* * *
Bealle walked in front of me. Gallo behind, his gun pressed into my back. I held the bag tight to my chest. For some reason they didn’t try to take it, at least not yet.
We stepped through the front door and the wind hit like a wall of ice. The sweat on my forehead evaporated and gave me a slight chill.
They led me down L Street to an empty parking lot. We moved to the middle of the dirt and gravel lot, stopping outside the range of the street lights.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Gallo said.
“What’s the gun for then?”
“Our protection.”
I said nothing and kept the bag secure in my arms.
“We aren’t too keen on taking you on again, especially after what you’ve been through.”
“How’d you know I’d be here?”
“We have sources,” Bealle said.
“Conners?”
“No. I don’t know any Conners.”
“Me either,” Gallo said. “Let’s go someplace we can sit down and talk.”
I wondered if that was for their protection as well.
We walked through the streets of Washington, D.C. until we found a twenty-four hour diner. Gallo asked for the booth in the corner by the window. He sat against the wall. I sat with my back to the restaurant and Bealle squeezed in next to me. I placed the bag between my left leg and the window.
A brown haired waitress came to our table. I ordered coffee. Gallo and Bealle ordered water.
“What do you know, Jack?” Gallo asked.
I shrugged. “Not much. I know that you guys framed me for the murder of that Iraqi family—”
“That wasn’t us, Jack.” Gallo placed his elbows on the table. He leaned forward. “Martinez was pissed. He probably still is. You made him look bad and then kicked his ass. He’s a hothead. But it’s not like him to go back, murder a family and then frame you.”
“What were we doing there that night?” I asked. “Were we there to kill the man?”
Gallo glanced at Bealle and nodded.
“Yes,” Bealle said. “If he didn’t give up the information he was to be terminated.”
“What about the woman?”
“No, that wasn’t part of it.”
“Martinez took that too far,” Gallo said. “That’s something we agree on. But, you know, there are no rules, man. We’re hunting out there and we need to get the information and neutralize the threat before it gets too far.”
“And that’s where you screwed up, Jack,” Bealle said. “Repeatedly you’ve gotten in our way. Not just us, but other teams.”
“It’s because I can’t work like that. I’m not some security detail. For eight years I’ve worked on these teams and always been involved. Now we go to Iraq after the attacks and I’m standing in doorways and providing the muscle. Hell with that.”
I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest and looked out the window at drunken people pouring out of a bar. I checked my watch and saw that it was now two a.m.
Gallo took a moment and responded. “It’s not just you. Other teams in the co-op are having this issue as well.”
I hiked my shoulders and held out my hands in a ‘who-cares?’ gesture.
“What else do you know?” Gallo asked.
“I know that half the people who come in contact with me end up dead. Stick around and you might skew that ratio even further.”
Gallo smiled.
“I know that somehow they tracked me. I figured they used the cell phone and got rid of it. Still, Abbot was killed.” I locked eyes with Gallo. “They murdered him and left me alone. So tell me, what the hell is going on here?”
Gallo took a drink of water and leaned back. “There were six teams. You know that, you were there with us. Six teams, a dozen Marines.” He turned and looked at the window at the crowd of people passing by, laughing and talking with each other. “Four are dead, six are in prison on base and you and Logan are on the run.”
The gravity of the situation hit home. I opened my mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
“You see where this is going?”
“What are they in prison for?”
“Returning to the scene of an interrogation and murdering any Iraqis there.”
I felt sick. “Why didn’t—why didn’t Abbot tell me this?” My mind raced as the world closed in. “He was about to. He had to make a call for my next contact, but he was going to tell me this before I left.”
Gallo shrugged and shook his head.
“What did you tell them when they asked about the family?” I asked.
“They never did,” Bealle said. “At least, they never asked us. Who knows if they asked Martinez?”
“Where is Martinez?”
“We haven’t seen him since that night. Word is he took leave and came back…”
“Here,” I said. “He’s in D.C.”
Gallo nodded and continued. “We never filed a complaint, signed a statement, nothing against you or Logan. And the other teams we’ve spoken with said the same. But…”
“But?” I hung on his words and watched as his face twisted in thought.
“There was always a team that didn’t have, uh, Marines attached. Six CIA agents, that’s it. I don’t mean us. Martinez and five agents.”
I knew where this was heading.
“We never worked with Martinez until a few months ago.”
“When they reorganized the teams,” I said.
Gallo nodded and continued. “Well, can you guess who took over the other five teams?”
“I’m guessing the other five men who worked on the CIA only team.” I said.
“Yup,” Bealle said.
I turned in the seat and leaned back against the glass so I could see both of them. I didn’t care who was outside. If someone was going to take me out, let them do it.
“Someone is trying to take apart the program then,” I said.
Both men nodded.
“That’s what we think,” Gallo said.
“Any ideas who?”
“We’ve been trying to determine that. Doing our own investigation. We can’t find anyone who knows. It’s coming from high up, whether in our agency or outside of it, it’s high up.”
I thought about it for a second before responding. “So why not just terminate the program? Send us back to the Marines to finish our careers behind a desk and merge your teams together. That would make more sense, right?”
“Absolutely,” Gallo said. “Why wouldn’t they do that? That’s what we can’t figure out.”
“Because someone else high up is pushing to keep the program going.”
Gallo shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Another question, then. So we’re saying that someone wanted us out of the way. Any ideas why?”
“So we can act however they want us to. There were too many incidents like yours where a Marine got in the way.”
“You say that like we’re some damn choir boys.”
Both men laughed.
“It also makes me question what they were going to do once we were out of the way.”
Gallo nodded. “Yeah, I wonder too. I think I have an answer, but I don’t want to believe it.”
I held out my hands. “Might as well.”
Gallo opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t.
Bealle said, “I think you know where he’s going with that, Jack. Let’s not go down that road. Right now we just want to put a stop to what’s going on.”
“What do you care?”
“We might not agree with the new direction. And if that’s the case, we might be terminated also.”
We said nothing for five minutes. The three of us sat in silence. I went over the conversation, making an extra mental note of the most important parts. I hoped that whatever was in the folder in the black bag could shed some light on what they said.
Gallo slid out of his seat and stood in front of the table. “Jack, we’re going to l
eave you for now.”
Bealle placed a piece of paper in front of me. “Those are our numbers. Call in the morning and we’ll meet up. Give you some time to absorb this. Think it over. Maybe something will click.”
With that, they left. I got up and switched seats so my back was against the wall, giving me a view of the diner. I watched Bealle and Gallo leave, keeping my eye on them until they turned out of sight. I had to shake my head as I looked around the diner. How had I missed so many people entering?
When the waitress came by, I ordered another cup of coffee. A few minutes later she returned and set the coffee down in front of me. I declined when she asked if I needed anything else. I watched her walk back to the wait station, and then I pulled the black bag onto my lap and unzipped it. I slid the manila folder out of the bag and set it on the table. My thumb and forefinger wrapped around the outer corner of the folder. I took a deep breath and opened it.
I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but my initial reaction was disappointment. There were just a few papers inside and nothing else. I turned the papers over and read the first line.
Then I read it again.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud, garnering more than a few looks from the resident bar-goers in my presence.
There, on the first line of the first document was the name Robert Marlowe, Deputy Secretary of Defense, a man who had a vested interest in the situation in Iraq for sure.