Soft Targets (4 page)

Irene sat alone in the rectory’s living room for the better part of a half hour. She heard Dom on the telephone in the kitchen, and while she couldn’t make out the words, she clearly heard the urgency in his tone. She heard her name mentioned once, and she heard what sounded like a defense of her status as an FBI agent. Finally, she heard the receiver being set into its cradle, and then . . . nothing. She’d expected Dom to return with a status report on whatever he’d been negotiating, but instead, she got only an extended stay in the empty living room.

What was he doing, anyway? The mysterious questions, followed by the long silence, were unnerving. If Dom had a solution, she wanted to hear it. If he didn’t, then she wanted to hear that, too.

When the doorbell finally rang, she jumped. It was the standard ding-dong sound, but it was so out of context that she nearly drew down on it. Apparently, that sound was the cue Dom had been waiting for, because he appeared in a heartbeat, nearly running from the kitchen through the foyer to answer it.

As he pulled the door open, Dom said, “Hi, Dig. Thanks for coming over.”

Dom stepped to the side and ushered in a man who looked like he might have been pulled out of a homeless shelter—a shelter with a very nice weight room. At five-ten, maybe a hundred eighty pounds, the man had wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and arms that threatened to rip the fabric of his T-shirt at the arm holes. Wild brown hair consumed his head and morphed seamlessly into an unkempt beard that seemed to stretch from just under his eyes into the neck of his shirt. His eyes were a shade of blue that she’d never seen before, more befitting a swimming pool than an iris. The eyes were hard, though, and as such matched perfectly the set of his mouth as he stepped into the living room.

“Irene Rivers,” Dom said, “this is my longtime friend Digger. Digger, this is my longtime friend Irene.”

He held out his hand, and Irene grasped it. They felt rough, the hands of a worker. She anticipated a crushing handshake but was pleased when his grasp proved to be gentle. “I’m pleased to meet you,” Irene said.

“Dom tells me you’re with the FBI.”

“That’s correct.”

“And he tells me that your children are in danger. That they’ve been taken.” As he spoke, Digger’s eyes never left hers. From someone else, it would have felt intimidating, but coming from him, it felt as if he were trying to read her mind.

Irene nodded, suddenly not trusting her voice.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Digger said. “Really, I’m very sorry to hear that.”

Dom gestured to the furniture with open arms. “Let’s sit down, shall we?”

Nothing about this felt right to Irene. As she resumed her seat on the sofa, she asked, “Forgive me, Dom, but why is Digger here?”

“I think he might be able to help you,” the priest replied.

“Help me how?”

Dom pointed with his forehead to the new arrival, who’d helped himself to a bentwood rocker.

“Before we get to that,” Digger said, “I need you to tell me that you want this resolved badly enough that you’re willing to break the laws that you’re sworn to protect.”

“What are, you, some kind of hit man?”

His face remained like stone. “Would it matter if I were?”

She turned to Dom. “What is going on here? Do you two rehearse your lines together?”

He shrugged. “Under the circumstances, I think he asks a legitimate question.”

Irene scoured her mind for a way to answer. “I guess it depends on what laws we’re talking about.”

Digger leaned forward far enough to brace his forearms on his knees. “They’re your daughters, Irene. Which laws are out of bounds?”

“Who are you?” Irene demanded. Her bullshit reservoir just filled to overflowing. “And what the hell kind of name is
Digger
?”

Digger looked across to Dom, who held up a hand in a silent request for patience.

“Irene,” Dom said, “if you just go along with the questions, the rest will play itself out.”

Could she actually say aloud the answer she was contemplating? Dare she confess such a thing out loud, even if it was painfully obvious to everyone in the room? They both waited for her answer.

“As you say,” she said, “they are my daughters. I would do anything for them.”

“Would you kill for them?”

She hated this line of questioning, and she found herself hating Digger for exploring it. Her feelings for Dom were only slightly more charitable.

“Yes,” she said. That was the answer they were waiting for, wasn’t it? Yes, she would kill for her daughters. “If circumstances warranted it.”

Digger’s eye twitched as he half-scowled, half smiled. “A man kidnaps two little girls on the heels of kidnapping two boys after murdering the two boys’ parents. How many more circumstances do you need?”

Irene sensed that she was speaking with a monster. “If you’re asking me if I will commit cold-blooded murder, then the answer is no.” She was surprised when Digger seemed satisfied by her response.

“Good,” he said, “because I am in fact not a hit man, and I don’t care to associate with those who are.” A beat. “Besides, murder wouldn’t serve your purpose. Once somebody’s dead, their intel value drops to zero.”

Irene sensed she was on a roller coaster. Whoever this Digger was, he was expert at keeping people on edge.

He read her confusion and said, “The first part of this mission—the only really important part—is to find your daughters. What are their names?”

“Ashley and Kelly.”

“We need to find Ashley and Kelly. Then we need to liberate them if we can. This Jennings punk is only as valuable as the information he can deliver. Beyond that, he’s a piece of meat that consumes oxygen. I couldn’t care less if he lives or dies.”

“But how are you going to convince him to give you the information?”

“Us, Irene. How are
we
going to convince him to give
us
the information?” Digger smiled and winked. “That’s when we begin to break those laws.”

Irene gaped, waiting for this to make sense.

Digger extended his hand. “My real name is Jonathan,” he said. “Jonathan Grave. I’m in the Army, attached to a unit that specializes in hostage rescues.”

If that was supposed to clear things up, it missed the mark by a long shot. “You’re suggesting turning this into a military operation? You look awfully young to have stars on your shoulders.”

Jonathan smiled. He seemed to be enjoying the confusion. “Nope, no stars. No eagles, oak leaves or bars, either. Just a lot of stripes. And no, I’m not proposing to turn this into a military operation. In fact, I’m proposing to turn this into a freelance operation. I figure that between our mutual skill sets, we could pull off something impressive.”

“What about posse comitatus?” The laws were very explicit that the United States military was forbidden to conduct combat operations on American soil.

“You’re really having a hard time wrapping your mind around this breaking-the-law thing, aren’t you?”

Yes, she was. “I guess I’m just not seeing the larger plan.”

“Think of it as an HRT op without the warrants and due process. Exactly what we do all the time overseas.”

Irene recognized HRT as the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. “Who’s
we
?”

Jonathan shrugged. “My colleagues and I. Your colleagues, too.”

Irene’s response to that was near reflexive. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention. I even got to play with some of your folks down in Colombia. Ringing bells yet?”

With that statement, Irene understood much more. While she had no official knowledge of the drug war activities in Colombia, news outlets had been buzzing about it for weeks, and she’d heard her share of rumors in the halls of the Hoover Building. If she guessed right, this Jonathan Grave fellow was a part of one of the most elite and secret military units in the world.

“The plan,” he continued, “is as simple as it gets. We pay your friend Jennings a visit and we scare the living shit out of him. He tells us what we want to know, or we’ll make his situation extraordinarily uncomfortable.”

Irene felt a rush of dread. “You’re talking about torture.”

“No,” Jonathan said. “I’m talking about persuasion.”

“How is that different from torture?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “Torture is what the bad guys do.”

“A rose by a different name, then.”

He inhaled deeply, as if to bolster lagging patience. “Look, this guy is not a soldier, okay? He’s not going to be inclined to take one for the team. He’s a coward who preys on children. The only strength he has is that which he is granted through the legal system that you seem so hesitant to rattle. Once he knows that those avenues are no longer available to him, he’ll sing long and loud. My experience with guys like him is that you never actually have to hurt them. You just have to make them think you will.”

It all sounded so reasonable and rational when it was presented in such calm tones. All she had to do was violate every oath she’d ever sworn, and turn her back on a lifetime of principles.

Jonathan continued with his sales pitch. “You want this to be more complicated than it is,” he said. “If your children were taken across the border to Mexico or across the sea to some East African shithole, this is exactly the mission I would be dispatched to carry out with the full authority of the United States government. They’re your daughters. It’s your call.”

“No torture,” Irene said. Was it possible she was on the brink of agreeing to this madness?

“No,” Jonathan snapped. “No rules up front. We’ll do what is necessary to accomplish the mission. I’m not going to make a promise that I’m not one-hundred-percent sure I can keep. I’ll ask the same thing of you. We play with a full deck or we don’t play at all.”

Irene found herself breathing too deeply as she sifted through all that was being asked, and through the resulting ramifications. She looked to Dom, whose handsome face was set in a blank mask.

“If I do this, Dom, and I seek forgiveness, could it possibly come?”

Dom’s eyes turned kind. “I can grant absolution,” he said, “but it’s up to the Big Boss to decide on forgiveness.”

Something dissolved inside of Irene.

“I’ll step out of bounds, though,” Dom continued. “I cannot believe that the Good Lord would prefer to watch a scumbag game the system rather than have two lovely young ladies reunited with their mother.”

Tears welled, blurring her view as she switched her gaze to Jonathan. “Let’s do it,” she said.

Irene had never seen such a mansion. Situated next door to the rectory, it was the massive structure she’d noticed on the way into town.

Jonathan ushered her through the front door and she was nearly overwhelmed by the opulence of the place. Everything from the sprawling oriental carpets to the mahogany stair rails were of the highest quality. The chandelier in the towering thirty-foot foyer glistened with millions of crystal baubles. She figured it weighed more than her car.

“So you say you’re an enlisted man in the Army,” she commented as she took it all in.

“Actually, I’m a noncommissioned officer. An E-8. First sergeant.”

“They must pay you very well.”

“I’m very good at what I do.” He led the way down the hall to a room on the right. This had to be called the library, just because of the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books. He helped himself to a comfortable forest-green leather chair and, with a sweeping motion of his upturned palm, he invited Irene to sit wherever she liked. She selected a silk-fabric love seat directly across from the fireplace.

“My real home is on post at Fort Bragg,” Jonathan went on. “This is just the place where I grew up.”

Irene felt her eyebrows scale her forehead.
Richie Rich has nothing on this guy.

“Jonny, is that you?” a voice called from somewhere outside of the room.

Jonathan actually blushed. “Yes, Mama, it’s me.”

He lives with his mother?
That didn’t fit Irene’s view of this guy at all.

Jonathan stood and walked to the door, where he met a round black woman as she crossed the jamb. Her eyes widened as she noticed Irene. “I didn’t know you had company,” she said in a Southern drawl as smooth as honey. Her words dripped disapproval.

“Mama, it’s not what you think,” he said.

Irene tried to help out, rising from her seat and offering her hand in greeting. “I’m Irene Rivers,” she said. “Special agent with the FBI.”

The woman hesitated before accepting the gesture of kindness. “I’m Mama,” she said. “Mama Alexander, if you’d prefer.”

Irene hesitated, not sure if she understood.

“Mama is a mainstay here in Fisherman’s Cove,” Jonathan explained. “Lived here her whole life. Tell anyone in town that Mama is your friend, and every door will open for you.”

Irene harbored no doubt that the converse of that statement was equally true. “A genuine pleasure to meet you,” she said.

“I’m helping Irene out with a problem she’s having,” Jonathan explained. To Irene’s ear, he sounded oddly like a teenager covering his tracks.

“Uh-huh,” Mama said. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, too.” She turned her gaze back to Jonathan. “Will you be wanting dinner tonight?”

“Don’t go to any trouble,” Jonathan said.

“And should I set an extra place at the table?” Her glare heated the room another twenty degrees.

“Not for me,” Irene said. “I won’t be staying. Thank you though.”

Mama’s face remained locked in a scowl. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Well, drive carefully on your way home.” To Jonathan: “You remember to be a gentleman, young man.” As she walked away, Jonathan closed the door behind her.

Returning to his chair, the redness in Jonathan’s cheeks hadn’t dimmed completely. “Mama was our housekeeper when I was growing up. My mom died when I was little, so Mama pretty much raised me.” He gestured with open arms. “This is her house now.”

Whoa, that’s not what Irene had been expecting. “Excuse me?”

Jonathan dipped his head as he clarified. “Well, it actually belongs to St. Kate’s now, but on the condition that Mama and her daughter get to live here in perpetuity.”

“What does a church want with a mansion?” Irene asked.

“They’re going to turn it into a school,” Jonathan explained, “exclusively for the children of incarcerated parents. We’re going to call it Resurrection House. Care to guess who the chief psychologist is going to be?”

“Dom.” Just from the way he’d stated the question there could only be one answer.

“Bingo.” Jonathan cleared his throat and crossed his legs. “To the business at hand,” he said, changing the subject. “I think we need to rock Jennings’s world. Knock him completely off balance. That will give us the edge when it comes time to questioning him.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Irene said. In fact, she had stopped understanding the narrative of her life about thirty minutes ago.

“You will,” he said. “You must be hungry. When was the last time you ate?”

Good Lord, this guy could whipsaw a conversation. She started to answer, but stopped when she realized the truth of it. “I don’t know. It’s been a while.”

Jonathan stood. “Go get some food,” he said. “Go to the end of the walk, turn left and walk to the bottom of the hill, to the river. You’ll see Jimmy’s Tavern. They’ve got better food than you think they will, and an excellent selection of single malts. Go with the Tavern Burger. Enough protein in that to keep you going for the rest of the day.”

“I shouldn’t,” Irene said. “If I’m going to be a part of this, I want to be part of the planning.”

“And you will be,” Jonathan said. “I promise. I just want to put together a little show-and-tell is all. Give me an hour. Even forty-five minutes will do.”

This wasn’t right. At so many levels, it wasn’t right. “I don’t want to leave you with all the legwork. I can do—”

Jonathan cut her off. “Irene. I don’t want you to see the details of what’s coming next. When you see those details, you’ll understand exactly why I don’t want you to see where they came from.”

There it was. She stood. “Okay, then. See you in an hour.”

As Jonathan walked her to the door, she was again taken by the sheer majesty of the place. Where did anybody get this much money? And once born into this much money, who in their right mind would walk away from it in favor of a fifty-thousand-dollar paycheck from Uncle Sam?

“I’m sorry for the mysteriosity,” Jonathan said as he opened the door. A flash in his eyes told her that the made-up word was a joke.

“I understand,” Irene said. “Trust is a journey. We’re just on the first step.”
And of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s fully exposed,
she didn’t say.

“Tell Jimmy that Digger sent you,” Jonathan said. “That’ll either get you a few dollars off the bill or get you thrown through the window.” Again, his eyes sold the humor. In a rugged nonglamorous way, Jonathan Digger Grave may well have been the most handsome man she’d ever met. Good Lord, those eyes!

As she navigated Jonathan’s directions to the sidewalk and then down the hill toward the Potomac River, Irene marveled at the charm of Fisherman’s Cove—a place she’d never heard of before Dom had announced that he would be moving there. It appeared that the residential part of town ended at the church, and that everything downhill from there—she had no idea what that compass direction would be, thanks to the complex geography of the Northern Neck—was part of the business district.

At a time when small-town America was heaving its last sighs, this little burg still teemed with life. More important, it apparently teemed with cash flow. Where painted clapboards faced the sun, she saw none of the cancerous peeling that she’d become so accustomed to. As she closed in on the bottom of the hill and the river that lay beyond, she was even more amazed to see that this was still an active commercial fishing village. Hardworking hard men swarmed to offload the day’s catch.

Jimmy’s Tavern sat exactly where Jonathan had suggested it would, at the bottom of the hill, and just a tad to the right. As she crossed the street, her eye was drawn to an old-school three-story firehouse that appeared to be in the throngs of being demolished. It registered with her only because her uncle on her father’s side had been a volunteer firefighter.

The much-touted Tavern Burger turned out to be a lethal assortment of butter, fat, and sodium, so Irene opted for the Cobb salad instead. She asked for dressing on the side, but it came pre-slathered anyway, presenting its own lethal combination of fat and sodium. The butter might well have been there, too, but if it was, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

The hour crawled by like three. When Irene returned to the mansion and rang the bell, the door opened within seconds. Mama Alexander stood in the opening with a look on her face that was significantly less harsh than the one from earlier, but still three clicks shy of welcoming. “Come in, Irene,” she said.

“Hello, Mama.”

“Jonny is waiting for you in the library, where he was the last time.” She gestured down the hall with an open palm.

Irene stepped inside. “Thank you.”

“You be careful now,” Mama said. “Don’t you go gettin’ him hurt, you understand?”

The structure of the comment rattled Irene. Did Mama assume that Irene was somehow in charge? Is that what Digger told her? If so, did it make sense to correct the record?

“I assure you that I don’t want to get hurt, either,” Irene said. It seemed like a good middle ground. Maybe it was an advance apology. What the hell was she thinking?

She entered the library to find Jonathan standing over an array of weapons splayed out on the plush tea-stained carpet. In addition to the advanced M16 knockoff that she recognized as a CAR-15, she noted an assortment of hand grenades—antipersonnel fragmentation grenades as well as nominally nonlethal flash-bangs—a roll of detonating cord and several electronic gadgets she’d never seen, and whose purpose was unknown to her.

“I understand you’ve been through the training for HRT,” Jonathan said, “so I figure you know most of what you’re looking at.”

An invisible hand pulled a string on her spine, launching a chill. How did he know this? She chose to say nothing, but for the first time in a long while, she realized that she and her Bureau were not necessarily on the top of the intel food chain.

“I see a lot of expensive weaponry,” Irene said. “And I have to tell you up front that if you expect me to pay for all of this, you’ll need to take a payment plan.”

“I do like my toys,” Jonathan said. “But these are on me.”

Irene’s bullshit bell clanged. “Please tell me you didn’t raid an arsenal.”

He smiled. “Hardly. Let’s just say I have means. Here’s the thing, though: You can’t touch any of this with your bare hands.” He handed her two pairs of gloves, one latex and one cotton. “Because of the nature of my day job, I’m invisible. Because of the nature of yours, you might as well walk around with a swarm of paparazzi.”

“There must be ten thousand dollars’ worth of materiel here. Are you telling me that you just do this as a hobby?”

“You’re asking as a curious citizen, right? Not as an FBI agent.”

“Oh, I gave up the high ground as an FBI agent about ten minutes after we met.”

“I’m in the business of right versus wrong,” Jonathan said. “We live in the greatest nation on Earth—and I’ve offered up my life for her on countless occasions—but we let too many bad guys turn the Constitution into a cynical weapon to wield against innocent people. I’ve decided to dedicate my life to leveling the playing field.”

“So your answer is to be a vigilante?”

“You can use a pejorative word if you want,” Jonathan said. She detected a note of agitation. “In my mind,
justice
is a better one. But the fact remains that you don’t want to have fingerprints, fibers, or DNA associated with any of it.”

Irene waited for the rest.

“We’ll get you coveralls,” Jonathan continued. “At some point, Jennings may recognize you. If that happens, your only route to survival is to lie through your teeth. He’s going to say that you were there in the room when his Constitutional rights were violated, and when you look him in the eye, you’ll need one-hundred-percent credibility when you deny everything.”

Something about the premise excited Irene. She understood that she should have been appalled, but in context, it was damn near exciting. “When do we get started?” she asked.

“We’re waiting for a friend of mine,” Jonathan said. “When he gets here, we can start into the serious planning.”

 

 

The friend turned out to be a giant of a man named Brian. The last name was Dutch and she couldn’t begin to pronounce it. Van de
Something
. He preferred to go by the name of Boxers, whatever that meant. At six-foot-huge, he literally filled the doorway as he entered the library. Unlike a lot of big men, Boxers fit his size and was handsome in his own way. Like Digger, he wore his hair too long, and his beard would have made a Mississippi biker proud. When he spoke, his deep bass voice rumbled the walls.

“This is Irene Rivers,” Jonathan said by way of introduction.

“You’re the FBI lady,” Boxers said. As he shook her hand, his grip, like Jonathan’s before, was surprisingly gentle. “I’m sorry to hear about your little girls. We’ll get them back for you soon.”

“Box is a fellow noncom with the Unit. I’ve known him for years and I trust him with my life.”

“That’s because I’ve saved it so many times,” Boxers said.

“Truer words,” Jonathan said. “She’s coming with us.”

Boxers’ face fell.

“She’s had HRT training,” Jonathan added.

“Have you ever shot anyone?” Boxers asked.

“Please don’t show me the length of your penis,” Irene said. “I can’t possibly compare.”

Laughter burst from Jonathan, even as Boxers turned red. One sentence, issue closed.

“So, what’s the plan?” Boxers asked when Jonathan could breathe normally again.

“Funny you should ask,” Jonathan said. “That’s why I invited you to the party.”

The plan came together quickly, and no plan had ever been simpler at its heart: Snatch and interrogate. Of course there were about a thousand moving parts in the middle, any one of which could derail everything, but Irene chose to stay focused on the goal: seeing Ashley and Kelly smiling back at her, alive and thriving.