Mark Gimenez - The Abduction

The major stops, pivots, and two steps later he is towering over the lieutenant, glaring down at him, his blue eyes burning with anger.

“Out here in the bush, I’m the law! I make the rules! And I say we kill VC! We kill livestock that feeds VC! We burn huts that shelter VC! We kill civilians that aid VC! Those are my rules of engagement, Lieutenant!”

The major blows out a breath and calms. He squats in front of his newest disciple, the anger subsided now, and for a moment Ben thinks the major is going to console him, perhaps offer a personal word of encouragement to a young Army soldier unversed in fighting a war in a moral vacuum; instead the major puts the barrel of his. 45 to Ben’s head and says in a steady voice: “Soldier, you ever question what I do out here again, I’ll put a bullet through your head and let the VC make soup out of you, too. I guarangoddamntee it.”

The major stands and walks away through smoke and fire and blowing ashes. Ben raises his hand to wipe the blood from his face and sees that his hand is trembling.

Ben felt proud when he had learned the major had selected him to fill a vacancy on SOG team Viper. The major was thirty-seven and a living legend in the Special Forces. Ben Brice was twenty-two and naive. “You’re a goddamn warrior now, Brice,” the major said after Ben got his Viper tattoo in Saigon. “One of us.” And he was proud when they ambushed that NVA convoy heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, bearing supplies that would aid the enemy and arms that would kill Americans.

Today, he is not proud.

Lieutenant Ben Brice slowly stands and looks down upon the china doll, her arms and legs splayed grotesquely, her vacant eyes staring back at him, the final moment of her life frozen on her face-a face that will haunt him the rest of his nights. He turns and walks away, leaving the china doll and his soul to rot in the rich black soil of the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam.

God has a plan for Ben Brice, or so his mother had always said and so he had always believed, right up until that dark night in Vietnam. Each evening now, thirty-eight years after the fact, Ben would sit in his rocking chair on the porch of the small cabin he had built with his own hands, watch the sun set over Taos, and wonder what God’s plan had been and why it had gone so wrong. Now, staring at the stars above his son’s mansion outside Dallas, the vague outline of an answer was taking shape in his mind.

FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux gave a little salute to the uniformed guard wearing a Gracie button as the gates parted in front of his sedan. Briarwyck Farms was the American Dream, an upscale community entered through black iron gates, surrounded by a ten-foot-tall brick wall, and guarded 24/7 by a private security force, a place where all the homes cost at least $1 million, all the parents were successful, and all the children were safe.

But these walls and gates hadn’t kept Gracie safe.

It was Monday morning-sixty hours post-abduction-and Devereaux was stumped. He had a command post equipped with phones, faxes, and computers running RapidStart, the FBI’s sophisticated information management system capable of filing, indexing, comparing, and tracking thousands of leads simultaneously-he just didn’t have any leads.

The girl had vanished.

Devereaux stopped at an intersection in front of the elementary school. A crossing guard holding up a stop sign escorted several children across the street; over her long-sleeve shirt the guard was wearing a white tee shirt with Gracie’s image on the back under HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Below her image was CALL 1-800-THE LOST.

The guard waved him on. He drove down the next block and turned right. The uniformed officers stationed at the end of Magnolia Lane recognized Devereaux’s car and were already removing the wooden barricades blocking the street as he turned. When he did, he saw that the media circus had gone national. The networks had arrived.

“Shit. She’s gonna do it.”

“Mrs. Brice, please don’t do this. It’ll bring out every kook in the country. It won’t help. It’s a waiting game.”

“I’m through waiting.”

Elizabeth left Agent Devereaux standing in the kitchen, obviously frustrated with a victim’s mother who refused to play her designated role. Well, too damn bad. The victim had been missing for sixty-one hours now and this mother was through waiting-for a ransom call to come, for the abductor to be arrested, for a dog to track down her daughter’s dead body, for God to save her. This mother wanted her daughter alive or the abductor dead. Or both. So this mother was taking matters into her own hands.

She was dressed for court; her hair was done and her makeup concealed the bags under her eyes. She would not be the pitiful grieving mother today, looking like hell, voice quivering, tears running down her face and makeup giving chase, begging a pervert on national TV to spare her child’s life. Today she would be a tough-broad lawyer negotiating a deal, just like any other day and any other deal: you have something I want; I have something you want. Let’s make a deal, asshole.

She proceeded down the gallery; the familiar adrenaline rush energized her to the coming performance, the same as when she stepped into the courtroom for the start of a trial. All heads turned her way when she entered the library, which now resembled a television studio. The three networks were represented with cameras and behind-the-scenes personnel; the national morning show hosts in New York would conduct the interviews; and the interviews would run live. Those were Elizabeth’s terms.

“Five minutes, Mrs. Brice!” a little twerp wearing a headset shouted while holding up five fingers just in case she was deaf.

She sat next to John in a straight chair positioned in front of the bookshelves, a backdrop that gave the impression more of a law office than a home. Elizabeth had planned this event down to the last detail, the same as if she were about to bargain with a prosecutor for her client’s freedom; instead, she was about to bargain with a pervert for her daughter’s life. And only she would do the bargaining. She had given her husband the same explicit instructions she gave her guilty clients before a plea-bargain negotiation: Keep your fucking mouth shut!

John was dressed in black penny loafers, white socks, jeans, a yellow shirt, and a goofy blue tie with cartoon characters, his most solemn tie; at least he had tried to do something with his hair. He was staring off into space. She leaned into him and said, “Lose the tie.” While he obediently removed the tie, she plucked the tiny wads of toilet paper stuck to his face where he had cut himself shaving-and she saw the evidence of her attack two days ago. Remorse again tried to sneak into her thoughts; it got a foot in the door this time.

Elizabeth sighed. She always hated herself afterward-after the rage had romped. After she had lashed out at John. He didn’t deserve it. But then, he never deserved it. She had cursed him too many times, but she had never hit him. This time the rage had crossed the line… and it scared her. She stared at her husband and wondered if he hated her half as much as she hated herself.

Playing on the color monitor in John’s mind was his image of the abductor-coarse, thick, hairy, dirty, mean, and ugly-a man who, coincidentally, looked just like the Army bullies who had terrorized him as a boy.

He thought of the bullies again, Luther Ray in particular, wondering where his redneck life had led to-no doubt a double-wide mobile home in rural Alabama. John had always pictured Luther Ray sitting in his recliner under a Confederate flag on the wall and looking forward to a big day during which he would drive his piece-of-shit pickup into town to collect unemployment (having been laid off from the local chicken processing plant) and on the way back home he would engage in some curb shopping (checking out rich people’s trash for stuff that might fit the double-wide’s decor). Luther Ray would be hung over from the previous night’s meeting of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter when he opened his morning paper and read that John Brice was a billionaire.