Pitfall (9 page)

Chapter Twelve

I
headed home after that, and on the way I stopped at my offsite storage area. I picked up my go bag there, and some gear I felt I’d need. Once I was back at my place I decided to stretch out and rest my back for a few minutes; it needed it. But my endorphins had petered out, and without meaning to I slipped into an uneasy sleep. And “uneasy” was the operative word.

As a general rule I hate nightmares. Who doesn’t? But the one gripping me now after I’d gotten home from Marsh’s house was in a class by itself.

In this particular one I was, of all things, a U.S. infantry soldier fighting in Vietnam. That in itself was weird, as the war was well on its way to winding down the year I was born. By the time I was three years old the last slick had left Saigon, the famous news shot of the terrified refugees hanging from the helicopter skid seared into the world’s consciousness. Like everyone else my age, what I knew of the conflict was only what I’d read, or been told to me by the ones who’d been there.

Somehow in my dream I was reliving the final mission of a guy I’d met during my time of recuperation at the VA hospital. He was a grizzled, humorous cuss, a widower in his late fifties, long since retired from his job as an executive at General Electric. Walking with a cane and a pronounced limp, he filled his now-empty days visiting the beds of the wounded troops recently returned from the Middle East, and it was there he told me his story.

In my dream the year was 1969. I was a scared spitless nineteen-year-old grunt, walking point on our daily patrol in Vietnam’s lowlands, the Ia Drang Valley to be exact.

The sun was scorching hot, God’s own heat lamp, and the sweat running down my body beneath my cheesecloth-rotted fatigues made it feel like ants crawling around. Worse, the M-16 in my hands seemed treacherous, as if it was still slick with the Cosmoline protectant it had been coated with when it arrived in-country. As I walked my ill-fitting pot kept sliding down over my eyes, its steel rim slamming the bridge of my nose with every fifth step.

The savage sawgrass flanking either side of the trail ripped at my bare arms as I trudged. I couldn’t comment on my miseries to anyone, as I was far out in front of the others. That was the idea behind a soldier walking point: the guy doing it would be the first one to step on a punji stick, or fall into a tiger trap, or trip a landmine, or run into Charlie out on his own patrol. In this way the rest of the troops would be alerted to the danger. Good deal for them. Not so much for you. It was, needless to say, a shitty job, and one only assigned by lot.

In my dream, today it was my turn.

Above me on the tree lined, mountain ridge the brash, hard sun mercilessly sat like a stubborn child, resolutely refusing to set. What was the matter with it? Didn’t it know that once it was dark I could rest? Rest. God, I needed rest. It felt as if I’d been walking this trail for years. Hot sweat flowed into the cuts on my arms from the sawgrass, making them feel like they’d been dipped in acid. Maybe around the next bend I could sit down, get a drink of warm metallic water from my canteen, and rest.

That’s when I heard the noise.

Instantly I froze, listening hard. Past experience had told me any new noise wasn’t good. It didn’t sound like Charlie’s chatter. It was … what
was
it? The sound wasn’t coming from up ahead. If the stupid bugs would just shut up their incessant buzzing for a second I could hear it better.

And then I did. Suddenly the entire planet went mute, save for that sound.

It grew, steadily getting louder, expanding, engulfing, swelling, and saturating the air until it was all around me, until it filled the world. 

The sound of crying. Men crying. But what—

I saw them then. God help me, I saw them. As far away as the red horizon stretched, the landscape was littered with wailing, screaming, crying men.

I gazed around in horror. Obviously I’d come upon the aftermath of an air strike. But which army was this? I couldn’t tell if they were our grunts or VC. Some of the men were missing arms or legs, or both. Some had no faces. Some were merely heads, their bodies God knows where. Some looked like they’d been carved open with ragged blades and eviscerated, their grayish entrails flopping free and quivering.

But as ghastly different as they all were, these men had three things in common. They were still alive. They were screaming the cries of the helpless and the hopeless. And they were blaming me.

I dropped my rifle, slapping my hands over my eyes. Blaming me? But why? What did I—?

“Help them, John.” I knew that voice. Drymouthed, I dropped my hands and turned.

Megan.

In her right arm she held a tiny, swaddled bundle—our son Benjamin—her left hand gently grasping that of our two-year-old daughter Colleen. My wife and daughter had on the same clothes they’d been wearing the night that drunk ran them down, almost a decade and a half earlier. As before, they were drenched in blood.

Megan held out our babies. “Help them, like you should have helped us …” Colleen’s head turned. In her tiny blue eyes I saw the same accusation I found in Megan’s. My wife’s sobs ripped me apart. “Why
,
John? Why weren’t you there when we needed you the most?”

The shame was too much. She was right. I’d failed them all. I deserved death. 

But maybe I still had a chance. If I could just hold them, kiss them, talk to them one more time, I knew I could make it right. With desperate hope I tried running toward them.

But my feet didn’t obey. To my horror I found I wasn’t running toward them but away, back up the trail. And my traitorous feet wouldn’t stop.

I hadn’t gone twenty steps when I heard the double click.

“Bouncing Betty” was the ghoulish name given to one of the nastier pieces of NVA ordnance. Simply put, a Bouncing Betty was a landmine that leaped into the air when it was stepped on; only then did it explode. As my bedside visitor at the hospital had explained, the Betty was an antipersonnel weapon in its purest form. On occasion they’d killed, but its main purpose was to maim; my visitor’s shattered leg was proof. The enemy’s thinking was that if a soldier was blown up by an ordinary mine he was simply dead, his body to be retrieved later. But if he was wounded by a Betty, at least two troops were out of action: the one who’d been hurt, and the one who had to drag him to safety.

During my time in the army, and especially during Operation Iraqi Freedom, I’d never experienced its like. The closest I’d seen were the mines the insurgents had developed, the infamous roadside bomb. But those were basically mankillers. I was told men had lost feet, kneecaps, legs, and their sexual organs to Bettys. A unique aspect was the mine’s sound, a double click when stepped on. The first click armed it, and a split second later a second one launched it three feet in the air. If a soldier heard that sound, his life was about to change.

And in the persona of my hospital visitor, I’d just heard it.

I only got a quick glimpse of the Betty as it jumped out of the ground in front of me. That glimpse showed its shape, a black, spinning coffee can-like device, maybe eight inches across. That was all I saw. A millisecond later it exploded.  But instead of one boom I heard … four?
Boom boom boom.
The men were screaming. My wife and children were screaming. I was screaming their names, Megan, Colleen, Benjamin … all of us so lost …

Boom boom boom boom.

Heart slamming in my chest, I threw off the sheet, bolting upright with a gasp.

A dream. Only a dream after all. I fell back, soaked in sour sweat as I ran it through my brainpan. A nightmare featuring my dead family, along with suffering injuries in a war I’d never fought in. A two-fer. Old Doc Freud would have had a field day with me. The shrinks at Walter Reed sure had, during my time off from my physical and occupational therapy. In stark detail I recalled the terse memo of their findings.

“In our opinion Captain Brenner suffers from intractable guilt issues due to his having been working his shift as a police officer the night his family was killed, although it is plain the blame is not his. It appears his unusually strong psychological makeup masked those feelings during his selection for Ranger training, but it also seems they were brought to the fore when he lost his men in Iraq. In our best judgment that guilt will follow Captain  Brenner the rest of his days, until he assuages it, or dies trying.”

Briskly I drew my shaky hands over my face, the night’s heavy beard rasping as I tried to wipe the vivid memory of the nightmare from my mind. I bit back a macabre laugh. Who knew, maybe those army shrinks were right. Maybe I really am doomed to tilt at windmills that will never move, no matter how hard I thrust. Maybe that’s to be my fate.

But so what? There are worse ways of wasting your life. To quote the ever quotable General George S. Patton, it beats shoveling shit in Louisiana.

Still, though, there was that incessant booming noise still coming at me, a noise which was occurring at—I checked my bedside clock— a little after eight hundred hours. Eight a.m. civilian time. I couldn’t believe it. I’d only meant to close my eyes for a couple minutes. Betrayed by my body again.

And that’s when I realized the sound was coming from my living room.

Shirtless, and clad only in my cotton lounging pants, I charged angrily across my bedroom in three steps and my living room in four, jerking open the apartment’s front door.

“What!” I barked.

The grinning man standing in the hall seemed nonplussed for a second, but quickly recovered. “Hello!” His face was beaming. “Did I wake you?”

Blearily I regarded him. He was in his late twenties, of middling height, with short, fair hair, light skin, and a sad excuse of a mustache. Over a white tab shirt and red, rep tie he wore a cheap, dark blue suit, adorned with some kind of plastic nametag on the lapel. Albie Watters was his handle. I figured him for either a Mormon or a salesman.

“What do you want?” My voice now was calmer.

He kept smiling. “I’m selling magazines.”

I frowned. “Say again?”

“I’m selling magazines, so I can earn a trip to the Virgin Islands.” He grinned again, like a possum eating a sweet potato.

“The Virgin Islands.” I cocked my head. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” 

“Sure. I like to get an early start. Birds and worms, right?”

“I don’t give a hot shit about worms. There are laws against this, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” He grinned again. “You gonna call a cop?”

“Don’t tempt me.” In all my life I’d never met one of these people. Seth and Janine had, but not me. I’d always thought they were urban legends, like snuff films, or alligators in the sewers. And the fact he was trying to sell his rags just so he could get laid on St. Thomas struck me as the height of gall.

“Here’s the list,” he said, pointing. “You’re sure to find some you like. They’re very informative, and will broaden your horizons.” Mine didn’t need broadening. “Just tell me how many you want of each.” He thrust his clipboard at me, striking me not so lightly on the chest. 

Mistake.

For a second I considered grabbing the huge conch shell I keep on a nearby shelf and slamming it down on top of his highly polished black Oxford. That’d learn him, as we used to say in Gibbs, but I didn’t. His lucky day.

I knew how to end this, but quick. “Were you trained to pitch your stuff like that?” My expression was deceptively equitable.

“You’d better believe it. And it’s working, too. Five more good orders this week and I’m well on my way to a sandy beach vacation.”

“How about that. And I was trained to respond like this.”

I took Albie’s clipboard from him, and he smiled broadly, as if he was sure I was about to place an order, possibly a big one. And then keeping my eyes on his, I lifted my knee and snapped the thing across it. His smile vanished as he stared at me in disbelief.

Handing the pieces to him, my tone was flat. “I can’t speak for the quality of the magazines you’re selling, but your clipboard needs work.”

And I slammed the door right in his Opie Taylor face.

On the other side there was silence, before hearing him say in a cheery way, just the way he must have been taught in salesman’s school, “Thank you anyway for your time, sir!” Then I heard him add with a mutter as he trudged off, “You rotten, no good, son of a …”

Oh well. As my Granny used to say, some days you eat the bear, other days the bear eats you. Wise words for friend Albie.

Right then I heard my Blackberry going off from where it was charging on my bedside table. Walking back in the bedroom, I picked it up and saw it was Seth.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself. Just wanted to tell you we’re back in town.”

“How’s Janine’s mom?”

“Holding her own, but Janine’s still fretting. Like she does over everything.”

“And you don’t?”

“Funny. I was just seeing if you’re ready for me to step in yet.”

“Not yet. It’s more important that you’re with your family. But if I need you …”

“Come on. Do you even have to ask?”

No, I didn’t, and after telling Seth to give Janine’s mom my best, we rang off. It was time for a shower and a shave and a fresh outlook.

Because I had the feeling today was the day things were about to turn interesting.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he time was a little past eight a.m., Wednesday, day three of the job. Once in the rental car I placed two calls on the burn phone.

The first one was to Marsh Plumb to see if he’d managed to do any good with the bank routing numbers I’d found on Manfred’s bank statements. Not surprisingly, he had.

“Marsh?” I said when he picked up.

“Johnny.” He grunted my name, sounding awful. “Using a disposable phone again, are we? I didn’t recognize the number, so I thought it might be you.” 

“Rough night?”

“You might say that. Nightmares.”

“Me too.”

I heard him take a deep draught of something. I bet I knew what it was.

“I dreamed I was a little boy at Auschwitz,” he intoned. “I was naked in a room with a hundred other naked people, including my parents. There were shower heads mounted on the walls above us, but it seemed I was the only one who knew what they were for.”

I knew where this was going, but I wasn’t about to interrupt.

“I tried jumping high enough to snap one off, but I kept missing. My dad laughed, the rest joining in. Right about that time the Zyklon-B gas started hissing out of those heads. And then nobody was laughing.”

“Sounds lousy.”

“You have no idea.” Marsh took another swallow. “Anyway. Early this morning I managed to work some magic. I found out where GeneSys is located.”

I sat up straight. “Where?” He’d said it so matter-of-factly. Maybe he really was a wizard. “I tried finding them on the internet, but no match came up.”

“That’s not surprising; the profile they keep is so low it might as well be nonexistent. You’re not going to believe this, but they’re not far, out past Chillicothe, about two hours east of here. The town is called Harrisville. It’s on US 50, halfway between Londonderry and McArthur.”

“I’ve never even heard of Harrisville.”

“Probably few have. That’s why they chose it.” I heard him clear his throat. “So this is it? You’re going to head out there now and rescue the girl, guns blazing?”

“I hope guns won’t figure in. But yeah, I need to check it out. And you’re going to keep trying to crack the code, right?”

“What a silly thing to ask.” Marsh’s voice grew tight. “Whatever you do, Johnny, please be careful. The friends I have who appreciate the musical transcendence of Muddy Waters I can count on one hand.” 

“One hand’s all you’ve got, since you use the other to hold that nasty booze you favor so much.” Marsh laughed at that; good, he needed it. “But don’t worry. I’ve grown too fond of my hide to risk it. I’ll just do a little recon. If Sarah’s there, and it looks like it’ll be too tough to get her out by myself, I’ll anonymously call in some reinforcements to handle it.” That is, I’d do that if time allowed.

“Good. I hope you mean that. I know how you are.” I heard my friend drain his glass. “Your Granny would be pleased to have reared such a wise boy.”

I felt badly about it, but I’d lied to Marsh about the guns. He frets too much over things like that, like the pacifist brother I never had. He doesn’t know I keep a fairly complete arsenal in an off-site storage area, and when I drove over there and opened it up, I was faced with several choices of weaponry. First, all the full-auto stuff was out. It’s problematical to use, and I didn’t want to call in favors to settle the mess they’d leave behind if I didn’t have to. I’ve only had to carry those weapons twice in the past, and each time I got away clean. I honestly didn’t think they’d be necessary this time; that mistake would prove costly.

Perusing the semi- automatic guns, I decided on my old standby, a Browning Hi Power 9mm Pathfinder with extra clips. It’s seen a lot of service, in a lot of different places. After making sure the guns and clips were snug inside my brown leather pancake shoulder holster, I slipped on my jacket and picked up my go bag, which a few years back a friend in the quartermaster corps had custom tooled for me. It contains plenty of pockets made to my exact specifications, and was just about right for any situation I might myself in. In it I’d packed some energy bars, a well-used Army .45 ACP, extra boxes of ammunition for both guns, a Navy dive knife, two flash bang grenades, and a pair of night vision goggles.

Before pulling away from the storage area, I then called Jacob Cahill. It rang twice before it was picked up. “Good afternoon, Prestige Industries.”

“Jacob Cahill, please.” I wiped my aviator sunglasses before putting them on.

“May I ask who’s calling?”

I recognized Susan Abernathy’s sultry tone. “Hello, Susan. Tell Jacob it’s John Brenner.”

“Mr.  Brenner, hello. Unfortunately Mr. Cahill is taking a meeting at present. May I ask what this is in reference to?”

Taking a meeting. Of all the idiotic California phrases that have sprung up like kudzu across the country these past few years, I think I hate that one the most. Taking a pill, taking umbrage, taking a ride, taking a shower … those I can understand. But to my admittedly retro thinking, meetings should be attended, not taken.

Putting my steel mug of coffee—Colombian blend today—in its holder, I drew in a steadying breath through gritted teeth. “It’s personal. Could I leave a message on his voice mail?”

“Certainly.” She sounded very businesslike. “I’ll connect you.”

I made it short. “Hi, Jacob. John Brenner. I’m calling to give you an update as I promised. I think I have a lead on Sarah. Let’s just say I believe she’s somewhere close by. I’ll let you know more as soon as I can.”

I thumbed the off button, and placed the phone back in my pocket. Everything was as ready as it was going to get, and I squared my shoulders.

As my old drill instructor used it say, it was time to get after it.

*

Mile after mile. The eastern half of Ohio is as pretty an area of the country as you’ll find, even as dry as it was now. From time to time the oaks and maples flanking both sides of US 50 gave way to intermittent farmland, the fields laden with heavy, golden wheat and tall, ripe corn. Past those stretched countless acres of nearly ready soybeans.

Megan had been partial to this kind of bucolic landscape. She’d always said that in the country she could really breathe. I wished she was here to see it; and in kind of a way, she was. She’s never far from me. Frequently I feel her presence. If that makes me crazy, so be it.

The trees pushed close against the highway as I motored across the green and golden rolling countryside, putting me in mind of the way I remembered the roads being around Gibbs. Today, though, the heat was unrelenting. The trees lifted their limp and withered leaves as if they were praying for rain, and in the fields I passed, not a cornstalk stirred.

But I knew it was only temporary. That rain would come soon, and in less than eight weeks October would be here. The foliage around me by that time would be ablaze with the deep reds, oranges, and rich golden yellows of lustrous fall color.

Marsh had been right, as usual, about the time the drive would take. A scant two hours after I’d left Madison I rounded one last turn on the highway and was greeted with the sign welcoming me to Harrisville. If you’ve ever taken any two-lane country roads in your time, you know the kind of notice I mean. It was as much advertisement from the town fathers as anything else.

The thing was large, white, and wooden, maybe six feet wide by five feet high with “Welcome to Harrisville” carved in big, fire-engine red letters fastened at the top. Underneath that greeting were hung plaques from the usual suspects, the Kiwanis, 4-H, Rotary Club, the Lions, area churches, and so on. At the very bottom the population number was listed: 9,346. “And gro-o-o-o-wing!” the sign proudly crowed.

Growing by at least one missing girl, I thought darkly.

Without warning the speed limit dropped precipitously from the posted fifty-five to thirty: as pretty a speed trap as you’d ever find. As I began driving through the town I was struck by the regularity of its layout. The whole place couldn’t have been more than ten city blocks square, as neat and even as a quadratic equation. Strangely, that simplicity made me uneasy. It seemed unnatural.

But if pressed, I had to admit the town was attractive. The main street I tooled along was wide and well-kept, adorned with tall bronze gaslights and rectangular, royal blue, flower boxes. The side streets crossing it at every block were just as nice, flanked with older Cape Cod-style houses, some with small, wooden detached garages.

I passed a small, neat red-brick library, a diner, a two-car police station, a pool hall, a five-and-dime, a bar and grill, and the like. Even the town square was decked out with the obligatory pillared river-stone courthouse, complete with a verdigris-encrusted cannon on the lawn. All this burg lacked was Andy and Barney chatting amiably with Floyd the barber up on Aunt Bee’s porch. It really was as if television’s Mayberry, North Carolina, had come to life and been transported to eastern Ohio. In sum, Harrisville was perfect.

Unnaturally so.

For some reason the place put me in mind of the eerie village from
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
: cheery, bright, and hollow at the core. And the more I drove, the worse it got. The sensation was as if space aliens had indeed ordered a ‘town, small, Midwestern’ straight out of central casting. Any second I expected to see Kevin McCarthy lurch from an alleyway and begin pounding on passing cars’ hoods, maniacally screaming, “You’re next!”

I couldn’t shake the feeling as I crossed through, which didn’t take long. A scant five minutes after I’d entered Harrisville I found myself driving out the other side. Almost a mile later I crested a small rise, and there it was, looming up out of the earth like a cancerous boil. GeneSys Technologies.

Unintentionally I began slowing down. I don’t know exactly what it was I’d expected, but the reality before me beat anything I could have imagined.

Picture a huge, somewhat flattened, elongated silver dome, like a roasting pan cover. Make that dome five hundred feet across by a thousand feet long. Surround the field it squats in with two rows of twelve-foot-high chain link fence set twenty feet apart, and then at each corner of that fencing put a manned guard tower, complete with searchlights and a .50-caliber machine gun, like the ones in an old Jimmy Cagney prison picture. As a final dollop, top the fence with rolls of wicked-looking concertina razor wire. Do that and you’d end up with an ominous facility covering an area greater than five football fields. They must have really had to work at keeping that low profile Marsh had mentioned.

I was wrong. This wasn’t a company. This was a fort.

Curving gracefully off the main highway loped a black driveway, passing a solid-looking guard shack. Next to that shack, mounted on the hurricane fence, was a sign bigger than the one welcoming me to Harrisville:
GeneSys Technologies. Tomorrow Begins Here.

Something began here, but it wasn’t tomorrow. At least not the kind of tomorrow I wanted to wake up in.

It seemed a heaviness was flowing out from the dome, spreading like a cloud of acid-yellow radiation, and choking the very air with its weight. And the thing is, I already knew what this was. I’d experienced it many times in Iraq. And other, darker places.

Somewhere inside squatted pure, mad-dog-dripping evil. And it was waiting. For me.