The Significant Seven (5 page)

Chapter Seven

April 22, 2009

Orth was splitting logs for firewood in the yard behind his cabin when the call came on his cell phone. It was barely an hour and a half past dawn, but he had already run his four miles through the adjacent forest, taken his daily two-mile swim in the cold waters of the spring-fed lake bordering his property, and was enjoying the exercise with axe and awl.

These spring mornings began misty, then cleared into a radiance beneath the tall pines that Orth had treasured since growing up in these woods. He looked at the cell phone screen, saw the number, said into the phone, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

He cleaned and put his tools in the woodshed, got into some town clothes, and drove his black Jeep Cherokee to Boulder Junction, the town nearest to his backwoods home. He pulled into the parking lot of the Qwik Stop service station and walked to the outdoor phone at the east end. The phone rang almost at once.

“Got something, something primo,” said the familiar voice. It was his fellow ex-Navy SEAL, ex-private security worker in Iraq, and continuing “asshole buddy,” as Orth liked to refer to Scott Sanderson.

Orth and Sanderson met at the U. S. Navy’s Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California. The two Midwesterners and enlistees bonded during the course of the extremely demanding twenty-six weeks spent training to become members of the Navy’s elite SEALS program. On the surface, they seemed an unlikely pair. Orth was a paragon of reticence, Sanderson a voluble, sociable young man. What they had in common was great aptitude and liking for the training they were receiving. Unlike more than 60 percent of their carefully selected entering class, they passed, Orth ranking second, Sanderson third, and began fulfilling their fifty-one month obligation to their government. More than eighteen of those months saw them together in the same unit, engaged in reconnaissance, then direct action, in various dangerous sections of Afghanistan. Their efficiency was noted and rewarded with medals and promotions. They were born killers.

Before putting in for their discharges in the summer of 2002, Orth and Sanderson discussed their futures. Sanderson had a young family, no job to go home to, and major financial issues courtesy of his free-spending wife. Orth had no obligations, except to himself, and hoped to find something he enjoyed doing while making good money. Stateside, they arranged to be interviewed by the president of a rapidly growing private security firm headquartered in northern Alabama. The young, politically connected firm had won lucrative contracts from the U. S. government to provide security for private contractors in Iraq. Sanderson’s eyes widened as he listened to the conditions of the contracts they were being offered, especially the pay scale. Even the normally stoic Orth could not hide his surprise at the terms. The two ex-SEALS looked at each other, then rose to shake the hand of their new employer.

Two months later, Orth and Sanderson arrived in Baghdad to join their division of the Aqua Negro Company. They found themselves among men much like themselves, ex-military personnel in some branch of special forces, many with shaven heads and muscled up like products of the weight rooms of American prisons. Some were fleeing bad marriages, or debts. Others, like Orth and Sanderson, were seeking work they loved and more money than they could make anywhere else that they knew of. For riding shotgun in armored SUVs for various contractors, or providing personal security for chosen individuals, they each drew down $5,000 a week. Some weeks, swimming smartly in the ocean of loose U.S. cash washing over Iraq, their rewards were much greater.

Since the two men’s rapid and secretive departure from Sadr City in the winter of 2006 and the subsequent dustup over the disaster they’d been involved with that led to the death of several innocent citizens, Orth and Sanderson had gone their separate geographical ways while maintaining low profiles and a strong thread of common interest in violence and money. Sanderson now lived in a Dallas, TX, suburb with his wife and three children. The lifelong loner Orth had gone back to his roots in the northern Wisconsin woods, just a few miles from where he’d been raised. Orth bought a dilapidated fishing cabin and spent four months meticulously renovating it. He worked alone, patiently awaiting the next thing life might bring to him. At thirty-eight, he had a decent bank account, tremendously good health, and no inclination to engage in anything other than lethal work.

It was the resourceful Sanderson who had discovered a network of American enterprises looking for talent to do what he and Orth were so good at. He learned that a great portion of the U.S. underworld, for decades dominated by Sicilian-Americans, was experiencing a shortage of trusted, trained, efficient killers.

“They just can’t come up with enough of their own guys,” Sanderson gleefully told Orth. “The young talent is going into banking, or lawyering, or politics, not murder. I see us as filling a need.” Even his humorless buddy chuckled at that. “And,” Sanderson said, “some of the guys we were with in Iraq can steer us other business. They take a percentage for doing so, but so what? The money is still great.”

Beginning with the discreet suffocation of a St. Louis accountant who had learned things he shouldn’t have, Orth and Sanderson worked efficiently and profitably. Typically, Sanderson would either conduct surveillance of the intended target or hire a member of the Agua Negro alumni to do so. Armed with the target’s daily schedule, habits, addresses, vices, virtues if any, Orth then carried out his deadly work. He and Sanderson were rarely in the same city at the same time, communicating mainly via cell phones that they purchased cheaply and changed often.

Sanderson took pleasure in paraphrasing the long dead baseball magnate Branch Rickey, who had famously declared that “luck is the residue of design.”

According to Sanderson, the work that he and Orth did was indeed the product of cautious and thoughtful design. The jobs Sanderson found for them were at various places throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Not once had they ever been close to being caught.

On the phone this afternoon, Sanderson said, “We’ll have to meet to get this deal set up.”

“Shit. Why?” Orth said. “The last one was straightforward.” A woman walking toward her car at the Qwik Stop saw the look on Orth’s face and moved faster.

Sanderson said, “This is a deal on a different level for us. We’re just going to have to talk about this
mano o mano
. Copy?”

“When. Where?”

“I’ll meet you tomorrow night in Madison. The Holiday Inn Express on John Nolen Drive. I’m flying into O’Hare, then I’ll drive up. I’ve reserved the rooms. You register as Ray Warren. I’m there under Jay Winston. Like always, pay cash.”

Orth said, “This must be big, you coming up that far.”

“You got it, brother,” Sanderson said. “It’s big.”

Before ringing off Sanderson said, “Hey, bro, let me ask you something. Are you feeling your usual fine self?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sanderson said, “I saw on the Internet last week that Al Casey, the guy who was with us that summer in Kabul, died. They said the cause of death appeared to be from natural causes. How about that? Casey was as fit as we were when we started there. He was what, thirty-four, thirty-five. Just like us, ex-mil trying to make good money. His wife insists Casey died of cancer. She’s trying to sue Agua Negro, which had cremated him and shipped him home to Tulsa. And quickly.”

“Scott, I don’t get it. Sue Agua Negro for what?” Orth said.

“Casey’s widow has a lawyer who claims that Agua Negro employees were, I am quoting now from the story on the Net, ‘Knowingly exposed during their work to a toxic chemical, a carcinogen, which is known to cause cancer.’”

Sanderson said, “Hold on a second.” Orth heard him hollering, “You kids, keep the damn noise down in there. Hear me?” Back on the phone, Sanderson said, “Sometimes here in my house, it sounds almost louder than one of our war zones.”

“No way,” Orth said. “What was this toxic crap that we were supposedly exposed to?”

“I was getting to that. It was at the water pumping station we guarded that summer. Remember? A gazillion degrees hot. We were breathing in all that bad air. Mrs. Casey’s lawyer says his research shows that water plant was, quote, contaminated with sodium dichromate, a known carcinogen. Unquote.”

A silence. Orth said, “Maybe Casey got sick some other way.”

Sanderson said, “Maybe.” Orth could hear the snapping open of what was undoubtedly a pint of the Australian lager his buddy had favored during their years in Iraq. “But maybe Casey didn’t,” Sanderson said. “Take care of yourself, bro. Let’s get going with this big project, and get the green, and hope for a long, healthy retirement.”

Sanderson heard Orth say, “I remember Casey real well. Good man. You think Casey’s wife will get any money?”

“Doubt it. The Agua Negro lawyers will fight her claim for years.”

There was a pause before Orth said “Scott, you think we got fucked over over there? With this cancer shit? While we were protecting this country?”

***

Driving the two hundred and thirty miles south the next day, Orth thought, not for the first time, about the unlikely partnership he had entered into. Orth was the only child of a Wisconsin lumberjack who drank himself to an early death and a woman who quickly followed her husband’s path once her son had joined the service out of high school. Orth neither had nor saw the worth of social skills beyond that elementary level needed to move unobtrusively through life.

Scott Sanderson’s background was very different. He was the third of five children of a South Dakota couple who doted on their offspring. Scott’s three sisters became teachers, his brother went into the family drugstore business. Scott enlisted in the Navy after two years at the University of South Dakota, where he’d majored in drinking and raising hell. He was loud yet likeable, and very ambitious. Once admitted to the SEALS program, he thrived in that ultrademanding organization. When they met early in their training, Sanderson and Orth sized each other up, competed fiercely against each other, and eventually bonded. Their Afghanistan action taught to them to trust each other in a way few other members of their unit understood.

Orth checked into the Holiday Inn late in the afternoon. There was message for him, a note saying only “three eighteen.” He went to his room, unpacked his light gear, and walked next door. Sanderson opened his door, grinning, a can of malt liquor in one hand. “My man,” he said, “come the fuck in.” They gripped hands.

Sanderson had ordered room service for them both. They ate as they talked casually about Sanderson’s family, about the respective chances of the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers in the next football season, about what they agreed was “the shit war in Iraq.”

Orth ate everything on his dinner tray: a half-pound cheeseburger, shrimp cocktail, fries, salad. He drank two bottles of water from the minibar. Sanderson only took two or three bites of his turkey club, which was unusual for him. He opened another Malt 45 from the pack he’d brought with him. When Orth’s plates were empty, Sanderson said, “Ready?”

“Go on with it.”

Sanderson leaned forward. “This,” he said, “is our biggest project yet. It’s going to have to be very, very carefully thought out. Main reason is, we’re getting paid on a sliding scale. I’ve met with the money person. The deal looks very solid. The money’s there. I got a down payment forwarded to our off-shore accounts yesterday. But it’s not going to be easy.”

Orth frowned, awaiting an explanation.

“There’s six targets,” Sorenson said. “We eliminate them all, one at a time. Different methods. Different locales. Nothing you can’t handle. I got the whole schemata worked out, you know? Like always, we’re the fucking stealth team. Yeah, it’s going to get harder to do as we go along through the list. That’s why I negotiated an increasing pay scale. It got complicated. It took some doing. But I did it.”

Orth hated complications. “Keep talking.”

“Like I said, we’ve got to do six. These people, all men, all know each other. After one or two go down, the rest, if they have any fucking sense whatsoever, and I’m sure they must, are going to be plenty nervous. Harder to get to.”

“What numbers are we talking?” Orth said.

“We get fifty for each of the first two. Next one, seventy-five thousand. One after that, a hundred. Another hundred for the fifth one. A hundred and a quarter for the finalist.”

Orth said, “Where are these guys?”

“Pretty well clustered,” Sanderson said, “all in the Midwest. You’ll be able to reach them easily. Did I say expenses are included?” he grinned, before draining his Malt 45. “So, what we’re talking about here…”

Orth interrupted him. “Scotty, I can still count. Five hundred grand, forty percent to you.” He stood up to stretch. Sanderson watched him, thinking that Orth looked like he’d even further tightened up his muscular body in the north woods. “One dangerous fucking cat,” is how Sanderson had described him to his wife.

“Not a bad summer’s work, bro,” Sanderson said.

Orth said, “Not bad at all.”

Chapter Eight

April 24, 2009

Trainer Larry Lambert’s top two-year-old filly, Princess Croft, came out of her sleep with a jolt when she heard some of the other horses down the line in the barn nicker nervously in the early morning darkness. She shook her head and pricked her ears. A voice was saying, “Quiet, quiet, now. It’s only me.”

Wide awake now, Princess Croft poked her gray head out the stall door. Almost immediately, familiar hands were stroking her neck and a familiar voice was pouring over her in soft but insistent tones. “Easy does it, babe. It’s only me. Just relax, baby.”

Princess Croft shuddered with pleasure at this most unusual nocturnal happening. She was a very sociable sort as horses go, especially young fillies, and she reveled in this unexpected attention. She sniffed the peppermint candy pieces in the visitor’s hand, snuffled them up with rapidity.

The familiar hands moved to Princess Croft’s jaw. Her head was pushed up a few inches. Suddenly there was the thrust of something alien into her left nostril. The filly whinnied in fear, raising her head. But the strong hands held her nose down. The soothing voice continued. A small probe forced the wad of sponge even deeper into her nasal passage. Then it was over. For Princess Croft, there was no real pain accompanying this intrusion, just the uncomfortable sense that something terribly unnatural had been placed in her body.

The soft voice took on a regretful tone. “Sorry, babe. Hated to do that to you, but…” There was a final soothing rub of the filly’s neck. “Good going, girl, you’ve handled this fine. Here, take this.” Princess Croft, wary now, nevertheless tentatively reached out and nibbled up the last pieces of peppermint candy. Finished, she snorted in appreciation. She watched as her visitor briskly, silently walked around the corner of the barn and disappeared into the night.

Two days later, in Heartland Downs’ fifth race, a maiden event for two-year-old fillies, Princess Croft was made the 3-to-5 favorite. She had been a strong second in her only start, impressing observers with the strong way she finished.

Princess Croft broke sharply and gained the early lead. She buzzed along in front for the first quarter-mile. Then, suddenly, she began to shorten stride. When the winner crossed the finish line, Princess Croft was dead last, nearly twenty lengths in arrears. There were scattered boos from the crowd aimed at her disgusted jockey.

The winner paid $28.40. She topped a $382 exacta and a trifecta worth $1,420 on $2 bets.

Trainer Larry Lambert, baffled by Princess Croft’s dismal performance, called Doc Jensen two mornings later. Using an endoscope, the veterinarian found and then extracted a foul-smelling sponge. “Well, at least I know why she ran so bad,” said Lambert. “Goddam, I’d like to get my hands on whoever would do something like this to a horse.”

That same night, the sponger collected a thick pay packet.