“Two strikes. Give it a year.”
Dombroski laughed. “You’ve got to take your turn at bat, Brodie. How are the women down there?”
“I’m focused on the case.”
“Good. Don’t spend government money in a whorehouse unless it’s information that you’re buying.”
“You’re welcome to come here and keep an eye on me.”
“No, thanks. You get all the glory. Meanwhile, share this new information about Crenshaw on a need-to-know basis.”
Meaning,It’s up to you if you want to tell Taylor.“Yes, sir. Anything further?”
“Negative further.”
The protocol was that the superior had the last word, so Brodie hung up and looked out at the view from the balcony. There were very few lights on in the city below and it was hard to tell where Caracas ended and the mountains began.
Every case, from petty theft to murder, is a nexus of people, places, motives, and interests. This case was more complex than most, but it was still made up of the same essential parts. He had a fugitive who was, in addition to being a potential head case, a highly trained member of an elite unit whohad been operating for years in a vast Black Ops war without end. The motive for his initial crime—desertion—was a mystery. But he had managed to kill his Taliban captors and escape imprisonment. If he’d then returned to a U.S. military base, that might have been viewed as a heroic act that could mitigate his initial desertion. But instead he had desecrated the bodies of the dead—a crime in both U.S. military and international law—and turned his back on his career and his country. Why?
And now this guy Crenshaw… tortured and killed. As a CIA officer in Kabul, Crenshaw would likely have coordinated and worked with JSOC and its special operators on the ground, including Delta Force.
CIA. JSOC. Kabul. Peshawar.
Caracas.
This was the piece that didn’t fit, the non sequitur in the unwritten story of Captain Kyle Mercer. Brodie looked out toward the eastern hills and Petare, to the great black wash of mountains and sky. Maybe tomorrow would bring some answers.
He went back into his room, locked his balcony door, and sat at the desk. He then installed the VPN client from Worley on his laptop and wondered if he had just given the DIA access to all of his e-mails and search history. Paranoia fed on itself.
He ran a Google search for “MBR-200,” the name of the colectivo gang that Raúl had given them. He found nothing on the gang itself, though he did discover its namesake—the revolutionary movement that Hugo Chávez had founded back in 1982 and that ultimately launched his first failed coup attempt a decade later. The “200” had been added to the name in 1983 to commemorate the two-hundredth birthday of Venezuela’s national obsession, Simón Bolívar.
History and memory ran deep here, thought Brodie. These thugs were dealing in child prostitutes and drugs, but they still wore these revolutionary tropes and signifiers like badges of honor. He thought back to the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shi’ite insurgent group in Baghdad formed during the war, which was named for a ninth-century imam who was prophesied to return in the end times. There was a real power to these associations, instilling a sense in these groups’ adherents that the fabled battles of old were being refought over and over.
Brodie had told Luis this country needed another Bolívar. But in reality, this place—like the entire world of Islam—needed to move on and find new heroes. Or maybe stop putting men on pedestals altogether.
He finished his rum, stood and pulled his Glock from its holster and placed it on the bedside table, set his alarm, then threw off his clothes and crashed on the bed. It had been a good first day in country. They’d met Worley, hired Luis, reconned the city, and met a pimp, and he had just learned that maybe the fugitive he was hunting had tortured and murdered an undercover CIA officer. And, by the way, his own partner might be a CIA asset as well.
Before he’d left for college, Brodie’s father had tried to entice him to stay by pitching a plan to take out a bank loan, buy the vacant acreage next to their house, and make a go at a real family farm. If he’d taken the old man’s offer, he’d now be harvesting corn, lettuce, maybe some rhubarb.
Instead he’d gone to college, and then he went to war. Then he joined CID, and that’s when life got really complicated. He wasn’t sure what he would find tomorrow in Petare, whether it was Kyle Mercer himself or just another breadcrumb along the trail that led to his fugitive. What Brodie did sense was that the scope of this case was widening, the picture slowly growing sharper—and he was sure that when the picture was finally clear, he was not going to like what he saw.
Outside, he heard the wail of a police siren, and what sounded like the distant crack of gunfire. He was suddenly back in Baghdad. He knew he needed to get out of this place before it erupted into civil war.
He turned off the bedside lamp and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
CHAPTER 21
Brodie came downstairs to meet Taylor for breakfast at eight o’clock. She was, as he expected, already at a table with a cup of coffee, reading a Spanish-language newspaper, which she folded as he sat down.
“Buenos días,” said Brodie.
“Morning. Did you sleep well?”
“The sound of gunfire always lulls me to sleep.”
“I heard that.”
Brodie poured himself coffee from a carafe and gestured at the paper. “What’s new?”
