Authors: David DeBatto
DeLuca recalled that Major Huston had specifically said Escavedo didn’t have a drinking problem. Perhaps he’d chosen not to
reveal that, the first time DeLuca had asked, but if so, why not?
“To me, it’s a matter of family values,” DeLuca said. “If those people wanted to all go live on an island somewhere, I’d be
the first to buy them a ticket, and if they want to serve their country, that’s fine, too, but if they want to flaunt their
lifestyle in front of my children, that’s a whole different issue.” This was, in fact, entirely the opposite of DeLuca’s actual
personal view, but he wanted to see what Koenig said.
“I’m looking at a picture of my kids right now,” Koenig said, “and I couldn’t agree with you more.”
DeLuca didn’t have to check his notes—he recalled, quite clearly, that General Koenig’s office inside The Mountain did not
contain any family photographs, something he’d found odd at the time. Koenig’s screen saver was a picture of a windswept beach,
and it hadn’t scrolled through a gallery of photographs, the way some computers did. Every computer screen DeLuca had seen
in Iraq had pictures of kids as screen savers. DeLuca had thought it odd that Koenig didn’t have any pictures of his family
in his office. But perhaps Koenig was calling from his office at Peterson.
“How’s the weather there, by the way?” DeLuca asked.
“It was snowing, last I checked, but I’ve been at CMAF since this morning, so I don’t really know,” Koenig said. That answered
that.
“Do you ski, General?” DeLuca asked. Joyce Reznick (who was probably cleaning latrines at a post somewhere in the Aleutians
right now) had said Escavedo had gone skiing with an older man who owned a house. DeLuca was fishing, but the more lines you
had in the water, the more likely you were to catch something.
“Haven’t the time,” Koenig said, clearly growing irritated at the small talk and struggling to remain cordial. Evidently DeLuca’s
good opinion mattered to him, now. It hadn’t before. “We have a house in Aspen, but we never get there.”
“So what do you think happened to Darkstar1?” DeLuca asked. “Or Darkstar2, for that matter?”
“I think it’s dead,” Koenig said. “For the same reason that Darkstar2 went black. Right now we’re looking back at launches
from former Soviet assets. That was where I was going when I told you Escavedo had Russian contacts. Personally it’s my belief
that both D1 and D2 were taken out by Russian ASATs, before they became operational. I don’t know how they knew what to target,
but they had more ASAT capabilities than anyone else, second to us, and plenty of reasons to not want Darkstar to become operational.
You can take all the conspiracy theories I’ve been hearing and shove ’em all—the simplest explanation is usually the correct
one. It’s a fight for the high ground.”
“Are you thinking it was a tactical laser?” DeLuca asked. “‘When we lose a satellite, we look for hosings first, kill vehicles
or kinetics second, and full power directed-energy last.’ Your own words, sir.”
“Probably,” Koenig said.
“We recovered three scraps of paper from a wood stove that Escavedo apparently tried to burn,” DeLuca said. “Three different
subjects. Shijingshan, Qadzi Deh, and Congressman Bob Fowler. Mean anything to you?”
“Fowler is on the House Armed Services Committee,” Koenig said. “What were the other two?”
“Shijingshan is a suburb of Beijing. Qadzi Deh is a glacier on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” DeLuca said.
“Nothing rings a bell,” Koenig said. “Would you like me to look into it?”
“That’s all right,” DeLuca said. “I just wondered if you had any projects regarding any of the above.”
“Negative,” Koenig said.
“What about Vitaly Sergelin?” DeLuca asked. “You think it’s the Russians. Is it possible that he’s connected? Or is he too
busy running his oil company?”
“Vitaly Sergelin is running a lot more than just an oil company,” Koenig said. “It amazes me when people think the KGB somehow
magically disappeared after perestroika. Just how is that supposed to work? You’re the most powerful secret institution in
the Soviet Union, and then after a few sham elections, you’re reduced to nothing? As far as I can tell, all they did was print
new stationery. Sergelin is exactly who I would suspect. He was directing the Soviet ASAT program at the time that everything
fell apart over there. I’m sure any investigations into his recent activities would bear fruit.”
Koenig was again trying to direct DeLuca’s investigation. Why? DeLuca was surer now than he’d been before. Koenig was involved
in some way. The question was, in what, and how?
“I’d appreciate it if you kept me informed,” Koenig said. “Lieutenant Carr will put you through if you call—I’ll leave standing
orders with him to that effect.”
“Will do,” DeLuca said. “By the way, just for your own records, Cheryl Escavedo was not gay. I’m pretty sure of that. Right
now we’re trying to track down who sent her flowers, but we have a number of witnesses who saw her with an older man. I’ll
keep you in the loop, though.”
“Thank you,” General Koenig said. “That would be fine.”
He hung up without saying good-bye.
If this was a chess game, DeLuca wanted Koenig to feel like he was under attack. In a real chess game, DeLuca might have offered
a poisoned pawn, hoping his opponent would take the bait. At the moment, DeLuca understood that he himself was, in this case,
the bait, but he needed to make the threat real and offer something of value if he was going to press his opponent into making
a mistake. Maybe Koenig wasn’t his adversary after all.
But he was certainly acting like one.
DeLuca called the office of Congressman Robert Fowler. He expected to talk to an aide, but when he explained who he was, he
was put on hold for a minute, and then the congressman himself came on the line. DeLuca expressed his surprise.
“I always have a minute for a member of the armed services,” Fowler said in a cheerful hail-fellow-well-met-and-don’t-forget-to-vote-for-me-in-November
sort of way. “If you’re calling with information about the investigation, however, I’d rather you come in in person, if you
can.”
“I wasn’t aware of any investigation,” DeLuca said.
“This isn’t about prisoner abuse, then?” Fowler asked.
“No, it’s not,” DeLuca said, vaguely aware now that Fowler was part of a committee looking into the subject. “Let me cut to
the chase because I know you’re busy. I’m in the middle of an investigation myself and your name came up. Something I thought
you should be aware of, though I’m not at liberty to disclose in full what it’s about. Have you, by any chance, been contacted
by a person named Cheryl Escavedo?”
“Cheryl Escavedo?” Fowler said.
“Sergeant Cheryl Escavedo.”
“Not to my knowledge, but I could ask my staff. Why would you like to know?”
“We found a printout she’d left behind with your name on it, and thought maybe she was going to try to contact you,” DeLuca
said.
“Perhaps she was, but if she was, I’m not sure I’d tell you, without knowing more about why you want to know,” Fowler said.
“Military personnel are free to contact me and to know with certainty that what passes between us will be protected by complete
confidentiality.”
“Well,” DeLuca said, “again, I’m limited as to what I can say, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have been contacting you about
your investigation. Just to put it in context, your name was mentioned along with two other things, places, actually. One
was a suburb of Beijing and the other was a mountain pass in Pakistan. And bad things happened recently in both places. I’m
not saying you necessarily need to take any extra precautions, and we’re way too early along in the investigation to reach
any conclusions, but I just thought, you know, you have a list of three, and bad things happen to two of them, you should
tell the third.”
“Just what are these ‘bad things’ you’re referring to?” Fowler said. “I take it this is my own personal orange alert call,
so I think I need to know what we’re talking about.”
“Well,” DeLuca said, realizing how foolish he was going to sound. “In one, in China, there was apparently an earthquake. The
Pakistan incident was similar.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“You’re calling to warn me about an earthquake?” Fowler said. “Well, Agent DeLuca, I’m planning on taking my family sailing
this weekend. We keep a boat in Cape May, so where we’re going, I don’t think earthquakes are going to be much of a problem.
But thank you for your call.”
“Congressman,” DeLuca said quickly, before Fowler could hang up on him, “I realize how idiotic this sounds, all right? I wish
I could tell you more—if I could, I might not sound quite so much like a man with his head up his ass.”
“I work in Washington, D.C.,” Fowler said. “I’m used to that. To tell you the truth, Agent, I was afraid you were calling
to threaten me, but if you were, you probably wouldn’t have threatened me with earthquakes, because not even the Army can
cause those. The only person I ever knew who could make the earth move was Jerry Garcia, and he’s dead.”
“If I gave you my private number, would you call me if anything unusual happens?” DeLuca said. “I can tell you this much—I’m
on a missing person investigation, and Sergeant Escavedo is the one who’s missing. We’re just trying to figure out what she
might have been thinking before she disappeared.”
“Good enough,” Fowler said. DeLuca gave him the number for his encrypted SATphone and thanked him for his time.
In Juarez, MacKenzie and Vasquez set up shop, starting in the afternoon, in a bar called Club Zorro, Leon Lev’s most recent
acquisition. Nobody there seemed to recognize the name Theresa Davidova. Vasquez made a deal with the bartender and didn’t
dicker the price down when the bartender told him the house wanted fifteen dollars off the top from each transaction. MacKenzie,
under the name Mila Zukova, was dressed as a “sexual service provider,” in black leather pants and a black lace halter top,
accented with a blonde wig and enough makeup to paint a small barn. The customers, who paid Hoolie a hundred dollars up front,
were all DEA agents Wes Vogel sent across the Rio Grande Bridge dressed as sailors and soldiers and sex tourists. MacKenzie
spent an hour with each of them, talking about sports or the military or who their favorites were on
American Idol,
which put them at ease when it was time to make the requisite moans and screams for authenticity’s sake, in case anyone was
listening through the walls (Vasquez had already checked the room for bugs). She helped one man with his daughter’s algebra
homework. Three, she took out into the hall and kissed good-bye, to make it look good in view of the Nana, a round mustachioed
woman who sat in a folding chair at the end of the hall, reading a wrestling magazine. Mack’s “satisfied” customers were asked
only to talk her up on their way out the door. By late afternoon, once word had gotten around that there was a white girl
getting one hundred dollars a throw (twice what the best Mexican whores could command), men other than DEA agents began to
arrive, though Vasquez told them Mila had had a very busy day and was finished for the evening. His attention was piqued when
a hard-looking mono-browed gringo who spoke broken Spanish with a heavy Slavic accent said he wanted to speak to the white
girl. When Hoolie tried to intercede, the man said he wasn’t a customer and pushed his way past, the bartender shooting Hoolie
a look to say, “Don’t fuck with this guy.”
Vasquez caught the man at the top of the stairs, tugging on his coat. The man turned and pointed a finger in Hoolie’s face.
“Touch me again, pimp, and I’ll cut your heart out and feed it to my dog,” he said. “What room is she in?”
“That one,” Hoolie said, pointing with his eyes.
MacKenzie was sitting on the edge of the bed when the man entered, Hoolie right behind him. She looked at the stranger.
“I will do anything except Greek,”
she said in Russian.
“You pay him first.”
“My name is Dushko Lorkovic,”
the man said in Russian, but with a Serbian accent.
“You’re the girl from Suma?”
Mack nodded.
“My boss asked me to invite you to a party, if you were good-looking enough,”
the Serb said.
“Tonight. He’ll pay you a thousand dollars. You’d better go if you want to work in this town.”
“I don’t go anywhere without my boyfriend,”
Mack said.
“Who’s your boss?”
“You know who he is. He owns this place. Why are you here?”
“I want to make adult films. I was told your Leon Lev could help me.”
“Does this idiot know that?”
“He thinks he’s my manager, but once I pay him back, I’m done with him. He’s harmless.”
“Tell him to get lost.”
“Please,”
Mack said.
“He has friends in Los Angeles who know my sister. I just have to pay him back.”
The Serb looked Hoolie over again.
“You can bring him,”
Lorkovic said,
“but wear something nice. And tell him to take a bath.”
He gave her a card from his pocket and wrote her name on the back of it, plus one.
“Give this to the men at the gate and they’ll let you in. I heard you were a dancer. Do you still dance?”
“I can dance,”
she said.
“Then bring your dancing shoes, Mila,”
Lorkovic said.
“What’d he say?” Hoolie said once the Serb had gone. “You were talking about me, weren’t you?”
“We’ve been invited to a party,” Mack said. “And we both speak very highly of you.”
A phone call from DeLuca got Captain Martin, General LeDoux’s aide, to scramble a Predator out of Nellis to overfly Lev’s
ranch for a falcon view. MacKenzie and Vasquez studied the photographs thoroughly to get a sense of the layout of the property.
The UAV would stay in the air, armed with a Hellfire missile, in case firepower was needed on short notice, with a pair of
A-10 “Warthog” gunships circling beyond the horizon to support them. Wes Vogel said he had an INS man who’d been undercover
in Juarez for almost a year who he thought he could get into the party, though it was rather short notice—if he could, the
man would identify himself by using the name of Hoolie’s childhood pet, a black dog named Oso.