A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (27 page)

“Right. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to have to search you. Would you mind just holding your hands out to the sides?”

The man patted her down perfunctorily.

“This is really serious,” she said.

“Well, they’re armed and dangerous, ma’am. You haven’t seen anyone suspicious out here, have you?”

“No. I haven’t seen anyone at all.”

“You’re from Jersey. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing up here at this time of the night?”

“Well, I’ve been visiting a friend in Fort Montgomery, and...”

“May I see your driver’s license, ma’am?” he said.

Three MPs surrounded her. One of them scrutinized her plastic license card. His flashlight lit up his face. The two others stood impassively, staring at her face. She looked up again into the trees and reached to pull her hair away from her forehead.

“I’ve got to be back home before seven. I saw no reason to wait for daybreak. I wasn’t able to sleep.”

“A friend? Who would that be, Mrs. Christopher?”

“Delores. Delores Fishbein.”

“Do you have an address?”

“I know the way but I don’t know the name of the street, officer. I’m sorry. I...”

“You don’t know the name of the street?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you choose to go to New Jersey on this road, Mrs. Christopher?”

“Actually, I got turned around. I thought I was heading to the Palisades Parkway. It’s so dark.”

“You’re not in any way involved in that attack on the bridge are you, Mrs. Christopher?” He directed his light at her face and watched her eyes.

“Me? Good God.”

“Glen Rock, New Jersey. I’m logging you in, ma’am. You may be hearing from the local police later. This is not the smartest thing in the world to be fooling with.”

“I didn’t intend to cause any trouble. I’m sorry.”

“We’re trying to deny these people any chance to get away, ma’am. Coming around here in your car is working against us.”

“You’re not going to arrest me or anything, are you?” Mag asked, lines of worry forming on her forehead.

“What is your telephone number in Glen Rock, ma’am?”

“201-555-8954. I just want to go home.”

“Right. I want you to turn your vehicle around now and head back to Glen Rock by way of the Palisades Parkway.”

“Thank you, officer. I will.”

“If, by chance, you do see anyone on the side of the road, or whatever, do not stop. Just keep going. Understand?”

“I understand perfectly,” Mag said.

She turned the ignition key, felt the warm blast of air on her face. For an instant, she saw the MPs in the rear view mirror; and then they disappeared as if they never existed.

* * *

It was two-thirty, but Mag was wide awake as she steered off the highway onto Ridgewood Avenue and drove slowly along the dimly lit street. She envisioned herself walking into the dark house, straight to the telephone, and straight to a blinking answering machine and a comforting message from Lou. But a tingling along her jaw line, tapped out a message that wouldn’t go away: Lou was out there somewhere in the night, freezing and wet.

As she turned the corner onto Pleasant, she saw a plain white van parked at the curb and a man perched high up on the telephone pole. Another man stepped out from behind the van and waved her past. In the rear view mirror, she saw the man snap open a small telephone and speak into it as he watched her car move down the street.

She didn’t know why, but she drove past their driveway. The house was dark. She continued down to Cedar and then turned the corner. A black sedan was parked at the curb. She saw a match flare inside, then die. She drove on, around the corner at Birch, and then slid to a stop and killed the engine. She sat there in the dim light and looked all around. She saw no movement. She exited, closed the door of the Subaru quietly, glanced up and down the street, and then strode rapidly across their neighbors’—the Comptons—yard. She made her way through the bushes at the back of their house and across the grass in her own back yard. Trude heard the key in the lock at the back door and yapped crazily until Mag sank to her knees to quiet the dog.

Upstairs, she went immediately to the window and moved the curtains slightly to see up the street. The white van was still there. The man on the telephone pole jumped down the last two feet, opened the rear door of the van, and ducked inside. The other man moved around the van, disappeared inside, and slammed the door shut behind him. For five minutes, Mag stood at the window. Nothing moved outside.

She shed her coat and moved quickly to the telephone, listened, and heard a faint crackling an octave above the dial tone. Was she imagining everything? Had she created an elaborate fantasy to push the truth off into the corner? Was it an affair? With Patty Buck? She sank into a chair in the darkened room. Her eyes roved over the dark Indian painting on the far wall, the long case clock in the corner, the floor lamp on the near wall. She brought her hand up to her mouth and blew lightly on her knuckles. She placed two fingers on her temple and pressed her ring finger against her lips.

No. It was real trouble this time: a deadly kind of trouble. A familiar calm locked in. An involuntary hum rose from her throat and ricocheted off her palette. It wasn’t even daybreak, yet everyone knew about this bridge thing. Everybody. Bliss and his helicopter. The election...

But suddenly, weariness intruded on her thoughts and pushed them away. Exhausted, she slumped in the chair and slept.

It was bright in the room when she awoke; nearly noon. The doorbell was ringing and Trude was at it again, barking at the door. She stared at the clock, bewildered, and then her brain began to clear. She looked out the window and saw Anne outside with the boys carrying a big, blue duffle bag.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The rain stopped again before they reached the top of Turkey Mountain. Weariness from the strain of constant vigilance claimed the strength in his legs and allowed mountain laurel tangles and jagged rocks to trip him as he lurched up the incline, peering through heavy eyelids, pulling Sydney along by the hand. The night wind leaned into his face, chilling the sweat on his forehead. It sneaked up the small of his back, snatched his thin wisps of breath, and scaled them along his cheeks and into the night. They fumbled through the darkness at the top of the ridge and found a small, covered draw on the eastern slope. They dropped to the ground and huddled—shivering, silent—until finally they slid into sleep.

* * *

The sun rose above the horizon and freed them of the chill as they slept. Lou woke to the sound of chopper blades
whupping
somewhere in the mountains. He didn’t move. But even if the craft were hovering directly overhead, he knew that the people inside it wouldn’t be able to see them through the branches and leaves.

He looked over at the girl. She was curled up next to a rock, still asleep; her white coat torn and dirty in a sodden heap next to her. Her cheek was smeared with mud, her black hair damp and straggly against her forehead. She lay in the fetal position; her head resting against her two hands. Her face wore an expression of peace. One leg was flexed as if she were running in her sleep.

She jerked and sat upright, looking all around with a blank look on her face. For a full minute she sat like that, looking at him and all around until it came back to her.

“Good morning,” he said.

She reached her arms out in a large yawning motion. “I’m cold,” she said.

“Get your jacket on.”

“It’s soaked. You got a couple of ham and cheese. Your sack, where is it?”

He tossed the rucksack to her. “They’re all we’ve got. The candy bars turned to mush.”

“I need a comb.”

“No combs,” he said.

“My feet are falling off,” she said, rolling up her pants legs. She peeled her socks off, threw them to the side, pulled a foot up into her lap, and massaged the arch. “Nobody said anything about backpacking.”

“You want to see where we are?” he asked. “Come here. See this long ridgeline? That’s Turkey Mountain. We’re right here in this draw.”

“Excellent. How long until we have a pack of dogs on us?”

“Dogs? With all the rain and water we went through? Nah.”

“I was dreaming about dogs. Never mind no scent; they found us.”

“Not yet they didn’t,” he said.

“Then they came at us with a helicopter with a blinding searchlight on it.”

“You can’t see anything from a helicopter in this stuff. Too many leaves and underbrush down here.”

“Then I saw this long line of men with shotguns combing the woods with, like, little rabbits and foxes and raccoons scrambling over the rocks in front of them, and Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier splashing through the swamp.”

“It takes time to organize a search like that. That’s something they might have operating tomorrow, but not this soon.”

“You’ve got all the answers.”

“I have no answers.”

“Show me where we’re headed,” she said, leaning over the map.

“Come midnight tonight, we walk a mile and a half out to the end of this ridge, across Mine Torne Road, to the little pick and shovel there on the map. That’s Borrow Pit. That’s where we’re supposed to link up.”

“With who? Stanfield?”

“Stanfield.”

“Asshole.”

“Unfortunately he’s all we’ve got at this point. Should’ve thought of that along with a lot of other things, but I didn’t,” he said.

“What if you had? What difference would that have made? We’re screwed. You didn’t think. I didn’t think, least of all about people getting killed. Whatever happened to the thing about nobody using their gun?”

“People get scared.”

“I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“Yeah, and maybe Elmer Fudd will get us out of here.”

“Okay, what are we going to do, commander?”

“Think.”

“Oh, great. Think.”

“You’ve got a big mouth.”

“More Ranger stuff.”

“Shut up. You got yourself into this. Don’t lay it on me.”

“You’re the one who came up with this brilliant plan with the trucks and the guns and the napalm. Look at these blisters.”

“I know a couple of guys back on the bridge who’d settle for blisters right now.”

A sudden wave of sadness swept along her brow and lodged in her throat as a muffled sob. “I’m sorry. Yeah. Oh, God.” She took in a deep breath and allowed a long steadying exhale. “All right. Are you ever going to reveal your name to me?”

“Cook.”

“Hey!”

“You don’t need to know my name. Okay. Christopher. Lou Christopher.”

“Sydney Winkler. I already told you.”

“Yeah, well, Sydney Winkler, we got ourselves into some deep tapioca here.”

“I wish it were still dark,” she said.

“The dark helps. It’s hard to move through this stuff at night; for them, too. If they’re out looking for us on foot already, they couldn’t have started before daybreak. There’s a lot of ground out there to be covered. Now that we’re out of that gorge, we could’ve gone in any direction. Even if they did have a line of men a mile long combing these mountains, they could never guarantee they’d find us with all of these little draws and swales. So they probably wouldn’t even do it. They have to be depending on active patrolling of the roads. They’re probably setting up checkpoints. Searching cars. Things like that.”

“Which means we have to walk out of here.”

“The plan calls for a linkup.”