LITMIR.BIZ

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page. Sound okay?”

      “Good,” Don said.

      “Sounds okay to me,” Luke said.

      She nodded. “Then let’s begin. The man on the screen is former Marine Corps Sergeant Edwin Lee Parr. Thirty-seven years old, raised in Kentucky, south of Lexington. Combat veteran, who saw action in both the invasion of Panama in 1989, and the Gulf War. He was also deployed in a peacekeeping role at the end of the Kosovo War. Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for meritorious service during the invasion of Panama. Honorable discharge December 1999, after twelve years of service.

      “Parr came home and kicked around the country for a year and a half after that, doing security work. He had a concealed carry license, and was mostly a personal bodyguard, mostly for businessmen, often for diamond dealers. He worked for a firm called White Knight Security, and bounced between New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. A few documented trips to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London, though it isn’t clear how the firearm regulations were handled in those cases.”

      Luke stared into the man’s angry eyes. It didn’t seem like bad work for a combat veteran. Not much action, but plenty of movement. It might even appeal to a man like…

      “Then September eleven happened,” Trudy said.

      “Did he reenlist?” Luke said.

      She shook her head. “No. Within a short period of time, there was enormous demand for experienced military contractors. White Knight Security spun off a whole new division called White Knight Consultants. Edwin Parr was one of their first available combat zone experts. He did a tour in Afghanistan, and has now been in Iraq for twenty-five straight months.”

      Luke was beginning to wish she would get to the point. The thought of Edwin Lee Parr in a combat theater, beholden to little or no chain of command, and making ten times the money of normal soldiers irritated Luke. To put it mildly.

      “Twenty-five months?” Luke said. “What’s he doing over there? I mean, besides padding his bank account?”

      “Edwin Parr appears to have gone rogue,” Trudy said.

      She paused and looked away from the keyboard and mouse for a moment. “The next images are graphic.”

      Luke stared at her.

      “I think we can handle it,” Don said.

      Trudy nodded. “Parr was fired by White Knight four months ago, despite having a five-year relationship with them. White Knight disavows knowledge of his activities or whereabouts. They disclaim responsibility for his actions.”

      A new image appeared on the screen. It showed perhaps a dozen bodies strewn about some sort of market square. The bodies were almost not recognizable as human—they had been torn apart by a bomb or some type of high-caliber repeating weapon.

      “Parr is operating in northwest Iraq, in what is known as the Sunni Triangle, beyond the reach of coalition troops. He has anywhere up to a dozen former or possibly present-tense contractors operating with him, as well as what we believe are one or two Marine Corps deserters. He is believed to be responsible for ordering a civilian massacre that took place in this Fallujah open air market, and it is believed that this is an image of the aftermath of that massacre. As many as forty people may have died in the attack.”

      Luke was interested. “Why would he do that?”

      A new image appeared on the screen. It showed two burned and headless torsos hanging from a bridge overpass.

      “The bodies you see here have been identified as the remains of former American military contractors Thomas Calence, age thirty-one, and Vladimir Garcia, age thirty-nine. Their jeep was attacked by Sunni insurgents. They were captured, beheaded, and set on fire. When this happened, neither man was on any payroll as a military contractor. The massacre in the previous image appears to have been payback for the deaths of Calence and Garcia, as part of an escalating series of tit for tat attacks. Calence and Garcia had been operating with Parr.”

      “What were they doing?” Luke said.

      A new image appeared, a map of the so-called Sunni Triangle.

      “The Sunni Triangle was Saddam Hussein’s stronghold in Iraq. The south of the country is primarily Shiite, and Saddam took great pains to suppress the Shiites, including frequent massacres. The north is primarily Kurdish, and if anything, the Kurds got even worse treatment than the Shiites. But north-central and northwest Iraq is Sunni. Saddam was born there, and the people there are his loyalists. It has been very difficult for the American military to tame this region, and much of it is still a no-go zone. We believe that Parr operates out there because this is where the bulk of Saddam’s wealth is hidden.

      “It seems that Parr has been systematically uncovering secret caches of money, weapons, diamonds, gold, and other precious metals, as well as luxury cars. He is finding this stuff through the use of torture and murder of Saddam’s former lieutenants and intimidation of the local population. The locals hate Parr, and they are actively trying to kill him.

      “But Parr has put together a small army of tough hombres—military consultants, several of them former special operators, and as I already indicated, possibly two Marine Corps deserters. All his men are battle-hardened, and Parr is making them rich, as long as they can stay alive. On that score, they are taking increasingly extreme measures to make sure they do so. Currently, they are kidnapping women and girls from the local tribes. We believe they are holding them as human shields. It’s also possible they are selling some of them to Al Qaeda, and to Shiite tribesmen from the south.”

      Trudy paused.

      “He is looting Saddam’s buried treasure as fast as he can, and he is not letting anyone get in his way.”

      “What’s our role in this?” Luke said.

      Don shrugged. “We’re the FBI, son. We’re going to go in there, rescue anyone being held against their will, and arrest Edwin Lee Parr for kidnapping and for murder.”

      “Arrest him…” Luke said. “For murder. In a war zone. Where hundreds of thousands of people have already died.”

      He let his mind chew on that one for a minute.

      Don nodded. “That’s correct. Then we’re going to bring him back here, try him, and lock him away. This man Parr is a mess, and he needs to be cleaned up. He’s a murderer, a liar, and a thief. He’s out there beyond anyone’s reach, operating under no one’s command, and has become a law unto himself. He is committing atrocities that the Iraqi people are blaming on Americans. If he keeps on, he is going to cause an international incident, one that will give our entire effort in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and around the world, a black eye.”

      Luke took a deep breath. “How do you picture this going?”

      Don and Trudy stared at him.

      Trudy spoke. “If you take the case, the CIA will provide you with an identity as a corrupt military contractor on the make,” she said. “You and a partner will proceed alone to the Sunni Triangle, find Parr’s headquarters from half a dozen suspected locations, infiltrate his team, arrest him, and then call for a helicopter extraction.”

      Luke grunted. He nearly laughed. He looked at young, lovely Trudy, graduate of an elite East Coast university. For some reason, he focused on her hands. They were tiny, immaculate, even beautiful. He doubted they had ever held a gun. They looked like they had never lifted anything heavier than a pencil, or been sullied by an ounce of dirt, in their lives. Her hands should be on a commercial for Palmolive. Her hands should have their own TV show.

      “That sounds good,” he said. “Did you come up with that? I can tell you that my last helicopter extraction went pretty well. My best friend died, my commanding officer died, pretty much everybody died, actually. The only people who didn’t die were me, a guy who lost his mind, and another guy who lost both his legs and his mind. And… you know, his ability to…”

      Luke trailed off. He didn’t want to finish that sentence.

      “That guy won’t speak to me anymore because he asked me to kill him, and I declined.”

      Trudy

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