No Fortunate Son (3 page)

The Rollup

N
avy Lieutenant Kaelyn Clute saw a white Toyota four-door sedan enter the parking lot, causing her to lean forward. The glare broke off the windshield and she saw it wasn’t her brother. She sat back, disgusted. She’d been told to wait outside the main exchange on Kadena Air Base and he’d be by to get her at noon. He’d said he was driving a white Toyota, which would have been fine except it seemed
everyone
here on Okinawa drove bland white Toyotas.

Just like a jarhead.

Captain McKinley Clute was her twin brother, and together they came from a long line of distinguished naval aviators. Their grandfather had retired as a four-star admiral, pioneering fleet aviation in the modern era. Their father had decided on a different path, retiring as a captain and going into politics, first as a representative, then as a senator, and was now the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

There had been no question where the Clute twins would end up.

Unfortunately, through a quirk of heredity passed down from their mother, McKinley was genetically red-green color-blind. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see colors, just that he sometimes mixed those two specifically. They didn’t find out until he was tested in high school, and just like that, his dreams of being the next
Top Gun
Maverick went up in smoke. He’d done the next best thing, joining the Marine Corps. Currently a captain in the military police, he’d been stationed at the provost marshal’s office on Camp Foster, Okinawa, for the last two years.

Kaelyn had continued in the family tradition and was one of the few females flying the F/A-18F Super Hornet. Assigned to VFA-103, she had
been detailed for mission planning and review of OPLAN 5027—the order of battle for the Korean Peninsula. A mundane tasking, it meant she’d spend her days validating such things as targets, refueling responsibilities, logistics trails, and a smorgasbord of other requirements that needed to be planned in advance if they had any hope of winning a fight with North Korea. She wasn’t looking forward to working with her joint partners in the Air Force and Army, but there was one bright spot: The meetings were all taking place on Kadena Air Base, just a stone’s throw from Camp Foster.

She hadn’t seen McKinley for eight months and had wrangled a way to fly in a day early to make that happen. Now if he’d only show up.

She saw another ubiquitous white four-door sedan enter the parking lot and recognized the shock of red hair even with most of it shorn off. An involuntary smile broke out.

McKinley pulled to the curb and leapt out, holding his arms wide, and she jumped off the bench, saying, “Mack!”

She ran into his embrace, ignoring the stares from the people coming and going. She said, “What took so long? Today’s the only day I have.”

He made an excuse, then got back behind the wheel saying, “The wait will be worth it. I’ve got a treat for you.”

As he drove out of the parking lot she said, “What’s that?”

“A place called Kajinho, which apparently means ‘Pizza in the Sky.’”

“Pizza? You’re shitting me. Why can’t we go to a local place? Something Okinawan.”

“I see the Navy has done wonders for your vocabulary. Don’t worry. It
is
local, and you’ll get to see more of the island getting there than eating around here. It’s about an hour and a half north, on the tip of the island, and it has the best views around. I’ll play tour guide.”

He turned onto National Route 58 and they began the tour, Mack pointing out landmarks as they passed. The Army post Torii Station, the Marine Corps’ Camp Hansen, Shinto shrines, Okinawan tombs, and anything else he could find, all the while talking like an expert. In between they caught up and compared notes on their two military careers.

About ninety minutes later they were off of 58, winding through the
mountainous jungle. Eventually, the road was only a car and a half wide, the switchbacks coming every five hundred feet, concrete tombs peeking out from the tangled jungle growth on the hills.

Kaeyln said, “You sure you know where you’re going?”

“Yeah. It’s right up here another hundred meters.”

They broke through to the top and she saw what looked like an old Okinawan house, with a view 360 degrees around. Her brother had been right; it was gorgeous.

They ordered their pizza and struck up a conversation with a couple of foreign backpackers new to the island. On their way to Australia, they had only a day to spend but had still managed to find the little slice of heaven at the top of Okinawa. They asked for further things to explore and McKinley was more than willing to play tour guide. While paying the bill, he agreed to lead them to the Okinawa Aquarium just fifteen minutes away.

They never made it.

Captain McKinley Clute’s car wasn’t found for two days, lodged in a ditch on a winding dirt road. The Okinawan police and Camp Butler Provost Marshal questioned everyone in the surrounding area but came up with nothing. The Clute twins had disappeared without a trace. The only lead was a couple of Irishmen who had been seen talking to them at a pizza joint a mile away.

All attempts to locate them for questioning failed.

*   *   *

Governor Rachel Deleon speed-walked to her car to get out of the crisp winter air. The driver, a sergeant in the Texas Department of Public Safety, opened her door. She said, “Bill, take the long way in. I’m expecting a call.”

He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and closed the door.

As the governor of Texas, she had a mansion within spitting distance of the capitol, but instead of a convenience, the closeness made her feel as if the job never left. In reality, it didn’t leave no matter where she went, but she preferred her house on West Lake.

As the most powerful person in one of the largest states, she had
defied the odds to achieve the position. Right off the bat, she was a female fighting in a man’s world. To make matters worse, she wasn’t classically beautiful. In fact, she was downright homely, something that every campaign manager she’d ever known said made her dead on arrival. She had fought a vicious campaign on the usual issues separating the parties and would have lost handily, but she had a couple of assets that nobody else in the running could tear down.

For one, she was Hispanic in heritage, which in Texas could do quite a bit to counterbalance her less than telegenic appearance. But it wasn’t enough. She needed the dyed-in-the-wool conservative vote from the people who were scared of that very heritage. People who might believe she had an agenda related to the immigrants swimming across the Rio Grande, which is where her husband came in.

A fifth-generation Texan, he was also a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National Guard. A veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Never mind that his military specialty was public affairs, and that he’d not once heard a shot fired in anger. Not once left the perimeter of Balad and Bagram Air Bases. The fact that his job was no more dangerous than a publicist at a corporation was irrelevant. He was a war hero. A veteran. And that title had proved decisive.

Currently, he was on temporary duty with the Texas Adjutant General at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, helping craft some deployment schedule or other thing. He’d promised to call at lunch, and given the seven-hour time difference, that meant she could take it on her way to work.

They turned onto Guadalupe Street, the dome of the capitol coming into view, and she began to wonder if she was going to miss the call. Paralleling the University of Texas, she started to tell her driver to turn onto MLK Boulevard and circle the school when her phone rang.

She said, “Finally! I thought I was going to miss you. Headed into work?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, the general bumped up a meeting, so I’ve only got a second. How’s life in the music capital?”

“Still ticking. Usual fights. That asshole Reese is talking about investigating our stock purchase into Dell again. Nothing I can’t handle.”

She heard him say, “What the hell,” then, “Hang on, honey, there’s some sort of accident. These cops are death on cells while driving.”

The phone went silent, then she heard her husband’s voice as if spoken from a distance. The other party was muffled and inaudible.

—“Officer, you speak English?”

—“Huh. Sorry about that. No insult intended. I never expected to hear that accent. Can I get through here?”

Her husband’s voice grew strident, the cell signal strong enough for Rachel to sense the fear.

—“Hey, what the hell are you doing? Don’t . . . no, wait!”

She heard him scream and she began shouting into the phone, causing her driver to whip his head toward the backseat.

Her husband didn’t respond. The only sound coming over the line was a car door slamming.

*   *   *

Airman First Class Curtis Oglethorpe bounced his beat-up jeep down the road, pushing it faster than was safe. Well, safe for the jeep, that is. As for Curtis, he needed to get off the lonely highway leading from Soto Cano Air Base to Tegucigalpa, the nearest city to his miserable station.

An air traffic controller for Joint Task Force–Bravo, he’d paid his roommate to take his shift, which wasn’t exactly kosher as far as the chain of command went. But then again, Curtis never found the rules worth following. Far from it, he was what was known in military parlance as a shitbag. The guy who could always be depended on to disappear whenever extra duty came around. Which gave his father no small amount of fits.

The son of the current secretary of defense, Curtis had been given everything—the proverbial silver spoon jammed up his ass from birth—and had done everything in his power to reject it. Not out of any pride in making his way on his own, but simply out of laziness. When he’d failed out of Dartmouth—a school that had been no mean feat to get him into in the first place—his father had had enough. He’d told Curtis in no uncertain terms he was joining the military or getting cut off.

Being a little bit of a coward at heart, Curtis had agreed, searching
out the least “military” occupational specialty he could find, eventually settling for air traffic controller in the Air Force. The recruiter had told him it was all gravy, with nothing but stateside assignments and nine-to-five work, then he’d been shipped off to JTF–Bravo in the stinking jungles of Honduras, controlling flights targeted against the drug trade, along with a multitude of other taskings.

Not his idea of the cush life promised by the recruiter.

The work was grinding, and the base grew tiresome within a month. He’d spent every waking moment he could haunting the bars in Tegucigalpa, searching for some companionship. In that, he’d failed, with the women seeming to smell the broken promises in his DNA. He’d started hunting Honduran women in Internet chat rooms and had found one who had taken a liking to him. So much so she’d agreed to meet him in Tegucigalpa at a place called the Bull Bar. The catch was he had to come tonight. Which meant he had to get out of his shift. Which also meant he had to get off the two-lane highway that led to the city.

JTF–Bravo was a small place, and if he passed anyone coming back from Tegucigalpa, they’d recognize his jeep. Then realize he was supposed to be on duty right now. And that wouldn’t be a good thing.

The old jeep groaned down the road, the suspension complaining at every pothole, the rusted holes in the body whistling with the wind. Curtis fought the vehicle, straining to keep the four wheels on the rutted blacktop at a speed that caused the jeep to become nearly unstable. He began to pass houses, then side streets, then entered the city itself, breathing a sigh of relief.

He wound through the small town to his rendezvous at the Bull Bar, the fear of getting caught now replaced with the hormones of getting laid. He parked out front and took a quick look in the mirror, smoothing back his longer-than-regulation hair, then sauntered inside.

It was fairly early, the sun still in the sky, and the bar looked old and worn without the cloak of darkness. But Curtis cared little about ambiance. His head on a swivel, he looked from the bar to the tables, finally settling his eyes on the mechanical bull in the corner. He saw nothing but a couple of males at the bar sipping whiskey out of highball glasses.

He approached and took a seat on a stool, seeing the men were
inebriated. He turned back to the door, and one leaned over to him, saying, “Where you from, bud?”

He heard the accent but couldn’t place it. He said, “America. You?”

“America! Land of the free! Home of the brave! We just came from there. We’re from Dublin, on the great Emerald Isle.”

“Emerald Isle?”

“Ireland, friend, Ireland. The land of the leprechauns. Let me buy you a drink.”

Curtis took another glance around the bar, still not seeing what he wanted. He said, “Sure. Whatever you’re having.”

“Irish whiskey. What else? Although the bog down here isn’t exactly pedigreed.”

The bartender poured and his new friend picked it up, turning a complete circle to hand it to him, staggering as he did so. Curtis took a sip and nodded. “Good stuff.”

The Irishman clinked his glass and said, “Who are you here to meet?”

“Supposed to hook up with a girl here.”

“A horny little lass? Some hot Honduran gee?” He gave a drunken wink, and Curtis took another sip, wondering how he was going to break contact from the sots when his date showed up.

Curtis said, “Well, I just met her online . . .” He stopped, unable to continue his train of thought, his head beginning to swim.
What the hell? I only had two sips.

He focused on the Irishman and saw double, the room starting to swim. The Irishman said, “What’s the girl’s name? Is it Esmeralda?”

His head was spinning, and he was fighting the bar stool as if he was riding the mechanical bull in the corner. The only thing that penetrated was the name.

Woozily, he said, “You know her?”

“Yes. I do.” The Irishman smiled, not looking nearly as drunk as he had a moment ago. “Sorry, bud. She’s not coming.”

Curtis started to slide off the stool and felt someone grab both of his arms. Then he felt
nothing.