Levon's Time Read online

  “The money is gone. My husband is sick. Very sick. And I have other children.”

  “You have a son close to Esperanza’s age,” Bullet Cross said.

  Her daughter’s name coming from this boy’s mouth was like a dagger in her chest. For a moment, she did not understand the mention of her son, what it meant. The boy with the profaned cross was still speaking. Amalia struggled to follow his words.

  “We will be repaid. One way or the other, you owe us for this. It is on you. The boy is not worth as much as a girl, but he is something.”

  Amalia stepped toward the men. Her knees were weak. Her mind was racing.

  “You understand?” Sad Eyes this time. “If you cannot give us back your daughter, then we must take your son.”

  “How am I to do this? Esperanza is in All-Obama. I have no way to find her. She cannot come home.”

  “She will call you. You will tell us where to find her.”

  “Call me? Call here? How? We have no phone.” Amalia waved a hand at the dark buildings behind her. A dog was barking inside one of the apartments.

  “Here. She will call you on this.” Sad Eyes stepped closer to place a silver lozenge in her hand. He used both his hands to press her fingers around it.

  “I have no money for this. I have no way to keep it charged. There’s no electric here.”

  “It’s all paid for. You don’t worry about that. Just keep the phone switched on and charged.” Bullet Cross was becoming impatient with her. He tapped his sneakered foot.

  “Use this. Connect it where you work.” Sad Eyes handed her a loop of black cord with a boxy plug on one end.

  “I am not sure I can do this. I don’t think it’s allowed,” Amalia protested. She flipped up the top of the phone, and it beeped. On a tiny screen was a picture of a sunny day on a sandy beach lined with palm trees and pearly surf.

  “Goddamn, puta!” Bullet Cross dashed his joint to the ground and whirled away in frustration.

  “Find a way. Keep the phone charged and with you at all times,” Sad Eyes said. “Your niña will call. We will be back, and you tell us where to find her.”

  “Vamanos,” Bullet Cross said and stormed back to the jeep.

  “Do not lose the phone,” Sad Eyes ordered in farewell.

  Amalia nodded mutely, clutching the phone and charger to her breast with one hand. The fingers of the other rubbed the crucifix in unconscious prayer. The bright lights swept over her, the tires sending up a fresh cloud of dust. She stood and watched the red lights vanish into the screen of trees. She was still there mouthing silent prayers as she heard the car’s engine build to a whine out on the valley road.

  The next day in the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Colby, Alabama, Dale Little stood looking at a photocopied notice stapled to the utility pole outside Fay’s diner.

  Dale had had little to do since they shut down the Kubota dealership over in Teeter. He’d been a mechanic there, fixing the lawn mowers and chainsaws and trimmers that came in, but business had slowed down a year back, and the place was shuttered. Dale figured it might reopen, with all the new gated developments getting started along the county road down to Haley. Until then, he’d bide his time and watch Netflix back at his mom’s house. But some days, he’d had enough of her bitching and whining and walked down into town for a Coke and a quiet smoke, or to catch up with some of the other out-of-work guys hanging at the E & B barber shop.

  Any distraction was welcome.

  The flyer showed a photograph of a pretty little girl smiling in a white dress. She held flowers in her hands. Looked Mexican to Dale’s eyes. In English and Spanish, the flyer asked if anyone had seen the girl, and requested that any information on her whereabouts be reported to the number below. The bottom of the flyer was cut into a row of tabs, each bearing a phone number.

  Dale tore one off and held it close to his eyes to inspect it. He’d left his Walgreen’s reading glasses back at the house when his mother’s carping drove him out.

  The row of digits on the strip of paper was one long-ass telephone number. He folded the strip of paper into the watch pocket of his jeans and vowed to keep a sharp eye out for the little bonita. This solemn vow faded away when Dale joined a spirited discussion at the barber shop about the Tide’s chances at the Orange Bowl.

  33

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “There ain’t a man on this Earth can’t be got.”

  “I will not help you! Lass mich alleine!” Klaus said. He was storming away from Levon across the gravel yard.

  “All I’m asking is who’s in Hut Two?” Levon said. His long strides brought them even.

  Klaus came to halt only because to proceed farther would have taken him in front of the rows of men kneeling at final prayer. He turned back to slide between two huts. Levon followed.

  “You want me to help you spill more blood?” he asked, hands shaking as he fumbled a cigarette from a box drawn from an inside pocket.

  “What should you care?” Levon asked. He struck a stick match and held it for the German. He had to take Klaus’ hand in his to steady it for the touch of the flame.

  “I do not! They were scum! This is different!” Klaus took a long drag.

  “How? How is it different?”

  “Hut Two is dissidents, men opposed to the current regime. Erdoğan has them locked up here to silence them.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Politicians. Journalists. Anyone who speaks against the president.”

  “I never see them. They’re protected, like the deviants and the rats?”

  “They are vulnerable to attack, same as Hut Fourteen. They are kept apart because a murder of a known figure would be an embarrassment. Ankara wants these men forgotten about. Their deaths would not go unnoticed.”

  “He’ll be harder to get at than Tiryaki.”

  “Who is the man?”

  “Mehmet Sadıkoğlu.”

  “Very hard. This man writes for a magazine that is popular. He is often on television. He is protected. His death would be a blot on the president. The world would take notice.”

  “Why would the Chechen want a man like that dead? He doesn’t seem political.”

  “He’s not. But there’s hardliners who want Sadıkoğlu dead. They would pay a fortune to have him eliminated.”

  Levon stood looking down at flecks of snow swirling over the gravel.

  “You will kill him for a phone.” Klaus hawked and spat.

  “They won’t allow me to contact my consulate. I need that contact.”

  “Enough for a man to die?”

  “I’m not going to kill him.”

  “You’re not going to kill anyone?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Klaus blinked snowflakes from his eyes to stare at Levon.

  34

  “This man will take over where I left off, Slick,” Gunny Leffertz said.

  They were on a naval base at Dam Neck, Virginia. Summer sunlight streamed in through the blinds of the common room. The three men sat at a table with mugs of fresh-brewed coffee, and all wore in civvies. Levon had on an Ocean City, Delaware lifeguard squad t-shirt and board shorts. Gunny was in khakis and the world’s ugliest guayabera shirt. The third man wore a black polo shirt and cargo pants. He was an Asian man whom Gunny introduced as Brett Tsukuda.

  “The SEALs tell me you’re half-fish,” Tsukuda said. He had an easy smile. He removed tinted shades to meet Levon’s gaze.

  “Gunny said he’d probably try and drown me, sir.”

  “No need for the ‘sir,’ Levon. Call me Brett. I don’t hold rank.” Brett poured a stream of sugar into his mug.

  “You gonna eat that or drink it?” Levon asked.

  “I like it sweet,” Brett said, stirring the syrup with a spoon.

  “You’re with an agency.”

  “Doesn’t matter which one, does it? It’s all just alphabet soup. We trade personnel like farm team baseball.”

  “Brett runs the shit list
,” Gunny said. “He points and you shoot. You’re gonna see places you never heard of.”

  “Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups are global. They’re set up everywhere but Antarctica,” Brett explained.

  “Gunny says this unit has a code suffix but no name. Will I be part of a team?”

  “You are the unit, Levon. You are the team. You’ll work with different hunter/killer outfits, but they’ll only be support for you. You’re the headliner, and they’re your backup band.”

  “They won’t even know your name, Slick. We have a dozen IDs for you to use. Your show. You take down the target, you adios like a shadow.”

  “Will any of the targets be domestic?” Levon asked. His eyes were locked on Tsukuda’s.

  “Yes.”

  “Any American citizens?”

  “That a problem for you?” Brett asked, unblinking.

  “Not for me.”

  “You’ll be covered, son,” Gunny said. He leaned across the table and gripped Levon’s arm. “No one will know your name but us three at this table. There won’t be any consequences for these kills.”

  “They’re all bad actors. All righteous marks. Every one of them is a clear and present danger,” Brett said.

  “Just asking. I need to know the rules. Even the ones I’ll be breaking.”

  Brett looked at Gunny Leffertz to gauge his reaction. The man kept his gaze locked on Levon with an intensity that made Brett forget that Leffertz was blind. His sight had been lost to shrapnel back during Desert Storm.

  “That’s only fair,” Brett agreed.

  “If you’re sure I’m your man, then I’m stepping up,” Levon said and extended a hand.

  Brett took the rough, workman’s hand in his own.

  “Welcome to the team, Levon.”

  “What team, Brett?”

  Gunny Leffertz’ donkey-bray laugh filled the room.

  35

  It was kind of fun when she forgot why they were camped up here in the woods.

  Merry sat on a slanted stone and poked the embers of the dying campfire with a stick. Sparks rose into the cold air to join the stars in the night sky above. The occasional snuffle and huff came from the horses, which were dozing along a hitch line slung between trees farther up the hill. Jessie and the girls were asleep in the shelter of Uncle Fern’s old still shack. The mossy roof was sagging over the corroded thumper inside, but its stone and log walls still blocked the wind.

  Merry heard a brittle crunch of leaves behind her. She turned to see Jessie Hamer stepping from the still shack, shrugging into her coat as she walked.

  “Couldn’t sleep either?” the girl asked.

  “I guess I got a thinking problem. You know that song?” Jessie said as she crouched to take a seat on a fallen log on the other side of the fire.

  “I don’t think so. Is it country?”

  “Yeah. It’s cute.”

  Rather than sit idle, Jessie snapped some kindling and tossed it into the ring of river stone that surrounded the fire. Fresh flames consumed the twigs. Merry leaned over to place a pair of sawn branches atop the fire, and the glow sent their shadows flickering in the dark branches of the trees all around them. Merry moved an old speckled coffee pot to rest close to the fire.

  “We can’t stay up here forever,” Jessie said.

  “I know,” Merry said. “My daddy only put enough stores up here for a month. He was a prepper when prepping wasn’t cool.” She was referring to the airtight drums hidden at the rear of the still shack and covered with a camo canvas tarp. They contained dehydrated meal packets, rain gear, blankets, a full medical kit, tools, and solar batteries. The spring farther up the hill provided fresh water for the production of the whiskey that had been made by five generations of Cades.

  “You know what I mean, Merry.”

  Merry nodded with a wincing smile.

  “I have a business. Clients. I can’t put them off forever. Sandy’s due at school. It’s coming up on three days we’ve been up here. No one’s come looking for us.”

  “And Uncle Fern.”

  Fern had called Merry on her cell to tell her that the walk-in clinic sent him to the urgent care center for his chest pains, and they had referred him to County Memorial, where they diagnosed him with gallstones and admitted him. He was due to be in surgery in the morning.

  “He’ll be okay. That tough old bird will come through fine, but he’ll need you at home to look after him for a few weeks or so.”

  “So, you think we should ride back down?”

  “Those men have no idea where you live. My truck is there now. I can work off of your property till the end of the week. Besides, I think they’re long gone.”

  “You sure?” The coffee pot hissed and bubbled. Merry lifted it from the fire using a cloth wrapped around the handle. She poured them mugs of tea while Jessie spoke.

  “I can’t know that. But those buttheads were small-timers, I can tell you that. It makes no sense for them to keep after one little girl. It’s not like that kind are afraid of the law, even if there was anything Esperanza could tell the police. Or if the police would even listen if she did tell them everything. And there’s not a lot of cartel activity in the county these days. We both know why that is.”

  Merry nodded.

  Her father had tangled with some criminals up from Mexico in these very woods a while back. As far as she knew, there were still bodies in the woods, or what was left after the coyotes got to them. As with most folks who messed with her daddy, the bad men had cut their losses and decided to move their business elsewhere.

  Only the federal government showed the will to take on the Cades on any kind of persistent basis. The Treasury department had made it their mission to bring in Levon Cade to face their brand of justice. At least some of their agents did. For one in particular, it was some kind of sacred trust.

  With her daddy overseas and out of their reach, they had turned to Merry, sending her into the tender mercies of the foster care system until a feisty child advocate out of Birmingham made them back off. But Merry knew they still wanted her daddy on a long string of charges, and he’d be in big trouble when he returned to Alabama.

  And he would return. Merry Cade knew her father. Despite his sins, Jesus loved her daddy and would see him safely home.

  “We’ll ride down in the morning. Can you take me over to see Uncle Fern?” Merry asked.

  “I sure will, honey.” Jessie smiled through the steam rising off her mug. “This will all work out fine. You’ll see.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jessie Hamer said.

  She stood at the Gas ’n’ Go the next morning, holding in her hands the flyer she’d found taped to the side of the fuel pump. It featured the photo of a smiling Esperanza. A half-dozen of the phone number tabs had already been ripped from the bottom.

  Jessie crumpled the paper in her fist and shoved it into the pocket of her barn coat. She turned back to see her daughter, Merry, and Esperanza talking in the cab of the truck. The stereo was turned up, sending a muted thump of bass through the rolled-up windows. None of them had noticed the flyer or her reading it.

  The truck now gassed up, Jessie slid behind the wheel with a cheery smile fixed on her lips. She dialed down the radio volume to a whisper.

  “Tell you what, Sandy. You can miss another day of school, right?”

  Sandy strongly seconded that motion.

  “We’ve been through a lot, and Merry needs our help. We’ll all go visit her uncle together, okay?”

  Along the county road to the Huntsville Highway exit, Jessie saw more flyers stapled to utility poles.

  “Looks like someone lost a dog or something,” Merry said.

  “Looks like they really miss it. Hope they find it,” Sandy added.

  Jessie gunned up the ramp toward the highway, her mind weighing and rejecting options that grew in number with every mile south.

  36

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “You’re gonna go to bat for some asshole
s now and then.”

  It was several days before Levon was outside his hut at the same time as the men in Hut 2.

  Security had been tightened following the double murder in the shower building. For the time being, showers were suspended entirely, and each hut was taken for meals separately. This process took up most of the morning and evening. They ate midday meals in their cells, buckets with cheese and cold meat in rice brought to them by unhappy, overworked kitchen trustees.

  There was no open exercise time either, which caused more unrest than even the hurried meals and lack of showers. Depriving these men of distraction was a risky tactic. Taking away their football was nothing short of madness. Fights inside the huts grew more frequent as tempers grew short in the cramped quarters with nothing to do but get on one another’s nerves.

  The men in Levon’s cell crowded at the window to take turns peeping through the gap in the shutters at the latest row. Levon took his turn to see guards dragging men from a hut on the other side of the broad lane. The Prick was there, giving his stick a workout on the backs of two men kneeling and hunched over on the gravel. He slammed the toe of his boot into each of their backsides, and one of them went sprawling, hands on his crotch. The Prick waved at the guards to haul them both away.

  “Where are they taking them?” Levon turned from the window, the little Thai eager to take his place for a look.

  “Inside the fence. The guard building,” Klaus said, looking up from a chess game he was playing with the Japanese.

  “What happens there?”

  “They beat them some more. Maybe lock them up in the sponge room.”

  “What’s the sponge room?”

  “I have only heard it mentioned. Something unpleasant, I am led to believe.” The German shrugged, gesturing with the butt of one of his last cigarettes.