All the Wrong Moves (6 page)

“What have you got for us?”

Ha! Like I was going to show my stuff after Comb-Over slammed his notebook in my face?

I let them all wait while I took a lick of salt, slammed back my shot and bit into the lime wedge. The tart, tangy combination jolted through my entire system and went a long way toward compensating for a night spent with coyotes and decaying bodies.

“You first,” I countered when the jolt subsided. “Tell me what you’ve found out since you left the test site.”

Mitchell lifted a brow at my arbitrary command but complied. “We ID’ed the second set of remains.”

“How?” I didn’t really want to know but curiosity got the better of me. “There couldn’t have been enough of him left to run his prints. Unless the guy was carrying an ID . . .”

“He was carrying several, all fake. But he’d very obligingly marked himself in law enforcement data systems worldwide by tattooing his right ass cheek. The coroner was able to piece together enough skin for us to run him through NCIC and IDENT-IAFIS.”

“Ident-a-face?” I smirked. “Apropos, wouldn’t you say?”

“IDENT-I-A-F-I-S,” Mitchell spelled out with exaggerated patience. “The tattoo popped for one Juan Sandoval. He had outstanding warrants for one count each of armed robbery, aggravated assault and attempted murder, with three counts of transporting illegal aliens into the U.S.”

“Nice guy.”

“Almost as nice as his traveling companion.”

I certainly agreed with that after Googling up Dead Guy Number One.

“We also got a preliminary report on the bullets. Appears they were M118LRs, chambered in a 7.62mm.”

“Translation?”

“They’re special rounds manufactured primarily for military sharpshooters. The markings on one round indicate they might be part of a batch purchased for use by USMC snipers. We won’t know for sure until we get the final ballistic report.”

Uh-oh! I’m not usually real good at connecting the dots but these were too big and fat even for me to miss. Three U.S. Marines dead in the shoot-out down in Colombia. The prime suspect in that ambush killed by a marine sniper bullet. Hard to stretch that into mere coincidence.

“There’s a USMC detachment at Fort Bliss,” Comb-Over put in. “They conduct surface-to-air missile training for navy and marine personnel. Stingers and Avengers.”

I fidgeted a little in my chair but didn’t say anything. No need to advertise the fact that I’d enjoyed a
really
intense weekend with one of the instructors at the Surface-to-Air Weapons Officer Course. The captain and I parted company soon afterward but the memories lingered—right up until I was jerked back into the present by Mitch’s low murmur.

“The snipers of the sky.”

I shot him a curious look. Was he remembering his navy days? Had he been trained to fire one of those shoulder-held Stingers?

Seeming to retreat inside himself for a moment, he dropped his glance to his Dr Pepper can. My glance followed his down and lingered on his hand. It was strong and weathered like the rest of him. It was also ringless.

That didn’t mean squat, of course. Lots of married men don’t wear wedding rings. My jerk of an ex, for example. Still, it said a lot for my state of my mind after a close encounter with persons of the dead variety that I hadn’t paid much attention to Agent Mitchell’s bare left hand until this moment.

“I’ll contact the lieutenant colonel who commands the marine detachment,” Comb-Over said as he angled away from me and wedged his notebook open a minuscule three or four inches to make a note.

Geesh! This was getting ridiculous. You’d think I was sporting a hammer and sickle on my uniform instead of a subdued, desert-toned Velcro patch that identified me as one of the Good Guys.

For a moment or two I seriously contemplated handing over the manila envelope with the copies of the digitized boot print and retiring to the bar and Pancho’s more genial company. I might have done just that if I hadn’t caught Mitch’s eye-roll and Sheriff Alexander’s barely smothered grunt. The fact that they didn’t like this smarmy little CID jerk, either, kept me in place.

When I did present the print, everyone went nuts over its clarity. So much so that both the FBI and CID wanted full access to all data downloaded from EEEK.

I wasn’t precisely sure about Harrison Robotics’s proprietary rights or DARPA’s policy vis-à-vis handing over test data but I was kinda out-gunned here. I resorted to a stall to give me time to discuss the matter with All Bent and my supervisor.

“My guys are processing the data as we speak. We’re talking hundreds of millions of gigabytes. I’ll make it available as soon as it’s downloaded.”

When the cop party broke up a short time later, I decided on one more shot of tequila. I took it at the bar and ordered a bowl of Pancho’s green chili stew as a chaser.

Now, don’t go all preachy and judgmental on me. I know my limit. I won’t tell you what it is, but suffice it to say that with a family history like mine it’s a sure bet I don’t overindulge in hard liquor. Right now, though, I wasn’t particularly eager to head back to CHU-ville and another night punctuated by Pen’s equine whistles.

I was nursing the tequila when the two Border Patrol agents delayed their departure to join me at the bar for a few moments. I’d already had a taste of Jeff Mitchell’s bluntness. Still, the look he lasered in my direction caught me as unprepared as his question.

“What do you know about the Marine Corps detachment on Fort Bliss?”

“The detachment? Nada.”

Interesting how many emotions an elevated eyebrow can convey. Particularly when it hikes up over a penetrating, cut-the-crap stare.

“I saw your reaction when the subject came up.”

“What reaction?”

“You squirreled on your chair like someone just hauled into hard secondary for questioning.”

Hard secondary being the containment area at border crossings where suspicious characters are taken for further questioning. Having made several jaunts across the Rio Grande to sample the ubiquitous delights of Juárez, I’m a little surprised I have yet to visit the holding pen. I’ve seen a few folks hauled off, though, and squirrel they did.

“What was that about, Samantha?”

“Nothing subversive,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “I went out with one of instructors from the school a few months back.”

Agent Mitchell, it turned out, was more interested in my connections than my currently nonexistent love life. “You’ve got an in at the school? Someone who might talk to you?” he persisted, those gold-green eyes drilling into me.

“Well . . .”

“Call him. Set up a meeting asap.”

Now, I’m only a brown bar. That’s second lieutenant, in civilian speak. Just about every commissioned officer in every branch of the military outranks me. Including, I was surprised to learn, the uniformed officers of the Coast Guard, the Public Health Service and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

I’ve heard of the Coast Guard, of course, and know the PHS runs the Indian Clinic in El Paso. Don’t quiz me on NOAA, though. I think they’re hurricane hunters or space cadets or something.

The point I’m laboring to make here is that the U.S. Border Patrol is
nowhere
in my chain of command. Even if it was, I’ve already confessed I haven’t completely mastered the art of taking orders. So of course I bristled and came within a breath of telling Agent Mitchell to go take a flying leap. He spiked my guns with a terse addendum.

“Make the meeting off-post.”

I deflated like the NASDAQ after another sharp spike in crude oil prices.

“Why off-post? And why,” I wanted to know, “the end run around Mr. Comb-Over?”

“Who?”

I jerked my chin toward the now empty back room. “Special Agent Hurst.”

Tess Garcia smothered a sound suspiciously close to a chuckle. Mitchell merely shrugged.

“I’ve worked with Andy Hurst before. Or tried to. He tends to view inter-governmental cooperation as a one-way street.”

“Yeah, I got that impression.”

I nursed my grudge against Hurst and his notebook until Mitchell abandoned Tess and me for the men’s room. Swinging around on my barstool, I followed his progress.

I’ll say this for the man. He exhibits all the personality of a warthog at times but he does have one fine butt. When I swung back around, Tess Garcia was watching me with speculative eyes.

“What?” I asked, feigning an air of innocence that wouldn’t fool a five-year-old, much less a highly trained and heavily armed Border Patrol agent.

She tapped an unpolished fingernail against her beer bottle, obviously weighing how much to share with an outsider. I was about to check my uniform for a hammer and sickle again when she finally responded.

“You want to be careful there. Mitch hit a rough patch a few years ago. He’s still working his way back.”

I’ve seen what rough patches can do to folks. Particularly the dysfunctional whiners and winos I call family. I was giving Agent Mitchell credit for dragging himself out of whatever pit he’d fallen into when I flipped up my cell phone and scrolled through the contacts.

I’d thought about deleting USMC Captain Danny Jordan from my call list after our one weekend together. He’s hot.
Extremely
hot. But he’s way too gung ho for a non-lifer like me. I mean, he has his skivies laundered and pressed!

Yo! This is Dan Jordan. Leave a message. Beeeeeeeep.

“Dan-O, this is Samantha Spade. I need to talk to you. Give me a call when you get this . . .”

“Heya, Sweet Cheeks. Long time no see.”

Or speak. Or touch. Or swallow each other’s tongues.

“What’s up?”

“Can you break away tomorrow? I’d like to talk to you.”

A wary note crept into his voice. “What about?”

I’d heard that tone before. From my ex, when I wanted to discuss our relationship.

“It’s not about us,” I informed him.

“Good to know.” His relief was palpable, which says a lot about Dan the Man. “So what’s this about?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. How about lunch? Twelve o’clock at the Smokehouse.”

“Can do. See you then.”

I flipped the cell phone shut just as Mitchell returned.

“We’re set,” I informed him. “Noon tomorrow, at the Smokehouse.”

“Good. Pick me up at the Ysleta Border Patrol Station. Eleven-thirty.”

“You know,” I said with some feeling, “it might be nice if you
asked
sometime instead of just dictating.”

A look of genuine confusion crossed his face. He glanced at Tess, who offered only a bland smile. The light dawned eventually, and he repeated the order/request with exaggerated politeness.

“Pick me up at the Ysleta Station. Eleven-thirty. Please.”

I gave him my most brilliant smile. “Will do.”

Blithely unaware I had just put the lives of my entire team on the line, I settled in to enjoy my green chili stew and shoot the breeze with Pancho.

CHAPTER FIVE

I drove back to the test site with the late August twilight coming on fast. The Franklin Mountains were a jagged purple smudge in the distance. Night-blooming cacti were getting ready to burst into showy white blossoms on either side of the two-lane road.

By this time of day, most of the roadkill had been either flattened or picked clean by buzzards so I didn’t have to dodge too many bloated armadillos. I kept a wary eye out for mule deer, though. I’d missed one by a twitch of his tail a few months back.

When I arrived at the site, the temperature had plummeted from a sole-searing one hundred eight to ninety-six or seven. My internal thermometer rocketed up again, however, when I saw EEEK still outside, pretty much where he’d been unloaded this morning.

Scowling, I marched to the only CHU with lights showing. A blast of refrigerated air hit me when I opened the door to our D-fac. ’Scuse me. That’s dining facility, which in this case includes a microwave, a coffeemaker, a fridge, a table and four chairs. Crowded into the other half of the CHU was a sofa, a couple of chairs and a TV with a satellite dish. Oh, yeah, and the Universal Gym.

Sergeant Cassidy was on the bench, clanking away. Pen had her shoulders hunched and earbuds stuffed in her ears while she listened to yet another incomprehensible treatise on supernovas or the mating habits of blowfish or something.

Brian Balboa and Dennis O’Reilly sat at the table, the remains of a microwaved pizza between them and their laptops open. Rocky, I didn’t doubt, was studying the specs on the next item we were supposed to test. Our little twitch of an engineer is as dedicated as he is gaseous. O’Reilly was deep into a computer chess match. I saw an animated knight put a king in check and shut the door with an irritated thud.

“Hey, guys. What’s the idea of leaving EEEK out where the gophers can nibble on his circuitry?”

O’Reilly kept his eyes glued to his laptop screen. Cassidy clanked away. Pen hadn’t even heard me come in. It was left to Rocky to explain.

“We discussed the matter and everyone agreed. Scraping human remains off test equipment isn’t included in our job descriptions.”

“It’s not in mine, either.” I huffed, although my scant months as a team leader had taught me that argument was totally bogus. Being in charge has its perks, most of which I’ve yet to experience. It also has a definite downside. Whatever idiot coined the cliché about the buck stopping here obviously never worked with my team.

“Where’s All Bent?” I asked in a desperate attempt to fob EEEK off on the Harrison Robotics rep.

“He packed up and left right after you took off for Dry Springs.”

I guess I should have expected that. The man had hit the ground like a dead buffalo.

Still . . .

“Benson reminded us that DARPA assumed full responsibility for EEEK when you signed for him,” O’Reilly put in without looking up from his chess match. “He’s your baby until you complete the required tests, oh Queen of Quack Inventors.”

I knew that.

Still . . .

I resorted to bribery and offered comp time for any civilian who volunteered for clean-up duty. When that pathetic stratagem didn’t work, I fell back on the old standby of whining. My team remained unmoved.