The Abduction

DAY SEVEN

Ben Brice opened his eyes not to a dog needing to pee but to his wife sleeping next to him for the first time in five years. The warmth of her skin against his brought a sense of regret to his mind: all the years he had lost with her.

Dawn was near and he needed to leave, but he lay still; he was not yet ready to let go of the moment. When he was young and life hadn’t yet had its way with him, he had let go of such moments freely, assured there would be many more to come; now he held onto each moment for as long as possible. He wrapped his arms around his wife one last time.

Ben recalled the first time Katherine McCullough had lain with him, on 6 June 1968, their wedding night. He was twenty-two and a second lieutenant; she was twenty and a virgin. When she came to him that night and let her gown slip off her shoulders and fall to the floor and stood before him, he knew he would never want another woman.

But life soon had its way with Ben Brice.

She had left him and now he must leave her. He released her and rolled out of bed slowly so as not to wake her. He was dressed and packed when she stirred. He went to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed stray strands of red hair from her face. She opened her eyes and stared into his as if trying to read his mind. Finally, she said, “She really is alive.”

He nodded.

“Why? Why’d they take her?”

Ben broke eye contact. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

Kate got out of bed, slipped into her robe, and pulled the belt snug around her waist.

“Does this have something to do with that tattoo?”

“You mean with the war?”

“Yes, with that damn war.”

Ben stood and grabbed his duffel bag. “Kate, everything has something to do with that war.”

Elizabeth spat the last of the bile into the toilet and flushed again. The taste burned her throat; the lining was raw from her morning vomits. Still kneeling, she grabbed the bottle of green mouthwash that she now kept by the toilet, took a mouthful, swished it around, and spat it into the toilet. She sank to the floor; the marble was cool on her bare legs. She rested her head on the toilet seat.

When she had woken, her mind had immediately taken advantage of the early morning, when she was most vulnerable, and tortured her again with more gruesome images of her daughter: Grace’s body, dead and decomposing and dumped in a ditch, maggots crawling out of her silent open mouth and over her pale lips, vultures pecking at her blue eyes and rats gnawing on her beautiful face, fighting over her flesh…

She felt her body’s regurgitation process gearing up again.

Seven mornings ago, Elizabeth had gotten dressed in this bathroom in her best closing argument outfit; that day had begun like any other day but had ended with Grace gone from her life. How can that be? How can life turn on us in a split second? How can life be so unfair? Harsh? Cruel? Evil? She had asked herself those same questions ten years ago. She had no answers then; she had no answers now. But back then, she had Grace. Now Grace was gone.

“I’m going.”

John was standing in the doorway. She knew he wanted her to go to him and embrace him and say “I love you” to him. He needed her to, and she wanted to. She tried to push herself up from the floor, but she hadn’t the strength. He started to walk away.

“John, I…”

He turned back. She had never been able to give voice to those words. And she could not now. Evil had taken that kind of love from her life. John walked out of sight.

She leaned over the toilet and vomited again.

Ben and Kate walked out of the pool house to find John standing next to a shiny red Range Rover. He was wearing sneakers, jeans, and an MIT sweatshirt. He appeared not a day older than the day he had left for college.

“I’m going with you, Ben.”

Ben reached out and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I understand your wanting to, son, but this isn’t your kind of work.”

Ben turned away, but John grabbed his arm. “I know that, Ben. This is man’s work, and I’m not much of a man. But Gracie’s my daughter. And if she is alive, I want her back.”

Ben started to order John to stay home, but he saw in John’s eyes the same truth he felt in his heart: finding Gracie was life or death, for her and for him.

“All right, son. We’ll do this together.”

Ben walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. Kate went to John and embraced him. “Be careful,” she said. Then, in a lower voice she must have thought Ben couldn’t hear, she said, “Do exactly what Ben tells you to do, and we might get Gracie back. This is what he knows.”

The landscape below was bleak and endless. It was Thursday and they were somewhere over West Texas. The plan was to fly to Albuquerque, drive to Ben’s cabin outside Taos, pick up his gear-the kind you can’t take on a plane, he had said-and drive nonstop to Idaho Falls to talk to Clayton Lee Tucker, the last person who had seen Gracie alive.

Ben’s hands were folded in his lap, his eyes were closed, and his breathing was steady and slow. The flight attendant raised her eyebrows at John when Ben failed to respond to her offer of coffee, tea, or juice.

“Coffee, black, for both of us,” John said to her.

He lowered Ben’s tray then his. The flight attendant placed cups of coffee on their trays. John drank his coffee, assuming they would fly in silence; but Ben opened his eyes and spoke.

“Thanks for letting Gracie visit me. She told me Elizabeth was against it but you stood up to her.”

It was, in fact, the only time John R. Brice had ever stood up to his wife.

“Last time I saw her,” Ben said, “we drove down to Santa Fe to deliver a table. When we got there, I took the table into the gallery. She stayed outside to check out the Indians selling their products on the Plaza. When I came back out, she was on the other side standing next to this old Navajo like they’re best friends.” A slight smile. “She was wearing a tribal headdress. She smiled and waved at me. I’ll never forget her face that day.” Ben turned to John; his eyes were wet. “Do you remember the last time you saw her face?”

John leaned back in his seat. He did remember.

Gracie yanks Brenda and Sally to an abrupt halt. It’s suddenly very important that she turn and look back for Dad. That same bad feeling has come over her again, like a nightmare while she’s still awake. The feeling that something really awful is about to happen to her. The same feeling she has experienced for more than a week now, always when she is outside on the playground during recess or at soccer practice or on the way home from school. Like someone is watching her. Waiting for her.

Her entire body is covered with goose bumps.

The sun is in her eyes; she squints. She spots her dad, looking back at her from soccer field no. 2. Usually, when the bad feeling overcame her, she would get close to a grownup and the feeling would leave. But not today. Not now. She wants desperately to run back to her dad.

“Come on, Gracie,” Brenda says, tugging at her arm. “There won’t be any banana snow cones left if we don’t hurry.”

She decides she’s just being a silly girl, something Mom always said was not allowed in her house. She’s in the middle of a big crowd at the park after a soccer game. The bad feeling can’t get her here. She is safe. She smiles and waves at Dad. He waves back with the cell phone. The goose bumps are gone.

They arrive at the concession stand. Holding hands, they weave their way through the crowd of kids and grownups. Sally gets her snow cone first then Brenda orders hers.

“Panty check!”

Gracie whirls around to the snot standing five feet away and taunting her with no adult supervision. Way stupid. The snot realizes her mistake. Her eyes drop to Gracie’s hands, now Ms. Fist and her twin sister. The sneer leaves her face and is replaced by fear. The snot starts to back away, then she runs, but Gracie has her by the hair before they’re behind the concession stand, alone, no big-mouthed butthead jerk football dad to save her now. Ms. Fist, meet the snot’s nose. The snot collapses to the ground like a bunch of pixie sticks.

What a wimp! And she’s eleven!

The snot cups her nose and starts crying like a baby. She looks up at Gracie; her eyes are wide with fear. But her eyes aren’t on Gracie, her fear not of Gracie, but of The goose bumps are back. The bad feeling is back. It’s all over Gracie now, smothering her like a thick blanket on a hot day. It’s behind her. It’s breathing on her. She turns to face it.

Something wet covers her face. She tries to fight it off, but she smells something funny. Every nerve in her body starts tingling and now she’s dizzy; her arms lose all strength, her legs go limp, her eyes want to close. She’s floating now, a gentle bounce. No, she’s not floating; she’s being carried. She hears crunching below her, like someone stepping on dried leaves.

The bad feeling is taking her through the woods.

Gracie’s mind is fading to black; she fights hard to think of something to save herself. She thinks of Ben. She calls out to him, but no words come out of her mouth.

Ben.

With her last ounce of strength and willpower, Gracie reaches up, grabs her necklace, and yanks hard. Her arm drops. Her hand releases the necklace. Ben’s Silver Star.

Save me, Ben…

… A hard bounce startles her awake, but she can barely force her eyes open, just enough to see that wherever she is, it is dark. She hears the drone of a car engine and feels the rumbling of tires against the road beneath her.

The bad feeling is taking her far, far away.

Her eyelids outweigh her will. She can no longer hold them open. She drifts off into that murky world again…

… And coming alive now. But she is groggy, like she can’t wake up all the way. She hears voices. She smells cigarette smoke and fast food and body odor. Her stomach feels really queasy, like she might barf. Her mouth is dry, but she does not lick her lips. She does not move any part of her body. Instead, she opens her eyes to slits.

It’s morning. She’s in a car, wrapped in a scratchy green blanket and lying across the back seat. Up front are two men. The driver has blond hair under a black cap; he’s wearing a plaid shirt. The other man is bigger with a flattop, like Ms. Blake, the P.E. instructor, except his hair is gray. His left arm is slung over the seat back. It’s a very big arm. With something on it she has seen before.

The big man’s big head swivels toward the blond man, and he says, “That geek’s gonna be a billionaire.” A cigarette hangs on his lip. “Maybe we oughta ransom this little cherry. Bet he’d pay a million bucks to get her back.”

“I wouldn’t take no amount of money for her,” the blond man says. “We was meant to be together.”

The big man shakes his head and exhales a cloud of smoke. “Just ’cause you wanna be with her don’t mean she wants to be with you. You think about that?”

“Yeah, I thought about that,” the blond man says. “She’ll learn to love me.”

“And what gal wouldn’t? Funny thing about women, though, sometimes they’re real stubborn about learning to love a man what kidnaps ’em.”

The blond man gives the big man a look. “It happened before.”

The big man nods. “So it has. All I’m saying is you ain’t had no experience with women-whores at Rusty’s don’t count. And I’m telling you, boy, an unhappy woman… damn. Only two things you can do with an unhappy woman: make her happy or kill her. Take it from me, it’s a helluva lot easier to kill her.”

That tickles him.

The engine is making strange noises. And it smells awful. She sees the tops of other cars and eighteen-wheelers passing them. They’re on the highway. The sun is shining in the right side of the car. Which means they’re heading north. Which must be why she now catches a slight chill, particularly when Without moving her head, Gracie checks herself over. Her white soccer shoe is on her left foot, but her right shoe is missing; she’s still wearing the blue knee socks and shin guards. She feels around inside the blanket and-her uniform is gone! Her jersey, her shorts-all she’s wearing is her Under Armour! Why did they take her uniform? And the answer comes to her: Oh my God, they raped me! She bites her tongue to silence her feelings and squeezes her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. But one tear escapes and rolls down her cheek, lands on the seat, and disappears into a crease in the cracked vinyl.

Gracie wasn’t entirely sure of everything that being raped included, but she knew it meant some male person sticking his penis into a girl down between her legs without permission (although she could not imagine ever giving a boy permission to do that). Mother never talked to her about sex or any of that stuff yet; she learned what she knew from Ms. Boyd in health class. Ms. Boyd told the girls that when a boy makes unwelcome physical advances, they should point their finger at him and firmly say, “No! And no means no!” The girls and boys attended separate sex ed classes; the girls giggled at the drawings of penises in the book. The only real live penises she had seen were Sam’s, which was really little and couldn’t hurt a girl her age, and Dad’s, one time when she walked in on him in his bathroom. He got totally embarrassed and covered up real fast, but she got a good look at it. Dad’s penis was big enough to hurt a girl her age.

But she doesn’t hurt down there. She doesn’t feel different at all. Maybe the two men have little penises like Sam’s and that’s why she doesn’t hurt. Or maybe they didn’t rape her.

Or maybe… she closes her eyes and sleeps again…

… Until she is awakened by a door slamming.

She cracks her eyelids. The blond man is gone. The big man turns toward her; she quickly shuts her eyes tight. She feels his gross hand over the blanket, shaking her leg not so gently.

“Wake up,” he says.

She pretends to be asleep, but she hears his heavy breath as he exhales, and she knows cigarette smoke is coming her way. She holds her breath, but the toxic fumes find their way into her nose. She coughs. She can’t pretend to be asleep now. She opens her eyes. The big man is looking at her and not like he wants to be friends.

He is way past ugly.

His nose is broad and flat, like he had run face first into a brick wall. A long scar zigzags down the left side of his face. One eye doesn’t look right. His whiskers look like Coach Wally’s hair when his burr cut starts to grow back in. The skin on his face is blotchy and leathery and filled with little pockmarks like that guy at BriceWare. (Dad said the guy had bad acne as a child.) A cigarette is clamped between his teeth and smoke comes out with each breath. He’s the biggest human being she has ever seen, and he looks really mean. Gracie realizes she is trembling, she is so afraid. But her mother’s advice plays in her ears like a song on her iPod: Men are like dogs. They can smell fear on a woman. Never let them smell your fear. Never let them see you cry. Always act tough even when you don’t feel tough. So Gracie acts tough.

“You wanna put that thing out?” she says. “Passive smoke is dangerous to a child’s health.”

The big man snorts like a bull and a stream of smoke comes out both nostrils. “Not as dangerous as me, pissed off as I get when I don’t smoke.”

He has a point, Gracie figures.

He flips a Twinkie back to her; it lands on the green blanket. Yuk, it isn’t even individually wrapped! It’s probably covered with cooties.

Still, she is hungry.

She pushes herself up, careful to keep the blanket wrapped around her, even though the Under Armour shorts and tee shirt cover her up. Her head feels heavy. She’s in a sports utility vehicle, a real POS: no plush leather seats or cherrywood trim, no Harmon Kardon stereo system or color-coordinated carpet, no TV built into the dash like Dad’s new Range Rover, and no CD player. This SUV is old and has bench seats instead of buckets, and crushed beer cans and cigarette butts and wadded-up fast food bags on the bare metal floorboards, the head liner is drooping in several places, and it sure as heck doesn’t have a heater that works.

She looks outside. They’re in a Wal-Mart parking lot, a long way from home. She recognizes the yellow license plates on the other cars, just like the ones on Ben’s Jeep.

They’re in New Mexico.

Gracie picks up the Twinkie and realizes she is not tied up. Her arms and legs are free. She scarfs down the Twinkie in three big bites.

“Um, you got another one of those?” she asks the big man before she’s swallowed the last bite.

He turns back in his seat and leans over. Gracie jumps to the door and yanks frantically on the handle. Nothing. To the other door. Nothing. The big man turns back and flips another Twinkie at her.

“Don’t bother, honey. Doors don’t open from inside. We ain’t stupid.”

Gracie considers debating that point with him, but she decides against it. She checks out the nearby cars. Maybe she can get someone’s attention, bang on the window and scream for help. But there is no one… except the blond man carrying a brown bag and walking toward his POS SUV with the kidnapped girl in it.

He doesn’t look much older than the boys on the high school football team. Dad took her and Sam to the big homecoming game last season; the blond man is cute enough to be the homecoming king, except he’s wearing a plaid shirt that looks like Dad’s pajamas. Homecoming kings don’t wear plaid.

He walks to the front of the SUV and lifts the hood. Smoke billows out. He steps back and waves his hand at the smoke like Dad when he tries to barbecue, then he ducks back under. After a minute, he slams the hood down and flings a yellow container aside. Wow, he doesn’t even recycle.

The blond man wipes his hands on his shirt, gets in the car with the bag, and says, “Ten goddamn quarts and we ain’t even halfway home.” He tosses a carton of cigarettes to the big man, who immediately tears into them like Dad into a new bag of Oreos. He then hands the bag back to Gracie. One of his fingers is just a nub. She empties the bag: pink sweats.

She sighs. “Well, kidnapping me is bad enough, but now my mom’s really going to be PO’d at you.”

“Why’s that?” the blond man asks.

“Making me wear clothes from Wal-Mart.”

The blond man chuckles as he puts the car into gear and drives out of the parking lot and back onto Highway 666 North, the sign says.

“Which reminds me-did you like, rape me or something?”

The vehicle suddenly swerves off the road without slowing down, sending the big man’s cigarettes flying-“Jesus Christ!” he says-and Gracie to the seat. The blond man slams on the brakes, stops the car, and practically climbs over the back of his seat. His face is red. He points the three fingers of his right hand at her.

“You think I would do that to you? You think I would let anyone do that to you? You’re pure and you’re gonna stay pure! Anyone tries to dirty you, I’ll kill him!”

She sat up. “You took my uniform.”

“I didn’t look! And you’re wearing them funny underwear, can’t see nothing anyhow. I put you in that blanket real fast.”

“Then why?”

“To throw the Feds off our trail. They ain’t never gonna take you back, Patty.”

“ Patty? My name is Gracie. Don’t tell me you two morons kidnapped the wrong girl?”

“No, we got the right girl,” the blond man says, turning back in his seat. “That’s your name now.”

And Gracie wonders why…

… The old man at the gas station is looking at their SUV kind of funny. He has a nice face. He’s standing on the other side of the gas pumps, shaking his head, gesturing at their SUV, and saying something to the big man, who’s smoking even though the sign says no smoking. The SUV’s hood is up. The engine must really be on fire now because an even bigger cloud of black smoke hangs in the air under the bright tube lights above. Gracie is wearing the pink sweats now. She inches her head higher. She wants to scream, Help me!

“Stay down,” the blond man says.

Gracie lies back down. But the old man saw her. And she saw him.

They’re in Idaho…

… And her head is heavy again, murky images and noises all around her, and the thick cigarette smoke suffocates her. A bed in a room but not her bed and not her room. She remembers being carried in the blanket and the same funny wet smell and the same dizziness and unable to resist when they tied her hands and feet again. And sleeping and dreaming and drifting in and out of dark and light for what seems like days, the TV blaring nonstop and mixing with men’s voices and the smell of- tacos? — and wondering if they will ever go to sleep.

“Me, I wouldn’t never win a million bucks, them questions is real hard.”

“That’s ’cause you ain’t never watched TV, boy.”

“That big guy right there, they call him Hoss-”

“Bonanza?”

“Why they got so many Mexican channels in Idaho?”

“Go to sleep.”

Laughter.

“That Elmo, he’s a funny sumbitch!”

“Shut up.”

“Gilligan’s always messing up and-”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“That guy there, he’s a doctor and he’s married to her, but he’s screwing the blonde, and-”

“Soaps? Boy, you like a kid with a new toy.”

“Hey, Patty’s on the news!”

“This here show, they put them people on a deserted island, see, then they vote one off each week. Last one left wins a buncha money. Was me, I’d tell them motherfuckers they vote me off I kill ’em.”

“I always liked that about you.”

“Paper says they arrested Jennings last night.”

“Good. The truck’s fixed, let’s hit the road.”

Now they’re back in the POS SUV and Gracie’s lying across the back seat and her eyes droop until…

… She opens her eyes to a greasy face pressed against the window and grinning in at her with several teeth missing.

“She’s a cutie,” he says.

“Get the shit loaded, Dirt,” the blond man says.

When the man called Dirt moves away, his face leaves a big smudge mark on the window glass. The rear hatch and tailgate open and the men push in green metal boxes with long shiny metal containers inside and letters on the side-USAF-and a word she had never seen before-NAPALM-then cover them with a heavy tarp.

“And the brass wonders why their inventory never comes out right,” the man with the missing teeth says.

They all laugh like he’s Jay Leno or something…

… And now she’s lying on a small bed in a small room in a small house. The sheets stink of foul body odor. She’ll have to bathe for a week to get this smell off. They think she’s asleep. She tiptoes to the door and peeks out. The two men are in the big room with another man with red hair who’s holding a long black rifle with a telescope on it and caressing it like a girlfriend. They’re drinking beer and smoking and laughing.

The big man says, “That red hair, ain’t no one gonna believe you’re some Muslim raghead.”

“Don’t matter none,” the man with red hair says. “FBI ain’t never gonna find me. Hell, they can’t find their butts with both hands.”

The big man points a thumb at her room and says, “What does the girl say, Junior? ‘Like, duh.’ ”

They all laugh again; then they get real quiet and the big man says, “Easter Sunday, Red. Don’t fuck it up.”

Gracie goes back to the bed and lies down and thinks, Isn’t Easter Sunday this Sunday?…

… She sees a sign that says Cheyenne, Wyoming.

She’s lying on the back seat of the car again; the two men up front seem happy.

The big man says, “You believe that sumbitch give himself a necktie? Goddamn, we are home free, podna.”

“So can we go through Yellowstone?” the blond man asks. “That’d be real neat for Patty to see.”

“Why sure, Junior. And after that we’ll take her down to Disneyland.” The big man looks at the blond man he calls Junior like he’s nuts; he exhales smoke and says, “This ain’t no fucking family vacation!”

Family? Did this Junior guy take her to be his…

… Gracie is cold. Her body is shivering uncontrollably. She is all alone. And so terribly afraid. She starts crying. She can’t hold it back any longer. But just when she’s about to lose it big time, she sees him, high up in the sky, floating under a white parachute. And he sees her. Coming closer now, the green beret, the uniform, the medals glistening in the bright sunlight, just like the picture on her desk.

Save me, Ben.

He is coming.

And for the first time since she was taken, she is no longer afraid…

When Gracie woke, she was shivering. She had kicked the scratchy green blanket off. She sat up, reached down, and pulled the blanket up to her neck. They were on the highway again, but the car wasn’t making funny noises anymore. The blond man was driving; the big man was smoking and reading a newspaper. Outside, the ground was covered with snow. Distant mountains taller than those in Taos rose high into the sky. Her head finally felt clear.

“Where are we?” she asked. “What day is it?”

“Well, good morning to you, sleepyhead,” the blond man named Junior said. “We’re in Montana, Patty. It’s Thursday.”

“Okay, just so you know? That Patty thing is really starting to annoy me.”

In the rearview mirror, she saw a thin smile cross Junior’s lips. She coughed. The car was filled with cigarette smoke. (Does the big man ever stop smoking?) She tried to lower her window, but it was stuck. She waved her hand to clear the air around her so she could breathe. She said to the big man, “Those things are cancer sticks. They can kill you.”

Without looking back, the big man said, “So can a nagging woman. Shut up!”

She stared at the back of his big head. “Nice attitude.” She noticed another smile from Junior in the rearview. They rode in silence until she said, “He’s coming.”

The big man tossed his newspaper back to her. “Ain’t no one coming for you, girlie. Your case is closed.”

Gracie picked up the paper and spread it out on her lap like at home when she read the sports pages after school. Her picture was on the front page; next to her was the picture of a blond man. He looked sad.

“I know him. He works for my dad.”

“Not no more he don’t.”

She read about her abduction, the search for her, and Mom’s reward offer. “You two Einsteins are passing up twenty-five million dollars to keep me? That seems way dumb.”

“Way dumb is right,” the big man said, and Junior gave him a quick look.

Gracie continued reading about her case, the investigation- hey, Dad’s IPO went through! — the arrest of the abductor, the abductor’s suicide, and her soccer shorts.

“You left my shorts in the woods? So everyone thinks I’m running around in my Under Armour? That is like, so totally disgusting.”

“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” the big man said.

Gracie read more. “They found my jersey in this guy’s truck? And my blood?”

“From your elbows,” Junior said. “Pretty smart, huh? I thought of that myself.”

“Oh, yeah, real smart. This guy killed himself.”

“That was just lucky. We set him up pretty good, but we was only hoping for a couple days’ head start. Didn’t figure on him hanging hisself. Now we’re home free.”

The story said this Jennings guy had hung himself in his jail cell, and the police had closed her case. Gracie Ann Brice was presumed dead. Her body would probably never be found now that the abductor had killed himself. Gracie didn’t understand: Why didn’t Jennings just tell the police that he didn’t take her? Why would he kill himself? It didn’t make much sense to her, but it didn’t change what she knew.

“No, you’re not. He’s still coming.”

Junior was shaking his head. “That wimp ain’t coming to save you just like he didn’t save you from that fucking asshole yelling ‘panty check’ at the game. Was me, I’d’ve shot the son of a bitch. I about did.”

Ms. Fist made an appearance. Gracie wanted to pummel Junior just like she had the snot. “First of all, numb-nut”-she wasn’t sure what that word meant, but she had heard a boy call another boy that at school and he didn’t like it-“don’t call my dad a wimp. He may be a doofus, God bless him, but he’s a genius, smarter than you two meatbots put together.”

Junior: “The hell’s a meatbot?”

“And second of all, he didn’t even hear the big creep. He was multitasking. And third of all, do you really think that’s appropriate language to use in front of a child?”

“Aw shit, I’m sorry, honey,” Junior said like he really meant it. “I won’t say them words no more.”

The big man turned in his seat to face Gracie. He wasn’t smiling. “I will. Listen up, sweet cheeks. If that boy calls himself your daddy’s smart enough to figure out Jennings didn’t take you and stupid enough to come looking for you, I’m gonna take my Bowie”-he held up what looked like an oversized steak knife-“and gut his scrawny ass from his dick to his neck and use his innards for bear bait, you understand? So sit back, enjoy the trip, and shut the fuck up!”

He was big and ugly and scary and he smelled bad. Gracie’s chin began quivering and her eyes watered. Just as she was on the verge of blubbering uncontrollably, she thought of her mother, the toughest, strongest, meanest person she knew. Gracie wasn’t like her mother, but it was in her genes-she could be if she needed to be. She recalled more of her mother’s advice: curse. Unexpected profanity from a woman, she had advised, intimidates men. Gracie remembered that word her mother often used when she thought Gracie wasn’t around and sometimes even when she was. She jutted her jaw out, leaned forward toward the big ugly scary stinking man, and enunciated each letter deliberately, which would have made Ms. Bradley, her English teacher, very proud.

“Fuck you.”

The big man gave her a hard look like he wanted to backhand her into next week, but Gracie’s chin held its ground; he abruptly broke into loud laughter.

“Where’d you learn to talk like that, girl?”

“My mother. She’s a lawyer.”

The two men looked at each other and shrugged. “Oh.”

“And FYI, A-hole-”

The big man just shook his big head. “You’re a piece a work, girlie. Makes me glad I didn’t have no brats-except maybe with some whores in Saigon.”

He thought that was funny.

“Anyway, FYI, I’m not talking about my dad. I’m talking about Ben.”

“And who the hell’s Ben?”

“My grandpa.”

The big man laughed again, even louder, and slapped Junior on the arm. “Her gramps.” He sucked on his cigarette like Sam sucking on a Slurpee, then he started coughing smoke like he was choking and his face got all red. “Damn angina.” He bent over and dug around and came back up with a pill bottle. He put a little pill in his mouth.

Junior said, “No one’s coming for you, Patty. You’re dead.”

“Ben knows I’m alive.”

“How?”

“He just does.”

After a few minutes the red left the big man’s face. He threw his left arm over the seat back again and said, “Well, shit, Junior, gramps is coming to kill us all and save her sweet little ass. We might as well give her up right now.”

A stern voice, her best imitation of Elizabeth A. Brice, Attorney-At-Large: “Yes, you should. Because he’s on his way right now. And if you two idiots had the sense God gave dirt, you’d let me out of this car so he never catches up with you.”

“Well, sweet cheeks,” the big man said, “I ain’t gonna lose no sleep over your gramps coming after me.”

“You should. He’s got one of those, too.”

“One a what?”

He was looking right at her now. His eyes followed her hand as she extended it and pointed her finger at the big man’s tattoo, almost touching his gross arm.

“One of those.”

The big man’s eyebrows crunched down. “Your grandpa’s got a tattoo says ‘viper’?”

“Yep, he sure does.” She gestured behind her with her thumb. “And he’s somewhere back there right now, catching up fast.”

The big man’s eyes shot up; he stared out the back of the car, as if Ben were tailgating them. His face was different now.

Because Ben was coming.

“We’re never gonna get to Idaho in this piece of shit!”

“Try it again!” Ben yelled from under the raised hood of the Jeep. John turned the ignition and pumped the gas pedal, filling the engine well with the smell of gasoline; the image of a Vietnamese child drenched in napalm flashed through Ben’s mind.

The jet had arrived in Albuquerque at 0900 local time. They had retrieved their bags and located the old Jeep in the parking lot. But the damn thing wouldn’t start again. Ben was under the hood and tweaking the carburetor, which usually worked. John was sitting in the Jeep, impatient and annoyed and becoming more of both by the minute.

Ben slammed the hood shut and came around to the driver’s side. John climbed over to the passenger’s seat. Ben got in, determined that the Jeep would start this time. He turned the ignition and pushed the accelerator to the floorboard.

“Come on, you son of a-”

The engine coughed and wheezed like a two-pack-a-day smoker then turned over. Ben quickly shifted into reverse; the Jeep jerked itself back out of the parking space. Then it died.

“Cripes!” from the passenger’s seat.

Ben jammed his boot down on the accelerator again; the Jeep fired up again. He rammed the stick shift into first before the Jeep could change its mind. The vehicle lurched out of the airport, belching a cloud of black smoke.

Once they were on the access road leading to the interstate, Ben glanced over at his passenger. John was his mother’s son-the same sharply etched facial features, the same curly black hair, the same slender frame, the same brilliant mind. He was so unlike his father. Ben’s thoughts turned back again to that night when “Stop!” John shouted.

Ben slammed on the brakes. “What?”

John pointed. “Pull in there!” Then he started punching the buttons on his cell phone like he was calling 911 to report an emergency.

“Hi, this is Gracie. I can’t answer the phone right now ’cause I’m on a date with Orlando Bloom- I wish! Actually, I’m like, at school or soccer practice or Tae Kwon Do class or chasing E.T. around the house. Anyway, I’m not here to answer my phone, duh, so leave a message or whatever. Bye.” The machine beeped.

Elizabeth was now sitting in Grace’s chair at Grace’s desk in Grace’s room listening to Grace’s voice. It was all she had left of her daughter. She reached over and hit the play button and listened again to her dead daughter’s voice.

Gracie said, “Ben Brice was a hero.”

The big man was shaking his head slowly like Mom did when Sam acted like a little butthead. “Ben Brice,” he said in a soft voice, almost like he was talking about someone who had died. “What are the odds, Junior? We drive halfway across the country to snatch this girl, turns out she’s Ben Brice’s grandkid. Same wave of His hand, God gives you her and me Ben Brice.”

Junior was now looking at the big man like he was from another planet. “The hell you babbling about, Jacko?”

The big man named Jacko said, “The major always said it ain’t no coincidence that the world’s oil is in the Middle East, same place the world’s three religions got started. He said, ‘God put that oil there, Jacko, ’cause one day it’s gonna bring the Jews, Muslims, and Christians back to the Middle East for the final conflict. Armageddon in the desert. God’s master plan.’ ”

“What’s all that got to do with her?”

“She’s my oil, Junior.” Jacko turned to Junior but pointed a gnarly thumb at Gracie. “She’s gonna bring Ben Brice back to me for the final conflict.”

“Who the hell’s Ben Brice?”

Gracie said again, “He was a hero.”

Jacko snorted smoke. “He was a traitor. The traitor got us court-martialed.”

Junior looked at him and frowned. “You mean-”

“Yeah, I mean. He’s the one betrayed the major.”

Junior’s eyes got wide, like Nanna’s that time she hit four numbers at the lottery and won six hundred dollars. He said, “He’s a dead man.”

“Not yet he ain’t,” Jacko said. “But he will be soon enough.”

“But how’re we gonna find him?”

“We ain’t. He’s gonna find us.”

“He ain’t never gonna find us on that mountain.”

“Yeah, Junior, he will. I don’t know how, but he will. ’Cause we took something belongs to him.”

“Now this is my kind of work,” John said as he and Ben entered the Range Rover showroom. A smiling salesman wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a clip-on tie appeared before the glass doors shut behind them.

“Morning, gentlemen. I’m Bob.”

A Range Rover dealership was like a second home to John R. Brice. When he had spotted it from the Jeep, his spirits had soared like a kid on Christmas morning: a new Rover would dang sure get them to Idaho! John walked over to a Land Rover on the showroom floor-Java black exterior-and opened the door-Alpaca beige leather interior. He had seen all he needed to see. He turned back to Bob.

“How much?”

“Fifty-seven,” Bob said. “That’s a steal for this baby.”

Certainly Bob didn’t think he was going to hose John R. Brice on the price of a Land Rover. Like most techno-nerds, John did not possess real world expertise requiring physical dexterity or social skills; he did not know how to lay tile or change the oil or fix a running toilet (don’t even think about a major appliance) or interface effectively with his kids’ teachers or his spousal unit. But he knew all the important things in life as defined by his generation: he knew how to write computer code; he knew how to buy stuff on the Internet; he knew how to make a billion dollars from intellectual property; he knew how to compare cell phone calling plans; and he knew the specs for a Land Rover.

“Land Rover LR3 series, HSE package. Four-point-four liter V-8 power plant with Bosch Motronic Engine Management System. Four-wheel-drive with electronic traction control, electronic air suspension, and antilock brakes. Terrain Response, Active Roll Mitigation, and Dynamic Stability Control systems. Five-hundred-fifty-watt Harmon Kardon Logic 7 surround sound stereo system with thirteen speakers and amplified subwoofer. Nineteen-inch alloy wheels. Cold climate package, leather seats, sunroof, Bi-Xenon headlights, rack-and-pinion steering, and the Urban Jungle accessory kit, although I’m partial to the Safari kit. Total MSRP, fifty-six-five. Plus transportation and dealer prep fees and add-ons, fifty-seven-five. I can shop this vehicle on the Net and pay forty-nine-five max. Because I’m in a hurry, I’ll pay fifty-one, cash and carry.”

John’s brain dump had Bob’s mouth agape. “But at that price I’m giving it away. Look, I’ll come down to fifty-six.”

“No way, dude. Fifty-two or we’re history.”

“Fifty-five?”

“Fifty-three, and that’s my final offer.”

“Fifty-four.” John turned away. Before he took two steps: “Okay, okay, fifty-three.”

“Done.” John put the phone to his ear. “Carol, you still there? Wire fifty-three thousand to-”

“Plus tax, title and license,” Bob said.

“How much?”

Bob started tapping on a little calculator. “Title is two-fifty, license is one-fifty, sales tax is six-point-seven-five percent times fifty-three thousand…”

To Carol on the phone: “Plus three thousand nine hundred seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents to-”

John held the phone out to Bob, who was still tapping away.

“… that’s three thousand nine hundred seventy-seven…”

“Yes, we know,” John said. “Tell her your bank account number. I need this vehicle in real time.” He pointed outside. “And you gotta take that POS Jeep off our hands.”

Bob hurried off with the cell phone. John turned to Ben.

“And that is how you upgrade to a new luxury SUV.”

Ben was shaking his head in obvious amazement. “What does ‘POS’ mean?”

“Piece of shit,” Jan Jorgenson said. She flung the dried-out marker across her office and into the trash can.

She had come into the office that morning for the first time since the abduction and tried to focus on the long list of young Arab men residing in Texas, but her mind wouldn’t let go of the girl on that soccer game tape. The image haunted her. She felt as if she were quitting on Gracie Ann Brice. But she was not a quitter. Marathon running had taught her to never quit. Twenty miles, you’re in a brain fog, your body is on autopilot, your feet are numb, you’ve lost control of your bowels, and you’re hitting the wall-but you don’t quit; you never quit. If you quit, you never learn the truth about yourself.

FBI Special Agent (on probation) Jan Jorgenson was determined to learn the truth about Gracie Ann Brice.

So rather than running six miles as she normally did during her lunch hour, she was outlining the Brice case on the large grease board in her small office in downtown Dallas. She had written GRACIE ANN BRICE at the top of the

board above five subheadings: GARY JENNINGS… JOHN BRICE… ELIZABETH BRICE… COL. BEN BRICE… DNA.

Under GARY JENNINGS, she had written BriceWare and blood in truck and jersey in truck and 9 phone calls and coach’s ID and child porn. Damning evidence. But still, the FBI’s Evidence Response Team couldn’t find a single hair from Gracie’s head in Jennings’s truck or apartment or on his clothes; or her fingerprints in his truck or his fingerprints on the porn picture; or child porn in his apartment or on his computers. He didn’t come close to the sexual predator profile. Nothing like a child abduction in his background, and a wife and baby and a million dollars in his future, but he chucks it all to rape and murder his boss’s ten-year-old daughter?

As the kids say, I don’t think so.

She had next completed the entries under JOHN BRICE: Ph. D., MIT… marries Elizabeth Austin… moves to Dallas… BriceWare… IPO. Other than his billion-dollar wealth after yesterday’s IPO, a possible motive for ransom, nothing else in the father’s background sparked her interest. Why would someone take John Brice’s child?

She had then written under ELIZABETH BRICE: Born NYC… Smith College… Harvard Law… Justice Department… quits Justice, marries John Brice, moves to Dallas… white-collar criminal defense. Why would someone take Elizabeth Brice’s child?

She was now filling in the life of COL. BEN BRICE: West Point… Vietnam… Green Beret… Colonel… Medal of Honor… classified duty… Viper tattoo. Why would someone take Colonel Brice’s grandchild?

Why would someone commit this crime?

What were possible motives?

She sat back down at her desk, which was covered with information Research had gathered about Colonel Brice from public sources, copies of newspaper and magazine articles, arranged in reverse chronological order. Research had highlighted in yellow each place the colonel’s name was mentioned in the articles. She thumbed through several. One was dated 30 April 1975, about the fall of Saigon, with a photograph of a U.S. helicopter rising from the roof of the American Embassy; a soldier was standing on the skid like a fireman on a fire truck and cradling a small object in his arm.

Another article was dated 7 August 1972, with a photo of President Nixon placing the Medal of Honor around Colonel Brice’s neck in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, awarded because Brice had single-handedly rescued one hundred American pilots from a POW camp; the colonel’s wife stood beside him.

Jan scanned several articles from Stars amp; Stripes, the military newspaper, then came to a front-page article from the Washington Herald dated 12 November 1969. The accompanying photograph showed reporters crowding a grim Colonel Brice outside an Army building, only he wasn’t a colonel back then, but a young lieutenant. Her eyes ran over the article: something about a court-martial over a massacre in Vietnam. Jan Jorgenson was not born until 1980; consequently, the Vietnam War meant no more to her than the Civil War. She was about to move on to the next article when her eyes caught a word in the fifth paragraph of the story: viper.

A shot of adrenaline ricocheted through Jan’s veins: Colonel Brice has a Viper tattoo. The unidentified male at the park had a Viper tattoo. The court-martialed soldiers had been in a special operations unit code-named Viper. She read on.

SOG team Viper, led by Major Charles Woodrow Walker, massacred forty-two Vietnamese civilians on 17 December 1968 in a small hamlet in the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam. Lieutenant Ben Brice reported the massacre. Once the media got wind, Quang Tri became a political cause. Members of Congress opposed to the war demanded that Major Walker be court-martialed. The Army resisted: Charles Woodrow Walker was a living legend. But when a group of senators threatened to hold up military funding, the Army surrendered and charged Walker and his soldiers under Article 118 of the Code of Military Justice: murder.

Lieutenant Ben Brice was the sole witness for the prosecution at the court-martial; he testified that Walker incited the massacre and murdered a young girl in cold blood. Major Walker had only to take the stand and deny the massacre. Case closed. A living legend trumps a lieutenant every time.

The crowded courtroom was silent with anticipation when the thirty-eight-year-old Army major, a strikingly handsome figure from the photo Jan was looking at, stepped to the witness stand in his uniform, his chest covered with medals, and stood erect as he addressed the members of the military tribunal.

“Dying, gentlemen, is a big part of war. People die in war. Men, women, and children. Soldiers and civilians. Enemies and allies. And Americans. Communist forces have killed forty thousand U.S. soldiers in Vietnam- forty thousand, gentlemen! And the Army is court-martialing me over forty-two dead gooks?”

The major sniffs the air like a bloodhound getting a scent.

“I smell the corrupt stench of politics in this courtroom.”

His accuser gazes upon the major, the very image of a Green Beret commando: six foot four, two-hundred-twenty-pound body hard as a side of beef, blond flattop, bronze face, and a voice that sounds like thunder. And he has those eyes, eyes like blue crystal that can see straight into your soul; when he locks those eyes on you, it’s as if you’re looking at Jesus Christ himself, his men say. They call themselves his disciples.

The major locks his eyes on the court-martial panel.

“When we bombed Germany into rubble in World War Two, we killed thirty-five thousand German civilians in Dresden alone. When we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we killed three hundred thousand Japanese civilians. But we did not cry over their deaths. We did not court-martial the pilots who dropped the bombs or the generals who ordered the bombing. We honored them as heroes. We gave them medals and parades. We put a general in the White House.

“But this war, I am told, is different. This war is unpopular with the people. To which I say, so fucking what! Since when did this man’s Army give a good goddamn what civilians think? Do you care what that lawless mob of malcontents protesting outside the gates to this Army base, burning the American flag you and I swore to defend, thinks? The soldiers fighting and dying at this very moment in Vietnam are not defending those civilians. They are defending this country! And I’m not about to let a buncha draft-dodging dopers tell me when and where and who I can kill to defend this country!

“And, I’m also told, this war is immoral, ugly, brutal, and evil. To which I say, yes, it is. Just like every other war this country has ever fought. War, gentlemen, is not pretty or neat or nice or humane fare fit for the evening news. War is ugly. Brutal. Inhumane. Evil. And necessary for the survival of the Free World!”

He points at the window.

“That mob wants America to lose in Vietnam. That mob wants to bring down the American military. We-you and I and this Army-cannot let that happen! We must not let that happen! For if we do, if we let that mob destroy this Army, the world will no longer fear America. Now, we can live in a world that does not love America. We can even live in a world that hates America. But, gentlemen, we cannot live in a world that does not fear America. We cannot live in a world that thinks it can fuck with America. Because once every piss-ant dictator, rebel, warlord, and terrorist thinks he can fuck with America, he will! Gentlemen, I am on trial, but it is not the future of Major Charles Woodrow Walker that is at stake today. It is the future of the United States Army. It is the future of America.

“I stand accused of murder by an Army that cowers before politicians, politicians who have never fought a war but who enjoy the freedom war brings- the freedom we give them! — politicians trying to win an election by appeasing that mob. I, gentlemen, am trying to win a war! To defeat Communism and preserve peace and prosperity for the United States of America!”

The major removes his coat. He unbuttons his left sleeve. He rolls the sleeve up. He shows the panel the Viper tattoo imprinted on his bicep. And he translates the Vietnamese words for them: “ ‘We kill for peace.’ By God, if this country is going to enjoy peace and prosperity, we damn well better be ready to kill for it!”

The major now points at his accuser.

“Since Truman betrayed MacArthur, every soldier at West Point knows that politicians will always betray the military. We expect that. But we don’t expect betrayal by one of our own, by a fellow member of the Corps. Just as Jesus Christ had Judas Iscariot, so too do I have Lieutenant Ben Brice. He betrayed me. He betrayed you. He betrayed his Army. He betrayed his country.

“Did we kill those gooks? You goddamn right we did! And I will kill every gook in Vietnam if that’s what it takes to win that war! To defeat Communism! As God is my witness, I don’t regret killing those forty-two gooks! My only regret is that I didn’t put a bullet in Lieutenant Brice’s head, too!”

Ben’s thoughts were jolted back to the present when the Land Rover bounced hard.

“Now there’s a motive-revenge.”

Agent Jan Jorgenson turned to the last page of the article. Major Walker and the nine other Green Berets were acquitted of murder but found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, stripped of their rank, and dishonorably discharged from the Army.

Did Walker abduct Gracie Ann Brice for revenge against Colonel Brice? And who is Major Charles Woodrow Walker? And where is he now?

The big man named Jacko was saying, “I remember one time, me and the major, we got these two VC up in the chopper, five hundred feet off the deck. The major’s interrogating them-where’s your base camp, how many men, and so on. The one gook, he keeps saying, ‘Doo Mommie,’ which means ‘fuck your mama’ in Viet. Well, the major finally got his fill, so he grabs the dink and throws his ass right out the door. We hear him screaming all the way down. Then the major grabs the other dink-that sumbitch pisses hisself. And he talks, gives us the coordinates of their base camp. We called in the B-52s the next morning. They wiped that camp and about five hundred gooks off the face of the earth.”

Jacko smiled like he was remembering his last birthday party.

“You lived for those days.”

Junior said, “What’d you do with the other gook?”

“Oh, we threw him out, too. Five-hundred-foot dive into a rice paddy.”

Jacko now had a faraway look on his face, like Sylvia when she talked of her old country.

“Best years of my life. Hell, killing, drinking, and fucking-to an Okie from Henryetta, Vietnam wasn’t no war, it was a goddamned vacation.” He shook his head. “Politicians fucked up a pretty good war.”

They were sitting in a McDonald’s drive-through waiting for their order. Gracie was listening. Junior was wide-eyed.

“Gosh, I love to hear them stories,” he said.

Jacko said, “Course, when McNamara and Johnson sent in the draftees and the war became a goddamn TV show back home, I knew my Oriental vacation was coming to an end. But I didn’t know my Army career was coming to an end when Viper team humped into the Quang Tri province that day in ’68 or when we humped out that night. I just followed the major in and followed the major out and in between we wasted some gooks. Just another day in paradise. But the Army sacrificed Viper team to the mob.” He sucked on his cigarette, blew out smoke, and said, “Because Lieutenant Ben Brice couldn’t keep his fuckin’ mouth shut.”

“Why didn’t the major kill Brice after he ratted you out?”

“After the court-martial, CIA hired us to greenback in Cambodia-CIA, they don’t give a shit about politics.” He chuckled. “With SOG, the major reported to the president. With the CIA, he reported to no one. Anyway, Brice, he was a native by then, living in the zoo with the Yards. After the war, he just disappeared.”

Junior handed a white bag back to Gracie. She had ordered a Big Mac, fries, and milk. Mother never let her eat fast food.

Jacko said back to her: “Where’s your grandpa been living?”

Gracie thought that if she told the truth, maybe they’d turn around and drive to Taos, which would be better than wherever they were going now. And she knew Ben wasn’t at the cabin anyway.

“Taos.”

“The hell’s he doing in Taos?”

“He makes furniture-rocking chairs, tables, desks. They’re awesome. Movie stars buy his stuff.”

Jacko thought that was funny. “Green Beret making rocking chairs for movie stars.”

“Like who?” Junior asked.

Gracie didn’t answer him. Instead, she said, “Let’s go to Taos. I’ll take you to his cabin.”

Jacko snorted. “I think I’ll wait for him to come to me.”

“Scared, huh? You know, you guys ought to pull over and let me out before he catches up with you.”

“Shut up, you little whore!”

Gracie wasn’t sure what that word meant, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment. Before she could defend herself, Junior did.

“Don’t call her that! She ain’t no whore!”

Junior was giving Jacko a real mean face, like Ronnie down the street that day she had beaten him up.

“She started it! Tell her to shut up! You want a woman in your life, that’s what you get-a fuckin’ mouth won’t stop!”

Gracie removed her lunch from the bag and began singing: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be morons…”

Jacko pointed a French fry back at her and said, “See? See what I mean?”

Gracie pulled the milk out of the bag and saw her picture on the carton under MISSING CHILD.

The off-road tires gripped the dirt-and-rock trail and the V-8 engine muscled the Land Rover up the steep incline while the plush leather seats cushioned the occupants as they bounced about, albeit less than one would expect due to the electronic air suspension system. For your off-roading needs, no other SUV measured up to a Range Rover product. John’s Range Rover back home was a sporty red job with four-wheel-drive, a neat feature even though the thought of actually taking a $75,000 vehicle off road had never entered John Brice’s mind. So when they crested the hill, John exhaled with great relief and his white-knuckled hands released their death grip on the steering wheel as he braked the Land Rover to a stop in front of a small cabin.

It was almost noon on the seventh day Gracie was gone.

A dog was on Ben before he had de-Rovered. Ben knelt and petted the dog; the beast licked his face like an ice cream cone. “How ya doin’, Buddy?” If a dog can cry, Buddy was. Ben stood and walked inside the cabin. Man’s best friend then greeted John, slobbering all over his jeans and Nike cross-trainers.

“Get away from me, you freaking mutt!”

John was not comfortable around dogs; he had had a dog for a while as a boy, but the dang beast had bit him every chance it could. Fido finally abandoned his attack on John when it spotted some kind of rat creature and gave chase into the brush bordering the cabin. John dehosed his jeans and checked out Ben’s cabin; it was smaller than the four-car garage at Six Magnolia Lane, but it was a neat log home just the same.

On both sides of the steps leading up to the porch were gardens; little sprigs stuck up out of uniform rows of black dirt. The porch floor was built of wood planks. Cacti in colorful pots, odd-shaped rocks, and painted wood carvings of coyotes and horses lined the porch rail. John followed the porch around the cabin and gazed out on the brown terrain that stretched to the distant mountains whose white tops were a stark contrast against the deep blue sky. As far as he could see, there was not another human being, not another house, not another anything. This was not an exclusive gated community constructed to keep the masses out. This was not a master-planned subdivision with an active homeowners’ association. This was not a place you came to for social engineering. This was where you came to leave the rest of the world behind.

On the west side of the porch were two wooden rocking chairs; one was half-sized with GRACIE carved in the seat back. John sat in her chair and imagined Ben and Gracie sitting there and talking, and he wondered what she had said about her father. He sighed. He should have come with her, as she had always begged him to, and sat in a rocker with JOHN carved into the seat back and talked to his father. But he had always been so brain-damaged about the past-a father not there to protect Little Johnny Brice from the bullies-and so focused on the future-an IPO that would make John R. Brice’s life perfect-that he had never found the reason or the time to forgive or forget.

He hoped Gracie had forgiven her father.

He stood and walked around back. Behind the cabin were a vegetable garden and a smaller structure accessible via a stone path. The door creaked as John entered Ben’s workshop; unfinished furniture and tools occupied the floor and walls. A rocking chair caught John’s eye. He ran his hands along the graceful wood armrests and down the curved back. He sat in the chair and leaned his head back. John had assumed the least about his father, that his woodwork would be crude creations, not works of art like this chair. Just as he had assumed a drunk would live like a drunk, sloppy and dirty. But the cabin and grounds and this workshop were meticulously maintained, as if Ben had a Sylvia Milanevic on the payroll.

John Brice didn’t know his own father.

“That’s for some movie star in Santa Fe.”

Ben was standing in the door.

“I’m going into town to pick up supplies,” he said. “There’s food inside if you get hungry. We’ll load up and hit the road as soon as I get back.” He held out an open hand. “Since you traded in my POS Jeep, I need to borrow your vehicle.”

John tossed the keys to Ben. “It’s yours.”

After the Land Rover had disappeared down the hill, John went inside the cabin. He was starving; all he had eaten that day was his normal breakfast of a dozen Oreos crushed in a glass of milk and the black coffee on the flight.

He walked over to the kitchen at one end of the main room and got a potent whiff of whiskey. Five empty whiskey bottles were sitting upside down in the sink. Looking at the bottles, John felt sure he was following a drunk on a wild goose chase; but there was no running home to Elizabeth now. He took the bottles outside to the recycling bin.

When he returned, he searched the cabinets for something decent to eat, but all he found were organic granola bars, organic oatmeal, organic pasta, organic peanut butter, vitamins, and health supplements. A drunk who takes care of himself? He opened the refrigerator: grapefruit juice, orange juice, yogurt, fruit, cheese, and a bag of bean tamales. Nothing worth eating. Which was just as well, because when he shut the door and saw Gracie’s photos stuck there with magnets, he lost his appetite.

He wandered around the main room and found a stack of newspaper and magazine clippings about BriceWare. com and its genius founder on a desk in the corner. On a table next to an old leather recliner by the fireplace was the Fortune magazine with John’s picture on the cover, opened to the Brice family photo and Gracie’s bright smile. Ben had kept up with his son all this time. But his son had never returned his calls or come to visit, convinced that at his age he no longer needed a father.

He was wrong.

The cabin had two small bedrooms, each with a tiny bathroom. One was Gracie’s bedroom: her clothes in the closet, her stuff around the room, an Indian headdress on the bed, a colorful totem pole in the corner, and a wooden headboard with Gracie carved in a neat script. He walked around the room and touched her things.

The other bedroom was Spartan, only a bed, a wooden chest in the corner, and a nightstand. The bed was neatly made; the ends of the blanket were tucked in tightly. It was an Army bed just like the bed John had slept in until the day he had left for MIT. He had never made his bed again.

Hanging in the small closet were jeans, corduroy and flannel shirts, a winter coat, and in a clear bag, the dress uniform of a full colonel in the United States Army. On the floor were jogging shoes and boots. On the shelf above were several hats and caps and a green beret wrapped in plastic.

On the nightstand were an old rotary dial telephone, a gooseneck lamp, a small framed photo of Mom, and a stack of letters from Gracie. An old phone, snail-mail letters, no computer in the cabin: his father was living in the past in every way possible. John picked up the top envelope; Gracie had drawn little happy faces around the edges. John sat on the bed and stared at the happy faces; he saw Gracie’s happy face. Could she really be alive?

So everyone back home thought she was dead.

Gracie wondered if they would have a funeral Mass for her like the one for the little boy two blocks over who had died a year ago from some disease he had been born with. The altar would be decorated with pretty flowers, Father Randy would be wearing his fancy vestments, and the choir would be singing “Amazing Grace.” Mom would look beautiful in a black dress and Dad would look… Did he even own a black suit?

Picturing the two of them together at her funeral, the beauty and the geek, Gracie found herself wondering again how they had ever gotten together… and if they loved each other. Dad loved Mom, that was like, obvious. He was a puppy dog around her, always licking her shoes. But did she love him? Gracie didn’t think so. She had asked Nanna one time, but Nanna said, “Of course she does, but sometimes grownups have issues that keep them apart.” She asked Nanna what issues were keeping her and Ben apart, but Nanna started crying so she never asked again.

But back to the funeral. Everyone would file into the church, old ladies would be crying, kids would be messing with each other, and their parents would be telling them to hush; Mass would start and Father Randy and the altar girls would walk up the center aisle to where her empty white casket-yeah, she wanted a white casket-would be sitting just in front of the altar and on top would be a picture of her in her soccer uniform because everyone wanted to remember her that way.

Gosh, it would be a great funeral. Everyone in town would be there, Mom and Dad, Nanna and Sam, Sylvia and Hilda, her teammates, Coach Wally, kids from school-they’d probably let school out that day-her teachers, and the principal; everyone would be crying and praying for the little dead girl. It sounded so neat, she almost wished she could be there. But she wouldn’t be there, and neither would Ben.

Because she wasn’t dead, and he was coming to save her.

Colonel, you saved my life. Lying in that cell at San Bie, I knew I would never see my wife or children again, but you gave my wife her husband back and my children their father. I owe you my life. God bless you.

John had found the boxes in the wooden chest; in the first box he had found dozens more letters, but these letters weren’t from Gracie. These letters were from military pilots pledging their lives to John’s father.

He did not know his own father.

He returned the letters to the first box. Then he opened the second box. He removed Ben’s framed West Point diploma, Army certificates, and a display case containing a hero’s medals: eight Purple Hearts; five Silver Stars with an empty spot for a sixth one; four Bronze Stars; two Soldier’s Medals; a Distinguished Service Cross; the Legion of Merit; and in a special case, the Medal of Honor, a round gold medal with an eagle over the word valor and a gold star with a Roman Centurion engraved in the center. John touched the medal with a reverence he had never before felt. He had never looked upon Ben as a hero. John R. Brice’s heroes were Tim Paterson, who invented DOS, Ray Tomlinson, who invented e-mail, and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the HTML, HTTP, and URL conventions that powered the World Wide Web, brilliant men who made Internet shopping possible, not men who fought a war forty years ago that nobody cared about.

What was Ben like back then, when he was young and robust? What were his dreams? What life had he and Mom hoped for? Were they ever happy? What made him a drunk?

John found the answers in the third box. Inside were photos: Ben’s formal West Point graduation portrait in his high-necked dress uniform above the Academy motto- Duty, Honor, Country; Ben and Kate, him in a white uniform and Mom in a wedding dress, outside a church, ducking under an arch of sabers held out by other soldiers in white uniforms; and other wedding photos with a best man and maid of honor whose images struck John. The woman, with her curly black hair and a certain frailty about her, seemed oddly familiar to John. In another photo, the same man was standing next to the same woman in a hospital bed holding a baby; Kate and Ben were leaning in from behind. Everyone was smiling like their IPO had just hit the street.

John dug deeper and found more photos: Ben and the other man just arrived in Vietnam, looking young and eager in crisp uniforms; a team photo, both of them with other soldiers and handwritten along the bottom the words SOG team Viper, 2 Dec 68; Ben sitting in a stirrup and dangling from a rope under a helicopter flying above a dense jungle; Ben lying on the ground, his pants ripped open and an Army medic wrapping his bloody leg; Ben in a hospital bed, a pretty nurse in a white uniform on one side, and on the other side, a general pinning a Purple Heart to Ben’s pillow; Ben, in the jungle, holding a long black rifle with a scope, his boot on a dead Asian soldier wearing black pajamas, 1000 meters written along the bottom; Ben, his smile gone now, replaced by a hardness John had never seen on his father’s face, camouflage greasepaint, his uniform no longer crisp but instead dirty and worn with the sleeves cut off, revealing his muscular arms and that tattoo. He was standing among Indians.

He was not the same man.

John realized he knew next to nothing about his father. Ben Brice had been a hero, he knew that, but Ben had never talked about the war and John had never asked. His father was a loser. A drunk. That was all he had ever really known about Ben Brice.

John returned the photos to the box, one by one, but his eyes lingered on the hospital photo of the man and woman with the baby. This same man was in the early photos with Ben but in none of the later ones. Looking at this man and this woman, something strange stirred inside John, like one of those deja vu moments. He touched the image of the woman gently. John didn’t know how long he had been staring at the photo when he looked up to see Ben standing over him. John held up the photo.

“Who are these people?” he asked.

Ben was quiet for a time. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair. Then he said, “Your mother and father.”

“My dad says life is random,” Gracie said.

“What?” Jacko said without turning his head back.

“Random. You know, things happen for no particular reason. He says life doesn’t make sense and isn’t supposed to. My mom says life is fucked up, but she has some issues.”

“The hell you talking about?”

His words and smoke came out of his mouth at the same time. She sighed. “What I’m talking about is, you two lamebrains kidnap me not even knowing Ben is my grandpa, and a long time ago during Ben’s war you did something bad and Ben told on you and you got in trouble.”

“How do you know we did something bad?”

“Because I know Ben didn’t. And now Ben’s coming after me and he’s going to find out you took me, the same guy he told on. I mean, what are the odds of that? Now my dad-he’s a math genius-he’d say that’s just random, what normal people call coincidence or luck. But I don’t think so. I think it’s meant to be.”

“Destiny?”

“God’s plan. See, Nanna-she’s my grandmother-she goes to Mass like, almost every day. She’s always saying, ‘God has a plan for you, Gracie Ann Brice. God has a plan for all of us.’ She says there’s no such thing as coincidence or luck, that everything that happens in our lives is supposed to happen because it’s all part of God’s plan. So you kidnapping me and Ben coming to get me, that’s not a coincidence. That’s part of God’s plan.”

Jacko exhaled smoke through both nostrils.

“Well, sweet cheeks, I don’t know about God’s plan, but my plan is to gut your grandpa.”

“Roger Dalton was the brother I never had,” Ben said. “We went through West Point together, then to Vietnam together.” He paused. “Academy instructors, they told us it would be our great adventure. It wasn’t.”

John’s eyes remained on the photo of his mother and father; his mother was holding him and his father looked so strong and manly. There was manly somewhere in John Brice’s genes.

“You were born a week before we deployed. On our flight to Saigon, Roger said, ‘Anything happens to me, you be my son’s father.’ He was killed two weeks later.”

“How’d he die?”

“A soldier’s death.”

Ben’s voice cracked. John wanted to know more, but he decided that now wasn’t the time.

“What happened to my mother?”

“Mary, she was smart just like you. But when Roger died, it’s like her mind couldn’t handle it. She was just too fragile to fit in this world.”

“Like me.”

“She died when you were six months old. We adopted you.”

“John Roger Brice.” Ben nodded. “Where are they buried?”

“Iowa. Where they were from.”

“When this is over, I think I’ll go to Iowa. Is his name on the Wall in Washington?”

“I suppose. I’ve never been able to go.”

“Maybe I’ll go to Iowa and then to the Wall. Maybe you’ll come with me.”

“Maybe.”

John looked at the photo again. “I always thought Gracie got her eyes and hair from you.”

Would she look for her daughter in every blonde blue-eyed girl she saw on the street, in the mall, and at restaurants? Would she wonder what her daughter looked like with each passing year, like those age-progression images she had seen of children missing for five or ten or fifteen years on the missingkids. com website? Would she always hold out hope that her daughter was still alive, somewhere? Would she become one of those pitiful mothers of lost children she had seen on TV, keeping Grace’s room exactly as it was now, always believing that one day she would return to this room?

The doorbell rang.

Elizabeth was still in her bathrobe and in her daughter’s room, so many thoughts running through her mind, trying to imagine life without Grace.

The doorbell rang again.

Her heart froze. Then it began to beat rapidly; her breathing came faster. She stood. She knew.

It’s her! It’s Grace! She’s come home!

Elizabeth bolted out of the bedroom and ran down the long hall and to the stairs and down to the first floor and through the foyer and to the front door and pulled the door open, ready to embrace her daughter and to hold her and to cry with her and to never let her go.

But you’re not Grace.

Standing on the porch was a young woman in a black dress; her anguished face seemed vaguely familiar. It took Elizabeth a moment to place it. Gary Jennings’s wife.

Elizabeth slumped against the doorjamb. She had been so sure it was Grace. Now, for the first time since the abduction, she thought she might be drifting toward insanity, floating on a raft down a slow-moving river, steadily and inexorably toward rapids where she would crack up on the rocks, finally to be thrown over the edge of a steep fall, driven down deep into the darkness below, never to resurface. The thought was inviting.

“Mrs. Brice, I’m so sorry about Gracie. But my husband didn’t take her. Gary would never do something like that.”

She started to leave, but she stopped when Elizabeth said, “Your baby.”

She turned back and said, “The doctors say she’ll be okay.”

She walked down to a waiting car, got in, and drove off. The street was silent and vacant; a few pink ribbons tied to mailboxes fluttered in the breeze and several scattered missing-child fliers skipped along the ground like children playing hopscotch. The TV trucks and police cars and cameras and reporters and gawkers were gone, back to their lives as if the world had not been irrevocably altered seven days ago; fathers and career mothers had gone back to their offices, stay-at-home moms to exercise classes and shopping malls, children to school, reporters to new stories, and the networks to New York. The circus had moved on.

Elizabeth turned and shut the door on her life.

John watched as Ben opened a door to a vault under the floor of the workshop and then knelt down and shone a flashlight into the dark space below.

“I hate rats,” he said.

Satisfied, he hopped down into the hole. His head was below floor level. He handed up three long metal containers. Then he hoisted himself out.

Ben dusted off one container with a cloth. He unlatched the locks and lifted the top. Inside, set into a molded form, were a black rifle, boxes of ammunition, two telescopes, one normal size, the other oversized, a black tube, what John knew was a silencer, a leather shoulder sling, two ammunition magazines, and a crude brass bracelet.

Ben slipped the bracelet onto his left wrist, then he removed the rifle and mounted the smaller scope and the silencer. He loaded a magazine and snapped it into the underside of the rifle and attached the sling at both ends. He stood and walked outside. John followed.

Facing the vast open space, Ben knelt, raised the rifle to his shoulder, gripped the underside of the stock with his left hand, extended his right elbow from his body, and sighted in with his right eye. The sound of the rifle’s discharge was muffled. Ben grunted, adjusted the scope, sighted, and fired again. Another adjustment and another shot.

“What are you shooting at?”

“Cholla cactus, five hundred meters out.”

John slanted his glasses to obtain sharper vision but without success. “Dang, I can’t even see it.”

“Inside, in one of the other boxes-a spotting scope.”

John returned to the workshop and opened the other containers. Inside one were a knife with Viper etched into the shiny blade, two sets of dog tags, one for Brice, Ben, and the other for Dalton, Roger, a small machine gun with a shoulder strap, and the spotting telescope. John took his father’s dog tags and put them around his neck. He then removed the scope and ran back out.

Ben said, “Straight down the barrel, rock formation.”

John looked into the scope, adjusted the focus, and spotted the rock formation.

“Got it.”

“Beyond that, a cactus.”

“With the yellow flower?”

“Yep.”

Standing behind Ben, John figured the theoretical probability of hitting that flower from five hundred meters-1,640 feet-had to be one in a million, even in the perfectly still conditions, and particularly by a sixty-year-old… the thought crept into John’s mind… drunk. The rifle discharged; the yellow flower split off whole from the cactus.

“Dang, Ben, that’s awesome! You must’ve been a dead shot!”

From Ben’s expression, John knew he had said exactly the wrong thing. Ben stood and walked over to a big rock and sat; he stared at the dirt for a time. Finally he spoke.

“NVA officers didn’t wear insignia. You couldn’t tell a grunt from a general, so you’d sit outside their camp, maybe a thousand meters out, watching them through the binoculars until you picked out the ranking officer, sometimes just because he had more cigarettes in his pocket. Then you’d wait until he was sitting down, eating, and you’d put the scope on him. And when you did, you played God. You decided he’d never see his wife or kids again, or even the next day, that because he was born in Hanoi instead of Houston he deserved a bullet in his head. You observed the last moments of his life, the last smile on his face, the last drag on his cigarette, and you squeezed the trigger. And his life was over.”

He looked up at John.

“I didn’t kill for God or country, or for those medals, or even to defeat Communism. Well, at first I did, but at the end, when I knew the war was lost, I killed so fewer American boys would come home in a body bag. Like your father did. That’s why I stayed over there, John. That’s why I wasn’t here for you.”

John looked out on New Mexico and felt his eyes water. “I should’ve been there for Gracie. I should’ve hung up on Lou and gone to the concession stand with her. I should have protected her.” He shook his head slowly. “Ben, I just let her go.”

“No, son, you didn’t let her go. They took her.” Ben stood and was the colonel in the photos again. “And we’re fixing to take her back.”

After graduating from high school, boys in Henryetta, Oklahoma, either go to college on football scholarships, take up farming like their fathers before them, or join the Army. Jack Odell Smith was big and strong and played football for Henryetta High, but he got ejected from most games for unsportsmanlike conduct. And he never took to the plow. So, barely a month after graduating at the bottom of his class, Jack O. Smith had joined the United States Army.

Jacko was not your leader of men. But he was a loyal follower and kept his mouth shut, character traits much admired in this man’s Army. Those traits, along with his physical strength, temper, and ability to kill without remorse, earned him a spot in the Special Forces Training Group at Fort Bragg. There he had met Major Charles Woodrow Walker.

Jack Odell Smith had found his place in life.

Major Charles Woodrow Walker had always thought his place in life would be the White House. “Jacko,” the major had said, “the American people are sheep. In times of peace, they just want to graze off the land and feel fat and happy. But when the wolves are in the pasture, they want to feel safe. ‘Make love not war’ sounds good when the war is ten thousand miles away. But when war comes home to America, and it will, the American people will turn to a military hero to make them feel safe. They will turn to me.”

But then the verdict was read: guilty. War criminals don’t get to be president.

Jack Odell Smith would not call himself a thinking man. He had always left his thinking to the major. But now, driving back to their mountain compound with Ben Brice’s granddaughter in the back seat, he found himself thinking about how one event could change the course of history: What if Lieutenant Ben Brice had honored the soldiers’ code?

Viper team would have continued covert operations in Laos and Cambodia and North Vietnam. The war would have been won by professional warriors. Soldiers would have come home to a hero’s welcome. No one would know about Quang Tri because no one walked away from Quang Tri. And Major Charles Woodrow Walker would be in the White House because on 9/11 the war had come home to America.

Now Lieutenant Ben Brice was coming home to Viper team.

Gracie had seen Ben’s tattoo many times, and he had even let her touch it, but he would never tell her why he got it or what the strange words meant. He only told her they were Vietnamese. Looking now at the same words on Jacko’s tattoo, she saw her chance.

“What do those Vietnamese words mean, on your tattoo?”

Jacko blew out smoke and said, “ ‘We kill for peace.’ ”

Gracie had often asked Ben about his war-she wanted to know why he was a drunk-but he refused to talk about it. “Honey,” he’d always say, “you’ll learn about the bad things in life soon enough. No need for me to hurry that day up.”

She sighed. That day had come.

“Did Ben kill people in his war?”

“Damn sure did. He was a sniper.” Jacko sucked on his cigarette, exhaled smoke, and said, “Your grandpa was a traitor, but I’ll say this for him: he was one helluva shot. He could put a bullet between a gook’s eyes from a thousand meters.”

Gracie fell quiet. Because now she knew something she wished she didn’t know, like when she’d read ahead in a book and find out the ending. She knew what Ben would have to do, and it made her sad to know it. She had figured out that he drank his whiskey to forget his war; now she knew he drank to forget killing people in his war. She didn’t want him to drink more of his whiskey because of her.

Jacko said, “Yep, damn shame he betrayed his team and now I gotta kill him.”

Gracie’s voice sounded odd, even to her own ears, when she said, “No, you’re not going to kill Ben. He’s going to kill you. And Junior, too.”

The two men didn’t say anything for a long while.

“I was still in ROTC at A amp;M when the Quang Tri shit hit the fan.”

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson had just reported to her superior her latest findings on the Gracie Ann Brice abduction. Agent Devereaux was still in Des Moines. The boy abducted there had been found dead. A manhunt was on for his abductor, a convicted child molester out on parole. For the third time.

“I’m running searches on Major Walker,” Jan said.

“Why?”

“Because Colonel Brice served under Walker in Viper unit. Because he has a Viper tattoo and the man in the park had a Viper tattoo. Because those soldiers committed a massacre, Brice testified against them, and Walker said he should’ve killed Brice. Because you said you wouldn’t have closed the case.”

“I know, Jan, but you think Walker’s been waiting almost forty years to get revenge on Colonel Brice? And somehow finds his granddaughter living in a gated community in Post Oak, Texas, kidnaps her, frames Jennings, and takes her to God knows where?”

Now that she actually heard her theory aloud, it did sound pretty ridiculous.

“And even if Walker wanted revenge on Colonel Brice, how would he connect him to Gracie and how would he find her? And if he wanted revenge, wouldn’t he just kill Colonel Brice? Why would he abduct his granddaughter?”

“He wouldn’t. I guess you’re right, Eugene, but this Viper connection, that’s an awfully big coincidence.”

John hadn’t invited Ben to his MIT graduation because of that damned Viper tattoo. He was worried that someone important to his future business career might see it and learn his father had been in the Army and had fought in Vietnam: the prevailing thought back then among professors at elite Northeastern schools was that only Southern crackers, minorities, and losers had gone to Vietnam. He had feared that because his father was a loser, someone might think John Brice was a loser, too. He had never talked about Ben to anyone, not even Elizabeth. He had never told her about that damned tattoo. But she knew Ben Brice was a loser; and that her husband was a loser, too.

Now, looking over at Ben sleeping in the passenger seat as John R. Brice, billionaire, drove a new $53,000 Land Rover loaded with weapons like the freaking U.S. cavalry through the Navajo Indian Reservation in northwest New Mexico, red cliffs looming large in the moonlight, John realized that those professors had been full of shit. As he had been. As his wife was.

Ben Brice was no loser.

Thirteen hundred miles due north, Junior stopped the Blazer in front of a cabin on a mountain in Idaho called Red Ridge. He would give anything for the major to walk out that door and see Patty. She was sleeping in the back seat.

“I got her,” Junior said.

Jacko grunted and disappeared into the dark, heading to his cabin. Junior opened the rear door and leaned inside. He slid his arms under Patty and lifted her. He stepped out of the vehicle.

“I’ll walk,” Patty said in a groggy voice, rubbing her eyes.

Junior gently leaned over until her feet touched the ground. He held onto her lightly to make sure she was stable.

“You awake enough?”

“I think so,” she said. Then she punched him in the nose and took off running into the darkness. Damn, she was fast for a girl. And hit hard, too.

Junior didn’t give chase because she was running straight for Jacko’s cabin. Sure enough, Junior shortly heard a scream. After a moment, Patty appeared again, carried by Jacko like a bag of fertilizer. He dropped her at Junior’s feet.

Junior sighed. “Patty, you’d’ve froze to death before morning. Now, if you run again, I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson you ain’t gonna like. I don’t want to do that, but I will for your own good. This is your home now, Patty, you got to accept that. We’re always gonna be together.”

Patty looked up at Junior.

“In your dreams, mountain boy,” she said.

Kate stirred in bed. She felt someone rustling around beside her. Sam.

“Nanna, I got the creeps again.”

“Another bad dream?”

“Unh-hunh. About Gracie.”

“You got Barney?”

“Yep.”

He wedged the stuffed Barney doll in between them and snuggled in tightly. After a moment, she thought he had fallen asleep, but his little voice broke the silence.

“Nanna, some man’s not gonna take me away too, is he?”

She propped herself up on her elbow and touched his smooth face. “No, Sam. That won’t happen. I promise.”

“Good.”

He closed his little eyes.