Jack Mars - Situation Room

“What is this place?” Luke said into his headset.

The chopper pilot was busy working his controls, but not too busy to talk. “I’ve heard it called Camp Enduring Freedom,” he said. “People around here tend to call it Camp Nowhere. It’s one of ours. Federal Emergency Management Agency. You won’t find it on any maps. I’d guess it doesn’t officially have a name.”

“Does it exist?” Luke said.

The chopper was low now, the grim gray buildings of the camp rising up all around them. Luke noticed glass reinforced by steel wires on the closest buildings.

The pilot shook his head. “Does what exist? This is uninhabited wilderness. There’s nothing out here as far as I know.”

A signalman in a yellow vest and holding bright orange wands stood to the side of the helipad and guided the chopper in. The pilot set the bird down perfectly in the middle of the pad. He killed the engine and the rotors immediately began to slow. There was a whine as they powered down.

“When you see that Chinaman,” the pilot said, “give him a couple of knocks for me.”

“We don’t do that kind of thing,” Luke said.

The pilot turned around and smiled. “Sure you don’t. Son, I fly people in and out of places like this all the time. I know who does what just by looking, believe me. One glance at you guys and I know they’ve decided to turn up the heat a few notches.”

He, Swann, and Ed exited the chopper, heads ducked low. A man was already waiting on the pad to greet them. He wore a gray business suit and a blue tie. His hair was blown about by the slowing blades of the helicopter. The fabric of his suit rippled from it. His black shoes were polished to a bright sheen. He looked as if he had just stepped off a commuter train in Manhattan. He was about as out of place as a man could possibly be.

As Luke came closer, the man’s face took form. He appeared ageless – not old, not young, some indeterminate place in between. He extended a hand. Luke shook it.

“Agent Stone? I’m Pete Winn. They told me the President sent you. Thanks for coming down to see us.”

“Thanks, Pete. Please call me Luke.”

Luke, Ed, and Swann followed Pete Winn away from the chopper and toward a corrugated aluminum hut at the far side of the pad. Even the chopper pad was surrounded by barbed wire fencing. The only way in or out of the helipad was through that building. The doors to the building were operated by a seeing-eye device. They opened automatically as the men approached.

“What is this place?” Luke said.

“This?” Winn said. “You mean the camp?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, well, I’ll give you the thirty-second elevator pitch. It’s basically a detention camp. We’ve got just over two hundred and fifty detainees at the moment, including more than seventy children. Mostly, they’re illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America whose lives would be at risk from the drug cartels or criminal gangs if they were sent back home. They haven’t been granted asylum, so they stay here with their families until such time as the Immigration and Naturalization Service can decide what to do with them. Their immigration status is officially undetermined. Meanwhile, since this place is invisible, the gangs have no idea where they are.”

They passed through the building quickly. It was basically a hangout for flight controllers, helipad signalers, and pilots. There were a few desks and chairs, some radio and video monitoring equipment, a radar screen, a coffee maker, and an old box of stale donuts on a table.

“So they sit here endlessly?” Swann said.

“Well, endlessly is a long time,” Winn said. “The family that’s spent the most time with us has been here seven years.”

Winn must have seen the looks on their faces.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Really. All the children go to school five days a week. The school is right here on the grounds. There are enrichment activities, including two first-run movies each weekend, shown in both English and Spanish. There’s soccer and basketball, and the adults are able to take language classes and job skills training, including training with master carpenters we bring in here.”

“Sounds great,” Swann said. “You guys mind if I spend my vacation here?”

“You might be surprised,” Winn said. “People like it here. It’s a lot better than going home and getting murdered.”

A black SUV waited for them outside the hut. As the car drove through the camp, they passed another fence topped with looping razor wire. A handful of men sat on benches on the other side of the fence. Four or five of them were white men. A couple of them were black. They all wore bright yellow jumpsuits. They stared through the fence at the passing car.

“Those guys don’t look like Mexicans,” Ed Newsam said.

Pete Winn’s face began to change. Earlier it had been friendly, maybe even a touch nervous to meet Luke and his team. Now it seemed almost dismissive.

“No, they don’t,” he said. “We’ve got some home-growns in here, too.”

“Are they hiding out from the cartels?” Swann said.

Winn stared straight ahead. “Gentlemen, I’m sure there are aspects of your work that you aren’t at liberty to discuss. The same holds true for me.”

After a few minutes they had traveled to the far side of the camp from the helipad and administration buildings. The car stopped. There was no one around – no prisoners, no workers, no one at all. A small cabin sat by itself on a desultory dirt lot.

The men stepped out. The lot was barren, hard-packed earth. Any sense of camp activity, or even life itself, was far away from here.

Pete Winn handed Luke a key ring. There was only one key on it. Winn’s face was hard now. His eyes were steely and cold. His demeanor had completed its drastic change from the uncertain functionary who had greeted them on the helicopter pad, to whatever it was now.

“The existence of this cabin is classified. Officially, it doesn’t exist, nor does this prisoner. Your visit here does not exist. The Chinese government has made no inquiries, official or backdoor, into the whereabouts of a man named Li Quiangguo. My understanding is the Chinese have acted like they have nothing to hide or to be concerned about, and have even offered assistance in finding the source of the hack into the dam operating system.”

He gestured with his head toward the cabin.

“The walls of the cabin are soundproof. The key opens an equipment cabinet in the back room. If you feel you need equipment to facilitate your interrogation, you may find what you’re looking for in that cabinet.”

Luke nodded, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t like the assumption these people all seemed to make that he had been called in here to torture the prisoner.

Had he tortured people before? He supposed he had, depending on the definition of that word. But no one had ever called him into a situation with the idea that he was going to torture a suspect. If they did, they’d be pretty foolish – there were people far more versed at it than Luke. When he had done it in the past, it was on the fly and he was improvising, almost always because a subject had critical information and Luke needed that information now.

Pete Winn went on, but now his manner was more relaxed, and his words were mundane.

“If you need anything, lunch, beer, dinner, or you want the car to return you to the helipad, just pick up the telephone in the cabin and dial zero. We’ll send you what you need. We can put you up on the base for the night if you like, and provide any kind of toiletries or personal items. Soap, shampoo, shavers – we have all that stuff. We can also get you a change of clothes, within reason.”

“Thank you,” Luke said.