The Teeth of the Tiger

  That was good news for Captain Brian Caruso as well, for whom an audience with a general officer was, if not exactly frightening, certainly reason for a little circumspection. He was wearing his Class-A olive-colored uniform, complete to the Sam Browne belt, and all the ribbons to which he was entitled, which wasn’t all that many, though some of them were kind of pretty, as well as his gold parachute-jumper’s wings, and a collection of marksmanship awards large enough to impress even a lifelong rifleman like General Broughton.

  The M-2 rated a lieutenant-colonel office boy, plus a black female gunnery sergeant as a personal secretary. It all struck the young captain as odd, but nobody had ever accused the Corps of logic, Caruso reminded himself. As they liked to say: two hundred thirty years of tradition untrammeled by progress.

  “The General will see you now, Captain,” she said, looking up from the phone on her desk.

  “Thank you, Gunny,” Caruso said, coming to his feet and heading for the door, which the sergeant held open for him.

  Broughton was exactly what Caruso had expected. A whisker under six feet, he had the sort of chest that might turn away a high-speed bullet. His hair was a tiny bit more than stubble. As with most Marines, a bad hair day was what happened when it got to half an inch, and required a trip to the barber. The general looked up from his paperwork and looked his visitor up and down with cold hazel eyes.

  Caruso did not salute. Like naval officers, Marines do not salute unless under arms or “covered” with a uniform cap. The visual inspection lasted about three seconds, which only felt like a week or so.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Have a seat, Captain.” The general pointed to a leather-covered chair.

  Caruso did sit down, but remained at the position of attention, bent legs and all.

  “Know why you’re here?” Broughton asked.

  “No, sir, they didn’t tell me that.”

  “How do you like Force Recon?”

  “I like it just fine, sir,” Caruso replied. “I think I have the best NCOs in the whole Corps, and the work keeps me interested.”

  “You did a nice job in Afghanistan, says here.” Broughton held up a folder with red-and-white-striped tape on the edges. That denoted top-secret material. But special-operations work often fell into that category, and, sure as hell, Caruso’s Afghanistan job had not been something for the NBC Nightly News.

  “It was fairly exciting, sir.”

  “Good work, says here, getting all your men out alive.”

  “General, that’s mostly because of that SEAL corpsman with us. Corporal Ward got shot up pretty bad, but Petty Officer Randall saved his life, and that’s for sure. I put him in for a decoration. Hope he gets it.”

  “He will,” Broughton assured him. “And so will you.”

  “Sir, I just did my job,” Caruso protested. “My men did all—”

  “And that’s the sign of a good young officer,” the M-2 cut him off. “I read your account of the action, and I read Gunny Sullivan’s, too. He says you did just fine for a young officer in his first combat action.” Gunnery Sergeant Joe Sullivan had smelled the smoke before, in Lebanon and Kuwait, and a few other places that had never made the TV news. “Sullivan worked for me once,” Broughton informed his guest. “He’s due for promotion.”

  Caruso bobbed his head. “Yes, sir. He’s sure enough ready for a step up in the world.”

  “I’ve seen your fit-rep on him.” The M-2 tapped another folder, this one not with TS formatting. “Your treatment of your men is generous in its praise, Captain. Why?”

  That made Caruso blink. “Sir, they did very well. I could not have expected more under any circumstances. I’ll take that bunch of Marines up against anybody in the world. Even the new kids can all make sergeant someday, and two of them have ‘gunny’ written all over them. They work hard, and they’re smart enough that they start doing the right thing before I have to tell them. At least one of them is officer material. Sir, those are my people, and I am damned lucky to have them.”

  “And you trained them up pretty well,” Broughton added.

  “That’s my job, sir.”

  “Not anymore, Captain.”

  “Excuse me, sir? I have another fourteen months with the battalion, and my next job hasn’t been determined yet.” Though he’d happily stay in Second Force Recon forever. Caruso figured he’d screen for major soon, and maybe jump to battalion S-3, operations officer for the division’s reconnaissance battalion.

  “That Agency guy who went into the mountains with you, how was he to work with?”

  “James Hardesty, says he used to be in the Army Special Forces. Age forty or so, but he’s pretty fit for an older guy, speaks two of the local languages. Doesn’t wet his pants when bad things happen. He—well, he backed me up pretty well.”

  The TS folder went up again in the M-2’s hands. “He says here you saved his bacon in that ambush.”

  “Sir, nobody looks smart getting into an ambush in the first place. Mr. Hardesty was reconnoitering forward with Corporal Ward while I was getting the satellite radio set up. The bad guys were in a pretty clever little spot, but they tipped their hand. They opened up too soon on Mr. Hardesty, missed him with their first burst, and we maneuvered uphill around them. They didn’t have good enough security out. Gunny Sullivan took his squad right, and when he got in position, I took my bunch up the middle. It took a total of ten to fifteen minutes, and then Gunny Sullivan got our target, took him right in the head from ten meters. We wanted to take him alive, but that wasn’t possible the way things played out.” Caruso shrugged. Superiors could generate officers, but not the exigencies of the moment, and the man had had no intention of spending time in American captivity, and it was hard to put the bag on someone like that. The final score had been one badly shot-up Marine, and sixteen dead Arabs, plus two live captives for the Intel pukes to chat with. It had ended up being more productive than anyone had expected. The Afghans were brave enough, but they weren’t madmen—or, more precisely, they chose martyrdom only on their own terms.

  “Lessons learned?” Broughton asked.

  “There is no such thing as too much training, sir, or being in too good a shape. The real thing is a lot messier than exercises. Like I said, the Afghans are brave enough, but they are not trained. And you can never know which ones are going to slug it out, and which ones are going to cave. They taught us at Quantico that you have to trust your instincts, but they don’t issue instincts to you, and you can’t always be sure if you’re listening to the right voice or not.” Caruso shrugged, but he just went ahead and spoke his mind. “I guess it worked out okay for me and my Marines, but I can’t really say I know why.”

  “Don’t think too much, Captain. When the shit hits the fan, you don’t have time to think it all the way through. You think beforehand. It’s in how you train your people, and assign responsibilities to them. You prepare your mind for action, but you never think you know what form the action is going to take. In any case, you did everything pretty well. You impressed this Hardesty guy—and he is a fairly serious customer. That’s how this happened,” Broughton concluded.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “The Agency wants to talk to you,” the M-2 announced. “They’re doing a talent hunt, and your name came up.”

  “To do what, sir?”

  “Didn’t tell me that. They’re looking for people who can work in the field. I don’t think it’s espionage. Probably the paramilitary side of the house. I’d guess that’s the new counterterror shop. I can’t say I’m pleased to lose a promising young Marine. However, I have no say in the matter. You are free to decline the offer, but you do have to go up and talk to them beforehand.”

  “I see.” He didn’t, really.

  “Maybe somebody reminded them of another ex-Marine who worked out fairly well up there . . .” Broughton half observed.

  “Uncle Jack, you mean? Jesus—excuse me, sir, but I’ve been dodging that ever since I showed u
p at the Basic School. I’m just one more Marine O-3, sir. I’m not asking for anything else.”

  “Good,” was all Broughton felt like saying. He saw before him a very promising young officer who’d read the Marine Corps Officer’s Guide front to back, and hadn’t forgotten any of the important parts. If anything he was a touch too earnest, but he’d been the same way once himself. “Well, you’re due up there in two hours. Some guy named Pete Alexander, another ex-Special Forces guy. Helped run the Afghanistan operation for the Agency back in the 1980s. Not a bad guy, so I’ve heard, but he doesn’t want to grow his own talent. Watch your wallet, Captain,” he said in dismissal.

  “Yes, sir,” Caruso promised. He came to his feet, into the position of attention.

  The M-2 graced his guest with a smile. “Semper Fi, son.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Caruso made his way out of the office, nodded to the gunny, never said a word to the half-colonel, who hadn’t bothered looking up, and headed downstairs, wondering what the hell he was getting into.

  HUNDREDS OF miles away, another man named Caruso was thinking the same thing. The FBI had made its reputation as one of America’s premier law-enforcement agencies by investigating interstate kidnappings, beginning soon after passage of the Lindbergh Law in the 1930s. Its success in closing such cases had largely put an end to kidnapping-for-money—at least for smart criminals. The Bureau closed every single one of those cases, and professional criminals had finally caught on that this form of crime was a sucker’s game. And so it had remained for years, until kidnappers with objectives other than money had decided to delve into it.

  And those people were much harder to catch.

  Penelope Davidson had vanished on her way to kindergarten that very morning. Her parents had called the local police within an hour after her disappearance, and soon thereafter the local sheriff’s office had called the FBI. Procedure allowed the FBI to get involved as soon as it was possible for the victim to have been taken across a state line. Georgetown, Alabama, was just half an hour from the Mississippi state line, and so the Birmingham office of the FBI had immediately jumped on the case like a cat on a mouse. In FBI nomenclature, a kidnapping case is called a “7,” and nearly every agent in the office got into his car and headed southwest for the small farming-market town. In the mind of each agent, however, was the dread of a fool’s errand. There was a clock on kidnapping cases. Most victims were thought to be sexually exploited and killed within four or six hours. Only a miracle could get the child back alive that quickly, and miracles didn’t happen often.

  But most of them were men with wives and children themselves, and so they worked as though there were a chance. The office ASAC—Assistant Special Agent in Charge—was the first to talk to the local sheriff, whose name was Paul Turner. The Bureau regarded him as an amateur in the business of investigations, out of his depth, and Turner thought so as well. The thought of a raped and murdered little girl in his jurisdiction turned his stomach, and he welcomed federal assistance. Photos were passed out to every man with a badge and a gun. Maps were consulted. The local cops and FBI Special Agents headed to the area between the Davidson house and the public school to which she’d walked five blocks every morning for two months. Everyone who lived on that pathway was interviewed. Back in Birmingham, computer checks were made of possible sex offenders living within a hundred-mile radius, and agents and Alabama state troopers were sent to interview them, too. Every house was searched, usually with permission of the owner, but often enough without, because the local judges took a stern view of kidnapping.

  For Special Agent Dominic Caruso, it wasn’t his first major case, but it was his first “7,” and while he was unmarried and childless, the thought of a missing child caused his blood first to chill, and then to boil. Her “official” kindergarten photo showed blue eyes and blond hair turning brown, and a cute little smile. This “7” wasn’t about money. The family was working class and ordinary. The father was a lineman for the local electric co-op, the mother worked part-time as a nurse’s aide in the county hospital. Both were churchgoing Methodists, and neither, on first inspection, seemed a likely suspect for child abuse, though that would be looked into, too. A senior agent from the Birmingham Field Office was skilled in profiling, and his initial read was frightening: This unknown subject could be a serial kidnapper and killer, someone who found children sexually attractive, and who knew that the safest way to commit this crime was to kill the victim afterward.

  He was out there somewhere, Caruso knew. Dominic Caruso was a young agent, hardly a year out of Quantico, but already in his second field assignment—unmarried FBI agents had no more choice in picking their assignments than a sparrow in a hurricane. His initial assignment had been in Newark, New Jersey, all of seven months, but Alabama was more to his taste. The weather was often miserable, but it wasn’t a beehive like that dirty city. His assignment now was to patrol the area west of Georgetown, to scan and wait for some hard bit of information. He wasn’t experienced enough to be an effective interviewer. The skill took years to develop, though Caruso thought he was pretty smart, and his college degree was in psychology.

  Look for a car with a little girl in it, he told himself, one not in a car seat? he wondered. It might give her a better way to look out of the car, and maybe wave for help . . . So, no, the subject would probably have her tied up, cuffed, or wrapped with duct tape, and probably gagged. Some little girl, helpless and terrified. The thought made his hands tighten on the wheel. The radio crackled.

  “Birmingham Base to all ‘7’ units. We have a report that the ‘7’ suspect might be driving a white utility van, probably a Ford, white in color, a little dirty. Alabama tags. If you see a vehicle matching that description, call it in, and we’ll get the local PD to check it out.”

  Which meant, don’t flash your gum-ball light and pull him over yourself unless you have to, Caruso thought. It was time to do some thinking.

  If I were one of those creatures, where would I be... ? Caruso slowed down. He thought . . . a place with decent road access. Not a main road per se . . . a decent secondary road, with a turnoff to something more private. Easy in, easy out. A place where the neighbors couldn’t see or hear what he’s up to . . .

  He picked up his microphone.

  “Caruso to Birmingham Base.”

  “Yeah, Dominic,” responded the agent on the radio desk. The FBI radios were encrypted, and couldn’t be listened into by anyone without a good descrambler.

  “The white van. How solid is that?”

  “An elderly woman says that when she was out getting her paper, she saw a little girl, right description, talking to some guy next to a white van. The possible subject is male Caucasian, undetermined age, no other description. Ain’t much, Dom, but it’s all we got,” Special Agent Sandy Ellis reported.

  “How many child abusers in the area?” Caruso asked next.

  “A total of nineteen on the computer. We got people talking to all of them. Nothing developed yet. All we got, man.”

  “Roger, Sandy. Out.”

  More driving, more scanning. He wondered if this was anything like his brother Brian had experienced in Afghanistan: alone, hunting the enemy . . . He started looking for dirt paths off the road, maybe for one with recent tire tracks.

  He looked down at the wallet-sized photo again. A sweet-faced little girl, just learning the ABC’s. A child for whom the world has always been a safe place, ruled by Mommy and Daddy, who went to Sunday school and made caterpillars out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners, and learned to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know / ’Cause the Bible tells me so . . .” His head swiveled left and right. There, about a hundred yards away, a dirt road leading into the woods. As he slowed, he saw that the path took a gentle S-curve, but the trees were thin, and he could see . . .

  . . . cheap frame house . . . and next to it . . . the corner of a van . . . ? But this one was more beige than white . . .

  Well, the little old lady who’d seen the l
ittle girl and the truck...how far away had it been...sunlight or shadows . . . ? So many things, so many inconstants, so many variables. As good as the FBI Academy was, it couldn’t prepare you for everything—hell, not even close to everything. That’s what they told you, too—told you that you had to trust your instinct and experience . . .

  But Caruso had hardly a year’s experience.

  Still . . .

  He stopped the car.

  “Caruso to Birmingham Base.”

  “Yeah, Dominic,” Sandy Ellis responded.

  Caruso radioed in his location. “I’m going 10-7 to walk in and take a look.”

  “Roger that, Dom. Do you request backup?”

  “Negative, Sandy. It’s probably nothing, just going to knock on the door and talk to the occupant.”

  “Okay, I’ll stand by.”

  Caruso didn’t have a portable radio—that was for local cops, not the Bureau—and so was now out of touch, except for his cell phone. His personal side arm was a Smith & Wesson 1076, snug in its holster on his right hip. He stepped out of the car, and closed the door without latching it, to avoid making noise. People always turned to see what made the noise of a slammed car door.