War Lord

One

I stood in the doorway of the room I shared with two other agents at the Office of Special Investigations, Andrews Air Force Base in DC, both of whom were currently away working cases. No one had moved in to claim the space I’d vacated, so it was a time capsule of sorts. My chair was pushed up to the desk, which was spotlessly clean and tidy — so clean and tidy, in fact, that it looked like someone else’s desk. On the wall was one of those gray felt-covered pin boards seen all around here. Typically, it was covered with notes pinned to other notes, several layers of paper: Post-its, bills of lading, consignment notes, printed-out emails, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs and identikits. On this board, though, none of the papers was current or even relevant, all of them referring to cases long since concluded, favorably or otherwise. The board reminded me of a photo I saw in Time of the anonymous sheets of paper lying in a dust-blown Manhattan avenue the day the Towers came down.

Noticing a photo frame on my spotless desk, I wondered how it had found its way there. It showed my uncle and a few of his buddies standing around a 105mm battery in ’Nam in ’71, shirts off, runt-like chests on display, shell casings scattered on the mud all around them. There was nothing else of a personal nature in the office, except for a half-size promotional Redskins football on the floor. A stack of mail bound with a thick red elastic band was rolled beside the computer keyboard, just begging to be left unattended for another month or two. In front of the keyboard was a small stack of loose papers, a Post-it note with the words Do these first stuck on the top sheet.

I sighed. The hardest thing about leaving is coming back, even when the place you went to had folks shooting at you or trying to put you in the slammer. I pulled out the chair and sat. The sooner I could get a skin of mold growing on a half-empty mug of coffee or two the more comfortable I’d feel about sitting here.

I glanced at the stack of papers. The top one was a handwritten note on the commander’s personal stationery, BRIGADIER GENERAL JAMES WYNNGATE embossed in black at the top of the page. In fountain pen he’d written, Glad to have you back in the fold, Vin. The place would have been too quiet without you, going forward. And congratulations!

Hmm… the boss liked it quiet, so maybe he wasn’t altogether glad. And the congratulations bit — congrats for what, exactly? Beating the Article 128 charge — assault with a deadly weapon occasioning grievous bodily harm? That was last week’s news. And surely it wasn’t because I’d reached number twelve in People magazine’s list of the ‘World’s Sexiest People’, either, an achievement that had more to do with the PR machine of a certain celebrity whose ass I’d helped pull out of the fire than any genuine sexiness on my account.

I pushed the general’s message to the side and moved on. Second note of the day answered one of the questions raised by the first. Here I was looking at a letter from the Secretary of the Air Force, officially informing me that I’d won the Silver Star for bravery under fire in Afghanistan, and that the medal would be awarded in a month’s time.

I put that letter aside too. Next on the stack was a third note from Wynngate, a copy of an all-staff email. The subject line read, Guaranteeing positive outcomes during personal interactions going forward. This, in fact, was far more like the sort of bonhomie I’d come to expect from the boss. The guy was a stickler for political correctness, applying it like a tourniquet around any ‘personal interactions’ here at Andrews, in the hope that they’d all turn gangrenous and drop off. General Wynngate was the master of bureau-babble, the mindless double-speak of the desk-bound management set. Mostly, no one had a clue what the guy was on about, which meant that he could never be accused of getting it wrong — probably an asset when you spent most of your time buddying up to folks on the Hill, which he did. Wynngate’s sentences were as long as the human genome and just as complicated. It also struck me that he managed to work the phrase ‘going forward’ into just about everything. I reread the email: the general required everyone at OSI to do the accompanying test to determine each individual’s strengths and weakness in the compatibility department, or something. I flicked over to the test, which was attached, and caught the words ‘Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment’.

‘You done it yet?’ Lieutenant Colonel Wayne asked, leaning on the doorjamb behind me.

I swung around. Arlen Wayne. I guess I’d call the guy my wingman. He was also my supervisor. A year ago we were both majors, but he’d since climbed a rung higher than me. And his reward was that he got to push even more paper around a desk. These days he was running a large chunk of the operation here at OSI HQ, Andrews Air Force Base. He was older than me by a couple of years, his brown hair starting to lighten at the temples and a few extra pounds gathering around his gut. Nothing a bottle of Just For Men and a week in the sack with a nymphomaniac wouldn’t fix. ‘Done what?’ I asked him.

‘The personality test.’

‘Yep, scored a hundred percent.’

‘It’s not that kind of test, Vin. You don’t score anything. There are no wrong answers.’

‘Doesn’t that mean there are no right answers? And if there are no right or wrong answers, wouldn’t it also follow that said test is a complete waste of time?’

Arlen came in and took a chair belonging to one of the absent agents. ‘We’ve all taken it. It’s gonna tell the Man what pigeonhole you fit into.’

‘Going forward,’ I said.

‘Going forward, what?’

‘Forget it.’

‘Y’know, Vin, I think you need to absquatulate.’

‘Is that something you do one-handed?’

‘No. Absquatulate,’ he said. ‘According to Google, absquatulate is the most ridiculous word in the English language. I looked it up. It means to run away, and it usually also means to take someone with you.’

‘You feeling okay, bud?’

‘Think about it at least. You’re owed a few weeks. Afghanistan Command has released you back to OSI. You were off active duty for quite a while, pending the court martial, and your place at Security Ops there has been filled since you left. I know you’ll be disappointed to hear that.’

‘Heartbroken,’ I said, mentally pumping my fist in the air at this news. I was over Afghanistan and I was thrilled to hear that the fucked-up joint was over me. I tapped the photo of my uncle. ‘Where’d you find this?’

‘In one of your drawers after you left. Thought it might add a little welcome-home warmth to the place,’ he said, glancing around at the mostly bare walls.

‘What’s a type indicator?’ I asked.

‘You heard of Myers and Briggs?’

‘Nope.’

‘They were psychologists — a mother — daughter team. They developed a psychometric test to identify various personality types, based on theories proposed by psychiatrist Carl Jung. He—’

‘Can you see my eyes glazing over?’

‘You asked. The test is supposed to work out how you process the world around you. Myers and Briggs believed that there were four opposite pairs of psychological differences in people, or sixteen different psychological types — type indicators.’

‘You’re sounding like Wynngate.’

Arlen grinned. ‘Maybe just take the test and we’ll see what comes out.’

‘Which pigeonhole do you belong in?’

‘The general thinks that we’ll all get on better and work more efficiently — you know, “enhance team dynamics” — if we understand each other’s psychological differences.’

‘Nuts.’

‘It’s called the modern workplace.’

‘Again, what did the test reveal about you?’ I asked.

‘That I’m popular, easygoing and know how to get the best out of people,’ said Arlen.

‘So basically: nice guy, but a little sly.’

‘It’s going on the bottom of all my emails.’

‘What is?’

‘My type indicators are ENTP — extraversion, intuition, thinking, perception. The general wants everyone to put their type indicators on their emails so that the receiver knows what kind of person the sender is. Though in your case I think the word is already out.’

‘Does this test have to be done now?’

‘No hurry. Before you leave for the day will do.’

‘Right.’ I put it aside.

‘Seriously, why don’t you just take it easy for a couple of days?’ said Arlen. ‘You’ve been through a lot with the court martial.’

In fact, the wringer was what I’d just been through, and mostly because I was guilty of exactly what they said I’d done, which was pistol-whipping a Department of Defense contractor by the name of Beau Lockhart at a US training base in Rwanda. Worse, I’d entertained twenty witnesses while doing it. But the asshole deserved it, and luckily for me some photographic evidence of the contractor’s involvement in murder and human trafficking came to light just in time to save me from doing eight years in Leavenworth with guys who get hard-ons looking at a hair-clogged drain hole. ‘Which reminds me, how’s the investigation into Lockhart coming along?’

‘The prosecution’s case is rock-solid. He’ll go away for several lifetimes,’ said Arlen, leaning down to pick up the Redskins football on the floor. He tossed it over. I caught it, lobbed it back.

‘What about Charles White? Anything new on him?’ White was Lockhart’s gun-smuggling partner, providing the weapons for the bloodbath going on in a nasty little part of the eastern Congo. Arlen had debriefed me on the guy shortly after the conclusion of my court martial.

‘Nothing I haven’t already told you,’ Arlen said, firing the ball back at me.

What he’d told me was that Charles White was former Marine Recon, honorably discharged three years ago with the rank of sergeant. He was then employed by FN Herstal and lasted six months there, after which he fell off the radar for a time. Interpol believed he was involved in the illegal weapons trade, which I could confirm. Arlen also told me that White had plenty of contacts within the US military, was believed to now be living in Rio de Janeiro and was moving around on false passports. ‘What about the M16s with their numbers removed that we recovered from the Congo? Any news on them?’

‘Other than they were manufactured by FN Herstal? Nothing, except that it suggests a possible connection to White, given that FN once employed him. As for the numbers, professionals removed them and we still don’t even know what batch the rifles came from or what the manufacturing date was. For all we know they were pilfered right off the assembly line.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘Right now, I’m not sure what I think. Some solid evidence would be handy.’

‘Or even a lead, by the sound of things.’ I tossed him the Redskins ball overhand, imparting a spin to it. Arlen caught it, and spun it right back. ‘So what’s the next move?’

‘There isn’t one,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’re off the case.’

I dropped the ball. ‘Who says?’

‘The DoD.’

‘Why?’

‘This one’s too big for OSI — it goes across service lines and happened overseas.’

‘When were you told to stand down?’

‘An hour ago.’

‘So who’s on it?’

‘CIA.’

‘You’re kidding,’ I said.

‘I wish I was.’

The Company shot itself in the foot so often it had no toes left. But aside from that, picking up the threads of that case was the only work I was interested in doing. ‘So what now?’

‘For you? We’ve got a couple of deserters from Lackland AFB to chase down. We think they’re involved in the drug trade, possibly with a Mexican cartel. Thought you might like to take it on. Mexico… beaches…’

I flicked him the ball and sucked a little air between my front teeth.

Arlen shrugged at the lack of traction he seemed to be getting. ‘We haven’t had a chance to talk about the report. You’ve read it, right? You want to talk about it?’

‘I read it. And let’s skip it.’

‘Okay…’

The report Arlen was referring to concerned the death of the late Special Agent Anna Masters. Masters and I had been close — partners and, well, partners. She died in a shootout. There was a lot of lead flying around at the time and some of it was mine. I’d gone a ways down the road thinking it was my bullet that killed her, but a forensic report just completed a week ago — many months after her death — confirmed otherwise. Whether it was my bullet or not, I’d always carry the guilt. She was gone. Nothing could change that.

‘Vin, it’s been eight months. Time to move on.’

I didn’t respond. Arlen juggled the ball back and forth between his hands. ‘You don’t want to go to Mexico on a case? Your call, I can accept that. How about instead I make it easy and fill out a 988 for you? All you’d have to do is sign it.’

I nodded.

‘Take some time, buddy,’ he continued. ‘You need it, and you deserve it.’

The 988, or more correctly the AFF 988, was the request leave/authorization form. I couldn’t skip Dodge unless it was properly filled out and countersigned by my supervisor, which happened to be Lieutenant Colonel Arlen Wayne here. ‘All right, you win. Put me down for a week or two,’ I said.

‘There you go… So, what you gonna do?’

Before she was killed, Anna had said she was headed to her sister’s scuba-diving business in the West Indies. She’d told me she was leaving the Air Force to get her diving instructor’s license and work on her all-over tan. The memory of that conversation came with a picture of her bronze body lying in the sunshine, naked. ‘Maybe I’ll go to the West Indies — get in some diving,’ I said.

‘The West Indies. That’s not so far. Maybe I could come for a few days, stitch it onto a weekend.’

‘Satchquatch.’

‘Absquatulate.’

‘Yeah, you need a holiday too,’ I told him. ‘Give all those paper cuts time to heal.’

Arlen managed a smile, but only just. ‘Why don’t I come over to your place later? We can talk about it and maybe go out for a drink.’ He let the ball drop to the floor and tapped it into the corner with his toe. ‘A new bar’s opened over your way. They get a young crowd. Maybe we could go there and cut a couple out of the herd. What do you say, Hopalong?’

‘Yee hah,’ I said.

‘Call you later,’ he replied, leaving the room.

Hmm. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of some time off. I folded the Myers-Briggs test and dropped it in the file, the round one on the floor under my desk.

‘Vin, before you go…’

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Arlen’s head around the corner of the door.

‘The test. Do it.’

That’s the trouble when you know someone well — they know you well right back. I gave a weary sigh, retrieved the forms from the trash, filled out the fields for my name and service details and then scanned the questions, all of which required a simple yes or no answer — questions like ‘You feel involved watching TV soaps’, ‘You tend to be unbiased even if this might endanger your relationships with people’, ‘You spend your leisure time actively socializing with a group of people, attending parties and shopping’, ‘You tend to sympathize with other people’, and so forth. Seriously, Wynngate had to be fucking kidding.