William Weber - Turning the Tide

“No question,” John replied. “The trick is to not become paranoid about it. Could be that after it’s built I never need that pod or the cabin we have up north, but I’d rather be prepared than worried about how I might look to my neighbors.”

“And what about the nightmares?” Tom asked. “Have they begun to fade?”

John shook his head, staring at the ground. “No. Those will always be a part of me, I know that now. Sometimes when the pressure gets to be too much, I still wake up in a cold sweat. I guess there’s some part of me that still wishes I could go back and change things. I’ve made mistakes, I won’t lie, and at some point I’ll have to answer for what I did. That I can live with, Doc, but the hardest part will be answering for what I failed to do.”

Oneida. Present.

Returning to town, John felt like he’d reached a new low. The mission had been one of his worst personal failures of the war. Heller, Gardner and Devon, three top-notch men, were dead and it was beginning to look like they’d been sent headfirst into an ambush.

The entire trek home, none of the men had said a word. Each was wrapped up in their own thoughts. What went wrong and who had tried to have them killed? For John, one person kept popping up, someone who had more likely than not never expected them to make it home to voice their suspicions.

Ray Gruber was an integral part of Oneida’s administrative team and a man who’d proven himself time and time again. This entire mission was based on his suggestion, his intelligence. But suspicions weren’t proof and John knew that drawing those kinds of conclusions when emotions were running high led to vigilante justice.

The streets were practically empty as they entered town. John, Moss and Reese exchanged curious looks. Up ahead, the vague outline of a crowd took shape. They seemed to be shouting.

“The heck’s going on?” John asked no one in particular.

Moss unshouldered his M4 and laid it across his lap as they rode down Alberta Street. “Hard to say, boss, but angry mobs are never a good sign.”

“Looks like they’re gathered in front of the jail,” Reese said.

The closer they got, the clearer the crowd’s chant became. “Lynch him,” they were shouting over and over.

“What’s this all about?” John asked a man in overalls who stood stiffly, hands planted on his hips.

“Caught another one of them Chinese spies,” the man told him. “And you won’t guess who it is.”

John bet he did, but let the man tell him anyway.

“The vice mayor,” he said, jabbing an accusing finger at John. “Your right-hand man. I could understand that drifter David Newbury, but Ray Gruber?”

Dismounting, John passed the reins of his horse to Moss and pushed his way through the crowd. Not surprisingly he found the front door to the jail locked and banged three times. Rodriguez answered and John struggled to get in past the clamoring crowd.

“Can you believe those people?” Rodriguez said. “I didn’t see them getting bent out of shape when David was caught.”

“Maybe because to them he was a nobody,” John said. “These people trusted Ray. Saw him every day. Thought he was one of them.”

“Hey, how did the mission go?”

“Not now,” John cut him off. “Bring me to Ray.”

“He’s being held in a cell with two guards. They got him on suicide watch. Your wife and I caught him sending messages to his Chinese contact.”

John looked him right in the eye. “Was he using his radio?”

Rodriguez nodded.

“None of us knew he had one before that last meeting,” John said. “We were all so focused on the intel coming in we didn’t think anything of it.”

The two men made their way upstairs to the holding cell area.

“What does this mean for Newbury?” Rodriguez asked.

“Frankly, I’m not sure. I was never a hundred percent convinced he fit the profile of a top-level Chinese spy,” John said. “More importantly, he was never privy to any high-level meetings. He spent most of his time sick in the hospital with Dr. Coffee, for goodness’ sake, biding his time till he risked heading back out to search for his family.”

“So his story about going to the bathroom in the woods…”

“Might have been the truth. He did have cholera at one point, don’t forget. And no matter how hard we tried, we never were able to extract a confession or any actionable intelligence from the man. By the end of this, we may owe him an apology.”

“He was waterboarded, Colonel.”

John stopped, his hands balled into fists. “Don’t you think that I know that? We didn’t set out to torture an innocent man, it just happened. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we won’t know for sure until we speak with Ray.”

They reached a long corridor packed with military personnel. Among them were General Brooks and Colonel Higgs, who were about to head into the dark room to watch the interrogation through the two-way mirror. Suddenly, a seemingly inconsequential piece of the puzzle took on a whole new meaning. John remembered how vehemently Ray had objected to Huan’s torture. At the time John had attributed it to the man’s kind and somewhat naive disposition. But now he could see Ray had been trying to protect Huan, perhaps on orders from his Chinese handler.

“You’re back,” Brooks said, about to head inside.

“Yes, and I heard about Ray. Let me be the first one to speak with him.”

“John, I don’t think that’s such a great—”

“He trusts me, General. I hired him for the job. If I don’t get anywhere then by all means send in the hounds.”

Brooks glanced over at Higgs, who raised an eyebrow.

“First we’ll need to fill you in on what we know.”

“So I can speak with him?”

“You can,” Brooks replied. “But you’ll have five minutes.”

Following a quick debriefing, John took a deep breath and entered the interrogation room. Inside, Ray Gruber was still in his pajamas, his hands cuffed to the arms of his chair.

The cuffs made a metallic clank as he struggled to raise himself up. “John, there’s been a terrible mistake—”

“Save the theatrics, Ray. I know everything. I’m not here to hear you plead your innocence. We’re already past that point. First thing I wanna know is why.”

Ray’s eyes fell and the seconds ticked away.

“I want a lawyer.”

John laughed. “There aren’t any lawyers anymore. Probably the best thing to come from the social breakdown. It’s just you and me, Ray. You, me and the truth.”

“We aren’t going to win this war, John,” Ray said flatly. “No matter how much I tried to lie to myself, the writing was on the wall. I was just honest enough to plan ahead.”

“For the Communist takeover?”

“You’re what they used to call a survivalist, John. You know, do whatever you must to stay alive. Well, what I did was no different.”

John leaned back in his own chair. “I always took you for a naive optimist, not a pessimist and especially not a traitor.”

“Guess it depends which end of the barrel you’re looking down. I know what goes on in those camps and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be dressed in rags with a number tattooed on my arm.”

“And what about now? You’re a tired old man in a pair of pajamas. How’d that plan work out for you, Ray?” John folded his arms. “What did they promise you?”

Ray stared down at his hands. “The one thing you couldn’t. A comfortable life once this mess was over and done with. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before, John. Was that so wrong? Right now we’re nothing but a wounded animal that needs to be put out of its misery. It was the only humane thing to do.”