An older woman was waiting for her. She was dressed in Southwestern casual, white hair flowing loosely around her sharply angled face. A younger woman, dressed similarly, was sitting at another desk, gaze fixed on a computer screen. She didn’t even look up at Moms’s entrance.
“Good afternoon, Moms. I’m Mrs. Sanchez.” She had an identification badge dangling from her denim vest with a purple band across the top.
“Afternoon,” Moms said. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a bank statement and held it out, along with her ID. “I’m getting paid too much.”
Sanchez took the bank statement and ID. “That’s a complaint I rarely get.”
“I’ve called, but naturally no one would talk to me about it over the phone. Even a secure line.”
Sanchez waved. “Come around the counter.” She led Moms to her desk. The walls were decorated with hung rugs and etchings of the desert.
Sanchez scanned in the QR code.
“I like your jewelry,” Moms said.
Sanchez paused, met her eyes, and smiled. “Thank you. My daughter makes it. She’s very talented.”
“She must be.”
“You’ve been complimented, dear,” Mrs. Sanchez called out.
The younger woman tore her gaze from the computer screen and gave a flicker of a smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mrs. Sanchez reached into her desk and pulled out a thick brown folder. It had yellow paper inside: Moms’s pay records. Once someone went Black, they no longer existed on the computer except for security checks and cover identities. All other paperwork was paper, just one copy as needed. Paper couldn’t be hacked into, could be locked in secure places like this, and could also be shredded, meaning someone really, truly, disappeared.
It happened.
“How long has this stipend been going into your account?” Mrs. Sanchez was flipping pages in the folder.
“Six months,” Moms said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to get here.”
Sanchez nodded as she got to a certain page. “It’s a survivor’s benefit.”
“From who?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Who can?”
“The comptroller might be able to.” As if on cue, a portion of the wall behind Sanchez’s desk slid open and a colonel entered. He had no ribbons, just a Combat Infantry Badge above his left pocket.
“It’s my old friend from the real army, now an event horizon,” he said with a grin. “In so deep, you suck all light with you.”
“Bill.” Moms got up and shook his hand. “You went in pretty deep, too.” He perched on the edge of Sanchez’s desk, who leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, watching and listening.
“Been a long time,” Bill said. He glanced at Sanchez, then back to Moms. “Afghanistan, just a couple of weeks after 9/11. I gave you a bunch of money.”
Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter spoke without glancing over. “Six million, four hundred thousand, five hundred and thirty dollars. Moms returned one point four-two-six-five of that with her country clearance voucher. Managed to account for every single dollar, which less than twelve percent of those in your situation were able to do.”
Moms glanced at Mrs. Sanchez, who was beaming proudly. “She has a good memory.”
“Seems so,” Moms said. “Made my ruck a little heavy, although we spread it out among the team.”
Bill nodded. “Bought off the Northern Alliance.”
“Bought goats, and horses, and technicals, too,” Moms said, referring to pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the cargo bay. “One of my guys got hit and he had so many wads of bills in his vest, they stopped the bullet before it even got to his body armor.”
“That’s always nice to hear,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “We rarely hear of the direct results of our actions in the field.”
Moms shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Where are all your ribbons, Bill?”
He laughed. “We don’t do those down here. It’s like sticking your DD214 on your chest and advertising everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve done. I like to keep my past a bit more private. Like you.”
“A CIB, though,” Moms said.
“Could have gotten that anywhere.”
“Not really,” Moms said.
Bill reached down and tapped his right leg below the knee. There was a hollow sound. “Got both the same place. Why I ended up in the puzzle palace here.”
“Sorry.”
“Lots have suffered worse.”
There was a moment of silence, one all veterans observe when touching on the subject of comrades that would never see another day. It also brought Moms back to the reason she was here.
“Why am I getting a survivor’s benefit? I wasn’t married last I checked.”
“Never married,” Bill said. “Not that you didn’t get offers.”
Even Mrs. Sanchez’s daughter stopped typing for at least two seconds before going to work.
Bill reached out and Mrs. Sanchez handed him the folder, with the appropriate page open. He frowned as he read. “Well. I’m afraid we can’t tell you. Compartmentalization and all that. You don’t have to be married to get a survivor’s benefit,” he added as he flipped the folder shut and handed it back to Mrs. Sanchez. “You know all those forms you fill out before a major deployment? The one for the benefit? You just list the people you want to get a slice of the pie and we get that slice to them.”
That made Moms think about whom she’d listed on her form when she’d in-processed at Area 51.
Mrs. Sanchez slid the folder back into her desk.
“What kind of benefit is it? A gratuity spread out?” Congress, as the first combat casualties were being carted out of planes at Dover after 9/11, had initiated a “death gratuity” one-time payment of $100,000.
How one could put a price on a life was beyond Moms.
“No,” Mrs. Sanchez said.
“When will it run out?” Moms asked.
“It won’t,” she said. “As long as you’re alive, you get it.” She cocked her head. “Your benefactors get the same. Didn’t you read the form?”
Moms shook her head. “I thought it was the same as the army.”
Bill laughed. “Is your unit the same as the army?”
“No.”
“Why would you think your benefits are?” Bill asked.
“It’s the best our government can do for those of you in the field,” Mrs. Sanchez said.
Her daughter spoke up. “Black Ops survivor benefits account for less than point zero-zero-zero-zero-eight of the entire Black Ops budget. Statistically almost insignificant.” She paused, seeing the reaction, then quickly added, “But only in terms of numbers.”
“Is there anything else we can do for you?” Mrs. Sanchez asked, and Moms realized that while Bill wore the uniform and held the title of comptroller, she was the person in charge down here. Then, sliding into a Nada Yada, she wondered if Bill worked here at all and whether he was really the comptroller. Or if, as she went through the various layers of security, they’d found someone who shared a past link with her and brought him in to divert attention from Mrs. Sanchez and what was really going on.
Moms wondered how Nada could stand to get through the day with his paranoia.
Moms stood. “I just wanted to make sure everything was legitimate.”
“You can count on us,” Mrs. Sanchez said.
And at that moment, Moms’s cell phone began to play “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”
She snatched it from her belt and looked at the text message. Then at Mrs. Sanchez. “Can I get to the White House from here?”
Neeley was doing her best to ignore the family. The steady rumble of the C-130 turboprop engines was a sound she was more than familiar with, but the excited Pakistani voices still bitching were getting on her nerves. They’d been in the air for a day, stopping briefly at Rhein-Main in Germany and were now somewhere over the North Atlantic. The pill had run out hours ago and all Neeley wanted to do was sleep.