The White Mountain (10 page)

“You ever see
The Deer
Hunter
with De Niro?  It’s like this glorified version of Russian
Roulette.  Some people do it for the thrills, some do it for the money. 
Others, hell, I reckon they just want to prove that they’re better than
somebody that might be better than they are.  From what I got out of Randall,
he was worried about their money situation.  Profiling for the rest of them
would suggest a combination of all three.  Cocky adrenaline junkies looking for
a big payday. 

“You get ‘em in a room, under
some lights, most of these guys would probably tell you they’d take their
millions and go buy their own private island.  Retire.  Drink some fruity drink
with a girl on their lap.  It’s all bullshit.  These personality types, they
can’t stop.  They’re addicted.  They love the way it makes them feel, you
know?  Sneaking around at night, crossing borders.  Playing God, getting away
with it.  You ever wonder why a middle-aged housewife, some suburban soccer mom
dragging around four toddlers and a newborn gets busted for shoplifting?  It’s
that same kind of thrill, even though she finally got caught.  Imagine that
multiplied a thousand times and add an itchy trigger finger, you got this
group.  You’re looking at me funny, but it’s the damn truth.  They’re hyped up
shoplifters.  That’s all.”

“These
shoplifters
are
about to ruin my sister’s family.”

“Not if you and I can help
it.”

The bartender slid another
scotch over to Chuck, then popped the cap off a light beer for Mary.  Chuck
handed him a twenty and declined the need for change.

When the bartender was out of
earshot, Mary said, “Tell me something, Chuck.  How do you figure into all
this?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, what’re you getting
out of it?  Why bother risking your job?  What’s in it for you?”

Chuck smiled as he poked at
the ice in his glass.  “That took you longer than I thought it would.  It’s
complicated, but here goes.  One, he’s a friend and asked for help.  Easy
enough.  Two, he’s dangerous.  It’s not worth the risk to potentially lose a
couple of good men if we try to save him from a suicide mission and he gets the
wrong idea.  And three—three’s a little gray, for lack of a better word.”  He
hesitated, folded his hands together.  “That beer’s not getting any colder.”

“And you’re not getting any
younger.  Tell me.”

The look on his face couldn’t
have expressed
hand in the cookie jar
more plainly if he’d tried.  “He
offered me a cut.” 

Mary shook her head. 
“Figures.  Nothing’s free, huh?”

“Everything stopped being
free a long time ago.”

“Fair enough.  Looks like I
don’t have much of a choice, do I?  Either I help or I get to watch my sister’s
family get torn apart.”

Chuck nodded.

“Shit.”  Mary took a long
drink of her beer, draining nearly half the bottle.  “Couple more things that
don’t make sense.”

“What’s that?”

“Why does Randall need
me
here?  You’re with the CIA, don’t you have every resource imaginable at your
fingertips?  Can’t you just whip out a couple of files and give Randall what he
needs?  You’re done, you get paid, everybody’s happy.”

“I wish it was that simple.”

“Then explain to me why it
isn’t, because I feel like I can’t see the forest for the trees.”

“I’m too old, Mary.”

“That’s not an excuse.  I can
barely walk.  If everyone gave up because of their limitations, the world would
be a lot sadder than it is.”

“It’s not that.  Believe me,
if all I had to do was whip out a couple of files, I’d have done it weeks ago. 
I’m—I’m a dinosaur.  Just some Cold War relic that never got put up on a shelf
where he belongs.  These young gunslingers they’ve got at the agency, they’re
all jazzed up on energy drinks and Doritos.  They’ve got the benefit of growing
up with technology on their side while I can barely open a goddamn email.  I go
snooping around in files I have no business being in, I’d leave too many
footprints.  Like a monkey with a typewriter.  I can’t risk it.  I just can’t.”

“And you told Randall this?”

“Yep.”

“What’d he say?”

“That he had the right person
in mind to help me help
him
.”

“And that person is me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mary sighed.  “What if I’d
said no?  What if he hadn’t been able to convince me to come?”

“I would’ve done the best I
could, I reckon, but in all likelihood, you’d be wearing black and listening to
a twenty-one gun salute within the next few days.  Supposing they ever found
his body.”

“Don’t be so morbid.”  Mary
finished off the beer and examined Chuck.  The messed up knot in his tie. 
White hair sprouting out of his head like ancient fishing line.  Dark circles
resting under pale blue eyes.

The old man was right.  He
was a dinosaur, but one thing was certain; he was still sharp and
quick-witted.  Nimble in the mind and a good judge of character, of
situations.  A Ferrari engine trapped in the body of a Yugo.  He reminded her
of Pop-Pop and how he used to tell her stories every Sunday when her mother
would take her and Alice by for a visit.

She didn’t
want
to
trust him.

She said, “Chuck?”

“Miss Mary?”

“Randall’s already lied to
me, so how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

Chuck swirled the liquor in
his glass, staring down at the ice cubes swimming in circles.  He said, “Honestly,
would anything I say right now make a difference?”

“Probably not.”

“You know, Hemingway, he
said, ‘The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.’ 
That’s all I can offer.”

“I don’t have a choice, huh?”

“Not if you’d like to keep
Randall from pushing up daisies.”

“Then how do you propose we
go about doing that?”

“Good old-fashioned footwork. 
Like the old days, back before we could spy on people from space.  Deception. 
Duplicity.  Cloak and dagger.  Whatever you want to call it.”

Mary leaned onto the bar,
both elbows propping up her head as she buried her face in her hands.  “Oh my
God, this is crazy.  So crazy.”  Her cell phone vibrated on the bar.  The
caller ID showed it was Randall.  “Speak of the Devil.”

“Randall?”

“Yeah.”  She sent the call to
voicemail, ignoring him.  Her anger at him had subsided, but not by much.  Not
enough to talk to him, but just enough to make her realize that she only had
one option, and that was to help, no matter how furious she was.  If she’d
known they were having financial problems, back before he’d made such a goddamn
ludicrous decision, she could’ve helped. 

She and Jimmy, they had a
little rainy day fund tucked away.  It would’ve been no problem whatsoever to
loan, to
give
them the money they needed.  And for what?  Randall and
Alice lived frugally.  As far as she knew, they didn’t have any debt.  He got a
modest check each month after retiring from the Marines, enough to pay the
bills, buy food.  They didn’t waste their money on fancy cars or buying things
they couldn’t afford.  Was that particular detail another cover-up for the real
reason?  That he was doing nothing more than buying a lottery ticket, one that would
result in death if he didn’t win, instead of merely losing a couple of bucks? 
Like all the rest of the events of that day, none of it made sense. 

It was too late to fix what
had already been done.  Unable to come up with any other alternatives, she
turned to Chuck and said, “Damn it.  All right.  It is what it is, I guess. 
Randall mentioned he figured we had forty-eight hours, and eight of that is
already gone, so where do we start?”

“You’re in?  Good.  Aside
from what I’ve already told you, here’s what I know and don’t know.  Most of it
is secondhand, mind you, just from asking around.  The feller that’s officially
assigned to the case hasn’t actively pursued it in a long time, but—
but
he’s partial to the drink.  You get a couple shots of Johnnie Walker in him,
he’ll start blabbing, you see.  I took him out for a round or two last week,
and come to think of it, he sat right there on that very same barstool.”

“Are you stalling or just
rambling?”

He chuckled.  “Sorry. 
Offering more detail up front to save questions.  So I got him about three
sheets to the wind and he spilled a few details before something clicked in
that hazy gray matter of his and he clammed up and went home.”

“What’d he tell you?”

“First, about four years ago,
after the last contest ended, some suit up the chain took a passing interest
and had him trace the money flow.  Ten million freakin’ dollars can’t be that
easy to hide, right?  They used their evil superpowers and tracked every major
transaction of a similar amount over a two week period and narrowed it down to
the only one that even came close to making sense.  Where it went wasn’t that
big of a surprise—offshore bank account, as usual—but where it
came from
got everybody in a tizzy for a couple of weeks before they realized it was
better left alone.”

“And?”

“It came from the Richmond
family.”

Mary had no idea who he meant
and told him so.

Surprised, Chuck said, “You
do know who the President is, don’t you?”

“Would you get on with it? 
We’re wasting time.”

“Who’s the President?”

Mary rolled her eyes.  “Hamm
Walters.”

“And who is President Walters
married to?  Who’s the First Lady?”

“Jessica.  And they have two
kids, Bernadette and Melanie, and they’ve got a Beagle named Churchill.  What
the hell, Chuck?  Am I being graded at the end?”

“This is big.  Real big, and I’m
trying to get you to understand the magnitude of the situation.  Anything
clicking yet?”

“Not in the slightest. 
Whenever I see politics on television, I fast forward the DVR just to get to
the commercials.”

“Then I’ll spell it out for
you—”

“Which you could’ve done five
minutes ago.”

“—Jessica Walters, maiden
name Richmond.  Her daddy’s Jackson Richmond, president and CEO of Richmond
Steel.”

“Whoa.”  Mary reached for her
beer, realized it was empty.

“‘
Whoa
’ is right.”

“You’re telling me that the
First Lady’s family is funding this?  Does she know?”

“The Magic Eight-Ball says
it’s a combination of ‘reply hazy’ and ‘signs point to yes.’”

“Good Lord.  So what else did
he tell you?”

“This Ares character that
they’re all so afraid of?  He may be involved with the family, too.”

CHAPTER 10

The temperature in the attic
had to be pushing one hundred and twenty degrees.  An itch, like the crawl of
an ant, slowly marched up Randall’s leg.  The pain in his bladder had reached a
tense, pulsating throb.  Sweat beaded on his forehead, pooled, and then crawled
in rivulets down over his skin and into his left eye.

But he was in a comfortable
place, a familiar place, and paid no attention to any of it.

Like so many times before,
all those missions deep into the jungles of South America or camped out for
days in the remnants of a bomb-ridden building in Afghanistan, the target was
out there, and all he had to do was wait for the perfect shot.

He missed Lakeland, wishing
he were there to join him in the fun. 

Fun
, he thought,
it used to be fun
. 

Remember Uganda,
Lakeland?  Remember how the wind was off and I shot the spoon out of
Muwangaba’s hand?  The look on his face, man, we laughed about it for days. 
You could put it on a t-shirt.  We got him on the second shot, one shot too
many, but damn, it was hairy getting out of there, wasn’t it?  You always said
you didn’t believe in God, but I know for a damn fact I heard you praying that
day.  Don’t you even try to deny it.  Ain’t no shame in tossing a few words up
to the Big Man.  Ain’t no shame at all, brother.

The word
brother
tamped out the goodness of the memories and replaced it with a sense of
mourning and loss.  Growing up an only child, Randall had always wished his
daddy would get around to baking another baby in his mama’s belly.  The other
kids at school had brothers and sisters, some younger, some older, and
regardless of their complaints about them, Randall had been jealous.  He’d been
too young to understand the bond between siblings, and instead, he longed for a
playmate and someone to share his chores with.  As he got older and moved up
through each grade and into high school, the desire faded and he became content
with the friends he had and the books he read at night, way out on the farm,
miles outside of town.

Then, when he’d joined the
Marines after graduation, he discovered the camaraderie of a true brotherhood,
and they became his family away from home.  When he met Jeff Lakeland at Sniper
School in Hawaii, their connection was immediate, and he was the closest thing
to an actual brother that Randall would ever have.