The First Casualty

36

Jason slowed the rented Ford to exit I-20. He had picked the car up at Midland International Airport, an hour and twenty-five minutes northeast. He had arrived there by an unremarkable and indistinguishable series of airports from San Juan to Miami to Dallas. A dawn-to-dark day of surly airline staff, tasteless airline food, and schedules far more hopeful than accurate. Contemporary air travel might be efficient, but it was anything but enjoyable.

He noted he was on South Cedar Street. The downtown could have been any one of thousands across the United States: one- and two-story storefronts with the usual tenants. Connie’s Cuts and Curls: If your hair doesn’t become you, you should be coming to us. Chat and Chew: Texas breakfast $5.95 starting at 5:30. Pecos Feed & Seed.

There was also the usual empty windows induced by the Walmart he had passed on the way into town.

Following the signs, he made his way to a two-story brick building, a former hotel and now the site of the West of the Pecos Museum. At this hour, the parking lot was empty except for a gritty Dodge Ram truck under the security lights. It could have been black, blue, or dark green. Hard to tell under its coat of dust.

Jason stopped just before the parking lot’s entrance and blinked his headlights once, counted to three and did it again. The truck came to life, its modified engine rumbling as headlights came on as though it were opening its eyes. Jason waited for it to pass him before pulling in behind.

Within a few minutes, the outskirts of Pecos were gone. Although darkness reigned outside the cones of their headlights, Jason got the impression there was no living soul within miles of the Ford and the truck, only the occasional ball of tumbleweed rolling across the road like an escaping child’s toy. More to keep awake than for entertainment, he turned on the radio. His first sound was a high decibel plea to come to Jesus and, on the way, send a few dollars to the Cornerstone Church of San Antonio. A twist of the dial filled the car with the adenoidal twang of a man wronged by his woman. Jason switched the radio off.

What had he expected in West Texas, the London Symphony Orchestra?

Jason’s inability to sleep on airplanes was catching up with him. The steady drone of tires on asphalt and the lack of anything of visual interest were tugging at his eyelids like lead weights.

This morning seemed like a week ago. He and Maria had met the charter, a single turbo-charged engine Piper Meridian with STOL capabilities to handle Saint Barts’ less than generous runway. The four-person, pressurized, club-seating cabin had been quiet, too quiet. Maria had occupied herself with a women’s magazine, a type Jason had never seen her read. After one or two efforts at conversation met with brief and frosty replies, Jason concluded that his participation in last night’s fracas was suspected, if not proven. It was almost a relief when they parted in San Juan with a kiss that might have been shared by siblings rather than lovers. She took an American flight to New York to change planes and head back to Indonesia by routing that made Jason’s head swim. An hour later, his Delta flight departed for Miami and the subsequent transfers that had brought him to Texas.

The truck up ahead was signaling for a right turn. Only seconds before Jason’s Ford left the paved surface could he see the faint trace of twin tracks in the dirt. He had seen no sign or other indication of where to make the turn.

The truck was in the belly of a cloud of dust, its taillights only marginally visible. Dirt and pebbles scratched at Jason’s windshield as though seeking admission. An occasional impact from below noted this path was better suited to a high-riding vehicle than a normal sedan.

After several minutes, the truck stopped. Jason could see its headlights reflecting from a gate in a fence that must have been fifteen feet high topped with razor wire. Although too far away to read, the lightning bolts and skull-and-crossbones on the adjacent sign made the posted and keep out notices redundant. In case a potential intruder still didn’t get the message, surveillance cameras moved back and forth atop the gate posts. This was not some ranch fence erected as deterrent to straying cattle.

Somehow, the name over the gate seemed more ironic than informative: peace and plenty ranch. Jason knew this place represented neither.

Jason got his first view of the truck’s occupant as he stood beside the open gate, motioning Jason through. Tall, with a broad-brimmed ten-gallon pulled low over his forehead. Leather vest and faded jeans stuffed into cowboy boots. All that was missing between this man and a B-grade western film was a six-shooter in a low-slung holster.

Jason waited for the man to climb back in the truck and lead the way. Minutes later, the two vehicles topped a slight rise. Below was a collection of single-story buildings that could have been bunkhouses from the same B-grade western. What no western, B-grade or otherwise, boasted was the mile-long runway Jason knew was on no aeronautical chart, or the collection of limousines that filled what would have been a real ranch’s coral but here was a cement skid pad. In the widely scattered lights, the buildings, the cars, everything took on an ephemeral, almost ghostlike appearance.

But this was not a real ranch, nor, for that matter, did it pretend to be, despite the rustic appearance given to the casual observer, had one been allowed within a half mile of the place. It was a school of sorts, a place of learning things taught in no university. It was where the world’s most skilled bodyguards came to perfect their craft. Its alumni included members of the security staff of the house of Saud, Bahrain, and a number of the other Emirates, as well as several countries where coups and assassinations played a significant role in the political process. From time to time, the U.S. Treasury Department contracted to send aspirants to the Secret Service’s presidential detail there for training superior to their own. The CIA also sent an occasional honor graduate of The Farm, its own facility, there, although to what purpose was never made clear.

“He’s in the laboratory,” Jason’s escort said from outside the car. “And he’s expecting you.”

Jason didn’t reply that, had he not been expected, he would never have gotten there.

Instead, he got out of the Ford, noting the air had taken a decidedly chilly turn. He could see his breath as he asked, “Which building is that? They all look alike to me.”

“The one with no number.”

Jason squinted, unable in the dark to see numbers on any of the structures, and turned to ask the man to point it out for him, but he was gone, disappeared into the night. Only the sound of the truck’s ignition proved he had been here at all.

Jason started down the slope, planting each foot with deliberation. This was not the time to suffer a debilitating fall. He yelped in surprise at an explosion of motion literally under his feet. Chagrinned at how easily he had been spooked, he listened to a buzz of wingbeats fading into the night. He had disturbed some prairie chicken’s slumber. Oh well, be glad it wasn’t a rattlesnake.

He was nearly startled into another exclamation when a voice came out of the dark. “Goddam, Artiste, you’re the only person I know can wander around open country and make more noise than a punk rocker playing bagpipes! Louder than a pair of skeletons getting it on on a tin roof! You been in hostile territory, you’d be KIA.”

A quick glance told Jason the speaker had somehow left the buildings and come up behind him without a sound. “Didn’t know I was in hostile territory,” Jason replied mildly. “How goes it, Chief?”

The shadow in front of him came closer. A tall man, long white hair in a braid. A hard, chiseled face that would have been at home on a buffalo nickel. And with good reason: James Whitefoot Andrews, Lieutenant Commander, USN (Ret.) was full-blooded Cheyenne. He traced his ancestry to Chief Black Kettle, who, unsuccessful in making peace with the white man through no fault of his own, was massacred by Custer at the Indians’ camp along the Washita River, along with dozens of women, children, and the elderly.

Fortunately, Lieutenant Commander Andrews, or Chief, as he preferred to be called, held no grudges.

Andrews extended a hand which Jason took. “It goes well, Artiste.” He started down the rest of the slope. “C’mon down to my laboratory, and I’ll get you a decent cup of coffee. I doubt you had one on the plane.”

Chief was either clairvoyant or had recently flown commercially.