Helen gave a little shrug. “Okay. Sounds good.”
“Are we all on the same page?”
“Yeah,” Joseph said, clenching and flexing his big, scarred hands. “Sure.”
“Works for me, Emily,” Guillermo said, stretching in his chair. “Okay if I get back to the kitchen? I still have some prep to do.”
“Sure,” she said. “I just want to let you know…”
She hesitated. Not because she didn’t know what she wanted to say, but because the words were getting caught in her throat. “All of you are amazing. I know I’ve been asking a lot from you, and… I just really appreciate it.” She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that would stop the tears, because crying at this point was just too embarrassing.
When she opened her eyes, all three were staring at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve had a long day.”
Helen took a step forward, like she was thinking about giving her a hug, but she didn’t quite get there. “Is there… do you need anything, or…?”
“No. No, I’m fine. Just tired.” She managed a smile. “I’m going to take a little time to go over the accounts and let you guys do what you need to do. Helen, why don’t you and I meet for a few minutes after I’m done? And Joseph… put me down for one of those chef’s specials tonight. I haven’t had a decent thing to eat all day.”
After they all left, she closed the office door and collapsed in her chair.
She knew that she came across as cold much of the time. Oh, she did the right things. Holiday bonuses and bottles of wine. She thought that she treated people fairly. But she’d been so closed off for so long, keeping a part of herself behind walls. She couldn’t admit who she really was. And she wasn’t sure she even knew anymore.
But who had time to worry about that?
She unzipped the GORUCK and pulled out Danny’s ammo box.
Three vacuum-sealed plastic bags.
The first one was money. Five bundles of hundreds, so probably fifty grand. She sighed. She had enough trouble with excess cash as it was. What should she do with it?
Deposit some to her Emily personal account, maybe. Under $10K to avoid the reporting requirements. She could use some extra cash to cover the rent, since she wasn’t paying herself what she usually did from Evergreen. And of course, there were the lawyers. It was Sunday, but she could deposit up to fifty bills at her bank’s ATM.
Except large cash deposits… as the girlfriend of a man jailed on federal drug charges… didn’t that just scream “Drug money! Freeze my bank account!”
“Shit,” she muttered.
Next, a smaller package, the size of a sandwich bag. Passports.
She opened the package. There were two. The first had Danny’s photo, with the name “Justin Terrence Carver.”
The second was for her. “Meredith Evelyn Jackson.”
If she needed to run, now she could. He’d made sure of that.
She took in a deep breath. Let the tears flow, this time, until one dripped onto the passport.
No time for that.
The last package was a notebook. Longer than it was tall, about 8” x 6”, with a sturdy, slightly battered dark-blue pebbled cover. A pair of wings, like the Air Force logo, and Pilot Logbook stamped in silver, faded in places.
She opened it. Light-green pages, like a ledger book. Columns for date, route, aircraft category and class, conditions of flight, type of piloting time. Some columns had no headings or ones that were handwritten; one of those was labeled “Account.” The last column on the right-hand page was a longish space for “Remarks and Endorsements.”
She looked at the first entry. It was dated about ten years ago.
The most recent entry was just over two years old.
When she’d met Danny in Mexico.
She was pretty sure she was looking at the logbook of the missions that Danny had flown for the Boys.
At first the entries were minimal. Abbreviations and numbers that she didn’t understand. Locations marked by airport codes and coordinates. But further in, the notes became more detailed. Names. Dollar amounts. “Kilos” instead of “Load.” Strings of numbers that looked like bank accounts. Remarks like: “Exfiltration.” “Face Shot.” “Dead drop.” “Ghost transpo.” “Wet job.”
“They burned Rami. FUBAR.”
“Target was bullshit.”
“Fuck this.”
There were about twenty unformatted pages in the back, just ruled lines, like a regular notebook. The first few pages were fragmented notes, a few doodles. Then, several pages in, a page of writing dated shortly after they’d arrived in Arcata.
For approx. 10 years I worked as an asset for an off-the-books CIA black ops unit. This log contains a record of those missions, including relevant names, dates, operational details and account numbers when applicable.
When I started I was proud of what I did. I truly believe we accomplished some good things. We took out some real bad guys and helped some good people. But on the balance, what I did wasn’t good. I supported missions that eliminated people we had no business targeting. I helped take gold and other valuables out of Iraq and Af-Pak. I ran illegal narcotics into the US and money and guns to Mexico, Central America and South America, all this as a means to continue to fund our missions and other ops, some within US borders. I’ve recorded what I know about those.
Some of the times when I was moving money around, I don’t know for certain what it was for. But from my years of working with these people and observing the behaviors, I believe some of these missions were just about making money. Everybody made good money, including me. But what we made is nothing compared to the people we were really working for.
Like Smedley Butler said, “War is a racket, conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”
I wasn’t serving my country, I was feeding the war machine. If you’re reading this, it’s because it’s time I did something to make up for it.
Captain Daniel Finn (USAF, Ret.)
She slowly closed the notebook. Rested her palms on its pebbled surface.
What was she supposed to do with this?
There was a scanner/printer in the office. Would that be smart, having another hard copy? Was there someplace she could hide it? Someone she could mail it to?
How would that help? Could she really say, “Let Danny go and leave us alone, or all this comes out”? Did things like that actually work?
Gary killed people who found out things they weren’t supposed to know.
She needed time to think about what to do.
Scan it and put it on a flash drive, she decided. Easier to carry that way, and she could make as many copies as she wanted.
The printer had a USB port that you could print from or scan to directly. She wasn’t sure if clearing the data from the printer really got rid of it, but it had to be better than having it on the computer and hoping “secure empty trash” did the trick.
First things first: she disconnected the printer cable from the desktop.
After she’d finished, some two and a half hours and over two hundred pages later, she cleared the data, plugged the printer cable back in and printed out a slew of reports on expenses and earnings, hoping that would overwrite anything still in the printer memory, having no idea if it actually would.
By the time she was ready to leave Evergreen, dinner was in full swing.
She stood by the end of the bar, sipping a half glass of wine from a bottle of Russian River pinot she’d been wanting to try. A nice crowd for a Sunday night. Everything looked good. The food, the warm lighting, the wood-burl tables, her photos on the wall. She wondered if this was the last time she’d ever see the place.
If nothing else, I proved I could do it, she thought.
“Hey, Emily. Nice to see you.” Matt, the young tattooed bartender, took a moment to wipe the counter in front of her. “Can I get you anything?”