Extraordinary Retribution (10 page)

They were headed to Knoxville, following TN-71 through the mountains. After scouting several local hospitals around the Gatlinburg area, they had set off to the bigger city in hopes of striking gold at one of the larger trauma centers. Sara Houston seemed sure of herself.

“This could turn into a wild goose chase,” Lopez muttered in frustration.

Houston parried immediately. “We won’t let that happen. If we strike out in Knoxville, we go to Plan B.”

“CIA headquarters.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that.

“That’s right,” she said. Even Houston paused as she seemed to consider the implications. “Our offices, Francisco. Something is buried there. Something that will explain this madness.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Things don’t happen without a cause! Multiple killings and coverups are
always
the tip of the iceberg.”

Lopez threw up his hands in frustration. “But you were
there
for years working next to him. If you didn’t know, how can you find out now?”

“I was a good soldier, Francisco. I did my job, and I did it well. I didn’t gossip. I ignored rumors. I believed in serving my country, not in dirtying it up.” Lopez saw a pained look on her face and decided not to press the argument.

She changed the subject. “Your bishop was cooperative?”

“Barely. This did not go down well. I’m a local priest with a parish. I am faculty at a Catholic school. Running off suddenly with poor explanations about it being related to my brother’s death raised a lot of eyebrows.” Lopez sighed. “If they weren’t going to close the school anyway, it wouldn’t have flown.”

Houston nodded. “Well, soon we’ll either have hit a wall, or discovered something that will make you take a sabbatical. We’ll find the answers, either at CIA or, just maybe, in Knoxville.”

“The hospitals.” Lopez was still skeptical.

She turned to face him, taking her eyes off the road and sending a new round of adrenaline through the priest. “Miguel was a hell of an agent. A bit of a legend at Langley, actually.” She returned her gaze ahead. “Judging from your description of the cabin, he put up one hell of a fight before he was killed. Whoever did this, they weren’t supermen. Somebody, likely several people, got hurt. I bet at least one of them seriously. They would have needed a hospital.”

“Why? Don’t these guys have some sort of secret lair or the like? Special hideouts? Paid docs who don’t talk?”

Houston laughed. It was a pleasant sound, free from the tension and cynicism of so many of her words. “Francisco, these are dirty players, so far underground that they live with worms. They clearly have resources, but not enough to staff trauma care in any old backwoods skiing resort in the South.”

“It makes about as much sense as everything else I’ve seen going on.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re totally green in all this.
Jesus
, you’re a damn
priest
. But you’re learning. I’m afraid you’re going to be learning a lot of harsh lessons, Francisco.”

“Whatever I have to do to find out what happened to my brother.”

She glanced briefly into his eyes. “We’ll check all the local emergency-room records in Knoxville, focusing on the day of Miguel’s death. There aren’t too many grenade wounds that come through the Tennessee ERs each month. Knoxville is about all they’d have left. If they needed help, they went there. And we’ll find them.”

17

“T
his is
highly
irregular.”

They sat in a pleasant if mundane office at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, confronted with the frowning face of a middle-level VP. VP of what, Lopez had lost track. The bureaucracy even in a Tennessee hospital was awe-inspiring.

It seemed that they had hardly paused for breath since Gatlinburg. Lopez wasn’t used to this. His rhythms were the Catholic school, the parish council, and religious services. He felt he had been strapped into a roller coaster. The weight in his stomach was his sense that it was only just now nearing the top of the first hill.

After the mad drive to Knoxville, they pulled up to the redbrick-and-glass trauma center, raised several sets of eyebrows flashing government ID, and demanded to see patient records in a murder investigation. One after the other, they had been transferred to higher-ranked hospital staff. The bureaucracy was all a blur to Lopez, and he shifted uneasily in his chair as he watched Houston scowl at the hospital administrator. The CIA agent recovered quickly and morphed her face into a pleasant smile.

“Ma’am,” began Houston, “we’re sorry to take so much of your time, but this is an extremely urgent matter. There have been criminal actions in the state of Tennessee that involve government employees.” She paused for effect. “
Murders
.”

The administrator seemed nonplused. “Yes, yes. That’s what the others said, too.”
Others?
Lopez and Houston exchanged glances. “You know, it’s always a murder or a mafia boss or some damned matter of national security and you Feds barge in here and think that you have access to any old thing that you want. We have other
important
business, you know.”

The priest leaned forward. “You said others were asking similar questions?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “FBI, CIA, KPD, whatever, I don’t know.” She looked the priest up and down. “Seems maybe Vatican too, now. No wonder all our tax money is wasted. Don’t you clowns ever talk to each other?”

Houston probed further. “This does seem wasteful, I know, but there are hundreds of investigative branches in US law enforcement, not to mention governmental agencies. This case is so important that it might have brought in unrelated groups. I’m sorry for any repetition, but a man has been murdered and we need to make sure nothing was missed. Can you tell me what they asked and what you told them?”

The woman sat in the center of a wrap-around desk. She spun around in her plush office chair, stopped when she faced a counter behind her desk, and grabbed a manila folder. She dropped it sharply on the surface in front of Lopez and Houston as she rotated back. Her tone was increasingly irritated.

“Look, it’s all in here, what we actually
do
have on this guy. The man came in with massive trauma injuries.
Shrapnel
if you can believe it—
combat injuries
. Former army surgeon was called in to have a look. There was no ID on him. He refused to talk to the police.” She shook her head. “He was here in the ICU, critically wounded, monitored around the clock, and then, one day,
poof!
He was gone. Stole a bunch of supplies, hot-wired a truck in the parking lot. Damndest thing we ever saw. Police came again and saw the file, and more of you Feds were here the other day. Maybe I should put this whole thing online and you all can just let me get back to my work.”

Houston began, “If we can just get a look—”

The woman waved them off. “First door on your right’s a conference room. Have a look in there and drop this back off with my secretary.”

“Thank you very much! We’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“Sure, honey, until the next bozo shows up.” She spun around and took a call, turning her back on them.

The two made their way to the small conference room and closed the door. The air inside was stale, and there was dust on the table. A small window overlooking the forested hills surrounding the hospital let in some light at the far end of the space, but the room was dim. Father Lopez flicked on the light, and they sat together to look over the file.

The administrator had summarized accurately; the details were stark on the page. The same day Miguel Lopez had been murdered, a John Doe had entered the ER with extensive injuries, pulling up delirious in a car, bleeding profusely, handing the medics a list of information: a summary of his wounds, his allergies to medicine, blood type. Everything the hospital staff might need to know except his name or any other personal information. The man described in the file was a combination of detailed data and gaping mystery.

“Shrapnel?” asked Lopez. “Could that be from the grenades?”

“Not much else,” said Houston. “She didn’t mention anyone else with him. How did he get here on his own?”

“She said he drove in.”

“In this condition? By himself? Why would his team allow that? How could he drive across the mountains from Gatlinburg so badly wounded?”

“Maybe they got him as far as the hospital and let him get the rest of the way. Hiding out?”

“Yeah, maybe.” She shook her head. “So many holes in this. Nothing adds up. But this is it, Francisco. No way this is a coincidence. This man was injured fighting Miguel. We found one of them.”

Lopez sighed, throwing up his hands. “And lost him.”

She ignored him, flipping through the pages. “There is some weird shit here.”

Lopez leaned closer, trying to decipher the medical jargon. There were the usual physical stats—height, weight, appearance. The staff described a physically imposing man of moderate height, bulked like a martial arts champion. Caucasian, blond hair, blue eyes. There was a description of injuries, treatment and patient response. A lot of doctor talk. Lopez paused, confused by the next section. “Skin discoloration?”

Houston nodded. “Seems they weren’t sure what to make of it. They ruled out burns or any diseases. Look, here, underlined with a question mark:
pharmacological
.”

“What do drugs have to do with skin?”

The CIA agent stared off into space for a moment, her eyes narrowing in focus. “Anything about his eyes?” She flipped through the pages. “Here—
contacts
!”

Her exclamation caught him off guard. “Contacts?” Lopez felt like a slow pupil.

Houston read from the page. “Patient was prepped for surgery. Clothes cut from his body, contacts removed.” She flipped back and forth intensely through the file. “Damn, no more on the contacts.”

“Sara, what is it? What’s so important about contact lenses?”

“You can use them for purposes other than eyesight, Francisco.”

Lopez thought about this. “You mean decorative? Colored lenses?”

“Exactly.”

“Why would this lunatic want fashion contact lenses?”

“I’m not sure, Francisco.” She began snapping photos of the pages with her smartphone camera, careful to make sure no staff looked in through the window in the door. “But I think our killer might be a chameleon.”

“
Chameleon?”

“Yes, hiding his appearance, changing it depending on his mission. It’s rare, and it’s reserved for ultra-elite ciphers. It usually goes with plastic surgery and serious, black-ops-type work. James Bond material. Honestly, stuff only
rumored
from anything I’ve seen at the Agency.”

That word again.
Black ops
. “This killer can’t be governmental!”

Houston closed the folder and put her phone away. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but now, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know anyone else who would have the resources to take things this far.” She stood up, and Lopez followed her to the door, once again reeling from the revelations that arose from this search. “Miguel’s killer was here, Francisco, and he’s something very nasty. I knew this was bad, but I’m getting a chill about where this is headed. We need to get up to CIA
now
. Something is
really
being buried. I’m convinced after seeing this.”

Lopez nodded. “Yes. So am I. And it seems that some others are as well.”

The agent nodded. “You heard the woman. Inquiries were already made. I doubt they were who she thought they were.”

Lopez exhaled. “We aren’t the only ones looking.”

18

H
e stood at the fence and called the old soldier’s name. The second day. The desert winds were blowing harshly from the south, the sand stinging exposed skin. The ground this far out from the major centers was cracked and nearly bone dry. The heat pounded down from an evil eye staring cruelly on them.

He repeated the call. The door of the rundown ex-army cabin banged open, and a stocky form approached the barbed wire cautiously. Even in his sixties, the man was imposing, his sagging muscles still considerable, the vasculature thick and prominent. He wore a tank top, exposing his mottled and dark skin, burnt from years under the sun. Scars from battles pocked his form. He limped slightly on the left side.

“You again?”

“Train me!”

The old solider shook his head in disbelief, and pulled on the faded American baseball cap shielding his eyes. “For God’s sake, boy! Why me?”

“You are the best. I have searched.”

“You’re not army. You’re not even Israeli.”

“You are hardly Israeli.”

The old man waved his hand at the youth. “Why should I train you?”

The dust swirled around the old man’s home, forming mini-tornados. The dark-skinned boy leaned into the fence, grasping the links almost desperately in his hands. He looked deeply into the soldier’s eyes.

“For justice!”

There were crickets.

For some unquantifiable time, that is all he knew. That droning, rhythmic chirping, swirling, pounding his consciousness, rising over him like water.

He swam. Swam in a sea of insect sounds, the patterns forming shapes in his mind, colors that danced. The colors slowly bled across his vision, fading to white like a fog.

He opened his eyes. There was only blurred light and the sense of crusted glue sticking his eyelids together. He raised his arm to rub his eyes.
Pain.
The pain kicked him suddenly to a higher level of awareness as he inhaled sharply. The cabin walls came into focus.

In the mountains
. He began to remember. Remember the hell of the last few days, and remember that this was not the first time he had awakened so disoriented.
Still feverish
. He summoned a burst of strength and pushed up from his chest to turn slightly to the side. The pain from his back nearly made him cry out.