“No. I—”
“It’s acceptable, Constantine. You’re a journalist, not a member of Delta. How could you know the depth of brotherhood that exists between those who passed the ultimate challenge only to spill blood together in some foreign shithole?”
“I’m sorry, Shale. That’s not what I meant.”
“No, he isn’t shamed by me. We spoke just yesterday.”
“I apologize.”
“Did you know I’ve received hate mail from some of the families?”
“Of the men you killed?”
“Families of the original victims. From those whose loved ones I avenged. I had considered that not everyone would agree with my cause, but hate mail? One woman told me to burn in Hell, right next to her son’s rapist and murderer.”
Constantine had known this moment would come, she’d only lacked the knowledge of when. The discussion of the ethical and moral dilemma proposed by his actions. How many nights had she herself lain awake, imagining her daughter’s final months on the earth? Had she ever really answered her own questions about the man who had tortured and murdered the man who kidnapped, drugged, and sold her precious child into a life of human sex trafficking, drug abuse, and eventually, death?
Not until then. She reached across and laid a hand atop that of her daughter’s only avenger.
“They are wrong, Shale. What you did—the courage and compassion and total sacrifice it took to follow through for the families—for me—in the name of our loved ones...well, it will never be repaid because we, those left in the horrific aftermath, don’t possess the amount of gratitude that might come close to equaling such action on our behalf.”
“You may be in the minority in that line of thinking,” said Veritas.
“Not after I write your story.”
“And now, dear Francis, you know why I chose you.”
An interagency federal task force including the Department of Justice, the FBI, The Central Intelligence Agency, and Interpol had been investigating and building a case against the human trafficking ring led by Silas Drew for over three years. The task force had followed the movements of Drew all over the west coast, but had finally caught a break in the missing person case of Emily Constantine.
Emily, an eleven-year-old girl, had been listed as missing for over seven years and was suspected to have been abducted just outside Rainier, Washington. The case of Emily Constantine had exhibited the M.O. of Silas Drew—young, pre-teen girls, abducted in remote locations along the Pacific and Northern Pacific coast states—but in all other cases, the remote locations were close to major metropolises, which suggested that Drew might have known Emily Constantine.
The theory led law enforcement to uncover a tie between Silas Drew and the township of Rainier: his third ex-wife, Marsha Glick, lived there, and interviews with the ex and with several other people who knew the family, ultimately placed Drew in the Rainier area in 2006, when the little girl had gone missing.
After being offered a deal that included immunity from the death penalty, the federal agents convinced the Glick woman to reveal the entire story. The authorities had yet to uncover Drew’s habit of revisiting his ex-wife, a battered woman who still harbored hope of reconciliation. Marsha Glick had been convinced to assist in the abduction of Emily Constantine by posing as a lost tourist in Drew’s van and luring the child to the vehicle, where Drew opened the sliding door and subdued the young girl.
Glick claimed to know nothing of her ex-husband’s further enterprises with Constantine, despite her having been complicit in the past of also helping him locate young prostitutes. Drew was also suspected of a string of murders in the Portland and Seattle areas, though forensic behavioral analysts believed the murders occurred early in the psychopathological development of Silas Drew. His eventual entrance into human trafficking and his devolution into direct involvement by perpetrating his own sadistic captivity, rape, torture, and murder of some of the young women he abducted.
Federal authorities had developed their lead into an arrest warrant. U.S. Marshals arrested Drew at his dwelling in the Los Angeles neighborhood of North Hollywood and extradited him back to Washington State.
Shale Veritas had followed the Silas Drew investigation closely. Colonel Cobra Treanor, who was by then riding a desk at the Pentagon, awaiting the elusive star he’d sought since leaving Delta in the late nineties, spoke often with his prize recruit. Both shared a common feeling of politics playing too large a role in Delta Force anti-terrorist operations. Treanor talked to Veritas many times about matters ongoing—things he’d heard; information he’d rooted out—most recently talking to Shale about the special interagency investigation into the human trafficking ring and, eventually, the arrest of Silas Drew for the abduction of Emily Constantine.
The Department of Justice decided to allow Washington State to prosecute the case of Emily Constantine, even though there was no body—live or dead—stating a desire to see the family of the girl receive justice. Both Veritas and Treanor agreed that the true decision was one made to shield the current administration’s platform—which had been elected largely on an anti-capital punishment decree—from using the death penalty as a pry-bar to convince Drew to give them more direct information of the trafficking business, names higher in the organization, with the longer-term goal of handing the administration a successful takedown after the years and millions of dollars spent chasing the spectral criminal enterprise.
“The DOJ could have leveraged the death penalty,” Constantine said to Veritas in their third interview.
“Leveraging the death penalty implies a willingness to use it if the deal isn’t made.”
“So the Feds dumped their circumstantial case on the State of Washington.”
“In their defense, they did have the testimony of Marsha Glick.”
“A meth junkie and multiple tenant of the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Not that those attacks were ever used to discredit her, of course.”
Marsha Glick had been released on bond and died in a suspicious house fire three weeks before the trial of Silas Drew was to begin.
“The government tends to focus on a bigger picture,” said Veritas.
“Don’t defend them. Not you.”
“I’m not defending them. You’ll find no bigger opponent of political machinations than me.”
“You left Delta after only four years.”
“Some would argue that was four years too many.”
“Clearly it wasn’t because of the demands of the job.”
Veritas laughed quietly. “There’s not a lot I can say about the nature of my training there, at Bragg. An interesting story, however: on the final day of bivouac—a multiple day test of the candidate’s ability to live off the land while still meeting mission objectives, time tables, checkpoints, et cetera—I was the first to reach what we all believed was the final rally point. It was the end of the day, the sun nearly behind the hills, and I was at the end of my physical capability to perform. Every man was, since that was the point. Previous rally point procedure indicated we should expect a dismissal to the barracks after the final evolution for the day.”
“I take it that’s not what happened?”
“The rally point official told me to muster at what appeared to be yet a further mission gathering area. My body screamed to the brain that there was nothing left in the tank. It was over. Still, I acquiesced and walked to the next evolution. I sat on a fallen tree, waiting for the rest of the candidates to finish the challenge. At that point there had been seven of us beginning the day. Only four finished on time, myself included. Of the three others, one—my closest friend in the program—quit on the spot.”