Blood Game: A Jock Boucher Thriller Read online

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  To my family, who shared the dream and made it possible.

  I also want to thank my good friend, the late writer and sailor Doug Danielson, expert on all things nautical, who provided invaluable advice and counsel. He now sails that never-ending sea.

  Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

  —GEORGE SANTAYANA (1863–1952)

  The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965)

  In addition to combat of all kinds, possible operations in the next several years will include everything from helping victims of a flood to restoring order in a collapsed state with large-scale criminal activity, violence, and perhaps even unconventional weaponry.

  —GENERAL RAYMOND T. ODIERNO, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE U.S. ARMY, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, JUNE 1, 2012

  Si vis pacem, para bellum. (If you wish for peace, prepare for war.)

  —ANONYMOUS

  PROLOGUE

  MAC HALLEY DESERVED A better death.

  He’d known failure, more than his share. Three marriages had ended in bitter divorce. Failed husband. Three kids from those marriages were grown and on their own. Not one kept in touch with him. Failed father. He had owned a small barge company that plied the Mississippi River and Intracoastal Waterway, but it went bust. Then he had a seafood restaurant overlooking the gulf, but Katrina smashed it flat, and after he’d spent every last dime getting it back on its feet, the oil spill fouled the neighborhood beaches and robbed him of the regular trade he had built up. Failed businessman. Alicia, his latest live-in, had dumped him; walked out with her suitcase—and his Rolex. Failed lover. At fifty-five years of age, he didn’t have much left, but it helped when he gave himself credit for his one consistent success in life: survival. His failures were not all his fault, and the fact that he got back on his feet over and over reinforced his sense of self-worth. His resilience had helped him land the job he had now; a shit job but one that kept him alive. Halley’s present occupation was a galley cook on one of the many offshore service vessels owned by Dumont Industries, one of the Gulf Coast’s biggest conglomerates. It was a curious combination of his former lines of work, only now he was a grunt, not a proprietor. Big difference.

  The 350-foot high-capacity vessel had finished a run deep into the gulf and was now on its way back to shore. It had been his first trip. Except for sack time in his bunk, he’d spent all his time in the galley cooking, as he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected was to be ordered to remain in the galley unless permission was given to go topside. This ship was not running personnel to and from the offshore rigs, as most of them did, but taking out drilling equipment. Were they worried he’d hurt himself? He probably knew the business better than most of the crew.

  On the second day of rolling seas, he said to hell with the orders. He needed some air. Looking for an access to the main deck, he passed an entrance to the ship’s hold, opened the door, and took a peek. He wasn’t sure what he saw, but he knew what it wasn’t. It wasn’t offshore drilling equipment. One item was uncovered. It was a tripod and stood chest-high. Painted olive drab. Halley forgot about going on deck. He hastened back to the galley. Where he stayed the rest of the day.

  That night he was in his bunk alone. All the crewmates quartered with him were on duty. The ship was slowing down and, without speed, was rolling in moderate swells. Being cooped up inside was enough to make any sailor seasick. He got up, went to the head, and splashed cold water from the sink on his face. He then went to the cabin door and found it locked. They’d locked him in the crew’s quarters. The engines rumbled, gurgled, then stopped. He heard another ship for just a moment, then its engines died too. It was close by. Then it was alongside. There wasn’t a lot of noise, but he knew the ship’s cargo was being transferred. The silence was odd. He’d never offloaded a vessel without yelling orders; it was part of the process. When he finally did hear voices, they were speaking Spanish. Half an hour later, the engines started up. Halley got back in his bunk. He feigned sleep when his mates returned.

  The next day, he waited for his chance and took another peek at the hold. There was a new cargo. The hundreds of rectangular packages were easily identifiable. That night after dinner, he complained about the restriction on his movement. A man needs fresh air.

  “Go on up,” the captain said. “Have a smoke.”

  He was standing at the stern of the vessel, one hand on the railing. It was a still night with a half-moon, and by its light he gazed at the dark water, phosphorus blinking like fireflies. He took a drag from his cigarette, leaned over the rail, and exhaled smoke. He did not know what sent him over and into the ship’s wake. His head hit the stern as he fell, and Halley was unconscious when he hit the water. Reflex actions took over, his pulmonary system seeking air. Half a liter of water was swallowed with the first gasp and flooded into his lungs. Then six liters of ocean water filled his respiratory organs. His throat constricted with rigor, cutting oxygen to his brain. Survival, his one success in life, now eluded him.

  The body sank quickly; fifty feet, one hundred, till it danced on underwater currents. Inside the cadaver, nature’s forces began their slow but inexorable process. Bacteria feeding on dead flesh in the belly and chest began to produce gas, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, methane: gases that caused it to rise like a balloon, though not all body parts rose at the same time. The torso was the first to bloat, as it contained more bacteria than the head, arms, and legs. The body was turned facedown in the water, limbs dragging below and behind. Passing fish took their nibbles. About a week later, the bloated corpse of Mac Halley rose to the surface. It wasn’t pretty. He had deserved a better death. He’d worked hard for it all his life.

  CHAPTER 1

  “WE’RE NOW TRAVELING AT the speed of a rifle bullet,” the fighter pilot said, “twice the speed of sound, over fifteen hundred miles per hour. We’ll arrive in Washington less than two hours from takeoff.”

  “What plane is this?” asked the passenger in the second seat, directly behind him.

  “F-15 Strike Eagle.”

  The voice of the pilot was audible but tinny, transmitted into the earpiece of the flight helmet. Jock Boucher stared at the complex instrumentation in front of him, astounded by where he was at this instant and where he had been just thirty minutes ago. Wrapped in a towel in his hotel room in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, his evening shower interrupted, he’d been greeted by a U.S. Air Force colonel telling him he had orders from the president to fly him back to Washington without delay. He’d been rushed to Puerto Vallarta’s international airport, given a flight suit, and practically carried onto the tarmac, where he’d found this winged devil cleared for immediate departure.

  “How did you get permission to fly a fighter aircraft into Mexico’s airspace?” he said into the helmet’s mouthpiece.

  “Our president spoke to their president. It’s unusual for a jet fighter, but our navy pulls into Mexican ports all the time.”

  “This must be costing taxpayers a fortune. I could have flown coach.”

  “I needed to log the flight time,” the pilot said. “I would have been up in this bird anyway; the president’s orders just gave me a mission. At least this is one thing they can’t assign a UAV.” The acronym was muttered with a sneer evident even through the lousy audio.

 
“UAV?” Boucher asked.

  “Unmanned aerial vehicle. A drone. They’re taking more responsibilities away from fighter pilots every day. I’m glad I’ll be retiring soon. I hate what’s coming. Took me two and a half years and cost the government ten million dollars to train me to fly this aircraft. Now they’re teaching twenty-year-old kids to play video games. After a few weeks they’re guiding drones over Afghanistan from a cozy cubicle in Las Vegas. Not what I signed up for. Yogi Berra said it best. ‘The future ain’t what it used to be.’ He should have been our national poet laureate. Anyway, sorry to ruin your vacation.”

  “Well, thanks for picking me up, I guess.”

  Boucher had one thought. The President of the United States must really be pissed off at him. A federal judge from the Eastern District of Louisiana, Boucher had let it be known he was leaving the bench only months after assuming the position. His first case had caused him to question whether he was fit to sit in judgment of others. In self-defense, he had taken the lives of two men with his bare hands. He had no remorse; in fact, he would do it again if given the chance. Bringing his girlfriend on vacation while he pondered the ramifications of his decision, he had been forced by this unexpected presidential command to leave her to make her own way home. The unheard-of abandoning of his judicial post must have caused anger and embarrassment to the man who had nominated him, and now the president was going to chew him up and spit him out in little pieces. He had sent supersonic transport in order to do it without delay. Jock Boucher was nervous.

  “How high are we?” he asked.

  “We’re climbing to our cruising altitude of forty-five thousand feet, over eight miles high. You can see the curvature of the earth from up there.”

  “Am I in the copilot’s seat?” He wondered if the controls in front of him needed attention that he would not be able to give.

  “That’s the WSO’s position,” the pilot said. “Weapons systems officer. Don’t worry, I don’t think we’ll run into any hostiles between here and the nation’s capital. You do have a throttle and stick back there, and they have all the controls you need to fly the plane. HOTAS—hands-on throttle and stick. Do you fly?”

  “Does a Piper Cub count?”

  “Same principle. Grab the stick. Get the feel. Got it? Great. I’m going to take me a little nap. Wake me up when—”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  The pilot laughed. “Just kidding.”

  Boucher repeated the question he’d asked the colonel on first meeting him. “Is the president pissed off at me?”

  “Like I said earlier, you’ll have to ask him. We’ll be touching down at Langley. There’s ground transport waiting to take you to the White House.”

  “That seems kind of late. Maybe I could just find a place for the night and meet him in the morning.”

  “I have my orders. Sit back and enjoy the flight.”

  “Yeah, right,” Boucher muttered.

  Despite his misgivings, it was a fascinating flight. The pilot explained the function and purpose of the screens and monitors and impressive equipment that were the responsibility of weapons systems officers, or “wizzos,” as they were called. The WSO station had four multipurpose displays, MPDs, including a moving map that could show a TSD—tactical situation display. It showed the area over which the plane was flying, as well as the location of any enemy aircraft and its exact position and direction of flight.

  “Wizzos are damned good instrument fliers,” the pilot said. “They have to be, with their restricted vision back there. There’s probably not a closer team in the military than a Strike Eagle pilot and wizzo.”

  They landed at Langley AFB, Virginia. A long black limo was waiting on the tarmac, as were two assistants to help Boucher discard his flight suit, stripping him out of it like mechanics in a Formula 1 pit stop. Dressed in his civvies, Boucher looked down at his feet. He was wearing his well-worn loafers with no socks. Not the way to meet the president. It was also damned cold. He’d started this journey in the tropics.

  It was after nine p.m., but there was still plenty of traffic on the George Washington Parkway. Boucher recognized Key Bridge as they crossed the Potomac and spotted the spires of Georgetown University on the other side. They turned onto M Street, which led to Pennsylvania Avenue, but a series of turns before nearing Lafayette Square meant he was not being taken into the White House through the front door. Instead, the limo parked outside an entrance to the Executive Office Building, where handlers as efficient as those who had disrobed him at the air base hustled him inside to an elevator that took him down to a basement corridor. They rushed through it to a smaller elevator, then pushed the button and the door closed. Boucher rose alone. The door opened, and a Secret Serviceman awaited him, wearing an earpiece attached to a white spiral cord that ran behind his neck and inside the back of his sport coat.

  “He’s here,” the agent said into a microphone clipped to his lapel. As these words were spoken, a door opened and two men in suits and ties stepped out, both olive-skinned with black hair, one with a small trimmed mustache. The president was right behind them. He was herding the two men toward the elevator and frowning as if mulling over a deep thought that required perfect organization before speaking—this from a man whose extemporaneous communication skills were legendary. He stopped, turned, and stared at the new arrival. “You’re Judge Boucher.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

  “And you just flew up from Mexico.”

  “I was in Puerto Vallarta, yes, sir.”

  “I think that’s quite a coincidence. Let me introduce you. Gentlemen, this is Federal Judge Jock Boucher of the Eastern District of Louisiana. Judge Boucher, this is Tony Torres, our ambassador to Mexico.” The gentleman with no mustache offered his hand. “And this is His Excellency Candelario Cuellar, the Mexican ambassador to the United States.” Boucher shook the Mexican diplomat’s hand, and they gave each other a respectful nod.

  “I hope you enjoyed your visit to our country,” the Mexican ambassador said.

  “Very much, Your Excellency. I only wish I could have stayed longer.” Boucher did not look at his commander in chief as he said this.

  “Then you will have to return.”

  “I am already looking forward to that.”

  “Gentlemen,” the president said, “Judge Boucher is a friend, and this is just a social visit, but we’d better get started with it so I can have my family time.”

  “Of course, Mr. President,” Ambassador Cuellar said, “I am sorry for the imposition. Please forgive the late hour.”

  “Not at all, Your Excellency. Thank you for coming. When you live above the store like I do, you keep later hours, but you don’t have a problem finding time for the wife and kids.” He turned to the U.S. ambassador. “Tony, it’s always good to see you. We’ll talk.”

  “At your earliest convenience, Mr. President.”

  The Secret Service agent held the elevator open for the men, and they both gave slight waves as the doors shut.

  The president sighed and shook his head in the silent corridor. “Hell of a mess down there. I don’t suppose you saw any of it where you were.”

  “Saw what, sir?”

  “Cartel violence. Decapitations. Torture. Gruesome murders. God, the death toll down there exceeds our combat losses in Vietnam.”

  “Sir, I saw sandy beaches, blue skies, blue water—and friendly people.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry to have cut your vacation short. Come into my office.”

  Boucher walked behind the president, took a few steps inside the Oval Office, then closed the door behind him. He stood in place as the president walked to his desk, leaned against it, then faced him with arms folded across his chest.

  “Like I said outside, with due regard to the separation-of-powers provisions of our Constitution, yours is purely a social visit.”

  “Of course, Mr. President.”

  “So tell me, what is this shit about you wanting to quit after
being on the bench for only a couple months?”

  “I don’t think I’m suited for the job, sir.”

  “The United States Senate thought otherwise; so did I. You know how much time and effort goes into a judicial appointment, and I stake my credibility on each and every nominee I send to the Senate for confirmation. Quitting so soon? You’re making me look like an ass. I’m trying to get the highest qualified men and women on the bench—jurists who’ll serve their country for the next two, maybe three decades.

  “I’m familiar with your background, Jock. You grew up in poverty, a Cajun raised on a Louisiana bayou in a town so remote you spoke French before you learned English. Your parents struggled to make a living, and you achieved a fine education, professional success as a lawyer, then as a well-respected state judge before your appointment to the federal bench. Believe me, I know how much you had to overcome to achieve what you did. You’re a credit to your family, your state, and an example of the promise this nation offers every man and woman regardless of creed or color. And you want to throw that all away? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President.”

  “ ‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it. I want to know why you want to quit.”

  “I killed two men,” Boucher said, “and given the opportunity, I’d do it again. I’m not fit to be a judge.”

  “When you screw up, you do it big-time, don’t you? I know you acted in self-defense, and I understand the dilemma you’re facing. On the other hand, I can’t just let you walk away. There are too many young men and women out there facing challenges in their lives, like you did throughout your professional career. You’re an example to them—at least you were. I am not going to have you regarded in their eyes as a failure or, worse, a dilettante. I fight a partisan battle with the Senate with every judicial nomination I make. They’re not approving my choices, and there are far too many vacancies on the federal bench. Some judgeships have been vacant for over five years. Even the chief justice of the Supreme Court is pleading with men of his own political party. If a judge I appointed tries to quit after a few months, they won’t blame themselves, that’s for sure. They’ll be screaming that my selection process is a failure, and I may not get another judge approved for the rest of my term in office. I’m not going to let you do that to our justice system. You’re not leaving public service yet. I’ve got another job for you, and it’s not a promotion.