Bodyguard of Lies (17 page)

Hannah screamed and Mitch turned to follow Neeley with the gun. The rope that was tied around Neeley's waist quickly ran out of slack and snapped tight into Hannah's harness, in the process whipsawing Mitch in the thighs. He staggered and held against Neeley's weight on the rope for a second and then he was gone, tumbling out into space.

Hannah was dragged to her knees by the taut rope, sliding toward the edge.

"Hold on!" Neeley cried out from twenty feet down, where she was swinging back and forth on the end of the rope.

"Hold on," Hannah muttered to herself as she looked around.

"Grab the protection!" Neeley yelled.

Hannah looked at the anchor points that Neeley had put in. She reached out with her right hand and grabbed hold of a sling attached to cam jammed into a small crevice.

"Now what?" she gasped.

"I'm climbing up," Neeley said.

Hannah felt the weight lessen on the rope. Soon Neeley's hands appeared and then she was up. Hannah stood. They both looked over the edge. Mitch had fallen all the way to the bottom, his broken body lying on top of a boulder. She looked around; there were no other climbers in sight and no one on the ground in the immediate area.

Hannah shook her head. "That poor boy. What a waste."

"Oh yeah," Neeley said. "He's one of Nero’s people. Don't waste any tears on him."

Hannah shook her head. “He said Racine. Not Nero.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn’t,” Hannah disagreed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Neeley said.

Hannah thought it did, but didn’t say anything. "Why the hell did you jump over the side?" she demanded, changing the subject.

"It was the only way to stop Mitch," Neeley said. "Rule fourteen. Desperate times call for desperate measures."

"'It's a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things,'" Hannah quoted in turn.

Neeley looked up from the package. "What?"

"Shakespeare. Beats Gant hands down in my book."

"Oh, shut up," Neeley said. She ripped open the waterproof wrapping and pulled out a small square of paper.

"So where's the tape?" Hannah asked.

"Damn," Neeley exclaimed. "It's only half a cache report."

"Cache report?" Hannah dully repeated.

"It's a format that gives directions to where something is hidden. In this case, it must be the tape."

"So where is the tape?"

"This only gives the IRP," Neeley said.

"IRP?" Hannah wearily asked.

"Immediate reference point," Neeley said. "It's the final fixed point from which you go to recover the cache. In this case it’s a bridge abutment. The only problem is we don't have the FRP, the far reference point and the area which tell us where the hell in the world the FRP is, which in turn leads us to the IRP."

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about." Hannah sat on a rock and leaned forward, putting her face on her knees. "Why wouldn't he leave the whole report here? For that matter, why didn't he leave the tape here? Hell, he could have left it all at the house in the closet with the climbing gear."

Neeley used a handkerchief to rub the sweat out of her eyes. "Come on Hannah, think about it. Gant had to make it hard to find the tape. The only reason I knew about this place is because I lived with him for over twenty years and climbed this route with him. But he couldn't put all his eggs in one basket. We need to find the other half of the cache report."

Neeley shook her head. “I don’t buy that. Gant could have cached it—as you call it—somewhere and told only you where it was. He has—had—another reason to make you go through all this.”

Once more Hannah’s words struck a chord of truth in Neeley, especially as she hadn’t told Hannah about the second note in the packet.

Hannah stared at Neeley. “How old are you?”

“Is that important?”

“It’s just a question.”

“Thirty-two.”

“You don’t look it.”

Neeley shifted uncomfortably.

“Maybe there’s something be said for living a life on the edge,” Hannah said. Sensing the other woman’s uneasiness, Hannah looked over at the wide expanse of plains to the east and the towers of Denver on the horizon. "So where else did he tell you to go?"

Neeley held up the second piece of paper from the packet.

"Not another climb."

"No, this is on flat ground."

"All right."

"It's in France."

"Oh." Hannah considered that piece of information. “France? Really?”

“Yes.” Neeley motioned for Hannah to follow. "We have a lot to do. Let's go. Hey, come on, don't you feel good about yourself knowing you got up here? Do you realize how difficult that climb was? It's a miracle really that you made it with no experience at all."

Hannah retrieved her backpack. "How come at the bottom you told me it was so easy and how anybody could do it? Does this mean I can't trust you?"

Neeley paused. "No, Hannah, it means you can trust yourself."

Neeley turned and made for the rappel point. She figured with luck they'd make it back to town before dark and Mitch's body wouldn't be found before the next day.

Neeley looked at the piece of paper and shivered at the thought of returning to Strasbourg and all the memories there. The ‘Goose Girl’, was all Gant had written on the paper. Neeley knew exactly what that meant. She had told Gant many times about the statue in Josephine Park in Strasbourg. Even about her niche in the rock wall where she hid her treasures as a child. Could it be that Gant had had the piece Nero thought she had? And he had put it there along with the video?

Looking behind her, she gave Hannah what she thought was an encouraging smile as she hooked up the rope. Hannah was looking down at Mitch’s body.

“Let’s go,” Neeley said.

The desk in Nero's office was now covered with Braille folders. Racine had said the women wanted a trade. Nero had been right so far. She had Gant's videotape or knew where it was. It’s exactly what Nero had predicted Gant would do. The tape and papers had been sitting for over ten years; a few more hours would be inconsequential. Indeed, what was difficult was reining in Mister Racine. He had apparently put the women on his ever-growing personal vendetta list. Nero wondered again how such an emotional man could have functioned so long in his profession.

While all appeared to be developing the way he had planned, there was an aspect about this that bothered Nero. He had thought he’d known the full story so many years ago. But he considered one of his greatest strengths to be the ability to admit that he was wrong. Maybe something had escaped his notice. He was disturbed by the Racine-Collins connection. The Senator would not have pulled Racine out of a hat to do the job in Baltimore. That indicated a prior relationship; perhaps one outside the province of the chain of command of the Cellar at even an earlier date. He had thrown the Sudan connection at the Senator to probe for more. What else had the two done together? Had the Senator been riding his own agenda for the past couple of decades, and if so, what was the agenda, and was it good for the country or just Collins?

Had they been together as early as the Sudan or even before? Nero had never considered the possibility before recent events because things had turned out the way they should in the long run from that event. Until 9-11 that was.

Nero saw a definite connection between what happened in Mogadishu and 9-11. Even Bin Laden had admitted as much, saying on record how he had felt seeing the Americans turn tail and run after a handful were killed in Somalia. Nero now felt there was more to Collins being in the Sudan and Racine disappearing for several months around that time. He had to wonder if an extension could be drawn to Mogadishu.

This angle was why he had brought Racine in on this operation, rather than another operative. He’d always found that thrusting someone into a crisis tended to expose their true nature. If Mogadishu had not been as he thought, then many subsequent events that had wavered from the path Nero had aimed for could be explained.

All Nero had been able to find so far was that Racine had been seen in Berlin later that October in 1993. Gant had been in Berlin also then, as he worked under a cover of a covert Special forces unit there. In fact, that was when Gant had ‘resigned’ and brokered his deal with Nero.

There was something interesting in Senator Collins classified file. The French Directorate of Territorial Security, the DST, had a flag on a bank account the Senator held in Geneva. Regular withdrawals were made from the account at a French bank in Paris and it was assumed that Collins had a mistress he was paying so no further inquiries had been made. Collins was a United States Senator after all.

Nero checked further into Collins file but if the Senator had a mistress in France, he saw very little of her unless she came to the States. Nero considered it, then pressed the intercom, instructing Mrs. Smith to get a hold of his contact in the DST. He wanted to know who the money was going to.

Nero lit another cigarette. It was early morning in Paris and he knew it would take Mrs. Smith a little bit of time to track the man down. Nero’s doctor had left the office earlier, still preaching about imminent death due to smoking, high blood pressure, bad diet and some words too long for Nero to consider. Nero found the idea of death not disturbing in the least. He had the contented repose of the lifelong atheist who had lived without the threat of hell and would die basking in the surety of his convictions.

All his life, Nero had believed that religion was merely a vehicle to protect man from his true nature. That without the shackles of the spirit, one could thoroughly indulge himself in the task of living which was a nasty business when done correctly, except very few could do it correctly, thus the need for religion.

In fact, Nero had very much appreciated the purpose of religion. He liked Jung who said that if God did not exist, then man would have had to invent him. Religion was very important. The break-up of the Soviet Union, Nero laid to the fact that the communists had ignored the very effective purpose of religion. Much more effective than communism for keeping the masses in their place.

Man was an animal, Nero believed. Left to their own devices, the majority of men and women would destroy themselves rather quickly. Religion helped. So did the Cellar. It kept the country on the straight path of sanity against the powerful people driven by emotion who would just as easily destroy it for their own selfish, short-sighted reasons.

There had often been times in his life where Nero had pondered the difference between him and his fellows. At an early age he’d simply accepted that differences existed. Then he’d accepted he wouldn't change. Even that he didn’t want to change. What could have been a distressing turbulent existence became instead a rather calm, calculated life with the occasional turbulent event.

What had happened to him in France at the hands of the Gestapo had only deepened this belief system. He’d felt no resentment upon his return to the States and meeting the man who had occupied this office and agreed with the decision that had cost Nero his eyes and his teammates their lives. It had been a smart decision with a large pay-off in favor of the United States and its allies that clearly outweighed the handful of men knowingly parachuted into the meat grinder. Those who had thrown tens of thousands onto the beaches of Normandy knowing many of them would die had been hailed as heroes and been feted with ticker tape parades after the war. Numerous statues had been cast in their honor. What was the difference? His predecessor had accomplished so much more with less loss of life. As had Nero over the decades since. Only for the Cellar there were no statues or parades or medals, nor was there any desire for them.

Knowing he might be so close to ending this entire messy business put Nero in an oddly reflective state of mind. He found it odd because it was new to him. He had simply never dwelt on the past to heal wounds or relive joys. And this was not because he had problems with the past; it was because he felt nothing. Nero had lived his entire life without feeling any emotion except for occasional anger, which seems the one human emotion able to birth itself in a void. Nero felt no real joy to be sure, but he had also never really experienced emotional pain or regret. A person like that was capable of amazing things, or nothing at all.

Nero, by accepting his lack of humanity, had made himself indispensable to that same humanity. Every country needed a few men who could accomplish what was necessary and unlike the sociopaths whom he passingly resembled and frequently employed, Nero could stop when that was necessary. That's why he could anticipate having the tape and papers but not feel the anxiety of not having them. After all, they were minor compared to what was really at stake here.

The phone rang and his contact in the DST, an old-timer who had been part of the Resistance team that rescued Nero so many years ago was on the line. Without preamble or giving a reason, Nero made his request.

"Can't I at least take a shower?" Hannah asked. "I need a break."

"We can rest when we're dead," Neeley muttered as she threw a duffel bag full of equipment into the bed of the pick-up truck.

"Oh, that's nice," Hannah said. "The words of Gant again?"

"No, Warren Zevon," Neeley paused in loading the gear. "They're after us. They know we're here and Mitch was just the point man. You can bet there will be more. Racine is probably on the way as we speak."

“No.”

Neeley stopped and looked at Hannah, surprised at the certainty of the word. “Why not?”

“Because he sent Mitch after us.”

“And?”

“Racine didn’t expect Mitch to fail, but if he did, then there’s a backup plan. If
that
fails, then Racine will come.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s been his pattern so far and he’ll continue it.”

Neeley thought through what Hannah had just said and realized the other woman was right. Racine would have a back-up in place. It was what Gant would have done, although she knew Gant would have made himself the primary on any mission. “OK. I buy that. But we still have to get out of here before his back-up plan kicks in.” She went into the house.

Hannah looked up and down the street Neeley’s small house was on. She was tired from the climb and the adrenaline rush had worn off during the drive back from Eldorado Canyon. Neeley had jumped out of the truck as soon as they'd arrived and started loading the gear.

"Are we going to drive to France?" Hannah asked as Neeley bustled past her with another load.

"No, we're flying."

"Not another one of your friends, I hope," Hannah said.

"We'll fly a commercial airliner," Neeley said.

"What about passports? I didn't pack mine in the rush."

"I'll take care of that," Neeley said. "Listen, you mind giving me a hand here?"

Hannah eyed the growing pile of equipment in the truck. "We're going to take all that with us?"

"No, we're not taking it with us," Neeley said, "but I don't want to leave it here for Racine's goons."

"Then what are we going to do with it?"

"We're going to cache the money." Neeley was bunging a pair of skis to the rack on the top of the camper shell. "Just help load the truck, Hannah. Please."

"Are we going skiing?" Hannah asked, a concerned look on her face.

"Just load!"

Hannah bit the inside of her lip and helped. Twenty minutes later, Neeley was driving through Boulder. She pulled into a crowded shopping center and parked. "Wait here," she ordered Hannah. "I have to get a few things in McGuckins." Neeley jogged into the hardware store and shortly reemerged with a shopping cart full of supplies, most of which she quickly piled into the back of the pickup.

As Neeley slid into the driver's seat, she thrust a box of plastic garbage bags and a roll of duct tape at Hannah. "Start bagging the money," she ordered, pointing at the briefcase right behind Hannah's seat. "Break it down into stacks of fifty grand and then triple bag each stack. Tape each bag shut and make sure they're tight. Try to leave as little air in each as possible. Make the bags narrow enough to fit inside the PVC pipe. Leave about thirty grand to take with us."

Hannah opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and got to work. Neeley drove to Broadway and turned right. After three miles Broadway linked up with Colorado 36 and the end of town. She turned onto 36 and drove north, paralleling the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She checked her rearview mirror constantly and once pulled over to let a row of cars pass her. After ten miles she was sure no one was following them.

Route 36 turned left into the foothills at the small town of Lyons. The road narrowed and started twisting and turning, following St. Vrain Creek into the mountains. They began gaining altitude.

Soon they could see the town of Estes Park ahead, and behind it the white peaks of the Continental Divide. Looking down into the town, Neeley could see that the old Stanley Hotel, where she and Gant had spent some nights a long time ago, had undergone a renovation. It was the hotel Stephen King had based the one in The Shining upon, something Gant had found amusing considering there was a McDonalds less than a quarter mile down the road from the entrance to the hotel.

As they passed through Estes Park, Hannah bound the last of the money. She was immersed in black bundles. "Hope we don't have an accident," Hannah said. "This would be hard to explain."

Neeley hardly heard her. She was playing with the control for her side mirror, angling it up. "We've got company."

Hannah spun about, but the road behind them was clear. "Where?"

"Above us," Neeley said. "There's a chopper above us."

Hannah tried looked to look but couldn't see anything. "You sure it's following us?"

"I'm sure. It's been shadowing us since we passed Lyons."

"Great," Hannah said. “Who are these guys?”

“The Cellar,” Neeley said.

“You’ve told me that,” Hannah said. “But who is exactly is this Cellar? Some super secret part of the CIA?”

Neeley shook her head. “I don’t think the Cellar is part of the CIA. I think the CIA may be part of the Cellar. Or they’re totally separate. I don’t know.”

“What now?” Hannah asked.

"I'm getting tired of following their lead," Neeley said. "Time to take the initiative. I'm going to make them play on our terms. First thing is to get that chopper down on the ground."

"How?"

In reply Neeley pointed at a sign that indicated that the entrance for the Rocky Mountain National Park was less than five miles ahead.

"So?"

"Trust me," was Neeley's answer.

The entrance to the Park was barricaded and the small booths were empty. A sign hung on the metal bar said the park would be opening Memorial Day weekend, which was still several weeks ahead. Neeley drove the truck off-road to the right of the gate. She regained the road on the far side and they headed into the park.

Hannah twisted her head as they entered a large meadow with mountains on all sides. "What are those?" she exclaimed as several large brown animals crossed the road in front of them.

"Mountain sheep," Neeley said. She was looking in her mirror. The chopper was hanging in the air several miles back. Neeley pointed across the meadow toward the snow-covered peaks while they waited for the sheep to cross. "See that thin line up there?"

Hannah craned her neck and stared. "Yes."

"That's Trail Ridge Road. That's where we're going."

"How high is that?"

"At that point? About twelve thousand feet."

"And then?"

"And then we take care of business."

They rounded the far end of the meadow and the road began going back and forth in long, forested switchbacks. Hannah sat silently and watched the scenery change with the climb. The first traces of snow started as they passed Many Peaks Curve. Despite the fact that the road had been plowed since the last snowfall, Neeley had to shift into four-wheel drive to deal with patches of snow blown across the asphalt. Hannah took a look out her window at the meadow, which was now over two thousand feet below them.

"See the chopper?" Neeley asked.

Hannah nodded. "It's over the meadow." As she continued to watch, the aircraft touched down briefly on the road they had traversed ten minutes earlier, bounced back up into the air, then settled down on the road, this time to stay.

"It's landed," Hannah said. "What's wrong with it?"

"Helicopters have low ceilings," Neeley said. "If they've got more than two or three guys in that thing it won't have the power to go much higher. They'll have to find some other means of transportation and that will give us enough time."

Neeley made another switchback and the meadow disappeared from view. Soon they passed a sign indicating they were going through twelve thousand feet in altitude. To the right, Hannah could see all the way back to the town of Estes Park beyond the park's entrance and four thousand feet down. The helicopter in the meadow three thousand feet below looked like an ant. To the left, the side of a mountain stretched up another thousand feet, the slope covered in several feet of snow.

Neeley pulled the pickup truck over. "We go up from here," she announced. "That's Sundance Mountain. We'll cache the money near the summit. It's only another thousand feet."

Hannah eyed the snow-covered slope and shook her head. "Uh-uh. No way."

Neeley handed her a set of small metal snowshoes, ski boots and a heavy parka. "Put these on. The boots are an old pair of mine. They should fit you. The snowshoes attach to them."

"Listen--" Hannah began, but Neeley cut her off.

"Do it. Now!"

With a grimace, Hannah put on the heavy plastic boots and began strapping the snowshoes to them. Neeley took the black bundles of money and shoved them into foot and a half sections of eight inch PVC piping that she'd purchased. She screwed caps onto each end and then sealed the ends with duct tape.

Neeley stuffed a folding entrenching tool and the PVC pipes into a backpack. She took out one of Gant's weapons cases and attached it to her backpack. She slung an MP-5 submachinegun over her shoulder and put extra magazines in the pocket of her parka. "Here," she said, extending the Berretta 9mm pistol to Hannah. "Stick this in one of your pockets."

Before Hannah had a chance to protest, Neeley handed her a set of skis. "Balance them on your shoulder. Let's go." Neeley kicked the toe of her snowshoe into the plowed snow on the side of the road and began climbing. Hannah stood there, skis in hand for a few moments, and then grudgingly followed.

After two hundred feet, Neeley paused and looked back. Hannah was fifty feet behind. Neeley scanned Trail Ridge Road. She spotted a Park Service Suburban coming their way, a thousand feet below and four miles away. She opened the weapons case and took out the sniper rifle that she had used in the Bronx. She quickly bolted the two parts together. She had taken off the suppressor earlier. She removed a 10 round magazine with a thin piece of red tape wrapped around the bottom, indicating these were hot loads, not the blue taped sub-sonic rounds. She slammed it home.

Neeley put her eye to the scope and twisted the focus. The men inside were dressed in black fatigues and had weapons. They must have stolen the parked vehicle from one of the closed Ranger Stations. Someone was staring back at her with binoculars from the rear seat of the truck.

"Let's go!" she called out to Hannah.

Hannah didn't have the breath to reply. It was like climbing a never-ending sand dune with boards strapped to her feet. She could feel sweat pouring down her back and her lungs were straining in the thin air to grab oxygen.

Neeley picked up the pace. The slope they were climbing was concave. There were trees on both sides, but their position at the center was clear. Neeley didn't figure it would help telling Hannah the reason there were no trees here was because it was an avalanche area. The top of the mountain was really a four hundred yard wide ridge, completing the top of the concave slope. When Neeley got within fifty meters of the top, she halted. She threw her pack down in the snow. Hannah was a hundred meters behind.

Neeley took the two ski poles and stuck them in the ground forming a waist high X. Sitting on her backpack, Neeley placed the forward stock of the rifle on the junction of the poles and put the scope to her right eye. She zoomed past Hannah's tortured face. The Suburban was less than a quarter mile from the pickup.

Neeley pulled back the bolt on the Accuracy International, chambering a round. She zeroed the crosshairs on a point on the front windshield and pulled the trigger. The round hit the shatterproof glass and an explosion of cracks emanated from the impact point. About two inches to the left of her aiming point Neeley calculated as the truck slid to a halt and four men piled out, crouching on the far side of the Suburban, pistols and submachineguns drawn. Neeley made the necessary adjustment to the scope so that it would be zeroed.

Hannah had thrown herself to the snow when Neeley fired. Now she stood, dusting herself off and continued up as Neeley yelled to her it was safe. "Their guns can't reach this far," she assured Hannah.

For good measure, Neeley fired a round into the left front tire, blowing it out. Then she waited, keeping the truck in her scope until Hannah reached her side.

"What now?" Hannah gasped, collapsing into the snow.

"Dig a few holes, here and there," Neeley said.

"What?" Hannah demanded.

"Just dig a few holes, not too deep, just enough to disturb the snow and make it look like something's been buried," Neeley unfolded and handed the shovel to Hannah, then went back to her watch.

Hannah leaned on the handle and stared at her companion. "I'm dying."

Neeley sighed. "You'll be happy while they waste their time looking here."

"You never planned on caching anything up here, did you?" Hannah said. "You just wanted to be able to shoot at those guys who were following us."

Neeley shook her head. "I came up here to get the helicopter out of the picture and give us the high ground, but I do plan on caching the money in the park. Just not here."

"Couldn't we have just buried it in the backyard next to the perennials?" Hannah asked as she thrust the spade into the snow.

"It would be found there."

"Well, what about in the woods around town? Could have saved ourselves the drive."

Neeley was watching one of the men edging his way to the right rear of the truck, getting ready to make a dash to outflank her. "The National Park is the best place. We're guaranteed that it won't be disturbed. Any place else and they can put a shopping mall on top of your cache site before you get back to it."

Neeley drew in her breath and held it. The man started his run and she fired. The 7.62 mm round tore through his right thigh and knocked him over the edge of the road, tumbling down into the pine trees on the slope below. The other three men fired futilely with their pistols and submachineguns but the rounds fell well short.