customer.”

“Mr. Tucker, where were Colonel Brice and Mr. Brice heading after they left your place?”

“Bonners Ferry. Up in Boundary County.”

“Deputy Sheriff Cody Cox,” a voice answered.

“Deputy, this is Agent Jan Jorgenson, with the FBI, calling from Dallas. I need to speak with the sheriff.”

“Sheriff Johnson? He’s out with the missus, it’s their anniversary. Well, actually, yesterday was their anniversary, but the sheriff got tied up and-”

“Did a Colonel Ben Brice and a John Brice meet with the sheriff?”

“Sure did. They went flying around this morning with Dicky in his helicopter. Sheriff said he owed his life to the colonel.”

“Deputy, I need to speak to the sheriff. This is an emergency.”

“Give me your number-I’ll track him down, have him call you.”

Elizabeth closed the door to the study behind her. Agent Jorgenson was sitting on her sofa.

“What’s the emergency, Agent Jorgenson? I’m on my way to church.”

The young woman took a deep breath and said, “Tell me about Major Charles Woodrow Walker.”

“He’s dead.”

“Did you know he had a son?”

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty years since my last confession.”

The Saturday evening before Easter Sunday was always a busy confession night. So far, Father Randy had listened to four dozen confessions from anonymous confessors kneeling on the other side of the confessional in St. Anne’s Catholic Church, all routine sins for which he had dispensed routine penances: ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. But he perked up upon hearing this confessor’s voice, for two reasons: thirty years was a long time between confessions and might require a non-routine penance; and the woman’s voice sounded oddly familiar. Her next words confirmed his suspicions.

“Father, I am possessed by evil. And now evil possesses my daughter.” Her voice was breaking up. “Father, Grace might be alive!”

Elizabeth Brice was in his confessional. Father Randy knew Gracie, the poor girl, and the rest of her family. He saw them every Sunday morning. But Elizabeth Brice had never set foot in his church.

“Gracie might be alive?”

“Yes!”

“What do you mean, she’s possessed by evil?”

“He’s taken her to Idaho!”

“Idaho? Who? ”

“The devil’s son.”

Father Randy shoulders slumped. The devil’s son? The poor mother was likely having a nervous breakdown. He decided to treat her gently.

“Why thirty years since your last confession?”

“My father was murdered when I was only ten. I blamed God.”

“For thirty years?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve not been to Mass for thirty years?”

“No.”

“Communion?”

“No.”

“You’ve lived without faith for thirty years?”

“Yes.”

“Why now?”

“I want to come home. I want my daughter to come home. I want God to give us a second chance.”

It was not easy being a Catholic priest these days. With so many priests being convicted of sexual assault on children and the Catholic Church becoming the favorite whipping boy of plaintiffs’ lawyers, he had often thought of quitting. What good was he doing? He was spending more time testifying in depositions than spreading the word of God via Masses and his website and the CDs and audiotapes and tee shirts. And did anyone really believe in God anymore? In Satan? That there truly was a daily battle between good and evil waged within our souls and for our souls? Had he saved even one soul in fifteen years? Now an odd sensation came over him and he knew: God was giving him his chance.

“Evil took me ten years ago,” Mrs. Brice said. “It won’t let go of my life.”

“Because you don’t possess the power to fight evil. Faith is our only defense to evil-we fight evil with faith.”

“But why my daughter?”

Father Randy now said words he did not understand: “Because there is a bond you and Gracie share, a bond with evil that must be broken.”

“Yes, there is. Father, how do I break this bond?”

“You don’t. Someone must die for the bond to be broken.”

“No! Don’t take her!”

The woman jumped up and barged out the door and opened the door to his side of the confessional. She lunged at him and grabbed the big silver crucifix hanging down the front of his vestment. Her eyes were wild.

“God, take me instead!”

“Patty, can you hear me?”

No answer.

Junior’s mouth was at the opening of the air vent and his hands were cupped around both, so she could damn well hear him. She was just being stubborn.

“You learn your lesson?”

Still no answer.

“Giving me the silent treatment, huh? I used to try that on the major when he put me down there, but he didn’t buy it then and I ain’t buying it now. You hear me?”

Silence from below.

“Okay, we’ll see how stubborn you are after another night down there.”

Junior stood and walked back to the cabin.

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson walked into her apartment to a ringing phone. She answered; it was Sheriff J. D. Johnson from Boundary County, Idaho. He confirmed that the colonel and John Brice were in Bonners Ferry.

“They think the girl’s up on a mountain. Place called Red Ridge.”

“I think she’s up there, too.”

“Thought the FBI closed the case when the abductor hanged himself?”

“We were wrong. Sheriff, you ever heard of Major Charles Woodrow Walker.”

“Hell, yes, I heard of him. You people arrested him over at the hospital what, ten years back? Don’t know what happened to him after that.”

“He died in Mexico. Do you know about his court-martial?”

“Vaguely, something about a massacre in Vietnam?”

“Yes. Place called Quang Tri. Colonel Brice testified against him.”

“Don’t tell me this major was part of a team code-named Viper?”

“He commanded it.”

“Damn. Colonel Brice found their camp all right. Said this was about an old score. Guess that’s what he meant.”

“Major Walker’s son abducted the girl, but not because of Colonel Brice. Because the mother was one of his father’s prosecutors. The others are all dead, except Mrs. Brice and the president.”

“ The president?”

“Yes, President McCoy. He was the FBI Director back then.”

“Well, Colonel Brice done found your boy and that’s probably a good thing.”

“Why's that?”

“Because he don’t have to play by our rules.”

“In Indian territory, Lieutenant, we make our own rules. First rule, we don’t follow command’s bullshit rules, particularly the rules of engagement that say we can’t fire on the enemy unless we’re fired upon first. No one gets a free shot at Viper team. We kill them before they kill us.

“Second rule, they all look the same, the enemy we’re supposed to kill and the civilians we’re supposed to save. NVA regulars, they’ll be in uniform. But not VC. They’re guerrillas, fathers and sons of the peasant class. Out in the bush, you won’t know whether a peasant is going to welcome you or shoot you until he does. When in doubt, shoot the gook.

“Third rule, a conscience is a dangerous thing in a shooting war. Your conscience can get you killed-that’s your business. But your conscience can get your team members killed-that’s my business. Leave your conscience right here in Saigon. Don’t take it out in the bush. Out there, ain’t no right or wrong. There’s killing the enemy or going home in a body bag.”

The major finishes his meal and pushes his plate aside.

“Fourth rule, and the most important rule to remember: you’re not fighting this war for the American people. They don’t give a damn about you or this war or these people or the Communist threat to the world. They’re back home smoking dope and making love not war and enjoying the peace and prosperity we provide them. Don’t ever expect support from civilians.

“You’re fighting this war for your Army. The West Point Army. Because your Army does give a damn about fighting this war and stopping Communism at the Seventeenth Parallel. Your Army understands the threat of Communism. Your Army knows that American civilians won’t get behind the fight against Communism in the world until Russian atomic bombs detonate over New York. Then they’ll come crying to us to save them and preserve their peace and prosperity and fight for their freedom. And we will-we are now, they just don’t know it. But your Army does. Your Army will stand in the door for you, your Army won’t abandon you when the going gets tough, your Army will never betray you.”

The major’s crystal blue eyes are boring into Ben’s.

“And you, Lieutenant Ben Brice, must never betray your Army.”

“Yes, sir.”

1 Dec 68. The American Bar on Tu Do Street in Saigon, South Vietnam, is noisy with the sounds of rock-and-roll music and giggling Asian dolls and drunken American officers. Lieutenant Ben Brice is in awe of the man sitting across the table. Charles Woodrow Walker graduated from the Academy fifteen years before Ben, but Ben knows all about him, as does every cadet who attended West Point after the major. Charles Woodrow Walker, they say, is the next MacArthur.

“I wanted you on my team,” the major says, “because your commanding officer at Fort Bragg says you’re the best damn sniper he’s ever seen. You got your Viper tattoo, now you get this.” The major pushes a long flat package across the table to Ben. “Welcome to SOG team Viper.”

Ben opens the package. Inside is a shiny Bowie knife with VIPER etched into the wide eleven-inch-long blade.

“Every man on Viper team carries a Bowie. Stick that in a gook’s gut, guaranteed to ruin his whole fucking day.”

“Yes, sir.”

The major hands Ben a small ID card with Ben’s photo, name, rank, blood type, and serial number-and words in bold type:

MILITARY ASSISTANCE COMMAND VIETNAM

STUDIES AND OBSERVATION GROUP

THE PERSON WHO IS IDENTIFIED BY THIS DOCUMENT

IS ACTING UNDER THE DIRECT ORDERS OF THE

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

DO NOT DETAIN OR QUESTION HIM!

“Your ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” the major says. “We report directly to the president. No one fucks with SOG.”

“Yes, sir.”

The major drinks his beer then says, “The Academy, Brice, is a great school. But forget every damn thing you learned there. The wars they taught you about, World War One, Two, Korea, they’re not this war. Everything you learned over there don’t mean dick over here. In this war, napalm is your best friend.”

A middle-aged American officer with a Viet bargirl under each arm stops at their table. Ben sees three silver stars and jumps up and salutes the lieutenant general. The major barely lifts his eyes then returns to his beer.

“The great Major Charles Woodrow Walker,” the general says with slurred speech. “A legend in his own mind.”

The major drinks his beer then says to Ben, “Last time a Saigon commando interrupted my dinner, I slapped his butt into the next lunar new year.”

The girls giggle and the general’s face turns red: “You stand and salute me, goddamn it! I outrank you!”

The major turns his full attention on the general, who recoils slightly.

“First of all, General, I don’t salute rear-echelon officers who ain’t gonna get any closer to a Communist in this war than fucking these Viet Minh girls. And second, as long as I’m in-country, only the president outranks me. You got a problem, call him.”

The general appears as if he’s about to explode, but he says nothing as he storms off.

“American soldiers are dying this very minute fighting the Communists. The general, he sits here in Saigon, lying about body counts to the press, more worried about Walter Cronkite than Ho Chi Minh.”

He shakes his head with disdain.

“We move out at dawn, hop a slick to Dak To, meet the team. Then up to Lang Vei, get our gear together, hike into Laos the next day. Tchepone, thirty klicks into Indian territory. Intelligence says there’s a major convoy moving down the trail. We’re gonna stop it.”

Ben is too excited to eat. The major has over one hundred missions into enemy territory under his belt. One hundred! And Ben Brice will be on the next one. The great adventure begins.

“That’s the war you’ve come ten thousand miles to fight.” He smiles, as if he’s made a joke. “What do you say, Lieutenant-last chance to change your mind, stay here in Saigon and enjoy the amenities?”

The major reaches out and grabs a beautiful young Viet girl as she walks by their table and pulls her onto his lap.

“Like Ling here. Most beautiful women in the world, Viets. You want one? I’m buying.”

The bar’s proprietress, Madame Le, elegantly dressed and beautiful and preceded by perfume more intoxicating than the bourbon, arrives at their table for the second time that evening, rests her dainty hand with its manicured red fingernails on Ben’s shoulder, and says in the English she learned at the finest finishing schools in France:

“Ain’t never seen you cowboys in here before.”

Ben blinked hard several times to clear his head of the major and the American Bar and Asian dolls and Saigon; when his eyes focused again, he was looking at a woman’s hand on his shoulder, anything but dainty with fingernails that had been chewed down to the nub. He turned his eyes up to the woman’s face; she had an alcoholic’s complexion with a wrinkle for every year of her life. She reeked of tobacco and cheap whiskey. She was no Madame Le.

“You boys want some company?” She jutted a hefty hip their way-“I got a Saturday night two-fer special”-and smiled as demurely as one could without a front tooth.

“No thanks,” Ben said. The woman seemed offended. So he forced a smile and added, “Nothing personal.”

Her eyes narrowed and moved from Ben to John and back.

“We’re gay,” John blurted out. “Yeah, we’re, uh, we’re in the movie business.”

“Oh,” the woman said. She seemed satisfied and left.

Ben turned to John. “We’re gay? ”

John shrugged. “Hey, it got rid of her.”

They had been sitting on bar stools in Rusty’s for more than an hour. The place was a dive. Country music played on the juke box. The floors were wood and sprinkled with sawdust. Neon lights glowed above the bar and a small TV played silently behind the bar. Pool tables crowded one corner. A few hard looking men and harder looking women populated the place.

Ben saw in the mirror behind the bar that the woman had tried her luck with a table of four brutes. She gestured back at Ben and John and said something to the men. They laughed. His eyes moved to the front door. A burly man, white, maybe a few years younger than Ben, wearing fatigues, boots, and an old green military jacket, entered, stumbled over to the bar, and sat down hard two stools away from Ben. His face was battered.

“The hell happened to you, Bubba?” the bartender asked him.

“Junior hit me with a goddamn shovel.”

Bubba spoke in a Southern accent. He removed his jacket. He was wearing a short-sleeve tee shirt, exposing part of a tattoo you could only get in Saigon. The bartender placed a beer and three shots of tequila in front of Bubba without being asked.

Bubba downed the first shot, shuddered as the tequila hit his system, and said, “Al, Junior done kicked me outta camp.”

Al the bartender laughed. “What’d you do this time?”

Bubba swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “The Viet dolls wasn’t no older, don’t see why he’s so pissed off. She’s on the rag, she’s old enough to fuck.”

Ben grabbed John’s knee to keep him from reacting. Bubba swallowed the second shot.

“The hell I’m supposed to sleep tonight?”

“Go on back out there,” Al said.

The third shot and a shake of his head. “Can’t. Mountain is booby trapped.”

“Okay, Bubba,” Al the bartender said, “you can sleep here, but not on the goddamned pool table like last time.” Al turned and walked away, shaking his head. “Booby traps.” As he passed Ben and John he said, “Those boys don’t know the war’s been over thirty years.”

Ben was plotting out a strategy with Bubba when he heard a drunken voice: “Hey, girlfriend, how about a blow job?”

Ben turned. One of the brutes, the biggest of the bunch, was standing there; his hand was resting on John’s shoulder. John’s face was frozen.

Little Johnny Brice had gotten the crap beat out of him at least once a week, sometimes twice. But the closest John R. Brice had ever come to a fistfight was a couple of years ago after a brain-damaged bagbiter driving a black Beemer had rear-ended him on the tollway, trashing John’s new Corvette, then offloaded his big self and called John a moron. Without considering the possible consequences, John had retorted: “I’m a moron? I’ve got a 190 IQ, a Ph. D. from MIT, and my own Internet company I’m gonna take public! What advanced degrees do you have, dude?” That had shut the dude up.

But it occurred to John now that informing this oversized meatbot standing over him of his IQ, advanced degrees, and highly successful IPO might not have the same effect in rural Idaho as it did in suburban Dallas. As a result, he was suddenly paralyzed by the familiar feeling of masculine inferiority. Little Johnny Brice looked to Ben.

“Walk away,” Ben said to the man.

John saw none of his fear in Ben’s eyes. But the cretin was too drunk to notice. He took a single step toward Ben; John knew that was a mistake. The man’s eyes suddenly bugged and he let out a guttural groan. John looked down. Ben’s boot was embedded in the man’s groin. The man crouched over, like an old man with a bad back, his hands cupped his genitals, and his face contorted with that particularly excruciating pain associated with having your balls busted. Ben stood, grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around, and gently pushed him toward his table. The man stumbled over; his giggling buddies helped him sit down.

Little Johnny Brice wanted to be a man like Ben.

Ben sat down and nodded at Bubba. “Can’t abide a rude drunk,” he said.

Bubba drained his beer, belched, and said, “Me either.”

“Your tattoo,” Ben said. “Highlands or Delta?”

“Delta. You?”

“Highlands,” Ben said.

“Green Beret?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, kiss my ass. How long was you in-country?”

“Seven years.”

Bubba shook his head. “I only got two tours. Would’ve stayed the whole damn war, but I got into a little trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Killing the wrong people kind of trouble.” Bubba paused. “Seventy-one, night op south of Cao Lanh, free-fire zone. We rocked ‘n’ rolled.”

Free-fire zone meant anything that moved was fair game, man, woman, or beast. Rock ‘n’ roll meant putting your weapon on full auto and firing indiscriminately.

“Sun come up, we see we didn’t kill no VC, only women and kids.” He shrugged. “Shit happens, man, it was a shooting war. Army discharged my ass ’cause of all the bad publicity over Quang Tri and My Lai.” Bubba sighed heavily and said, “Best years of my life.”

“What’d you do after the Army?” Ben asked.

“Went back home to Mississippi, but it weren’t the same, all that civil rights bullshit, niggers acting like they owned the goddamned place, Feds fuckin’ with us. So I come out west, hooked up with these boys, been here ever since. We got us a camp out on Red Ridge. Full squad. All Green Beret except Junior.”

Twelve men. “That the Junior kicked you out of the camp?”

Bubba frowned and nodded. “Asshole. He ain’t never even been in the Army. But it’s his mountain.”

“So what are you boys doing bunkered up in the mountains?”

Bubba leaned in close; his breath was hot with the tequila.

“We’re fixin’ to change the world, podna. Big time.” Bubba looked past Ben and said, “Your friend wants more.”

Ben glanced at the mirror behind the bar and saw the big brute approaching almost at a sprint; he was wielding a beer bottle like a club. When he raised the bottle above his head, Ben spun to his right. The bottle smashed on the bar instead of Ben’s head. Ben drove the heel of his boot into the outside of the man’s right knee; a sharp pop signaled the snapping of ligaments. The man collapsed, hit the floor hard, and writhed in pain. Ben sat back down next to Bubba, who snorted at the drunk on the floor.

“He won’t be running track no more.” He held out a meaty hand. “I’m Bubba.”

Ben shook Bubba’s hand. “I’m Buddy.”

Bubba’s face brightened. “My daddy’s name was Buddy, how ’bout that? What brings you to Idaho, Buddy?”

“Hunting.”

“Well, Buddy, we got some damn good huntin’-deer, mountain lion, bear. Killed me a fine buck yesterday. Junior, he’ll let me come back in a day or two, once he calms down about his little bitch. You wanna come out, do some huntin’, meet the boys?”

Ben gave Bubba the biggest smile he could muster.

“Bubba, nothing more I’d rather do than meet your boys. How about another shot there, podna?”

John was driving the Land Rover. Ben was in the back seat with the big dude from Rusty’s; his given name was Archie, but he went by Bubba. He was puking out the window.

Bubba had been totally shit-faced when they had finally left Rusty’s. Ben had poured a bottle of tequila down Bubba but had never so much as licked his fingers himself. Bubba had no place to sleep other than the bar, so Ben had suggested he stay with them. Bubba had accepted and climbed into the Rover.

Bubba pulled his head back inside and said, “Fuck me,” then his head fell back, his mouth gaped open, and he started snoring.

An hour later, they arrived at the Moyie River Bridge spanning the deep gorge they had seen that morning from the helicopter, where Dicky had flown in circles for five minutes, bringing John dang close to barfing his guts up.

“Pull over,” Ben said.

John stopped the Rover and cut the engine. No other traffic was on the road at that time of night. Ben got out and walked around to Bubba’s side and opened the door. He slapped Bubba semi-conscious and yanked him out.

“We there?” Bubba asked.

“Gotta hit the head,” Ben said. “How about you?”

Bubba grunted. John went around to their side of the car while Ben helped Bubba over to the bridge rail. Bubba leaned against the low railing, found himself, and starting peeing on his foot. He let out a groan of relief. Down below, white water crashing over rocks was visible in the moonlight.

“What doin’… out here?”

The cold air was reviving what was left of Bubba’s brain.

“Bubba, what kind of weapons you boys got at the camp?” Ben asked.

“Stingers… grenade launchers… napalm…”

Bubba’s words came out slurred and slow, and he was swaying slightly as he spoke.

“How’s the perimeter booby trapped?”

Bubba’s head rolled around, and he laughed. “Explosives… trip wire…”

“Girl at your camp, does she have blonde hair?”

“Unh-hunh… pretty little thing.”

“Why does Junior want her?”

“Says she… belongs with him… Says she's his…” Bubba was finishing his business. “But she’s… just pussy.” He let out a drunken laugh. “Tried to get me some, too… li’l bitch kicked me right in the

… goddamn balls.” He turned around, his eyes only slits in his fat face but his mouth grinning and his penis in his hands. “Junior, he wants her for himself, but ol’ Bubba’s gonna get some of her, sure enough.”

“I don’t think so, Bubba.”

In a sudden, sharp movement, Ben drove his fist into Bubba’s Adam’s apple and knocked him back into the rail. Bubba gagged and his hands flew up to his throat. Ben grabbed Bubba’s legs and lifted hard, flipping Bubba over the rail. John’s mouth fell open as he watched Bubba’s big body drop four hundred fifty feet and disappear into the gorge below. He couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed.

“Cripes, Ben! You freaking killed him!”

Ben was looking down; he nodded. “Unless he bounces real good.”

“We gotta call the FBI!”

“We get the law involved, John, and those men will kill her. Or the FBI will kill her trying to kill them.” Ben looked up from the gorge and at John. “Son, the law’s not gonna save Gracie. We are.”

Thirty minutes later, they were stopped on the side of the highway again; they were searching the area around a dirt road leading up the mountain. John didn’t have a dang clue what they were looking for. Ben was up the road, far enough that John could only see the light of Ben’s flashlight. Ben’s light suddenly came bouncing toward him at a fast pace. Then Ben came into view.

“This is it,” Ben said.

“How do you know?”

Ben held his hand out. John shone his flashlight on Ben’s palm, on a small white object, tubular, a single word printed on the wrapping: Tampax.

“I told you. She’s a smart girl.”

The moonlight reflecting off the snow provided sufficient visibility for Ben and John to work their way up the steep mountain; they were crisscrossing at angles to the slope through a thick forest of tall pine trees, large boulders, and deep ravines.

They wore black knit caps, black greasepaint on their faces, black gloves, and black thermal overalls; they could stand still and blend in with the trees. The sniper’s rifle was slung over Ben’s shoulder; a. 45-caliber pistol was strapped to one leg and the Bowie knife to the other. His backpack was loaded with ammo, the Starlight Scope, and a power pack, an enclosed car battery used as a portable jump-starter that he had transferred from the Jeep to the new Land Rover in Albuquerque. John was carrying a sleeping bag.

Ben’s eyes searched the ground, but his thoughts were of an American soldier, nineteen years old, drafted right out of high school, walking patrol in a Vietnam jungle and thinking about his sweetheart back home instead of the ground in front of him. He swings his foot forward as he steps and just as he realizes he has tripped a wire hidden in the undergrowth, he learns his fate: a bamboo mace swinging down into him with great force; a crossbow directly in front of him discharging an arrow aimed at his chest; boards studded with fecal-infected nails springing up and slamming into his face; or a huge spiked log rigged up high in the trees hurtling down on him.

Ben spotted the trip wire fifty meters outside the security perimeter. Normally, the wire would have been all but impossible to see in the woods; but it stood out against the white snow.

“Sit,” Ben whispered to John, who immediately dropped to the ground. “Don’t move. I’ve got some work to do.”

Ben left his son and followed the trip wire through the trees.

The seven dead Vietnamese Communists are laid out in a neat row like sardines in a can; a clean black V has been burned into their foreheads with the red-hot branding iron. Lieutenant Ben Brice will never forget the smell of burning human flesh.

Ben now had the same branding iron in the cross hairs of the Starlight Scope: employing ambient night light, a battery-powered intensifier produced an image seventy-five thousand times brighter than the human eye. A sniper could detect enemy movement up to six hundred meters away. Once Starlight Scopes were deployed in Vietnam, the night no longer belonged to Charlie.

John had buried himself in the sleeping bag; he was exhausted after the two-hour hike and freezing in the zero-degree temperature. Ben was standing behind a tree, using the scope to scan the camp and to locate the best shooting position. A white SUV was parked outside the main cabin. The branding iron hung on the door of the next cabin over. Two old pickup trucks sat in front of the other cabins, blocking his line of fire to the cabin doors from his present position. Tree cover was available on the east, west, and north sides of the camp.

Satisfied with the layout of the camp, Ben swept the scope up and searched the area above the camp on both sides. A ridge about five hundred meters west of the camp would be the ideal sniping position if sniping were his only mission; but this was a rescue mission. He needed to be closer to the camp. He was about to put the scope down when he noticed something on that ridge: a movement. Not noticeable to the naked eye, but noticeable through a Starlight Scope. Maybe an animal. He focused in on the location again.

That was no animal.

Pete O’Brien was pissed off.

Low man on this totem pole meant Saturday nights on the mountain. Shit rolls downhill in the Bureau and nowhere faster than in HRT. He put the night-vision binoculars to his eyes.

Pete O’Brien, a five-year man with the FBI but the rookie operator on this seven-man sniper team, had caught the overnight shift again. The team leader and the senior operators had taken the Humvee down to Coeur d’Alene for the night; at that moment, they were sleeping in warm beds next to strange women, while Pete was up here on this damn mountain freezing his ass off. At least the wind had died down. The night was so still and quiet he could hear his heart beating. If anything moved on this mountain, he would know it.

Pete thought of the girl.

And he thought of HRT’s motto: Servare vitas. To save lives. And of HRT’s mission: to rescue U.S. persons held by hostile forces. If he had a daughter and some hostile asshole abducted her, he’d damn sure expect the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team to save her life or die trying, not to take pictures while she was being raped or killed. But Pete O’Brien was under strict orders to conduct visual surveillance of the “crisis site,” i.e., the cluster of cabins, and shoot 35-millimeter black-and-whites instead of. 308-caliber slugs at the bad guys holding the girl.

She’s a hostage!

And we’re the Hostage Rescue Team! Not the Hostage Photography Team! Not the Hostage Hope You Get Out Team! Not the Hostage is Probably Being Raped but We Got More Important Shit to Worry About Team!

This is bullshit!

What could be more important than that little girl’s life? We ought to blow the door to that cabin and save her life! Or die trying.

Pete was pissed!

Pete O’Brien had signed on to save lives. But after killing a mother at Ruby Ridge and letting those children die at Mount Carmel in Waco, HRT had been cut off at the knees. They couldn’t take a shot or a shit without an okay from a suit at Headquarters. And then the World Trade Towers dealt a body blow to the Hostage Rescue Team: HRT had been created for the specific purpose of rescuing airplane passengers held hostage by terrorist hijackers. But if the terrorist hijackers were willing to fly the plane, themselves, and their hostages right into office buildings, what the hell good was HRT? That realization had sent morale to such depths that highly trained and high-testosterone snipers were chasing pussy instead of shooting bad guys on a Saturday night.

And that was what graveled Pete’s butt. HRT was better trained, better equipped, and better funded than any other civilian law enforcement unit in America- we fly around the country in our own C-130 transport, for God’s sake! — but we never shoot anyone! We never rescue anyone! We never do anything!

Pete O’Brien was really pissed!

We wear our cammies and face paint and body armor and pack MP-5s and M-16s and 9-millimeter semis but we don’t do a goddamned thing! We got Bradley armored vehicles and helicopters, we got night-vision goggles and binoculars and scopes, we got flash-bang grenades and explosives to blow doors, we got black paramilitary outfits and polypropylene panties, we got. 50-caliber rifles with bullets that’ll blow your head clean off-but we got no balls.

We’re a bunch of goddamned career bureaucrats scared shitless of fucking up and facing an administrative review or a criminal investigation or a Congressional hearing and losing our jobs and our pensions instead of doing the right thing: taking a chance and saving lives.

This is wrong!

Pete O’Brien touched the rifle beside him. He was a trained FBI sniper, qualified at the Marine Sniper School, although he had yet to pull the trigger with the cross hairs on a human being. Sniper School had taught him to stalk a target without detection, to lie in wait for days if necessary for a shot opportunity, to camouflage himself so that to the world he was the mud, the swamp, the trees, the bush, anything but an FBI sniper, to wait for that one moment when the target presented himself, to take the shot, to kill the bad guy, and to save lives. All Pete O’Brien wanted was a chance to do what he was trained to do better than anyone else in the world.

He felt something cold against his cheek, cold like steel. Like the barrel of a gun.

“That’s her,” the FBI agent said.

Agent O’Brien was looking at the photo of Gracie illuminated by Ben’s flashlight. Ben turned the light on the agent’s map of the camp. The agent pointed at the main cabin with both hands, which Ben had bound with duct tape. He never left home without duct tape.

“She’s in that cabin, last we saw her.”

“When was that?”

“Seventeen hundred hours, day before yesterday. She tried to escape. She didn’t make it.”

“You people didn’t help her?”

The agent sighed. “No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Orders from the top. The very top.”

“How many men?”

“Eleven, all tucked in for the night. Couple of the men got into a fight yesterday, one left, never came back. We don’t know what happened to him.”

“We do. Agent, why does the FBI want these men bad enough to sacrifice a ten-year-old girl?”

The young agent shook his head. “Honest to God, I don’t know. Need-to-know basis, and I guess I don’t need to know. But they’ve stockpiled enough weapons in the main cabin to start a war. And they look like real soldiers.” He shook his head. “Whatever they’re up to, it must be something real important.”

Ben doused the flashlight.

“Son, there’s nothing more important in the world than getting my granddaughter out alive.”

“Eugene, she’s alive!”

“Who?”

“Gracie! I called eight times yesterday to your cell phone.”

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson had finally reached Agent Devereaux at his Des Moines hotel on a land line.

“Just a second,” Eugene said. Then: “Shit, the battery on the cell’s dead. We worked late, got our man up here. All right, now what’s this about Gracie?”

“She’s alive.”

“Start at the beginning.”

“Okay. After Major Walker was discharged from the Army-”

“Stop. You went ahead with the search on Walker?”

“Eugene, I had a bad feeling.”

“All right, Jan. I’ve had those feelings, too.”

“Anyway, he holed up on a mountain in Idaho, got married, had a son. He was plotting a military coup. We received an anonymous videotape twelve years ago. We got lucky, apprehended him in Idaho ten years ago. Top secret.”

“Must be why I never heard about it.”

“Must be. Anyway, before he could be tried-oh, Elizabeth Brice was one of the Justice Department prosecutors on his case-his followers took a hostage and threatened to return her in pieces unless Walker was released.”

“Let me guess-Elizabeth Brice was the hostage.”

“Yep. So McCoy released Walker, and Walker released her.”

“And what happened to Walker?”

“Died in Mexico. Heart attack. Probably precipitated by a few CIA bullets.”

“Probably. Point is, he’s history.”

“Except he had a son, fourteen at the time, makes him twenty-four today. Blond hair, blue eyes. We captured Walker when he took the boy to a hospital. They had to amputate his right index finger, spider bite. After Walker was arrested, the boy disappeared. Doctor assumed he died up in the mountains.”

“From a spider bite?”

“Hobo spider, like the brown recluse. It can be fatal if untreated.”

“Did you run a search on him?”

“Nothing. But there’s more. Every person involved with Walker’s prosecution-the judge, three Justice lawyers, including your friend, James Kelly, and two agents-are dead. Everyone, Eugene, except-”

“Elizabeth Brice and Larry McCoy.”

“Yep.”

“Jesus.”

“There’s more.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Our ID on the abductor, Gracie’s soccer coach, remembered something about the abductor that he didn’t disclose after Jennings hung himself.”

“What’s that?”

“The abductor was missing his right index finger.”

“Damn.”

“There’s more. The call-in from Idaho Falls positively ID’d Gracie in a white SUV with two men, one with a Viper tattoo.”

“Stop. I had an agent in Boise-”

“Dan Curry.”

“Yeah, Curry. He went to that source and showed him the blowups. His 302 said the guy could not ID Gracie or the men or the tattoo.”

“That’s what his 302 says, Eugene. But I called the source. Curry never visited him.”

Eugene was silent for a moment. “I smell a rat.”

“You got a bad feeling?”

“Yeah, I got a bad feeling. We’re officially reopening the Gracie Ann Brice investigation-and if they took her across state lines, that gives us federal jurisdiction. It’s my case now. I’ll notify Washington, right after I call Stan.”

“The director?”

“The one and only. What else?”

“Colonel Brice and the father have tracked these men to northern Idaho, a mountain called Red Ridge outside Bonners Ferry. Place is a national campground for these Aryan Nations types and militias and other assorted wackos. That’s real close to Ruby Ridge.”

“Great. Two things, Jan: First, if Walker’s son is killing everyone he figures is responsible for his father’s death, is he after the president?”

“Agent Curry didn’t suppress evidence in a kidnapping case on his own.”

“Yeah.”

“Eugene, if they’re after McCoy and we know it, we’d have that mountain under round-the-clock surveillance, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“With HRT?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the second thing?” Jan asked.

“Why’d they take Gracie?”