I also called Jamilla every day, sometimes a couple of times a day, or she’d call or e-mail me. The distance separating us was becoming more and more of an issue. Neither of us had a good solution yet. Could I ever move the family to California? Could Jamilla move to Washington? We needed to talk about it face-to-face, and pretty soon.
After I returned from Colorado, I spent a couple of days working in Washington. I knew that I had one more important trip to make, but I needed some more preparation first. Measure twice, cut once. Nana had always preached that to me.
I spent countless hours on Lexis, but also the military database, ACIRS, and the law enforcement system, RISS. I made a visit to the Pentagon and talked to a Colonel Peyser about violence against civilians committed by American soldiers in Southeast Asia. When I brought up the An Lao Valley, Peyser abruptly cut off the interview, and then he refused to see me again.
In a strange way, that was a very good sign. I was close to something, wasn’t I?
I talked to a few friends who had served in Vietnam. The phrase “if it moves, it’s VC” was familiar to most of them. Those who knew about it justified it, since violent outrages were constantly being committed by the North Vietnamese. One army vet told this story: He’d overheard other soldiers talk about a Vietnamese man, in his mid-eighties, who’d been shot down. “Got to hand it to him,” a gunnery sergeant had joked, “man his age and he volunteers for the Viet Cong.”
And one name kept coming up whenever I talked about the An Lao Valley.
In the records.
Everywhere I looked.
One name that was a link to so much that had happened — there, and here.
The fourth of the blind mice?
I had to find that out now.
Early on Thursday morning, I left for West Point. It would be about a five-hour drive. I was in no particular hurry. The person I wanted to see there wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t think he had any reason to run and hide.
I loaded up the CD player with the blues mostly, but also the new Bob Dylan, which I wanted to hear at least once. I brought along a thermos of coffee as well as sandwiches for the road. I told Nana that I would try to be home that night, to which she curtly replied, “Try harder. Try more often.”
The drive gave me time to think. I needed to be sure that I was doing the right thing by going to West Point again. I asked myself a lot of tough but necessary questions. When I was satisfied with the answers, I gave some more thought to taking a job with the FBI. Director Ron Burns had done a good job showing me the kind of resources I’d have at the Bureau. The message was clear, and it was also clever: I would be better at what I did working for the FBI.
Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, though.
I knew that I could make it in private practice as a psychologist now, if that was what I really wanted. Maybe I could do a better job with the kids if I had a regular job instead of the Job. Use those marbles wisely, savor those precious Saturdays. Make a go of it with Jamilla, who was constantly in my thoughts, and should be.
Eventually, I found myself on Route 9W, following road signs for Highland Falls and West Point.
As I got close to the Point, I checked my Glock and put a clip in. I wasn’t sure I’d need a gun. Then again, I hadn’t thought I’d need one the night Owen Handler was murdered near here.
I entered West Point through the Thayer Gate at the north end of Highland Falls.
Cadets were all over the Plain parade drilling, still looking beyond reproach. Smoke curled lazily from a couple of chimneys on top of Washington Hall. I liked West Point a lot. I also admired most of the men and women I’d met in the army. But not all of them, and everybody knows what a few bad apples can do.
I pulled up in front of a redbrick building. I had come here for answers.
One name was left on my shopping list. A big name. A man beyond reproach.
General Mark Hutchinson.
The commandant of West Point.
He had avoided me the night Owen Handler had been murdered, but that wasn’t going to happen again.
Chapter 110
I CLIMBED STEEP stone steps and let myself into the well-kept building that housed the offices of the commandant of West Point. A soldier with a “high and tight” haircut was sitting behind a dark wooden desk that held a highly polished brass lamp and orderly stacks of papers and portfolios.
He looked up, cocking his head like a curious and alert grade-school student. “Yes, sir. Can I help you, sir?”
“My name is Detective Alex Cross. I believe General Hutchinson will see me. Please tell him that I’m here.”
The soldier’s head remained tilted at the curious angle. “Yes, sir, Detective. Could you tell me something about your business with the general, sir?”
“I’m afraid that I can’t. I believe the general will see me, though. He already knows who I am.” I went and sat on a stuffed chair across the room. “I’ll be right here waiting for the general.”
The soldier at the desk was clearly frustrated; he wasn’t used to civil disobedience, especially not in General Hutchinson’s office. He thought about it, then finally picked up the plain black phone on his desk and called someone further up the chain of command. I figured that was a good thing, a necessary next step.
A few minutes passed before a heavy wooden door behind his heavy wooden desk opened. An officer in uniform appeared and walked straight over to me.
“I’m Colonel Walker, the general’s adjutant. You can leave now, Detective Cross,” he said. “General Hutchinson won’t be seeing you today. You have no jurisdiction here.”
I nodded. “But I do have some important information General Hutchinson should listen to. It’s about events that took place during his command in the An Lao Valley. This was in ’sixty-seven through ’seventy-one, but in particular, ’sixty-nine.”
“I assure you, the general has no interest in meeting with you or hearing any old war stories you have to tell.”
“I have a meeting set up with the Washington Post about this particular information,” I said. “I thought the general should hear the allegations first.”
Colonel Walker nodded his head once but didn’t seem impressed or worried. “If you have someone in Washington who wants to listen to your story, you should go there with it. Now please leave the building, or I’ll have you escorted out.”
“No need to waste the manpower,” I said, and got up from the cushy armchair. “I’m good at escorting myself.”
I went outside on my own steam and walked to my car. I got in and slowly drove up the pretty main drag that cuts through West Point. I was thinking hard about what to do next. I eventually parked on a side street lined with tall maples and oaks that had a majestic view of the Hudson.
I waited there.
The general will see me.
Chapter 111
IT WAS PAST dark when a black Ford Bronco turned into the driveway of a large Colonial-style house that was flanked by elm trees and ringed by stockade fencing.
General Mark Hutchinson stepped out of his vehicle. The interior lights illuminated his face for a few seconds. He didn’t look one bit worried. Why should he? He had been to war several times, and he’d always survived.
I waited about ten minutes for him to put the houselights on, then get settled in. I knew that Hutchinson was divorced and lived alone. Actually, I knew a lot about the general by now.
I walked up the front steps, much as I’d gone up the steps to the general’s office earlier that afternoon. The same deliberate pace. Relentless, unstoppable, stubborn as hell. I was going to talk to Hutchinson today, one way or the other. I had business to finish. This was my last case, after all.
I banged the front door’s iron knocker a couple of times, a tarnished winged goddess that I found to be more imposing than inviting.
Hutchinson finally came to the door in a blue-checked sport shirt and pressed khaki slacks. He looked like a corporate executive caught at home by a
pesky door-to-door salesman, and none too happy about the interruption at this time of night.
“I’m going to have you arrested for trespassing,” he said when he saw me. As I’d told the soldier in his reception area, the general knew who I was.
“That being the case . . .” I pushed my way through the front door. Hutchinson was a broad-shouldered man, but in his sixties. He didn’t try to stop me, didn’t touch me at all.
“Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” he asked. “I believe you have.”
“Not really. I’m just getting started.”
I walked into a spacious living room and sat down. The room had deep couches, brass floor lamps, curtains in warm blues and reds. His ex-wife’s taste, I assumed.
“This won’t take too long, General. Let me tell you what I know about An Lao.”
Hutchinson tried to cut me off. “I’ll tell you what you don’t know, mister. You don’t know how the army works, and you don’t seem to know much about life in power circles either. You’re out of your depth here. Leave. Now. Take your goddamn stories to the Washington Post.”
“Starkey, Griffin, and Brownley Harris were military assassins assigned to you in Vietnam,” I began.
The general frowned and shook his head, but finally seemed resigned to hearing me out. He sat down. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of any of those men.”
“You sent ten-person teams into the An Lao Valley specifically to intimidate the Vietnamese. It was a guerilla war, and your teams were instructed to act like guerillas. They committed murders, mutilations. They slaughtered noncombatants. They had a calling card — they painted their victims red, white, or blue. It got out of control, didn’t it, General?”
Hutchinson actually smiled. “Where did you dig up this ridiculous shit? You have some fucking imagination. Now get the hell out of here.”
I continued. “You destroyed the records that these men were even in the An Lao Valley. The same was true of the three assassins — Starkey, Griffin, and Harris — the one’s you sent to clean up the mess. That’s how I first found out about the deception. They told me they were there. But their army records said otherwise.”
The general looked uninterested in what I had to say. It was all an act, of course. I wanted to get up and punch him until he told me the truth.
“The records weren’t destroyed, General,” I went on.
Finally, I had his attention. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just what I said. The records weren’t destroyed. An ARVN scout named Tran Van Luu brought the atrocities to the attention of his CO. None other than Colonel Owen Handler. No one would listen, of course, so Luu stole copies of records — and took them to the North Vietnamese.
“Those records were held in Hanoi until 1997. Then the CIA happened to obtain copies. I got my copies from the FBI, as well as from the Vietnamese embassy. So maybe I do know a little about life in Washington’s power circles. I even know that you’re being considered for the Joint Chiefs. But not if any of this started to come out.”
“You’re crazy,” Hutchinson huffed. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? Two teams of ten men each committed a hundred or more murders of civilians in villages during ’sixty-eight and ’sixty-nine. You were the commanding officer. You gave the orders. When the teams got out of control, you sent in Starkey and his men to tidy up. Unfortunately, they killed a few civilians themselves. More recently, you gave the order to have Colonel Handler killed. Handler knew about your role in the An Lao Valley. Your career would have been ruined, and you might have even gone to jail.
“You went up country with Starkey, Harris, and Warren Griffin yourself. You were there, Hutchinson, in the An Lao Valley. You’re responsible for everything that went wrong. You were there — you made it four Blind Mice.”
Hutchinson suddenly turned around in his chair. “Walker, Taravela,” he said, “you can come in now. We’ve heard more than enough from this bastard.”
Two men entered through a side door. They both had guns drawn, pointed at me.
“Now you don’t get to leave, Dr. Cross,” said Colonel Walker. “You don’t get to go home.”
Chapter 112
MY HANDS WERE cuffed tightly behind my back. Then I was pushed outside and shoved down into the trunk of a dark sedan by the two armed men.
I lay curled up like a blanket or rug in there. For a man my size, it was a tight squeeze.
I could feel the car back out of Hutchinson’s driveway, bump over the gutter, then turn onto the street.
The sedan rode inside West Point at a reasonable speed. No more than twenty miles per hour. I was sure we were leaving the grounds when the car finally sped up.
I didn’t know who was up front. Whether General Hutchinson had come along with his men. It seemed likely that I was going to be killed soon. I couldn’t imagine how I would get out of this one. I thought about the kids and Nana, and Jamilla, and I wondered why I’d risked my life again. Was it a sign of good character, or a serious character flaw? And did it really matter anymore?
Eventually the car turned off the smooth highway surface, onto a seriously bumpy road that was probably unpaved. I estimated that we were about forty minutes from West Point. So how much longer did I have to live?
The car rolled to a stop and I heard the doors open and slam shut. Then the trunk was sprung.
The first face I saw was Hutchinson’s. There was no emotion in his eyes. Nothing human looked back at me.
The two others were behind him. They had handguns pointed my way. Their stares were blank as well.
“What are you going to do?” I asked a question that I already knew the answer to.
“What we should have done the night you were with Owen Handler. Kill you,” said Colonel Walker.
“With extreme prejudice,” added the general.
Chapter 113
I WAS LIFTED out of the car trunk and unceremoniously dropped on the ground. I landed hard on my hip. Pain lanced my body. Just the beginning, I knew. These bastards were out to hurt me before they killed me. I was handcuffed and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
Colonel Walker reached toward me and ripped open my shirt. The other man was pulling off my shoes, then my pants.
Suddenly I was naked and shivering in the woods somewhere in upstate New York. The air was cold, probably in the low forties.
“Do you know what my real crime is? Do you know what I did that was so wrong in Vietnam?” Hutchinson asked. “I gave the fucking order to fight back. They killed and maimed our men. They practiced terrorism and sadism. They tried to intimidate us in every way they could. I wouldn’t be intimidated. I fought back, Cross. Just like I’m fighting back now.”
“You also murdered noncombatants, disgraced your command.” I spit the words at him.
The general leaned in close. “You weren’t there, so don’t tell me what I did or didn’t do. We won in the An Lao Valley. Back then, we used to say there were only two kinds in the world, the motherfuckers and the motherfucked. I’m a motherfucker, Cross. Guess what that makes you?”
Colonel Walker and the other man had paint and brushes. They began to swab cold paint onto my body. “Thought you would appreciate this touch,” Walker said. “I was in the An Lao Valley too. You going to tell the Washington Post on me?”
There was nothing I could do to stop this. No one could help me either. I was naked in the world, and all alone, and now I was being painted. Their calling card before they killed me.
I shivered in the cold. I could see in their eyes that killing me meant nothing to them. They’d murdered before. Owen Handler, for one.
So how much longer did I have? A few minutes? Maybe a couple of hours of torture? No more than that.
A gunshot rang out in the blackness. It seemed to come from beyond the headlights of the blue sedan we’d driven there in. What the hell?
A dark hole opened in Colonel Walker’s fa
ce, just below his left eye. Blood spurted. He flopped over backward, landing with a heavy thud on the forest floor. The back of his head was gone, just blown away.
The second soldier tried to duck, and a bullet drilled his lower spine. He screamed, then fell and rolled right over me.
I saw men come swarming out of the woods — at least half a dozen. I counted nine, ten of them. I couldn’t see who they were in the darkness. Who in hell was rescuing me?
Then as they came closer, moonlight illuminated some of their features. My God! I didn’t know them, but I knew where they had come from and who had sent them — either to follow me or to kill Hutchinson.
The Ghost Shadows were here.
Tran Van Luu’s people had been tracking me. Or Hutchinson.
They were speaking in Vietnamese. I didn’t understand a word they were saying. Two of them grabbed the general and threw him to the ground. They began to kick him in the head, the chest, and stomach, in the genitals. He cried out in pain, but the beating continued, almost as if they couldn’t hear him.
They left me alone. But I had no illusions — I was a witness to this. I lay with my face pressed against the ground. I watched the attack from the lowest vantage point. The beating of General Hutchinson seemed unreal and almost inhuman. They were now kicking Colonel Walker and the other soldier as well. Beating the dead! One of them took out a serrated knife and cut Hutchinson. His scream pierced the night. It was obvious that they wanted to hurt the general but not kill him. They meant to torture and terrorize, to wreak havoc.
One of Luu’s men pulled out a straw doll. He threw the doll at Hutchinson. He then stabbed the general in the lower stomach. Hutchinson screamed again. The stomach wound wouldn’t be fatal. The torture was going to continue. And sooner or later they would paint all of our bodies.
I believe in rituals and symbolism, and I believe in revenge.