sorry they were that my brother had been murdered by jihadist fanatics.” The memory of the brush-off made Ledford’s lips tighten. “I don’t understand it.”
The general examined her quietly for a few moments, and the room fell silent. “Well, Petty Officer, I frankly don’t understand it either, and I don’t like it.” He unfolded from his chair and walked to the window, looked out, then turned back, having made his decision. “Lieutenant Colonel Summers, I want you to set up Petty Officer Ledford with a lawyer and take a sworn statement, and get a polygraph so we can start a file on this. Names, dates, and places of the people she talked with. Lizard, take her cell phone and go do some of your electronic magic. See if it has been hacked, get the call history, and enlarge those two photographs, as clear as you can get them. Gunnery Sergeant Swanson, you find out what’s going on with our friends at the FBI. Everybody be back here at six o’clock for a briefing.”
Master Gunny Dawkins cleared his throat loudly to get the general’s attention. “Sir, we already have a Green Light project under way.”
“I am aware of that,” Middleton said. “We just have to juggle two balls with one hand for a little while. Dismissed. Get out of here.”
SPECIAL AGENT DAVID HUNT of the Federal Bureau of Investigation met Kyle Swanson in a Starbucks near the National Archives, where they each bought a coffee and walked the two blocks to the Mall. The tourists were not as thick in August, with schools around the nation getting ready to start and vacation time drawing to a close. Hunt had been with the Bureau for almost twenty-five years, and somewhere along the way, the burly special agent had become a bureaucrat. He didn’t even remember when it happened. He thought more and more about life after the Bureau, retirement, slowing down and rebuilding the family time that had suffered for his job for so long. Maybe even learn how to fish. No, not that. Fishing was worse than playing golf.
“Here,” he said and handed a plain manila file folder to Swanson. “Didn’t need any private face time for this, Kyle. I could have sent it by bike messenger. Nothing to it. We offered to help the Pakistani ISI investigate the ambush, give them access to Bureau forensic resources, and they almost laughed out loud. These raggedy-ass pictures of the scene are already on the Internet, and it’s all we’ve got.”
Swanson led them to a park bench beneath the shade of a big tree that broke the heat. “Pretty thin stuff, Dave,” he said, studying the half-dozen photographs. Nude bodies on the ground, swelling due to the heat. An empty truck. Just a normal slaughter of innocents. He had seen similar atrocities in different places all around the world.
“Well, after we got slapped around by our pals at the ISI, the State Department also decided to shut us out. I got a memo that the Pakistani government had taken appropriate action, found and disposed of the murderers, and that it was officially all over but for the burying. It was all very terse, very convenient. Since WikiLeaks, they’re scared shitless over there at State about writing anything down.”
Swanson drank his coffee. “I thought we were all supposed to be working together these days. The War on Terror ring a bell?”
“Yeah. Well, it ain’t happening. Why are you guys interested in this little scrape, anyway?”
Swanson handed the folder back to Hunt. “Some Coast Guard chick that knows Sybelle Summers came to town to shake some bushes because her doctor brother was among the victims. She’s got a lame story that he saw something that is possibly militarily important over there in Mudville, and that’s what got him shot. When she took her story up the chain, including to your FBI shop, she was ignored.”
Hunt shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything about any inquiry from a relative, but it’s a pretty routine situation. Some family members always see conspiracy in the violent death of a loved one. Did she have any proof?”
Kyle said, “A couple of messed-up cell phone photos that her brother had sent, along with a cryptic text message that she claims refers to the Viet Cong tunnels in Vietnam, back in the day.”
Hunt grunted. “Humph. And you think my file is thin? You’ve got nothing there.”
“I agree, but General Middleton has one of his feelings that something isn’t right and wants it checked out. We’ll keep it all in-house for the time being until we see if there’s anything worth following. I ain’t betting on it. The kid may just be a flake.”
Hunt flipped his empty cup into a trash can, then adjusted his glasses and leaned forward, planting his hands on his knees. “She may not be such a flake, Kyle. In fact, she may be onto something. My opinion is, this thing deserves some investigation but is being stonewalled by somebody over in Foggy Bottom.”
Swanson looked hard at his old friend. Hunt was getting on in years, but he was still part bloodhound and part street cop. “Why? You having some old jealousy vibes because State won’t let you guys into a party?”
“Look at the pictures carefully, Kyle,” said Hunt. “Take them back and let your guy the Lizard work on them, make them clearer. Something important is missing.”
“What’s missing?” Swanson opened the folder again and studied the pictures more closely.
“The story is that they were shot up and robbed by some Taliban loonies, right? These photos supposedly represent the positions in which the bodies lay when Paki army troops found them.”
“Yes.” Kyle looked closer.
“If their trucks had been stopped and they were forced out and murdered on that spot, then where’s the blood? There is blood around the bullet holes in their clothing but not around the bodies, Kyle. The guy with his head blown apart should be resting in a big puddle of brains. Get it now?”
Swanson did. Hunt was right. He knew from personal experience that nobody ever gets badly shot and keeps all of the blood inside. It leaks, gushes, oozes, sprays, drips, and floods, and it keeps coming out until the heart stops beating. In the photos, the ground around each of the bodies was trampled but unstained. “Maybe the rain washed it away?”
“It had stopped raining in that particular area two days before, and the sun dried it out. The floods had never reached that high ground. The dirt, the side of the truck, the foliage, those logs near the bodies—all devoid of blood.”
Swanson closed the folder. “You’re saying they were killed somewhere else, then moved to this place and dumped.”
“Exactly. Those bodies bled out, then were transported to this spot to be found, away from the actual murder scene. One other thing. Look at the ankles we can see. They’re all without shoes, which is not abnormal in a place filled with thieves. But those dark stripes look to me like rope burns, which had to be made while they were still alive. Our people down at Quantico say the bruising is consistent with a victim being hung upside down.”
“I thought you didn’t investigate.”
“Just called for a few observations by friends.” Dave Hunt grinned. “Nothing official. Your people will find the same thing. I think these poor people were captured, hung up like sides of beef, and shot to hell, and the blood emptied out by the barrel. Then they were brought to this place and dropped. Why? I have no idea.”
“Weird,” said Kyle.
“Indeed,” said Dave Hunt. “We may be stymied on our end, but you and Trident can go around the normal rules. Kick over some rocks on this one, Gunny Swanson. See what crawls out.”
The six o’clock meeting in General Middleton’s office at the Pentagon was a tense session that seemed to be taking them down a road they did not want to travel. Sybelle Summers reported that Beth Ledford had passed the polygraph examination and had been interviewed by a Marine Special Ops lawyer, under oath. Middleton had copies of the polygraph results and the legal statement.
Commander Freedman had produced a slick set of eight-by-ten reproductions from the grainy photographs that Ledford had brought, but they showed nothing more than the fallen railroad bridge, with one end sticking in the river, and another shot of a valley. He had examined her cell phone and said that it was clear. No one had hacked it.
Then Swanson gave a debrief on his talk with Special Agent Hunt of the FBI and added his photos to the growing stack of paperwork.
Middleton spread all of the photos side by side on his desk, the pictures the Lizard had enlarged next to the gruesome forensic-style pictures from the Pakistanis. “It’s not the same location. Both of Dr. Ledford’s pictures are from a low area, and the bodies are on dry ground, with completely different foliage,” he said. “Better if you not look at these, Petty Officer Ledford.”
