Extraordinary Retribution (5 page)

At this moment, he felt no triumph at what his brother was confessing.
Miguel, what have you done?

Miguel Lopez shook his head. “We had choices. Like anyone. I can’t run away from that.” He laughed grimly. “Looks like there is no running away now. At least I drew one line in the sand.”

“What choices, Miguel? What actions? What line in the sand?”

“There’s not much time left, Francisco. I had to come. To tell you—you as a priest, in case there can be some forgiveness for me. And, finally, to tell you as my brother.”

“To tell me
what
, Miguel?”

The shadowy figure coughed the words out, forcing through pride or tears, Father Lopez couldn’t tell. “That you were
right
, Francisco. In the end, after everything, you were right.”

The door to the confessional swung open abruptly, and footsteps rapidly moved away. Father Lopez rose and exited, but not quickly enough. His older brother was too fast. A dim shape shrouded in a flowing coat was all he could see exiting the church. By the time he reached the church doors panting, the lot was empty, and his brother was gone.

The stars shone coldly. He felt a chill, like a cold voice whispering, telling him that the figure would not be coming back, telling him that what his brother had really come to say this evening was
goodbye
.

7

M
iguel Lopez noted that the air was thinner and that the vegetation had begun its subtle change from pure deciduous to a mixed pine character. The mountains around Gatlinburg, Tennessee were not very high, but even at this altitude, he could sense the changes – changes in the air, the smells, the soil and rock, trees and game. Miguel Lopez was unusually good at sensing his environment. It was what had kept him alive for so many years when others had died. In street fights, in war, and in many dangerous circumstances ruthlessly concealed from public knowledge.

His shiny SUV rested in front of a dilapidated gas station. Two young attendants waited on him. They flashed him hostile looks as they filled the tank and cleaned the windshield, telling him more than the camouflage pants and Confederate flag on their caps. For men like this, his Central American good looks were anything but welcome.
For them, I should be pumping
their
gas,
he thought with a chuckle. That’s why he always insisted on full service.

His professional eye had already canvased the station. The men were armed, but the shotguns were racked inside the building, foolishly displayed like trophies. Given the overall disarray of the place, he doubted they were loaded. It would likely take them five minutes to find the shells if they needed them.
Clueless boys who fancy themselves hunters.
Miguel Lopez had often been a hunter, and at times, prey.
But never fleeing such a deadly predator.

Closing the door, he cranked the ignition, shifted and pulled quickly out of the station. He had been on I-75 for most of the day, then taking short skips on small roads to US-441, which had brought him into Gatlinburg. Normally, it would have taken him only four or five hours to make the journey from northern Alabama. But he had definitely not traveled anything like the crow flies.

Yesterday had been spent in a long diversion, countless back roads, quick turnoffs, constant observation. He had to make sure he hadn’t been followed. If he had been, he might have attempted to lose them, or better, turned the tables and set an ambush. Become the predator. But he had seen nothing. He was alone.

Turning northeast, he finally began the drive toward the old cabin. It had been in the family since before he was born, and as very small children, he and Francisco had spent many vacations there. His father, an immigrant engineer who had been recruited right out of Mexico City to fill the growing staff of Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center during NASA’s heyday, had done well in his adoptive country. He had loved America so much, disregarding the prejudice and difficulties everyone of his heritage faced. Lopez did not fool himself. His father had been an elite, a near genius who had helped build the space shuttle orbiter engines, working with international teams of physicists and engineers from Europe, Asia, and America. He was well paid. And he had done all he could to fit his young family into the strangeness of American life. He had even bought a cabin in the Tennessee mountains.

But it had been abandoned – too old, too far, and too much trouble once his sons had grown. His father had never even bothered to sell it.
Or maintain it,
he thought and smiled. It had cost him a lot of work and money to bring the cabin to the condition he required of it. He had told no one. Why he thought there was a need for a safe house had no rational answer. It was that part of his mind that had kept him alive, the part that sensed vulnerability and constantly sought ways to reduce it.

The large vehicle strained as the grade of the road steepened. He reflexively glanced in the rearview mirror, saw nothing, and returned his gaze to the road in front of him. The family’s mountain cabin was the perfect solution. He had nearly rebuilt the entire structure, to a different set of specifications. The walls were reinforced with thick steel, the windows of bullet-proof glass. Security systems spread like a web from the cabin into the neighboring woods: cameras, microphones, and motion detectors, all feeding back into a centralized control module in the cabin itself. Underneath the floor, he had built a storage room that housed an armament of weapons from high-powered assault rifles to grenades. Somehow, some part of him sensed that it would all be needed someday. That day was now.

He didn’t know why this was happening. That it
was
could not be denied. The victims, one after the other, were all known to him. They had run the secret operations together. They had handled the cargo as a team. They had followed orders. Orders from above that told them that this was necessary, that this would save the lives of potentially thousands of Americans. This was a war, even if the form and manner of its execution was unlike anything ever seen before. In war, you followed orders; that much he knew from the battlefield.
But sometimes, things went wrong
.

He knew “Why?” was a dangerous question. There were often no clear answers in the land of shadows, where programs hidden from the rest of the government, devoid of accountability to the American public, were formulated, established, and put into motion. He knew better than to seek any help. He was alone.

But he was not ready to die, not with a family he loved and that depended on him. Not now.

Let them find me in the mountains. Let them come to the cabin.

He stepped more firmly on the accelerator, the SUV shifted into an angry overdrive, and jumped forward along the road as it climbed into the forest of pines.

8

T
he ride back from Huntsville was mostly quiet. Father Lopez piloted the vehicle through the rush-hour traffic. His brother’s wife sat in the front passenger seat, her face a valiant effort to conceal the weariness she felt. For two days, they had called friends and relatives, followed up on every contact in their address book, and fired emails to Miguel Lopez’s several accounts at work, Google, and Yahoo, hoping that he would check. If he did, he did not respond. No one had seen or heard from him. He had simply vanished.

Maria Lopez had pulled the young girls from school for the remainder of the year. With only a few weeks left, it didn’t matter anyway. Not in the context of her husband disappearing. Not when she felt her family was falling apart. Her daughters were staying with her mother once again. There were questions – so many questions. Questions she didn’t have any answers for.

Today they had made the rounds of several police stations in the local towns. They had even made a trip over to the FBI Resident Agency in Huntsville. The story was the same there, as well. They couldn’t file a missing person report, couldn’t launch an investigation on an adult unless there was a clear indication that he was a danger to himself or others, or that he’d gone missing under conditions that indicated a danger to himself. It didn’t matter that this was completely out of character or that Miguel had loaded himself with weapons. He had gone voluntarily, and they weren’t going to be able to make a case that a Southern man who had taken firearms with him was in a dangerous mental state. One of the police officers had laughed it off, said that maybe her husband needed some “man” time in the woods hunting. It was ludicrous. They were on their own, completely dependent on Miguel himself contacting them.

“He’s being cruel,” Maria said almost to herself.

Father Lopez grimaced. He didn’t know what to say. But he had to admit, his brother seemed to be acting with little regard for his family. “We don’t know what’s going on, Maria. Miguel’s always done his best for you and the girls. Maybe he’s messed up right now, I don’t know. But I’m sure whatever state he’s in, he thinks that he’s doing what he can for you.” He didn’t sound convinced of that even to himself. “You should go up and stay with your mother. Being alone in the house is going to drive you nuts.”

“I can’t, Francisco! What if he comes back and I miss him? I’ve got to wait there.”

He didn’t want to tell her that he thought very much that Miguel would not be coming back until this was completely sorted out.
Whatever this was
.

“Where would he go, Francisco? I mean, let’s assume he’s not running out on me, or something. What if he
were
afraid of something, of someone, maybe. What if he went into hiding? Where would be safe for him?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for the last few days,” he said, pulling off the highway, and entering the manicured suburban sprawl of Madison. His brother had few friends. He never spoke of favorite locales, vacation spots, or hideaways. Miguel Lopez was not one to dream out loud.

“Wait a second.” The priest pulled the car to a stop in front of a large field. “Vacation spots.”

“What was that?” asked Maria.

Father Lopez felt far away in thought as he spoke. “When he was a kid, Miguel just loved this old cabin my family used to go to.”

“The one in Tennessee?” she asked. He nodded in agreement. “He mentioned it a few times.”

“We haven’t been back there in over twenty years. I don’t know if the place is still standing. I don’t think Dad ever sold that off, though.” He shook his head. “It’s crazy. Why would he go there?”

His brother’s wife looked out over the field. “It’s the only idea we have, Francisco.”

“Yeah, and a five-hour drive up into the Smoky Mountains on a wild goose chase.” She turned to him, and he could see the desperation in her eyes. “But, maybe one I should make, just to check it out.”

“Would you, Francisco?”

He smiled and patted her on the arm. “Of course.”

Two hundred miles away, sequestered in the green mountain massifs of Tennessee, a decrepit Ford Mustang pulled up to the Pine Ridge Motel. The vehicle matched the run-down establishment, its rusted metallic contours blending with the unpainted wood and corroded iron structure, the busted taillights a cousin of the broken-down “No Vacancy” sign that hung at an angle from the side of the building. The door of the Ford opened slowly, and a blond man in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt stepped onto the gravel lot. He seemed broad enough to be a lumberjack from one of the local logging companies, and he ambled into the reception area like a fatigued veteran of long hours with a chain saw and heavy pines.

Impatiently, he rang a small bell on the counter. A middle-aged man of about the same height but twice his weight ambled into the room and placed himself on the other side of the counter.

“Can I hep ya?” he said with a powerful drawl.

“Got any rooms?”

“Jist you?” he said, looking behind the man, expecting to see someone else, hoping to see something as well built as this man, but of the other gender.

“Yup.”

“All right. It’ll be forty a night, an’ we don’t ‘quire no credit cards.”

The blond man smiled. “That’s good. Ain’t got any.”

The visitor pulled out a fifty and dropped it on the counter. The clerk threw him back a ten with the room key, staring a moment as the visitor grabbed the keys and money.

“Looks like ya burned yer arm good.”

The man looked down to where his sleeve had moved up on his arm, revealing a brown region of skin above his wrist. It looked like a burn of some kind or a severely discolored birthmark.

“Fixin’ my engine.”

The man behind the counter nodded. “Number 8. Cable’s out, so there ain’t no TV. We got hot water in the mornin’s. You want breakfast, there’s Mary-Lu’s up the road.”

“Thanks.”

The visitor walked back outside to his car. He opened the trunk and removed what appeared to be a heavy suitcase, as well as a large tool case. Closing the trunk, he carried the cases to room eight, unlocked the door and stepped inside.

It was what he expected—filthy, broken down, and bug infested. An ugly sore and contrast to the beautiful vacation resorts that dotted the area. The mirror in the bathroom was cracked, and the toilet looked ready to be condemned by the health inspectors. But it was out of the way. Invisible. It would do.

He shut the door. His shuffling gait altered dramatically and took on an intensity and quickness uncharacteristic of the role he had just been playing. Leaving the cases on the bed, he opened the suitcase and removed a small leather satchel. He carried it into the bathroom and placed it on the begrimed sink. Reaching inside, he grabbed several bottles, as well as a large white tube. Uncapping the tube, he squeezed a toothpaste-like cream onto the discolored region of his arm, and rubbed the material over the brown spot until it was full covered. He then washed his hand. Removing a spool of plastic wrap from the bag, he cut off a clear square and taped it over the treated region of his arm. He then returned the materials to the satchel. Rolling up his sleeves and unbuttoning his shirt, he examined his skin carefully. After several minutes, he shook his head nearly imperceptibly and buttoned his shirt. He had waited too long this time.