The Book of Truths (16 page)

Unless they were a person like Moms.

Going to a place only someone like Moms wanted to go.

She’d already passed through three security checkpoints, all on the supposed lowest level. That didn’t bother her as much as simply getting in from the parking lot to the first checkpoint. All the rank irritated her. They had full-bird colonels here doing the work of secretaries. One-star generals fetched coffee. The place was so top-heavy with eagles and stars it was amazing anything got done.

And the ribbons. Every officer’s jacket uniform was so laden with them above the left breast pocket, she was surprised they all weren’t walking tilted over. She’d been out of the “real” army not that long—okay, a while—but she didn’t recognize what some of the awards were for. Most of the ribbons indicated combat duty, and it was rather easy to tell the difference between those in this building who would rather be there than here. This was a world
away from where the soldiers on the ground implemented the policies that flowed out of the building.

She turned down a hallway and another desk blocked the way. Two military police, honest-to-God soldiers, not contractors, stood behind the desk, which was manned of course by a full-bird colonel. He looked up at her, noted the civvies, ran his eyes up and down her body, checked her hand for an Academy ring (she never wore her West Point ring), then sighed as he mentally slotted her: another military person turned play-spook.

“Can I help you?”

Moms took out her real ID and flipped it open.

The colonel popped up. There was no rank or name on the ID, just her clearance and a QR code. It was enough to get him to his feet, because he only saw that clearance a couple of times a month, even three security checkpoints in. There were fewer than fifty people in the country who held it, and only a few visited the Pentagon. And when they did, they normally came in the VIP entrance through the underground parking lot, whisked by two-star generals to whatever briefing they were to attend by a four-star general.

Moms still hadn’t said a word. The colonel took her ID and scanned the QR code with a handheld device. It beeped green. Then he picked up another handheld device.

“If you don’t mind, ma’am?”

Moms stood still as he shone it in one eye, then the other, checking her retinas. It flashed green.

The colonel waved her through, the two MPs stepping aside. She walked down the hall and then a set of stairs to a sublevel that wasn’t supposed to exist according to the brochures and press releases. None of the doors were open. There was no bustle of people going about. The work down here was done behind closed
doors, in hushed tones, with a minimum of what the army called “dissemination of information.”

She reached a desk set in an anteroom, behind which sat an elderly man peering at a newspaper through glasses perched on his bulbous nose.

He looked up and smiled. “Good day.” He waved the paper. “Got a mudder running the fourth tomorrow, but don’t know if the weather will agree. You play the ponies?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Smart girl.”

Moms couldn’t remember the last time she’d been called girl.

“Who do you want to chat with?”

“Pay.”

He nodded sagely. “No one gets paid enough that comes through here.”

“I’m getting paid too much.”

A frown crossed his wrinkled face. “That’s not good either.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’ll be wanting to talk to Mrs. Sanchez then.” He glanced at his computer screen. “Moms, is it?”

“Yes.” The odd single name, no salutation, seemed not to bother him in the slightest.

He pulled open a drawer and extracted a thick, brown file. He broke the seal on it, reached in, and pulled out a stapled set of purple paper. Moms recognized the paper and the handwriting on it.

He ran his finger down it. “Fourth-grade English teacher?”

“Mr. Carletti.”

“Name of the second street you lived on?”

“Same as the first street,” Moms said. “Taylor Lane.”

He smiled. “That was one of those they told you to mix up, eh?”

He asked six more questions, two of which also had mixed answers. Eight questions and answers out of the five hundred on the purple paper that she’d filled out many years ago when she’d first been submerged into the world of Black Ops. It was the last check and balance. Technology could be fooled, scanners could be overridden, but the human memory checked by another human and then twisted by deceit was the final obstacle. She knew there was probably some sort of weapon in the man’s other hand and was certain there were guards behind some of the doors scattered about, watching this play out on video screens, ready to burst in at the wrong answer. If she got it wrong, they wouldn’t be cuffing her and reading her rights.

“Very good,” he finally said. He placed the purple paper back inside the folder and slid it back into his desk. He hit a button underneath his desktop and a door swung open, revealing a room the size of a telephone booth.

It didn’t have a telephone. Just a chair.

“Enjoy the ride,” he said.

Moms got in and sat down. The door hissed shut. There was a slight jolt, then she was moving sideways, which was a bit disorienting. She came to a jarring halt, and then she was moving backwards. She thought of a horror movie she’d watched on Netflix in her bunk at the Ranch one night,
The Cabin in the Woods
, and how all these creatures from nightmares were kept in little cubicles deep under a government-run facility. Each cube could be moved about as needed. That’s what the subworld of the Pentagon reminded her of.

Except she was the one being moved about to go meet someone in one of those cubicles. If she was Nada, she would know
what that made her, but being Moms, she’d long ago accepted that the world needed people like her and places like this. Nada accepted it also, but it just depressed him.

With another jerk, the booth came to a halt and the door swung open. Moms stepped out.

A chest-high counter, like the DMV, awaited her. Except there was no “take a number and take a seat.” That was the job of the old man reading about horses. They couldn’t have the people who came to this part of the Pentagon seeing each other and perhaps recognizing that person on a mission or while walking through the mall with family. It was called Black Ops for a reason.

An older woman was waiting for her. She was dressed in Southwestern casual, white hair flowing loosely around her sharply angled face. A younger woman, dressed similarly, was sitting at another desk, gaze fixed on a computer screen. She didn’t even look up at Moms’s entrance.

“Good afternoon, Moms. I’m Mrs. Sanchez.” She had an identification badge dangling from her denim vest with a purple band across the top.

“Afternoon,” Moms said. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a bank statement and held it out, along with her ID. “I’m getting paid too much.”

Sanchez took the bank statement and ID. “That’s a complaint I rarely get.”

“I’ve called, but naturally no one would talk to me about it over the phone. Even a secure line.”

Sanchez waved. “Come around the counter.” She led Moms to her desk. The walls were decorated with hung rugs and etchings of the desert.

Sanchez scanned in the QR code.

“I like your jewelry,” Moms said.

Sanchez paused, met her eyes, and smiled. “Thank you. My daughter makes it. She’s very talented.”

“She must be.”

“You’ve been complimented, dear,” Mrs. Sanchez called out.

The younger woman tore her gaze from the computer screen and gave a flicker of a smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mrs. Sanchez reached into her desk and pulled out a thick brown folder. It had yellow paper inside: Moms’s pay records. Once someone went Black, they no longer existed on the computer except for security checks and cover identities. All other paperwork was paper, just one copy as needed. Paper couldn’t be hacked into, could be locked in secure places like this, and could also be shredded, meaning someone really, truly, disappeared.

It happened.

“How long has this stipend been going into your account?” Mrs. Sanchez was flipping pages in the folder.

“Six months,” Moms said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to get here.”

Sanchez nodded as she got to a certain page. “It’s a survivor’s benefit.”

“From who?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Who can?”

“The comptroller might be able to.” As if on cue, a portion of the wall behind Sanchez’s desk slid open and a colonel entered. He had no ribbons, just a Combat Infantry Badge above his left pocket.

“It’s my old friend from the real army, now an event horizon,” he said with a grin. “In so deep, you suck all light with you.”

“Bill.” Moms got up and shook his hand. “You went in pretty deep, too.” He perched on the edge of Sanchez’s desk, who leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, watching and listening.

“Been a long time,” Bill said. He glanced at Sanchez, then back to Moms. “Afghanistan, just a couple of weeks after 9/11. I gave you a bunch of money.”

Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter spoke without glancing over. “Six million, four hundred thousand, five hundred and thirty dollars. Moms returned one point four-two-six-five of that with her country clearance voucher. Managed to account for every single dollar, which less than twelve percent of those in your situation were able to do.”

Moms glanced at Mrs. Sanchez, who was beaming proudly. “She has a good memory.”

“Seems so,” Moms said. “Made my ruck a little heavy, although we spread it out among the team.”

Bill nodded. “Bought off the Northern Alliance.”

“Bought goats, and horses, and technicals, too,” Moms said, referring to pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the cargo bay. “One of my guys got hit and he had so many wads of bills in his vest, they stopped the bullet before it even got to his body armor.”

“That’s always nice to hear,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “We rarely hear of the direct results of our actions in the field.”

Moms shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Where are all your ribbons, Bill?”

He laughed. “We don’t do those down here. It’s like sticking your DD214 on your chest and advertising everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve done. I like to keep my past a bit more private. Like you.”

“A CIB, though,” Moms said.

“Could have gotten that anywhere.”

“Not really,” Moms said.

Bill reached down and tapped his right leg below the knee. There was a hollow sound. “Got both the same place. Why I ended up in the puzzle palace here.”

“Sorry.”

“Lots have suffered worse.”

There was a moment of silence, one all veterans observe when touching on the subject of comrades that would never see another day. It also brought Moms back to the reason she was here.

“Why am I getting a survivor’s benefit? I wasn’t married last I checked.”

“Never married,” Bill said. “Not that you didn’t get offers.”

Even Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter stopped typing for at least two seconds before going to work.

Bill reached out and Mrs. Sanchez handed him the folder, with the appropriate page open. He frowned as he read. “Well. I’m afraid we can’t tell you. Compartmentalization and all that. You don’t have to be married to get a survivor’s benefit,” he added as he flipped the folder shut and handed it back to Mrs. Sanchez. “You know all those forms you fill out before a major deployment? The one for the benefit? You just list the people you want to get a slice of the pie and we get that slice to them.”

That made Moms think about whom she’d listed on her form when she’d in-processed at Area 51.

Mrs. Sanchez slid the folder back into her desk.

“What kind of benefit is it? A gratuity spread out?” Congress, as the first combat casualties were being carted out of planes at Dover after 9/11, had initiated a “death gratuity” one-time payment of $100,000.

How one could put a price on a life was beyond Moms.

“No,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

“When will it run out?” Moms asked.

“It won’t,” she said. “As long as you’re alive, you get it.” She cocked her head. “Your benefactors get the same. Didn’t you read the form?”

Moms shook her head. “I thought it was the same as the army.”

Bill laughed. “Is your unit the same as the army?”

“No.”

“Why would you think your benefits are?” Bill asked.

“It’s the best our government can do for those of you in the field,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

Her daughter spoke up. “Black Ops survivor benefits account for less than point zero-zero-zero-zero-eight of the entire Black Ops budget. Statistically almost insignificant.” She paused, seeing the reaction, then quickly added, “But only in terms of numbers.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you?” Mrs. Sanchez asked, and Moms realized that while Bill wore the uniform and held the title of comptroller, she was the person in charge down here. Then, sliding into a Nada Yada, she wondered if Bill worked here at all and whether he was really the comptroller. Or if, as she went through the various layers of security, they’d found someone who shared a past link with her and brought him in to divert attention from Mrs. Sanchez and what was really going on.

Moms wondered how Nada could stand to get through the day with his paranoia.

Moms stood. “I just wanted to make sure everything was legitimate.”

“You can count on us,” Mrs. Sanchez said.

And at that moment, Moms’s cell phone began to play “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

She snatched it from her belt and looked at the text message. Then at Mrs. Sanchez. “Can I get to the White House from here?”