Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

‘Ma’am, you can’t interfere,’ Henderson, the Ranger sergeant, said. When Emma ignored him, he muttered, ‘Goddammit all’ under his breath, then said to his men, ‘Get your weapons.’

Emma had been with the four-man Ranger unit for three weeks now, and when the unit was first assembled, the men had been told she was in charge. They hadn’t been told her rank or what organization she belonged to, but the bird colonel who briefed them told them she was the man . The soldiers figured that the tall blond gal was from one of the spy shops and it was probably some kinda political thing that the army had to go along with, but they had a hard time believing that they were going into the badlands with a young good-looking woman leading their squad. They’d follow her orders, of course — they were Rangers — but what they really expected was that Emma would listen to their sergeant and do whatever he said. It didn’t take them long to figure out that she was bright enough to ask for the sergeant’s input, but in the end she was the one who made the decisions. Emma had, even then, all those indefinable qualities of leadership that inspire confidence and obedience and loyalty, and after only a short period the Rangers were accustomed to following her lead. But now she was doing something that the soldiers knew was wrong — or at least wrong from the perspective of their mission.

Emma strode up to the chieftain. He raised his haunches off the rim of the well and looked down at her; he was six-foot-six. Emma took the veil off so he could see her face — she hated that damn veil — and while looking directly at the chieftain, she said to her interpreter, ‘Tell him I want him to stop this.’

She saw the rage forming in the chieftain’s face; women didn’t speak to him that way. He looked as if he might strike Emma, but he restrained himself. He said something the interpreter translated as ‘This is a tribal matter. Go back to your tent, woman.’

Emma suspected that if she threatened not to pay him or give him the missiles, he’d agree and then stone the woman as soon as the Americans left. She also knew she had to come up with some solution that would allow the chieftain to save face. He’d kill Emma and her men before he’d be humiliated by her in front of his tribe.

Emma looked over her shoulder. The man who had been speaking in the center of the square had stopped. The condemned woman had slumped to the ground. The villagers were all looking over at the chieftain and Emma. Most of the villagers at this point, even the women, held stones in their hands.

‘Tell him,’ Emma said to her interpreter, ‘that the American army wants that woman. Tell him we need a … a cook.’

Henderson, who was now standing next to Emma, said, ‘Ma’am, you can’t do this.’

‘Tell him,’ Emma said, ignoring Henderson, looking directly into the chieftain’s eyes, ‘that we’ll pay him a thousand dollars for the woman.’

The chieftain looked at Emma, then over at his people, then back at Emma again. ‘The woman has a daughter,’ the chieftain said.

‘Tell him we’ll train the daughter to be a cook too. We’ll pay five hundred for her.’

‘Jesus Christ, ma’am,’ Henderson said.

When they returned to their base camp with the woman and her daughter, the bird colonel in charge chewed out Emma as only a bird colonel can, then asked her what in the holy hell they were supposed to do with an Afghani woman and her daughter. Thanks to the Red Cross and to people Emma contacted back in the States, a year later the woman and her daughter were in America. The woman never acclimated to her new country and, oddly enough, seemed to resent Emma for what she had done. The daughter, however, thrived and was now the assistant manager of a bank in Maryland. The daughter would tell Anisa Aziz that Emma could be trusted.

But Anisa didn’t call. The next day Emma returned to Washington, D.C.

DeMarco made the mistake of telling Mahoney that he was going to Long Island to talk to the air marshal who had killed Youseff Khalid. It was a mistake because Mahoney said, ‘Well, hell, since you’re going up north anyway, stop by and see Flynn and have dinner with Father Mike.’

This meant DeMarco would now have to leave D.C. at the crack of dawn, see the air marshal in New York, then catch another plane to Boston — and have to endure the heightened security at three airports instead of two. After he met with Flynn and had dinner with the priest, he’d then have to spend the night in Boston because the last shuttle would have left for the day, and he would have to catch another early A.M. flight back to Washington with a hangover so bad his hair would hurt.

But, he had to admit, he was looking forward to dinner with Father Mike.

DeMarco had called Orin Blunt’s home the night before, and when a man answered the phone he’d hung up. He wasn’t going to ask the air marshal if it was okay to come up and see him. He’d just knock on his door.

And knock he did. The man who answered the door was holding a magazine in his hand and wearing a faded blue denim shirt, khaki pants, and boat shoes. He was about DeMarco’s height but didn’t have DeMarco’s bulk. He had gray hair cut close to his scalp, small features, and the kind of eyes and face that poker players pray for; they gave away nothing.

When DeMarco showed Blunt his ID and said he wanted to talk to him about the shooting on the shuttle, Blunt stared impassively for a second and then invited him into his home. He didn’t offer DeMarco anything to drink; he just pointed him at a dining room table and took a seat across from him.

‘Why are you here?’ Blunt said. ‘The TSA review board has already given me a clean bill on the shooting.’

Blunt had placed the magazine he’d been holding on the table next to him. It looked to DeMarco like a catalog for power boats.

‘Thinking about buying a boat?’ DeMarco said.

Blunt just stared at DeMarco for a moment and then said again, ‘Why are you here?’

‘I want to know how you happened to be on the same plane as Youseff Khalid that morning.’

‘I wasn’t on the same plane as him,’ Blunt said. ‘ He was on the same plane as me. That’s the flight I was assigned to that day, and if things had gone the way they normally do, I would have caught a flight out of Reagan to Chicago, and then from Chicago back to New York.’

‘I’ve got calls out to people who will tell me if you requested that flight or if you traded flights with someone,’ DeMarco said. And that wasn’t a lie. DeMarco had asked his new buddy Jerry Hansen, at Homeland Security, to see if Blunt had had himself assigned to Youseff’s flight but Hansen hadn’t gotten back to him. But what he really wanted was to see Blunt’s reaction to his threat — and there was none.

Blunt just said, ‘That’s good.’

DeMarco figured that maybe somebody had killed Rollie Patterson to keep him from talking because Rollie seemed like the type who would cave the minute a cop placed him in the hot seat. Orin Blunt, on the other hand, wouldn’t talk if you put his nuts in a vice.

‘I understand you’re on leave and thinking about retiring,’ DeMarco said.

Blunt nodded his head. ‘Shooting that guy really shook me up. I don’t want to ever have to do something like that again.’

‘Yeah,’ DeMarco said. ‘I can tell you’ve really been traumatized.’

There were many individuals, businesses, and organizations that contributed to Mahoney — and most of these contributors Mahoney was happy, even proud to name. But there were some who filled the speaker’s war chest that either Mahoney or the contributor wished to keep secret.