The White Mountain (24 page)

The gas pump clicked to a
stop beside Randall.  “Chuck, I don’t—Billy…
Billy?
  Tell me what’s going
on.  Is Mary okay?”  His cloudy haze of confusion parted to reveal a blue sky
full of realization.  “Holy shit, are you working with
them
?”

Billy laughed.  “Working with
them?  I
am
them.  One third of Ares.”

Randall froze mid-pace. 
Ares
is three.
 
Billy.  Why did that sound…Billy Barton.  Good God.

The man that had befriended
him was also the man that would be trying to kill him.  One of the three.  “Is
that why you tracked me down?  Were you sizing me up or something?”

“Subterfuge, if you’re smart
enough to know what that means.  But, first things first, White Mountain.  The
rules have changed a bit.  We’ve had some—call them…
complications
with
this particular game, and you’ll be fighting for a different sort of prize.”

“Mary?  Is it Mary?”

“Nope.  Try again.”

Randall paced and thought,
feeling his heartbeat echoing throughout his body, pumping, throbbing in every
bruised muscle and painfully swollen injury.  “What, my life?”

“Yes and no.  That’s more of
a consolation prize.”

“Jesus, I don’t know.  What do
you want me to say?  I’m out.  I quit.  Is that what you want?  I don’t give a
rat’s ass about the money or the game anymore.  I won, didn’t I?  You just give
me Mary and we’ll walk, call it even.”

“Would that I could, but it
doesn’t work that way.  Never has and I don’t want it to.  You signed a
contract.  You’re in this.  And your prize, if you win?  Take a listen…”

Randall heard a sharp, “No!”
followed by a scream and a yelp. 

His legs numbed.  He couldn’t
breathe.  He hammered a fist against the truck bed.

He’d never considered the
possibility.  He hadn’t hidden them well enough.

“Let ‘em go.  Now.”

“Ha, and lose the advantage? 
Not a chance.  Has that
ever
worked in the history of hostages? 
Honestly, I’d like to know.  You think I’d just roll over and send them home
because you demanded it?  Use your head.  This is real.”

“One hair, man.  One hair—one
speck
of blood—I get there and see even the slightest scratch on my wife
or kid, you are
gone
, you hear me? 
Gone
.”

“I’m sure you’d like to try,
soldier, but it won’t be that easy.  Here’s the deal.  I know that you’re only
a couple of miles away…”

How?  How’s he know that? 
The chip…I forgot about the damn chip.  So much for a surprise.

“And given the fact that we
found Mary’s GPS locator—smart move, really—I take it you know where we are?”

Hand on his hip, eyes rolling
skyward, Randall said, “Yep.”

“Approximately, or
definitely?”

Randall recited the address
he’d last seen on the GPS device.

“Good.  Close enough.  Come
to the storage building out back.  We’ll give you the final details when you
get here.  Don’t take time to stock up on anything.  Just bring whatever guns
and bullets you’ve got with you.  See you in twenty, Randall.  Oh, and for
every minute you’re late, Alice here loses a finger, so forget about trying to
snipe from a rooftop.  Front and center, at attention, twenty minutes.”

“You don’t touch her, you got
me?  Hands off.  Hands
…off!
  I’ll be there.  I’m coming for you, bud. 
I’m coming.”

***

Minutes later, after he’d
paid for the gas, after he’d left tire tracks while peeling out of the lot,
Randall sped through the empty, dogwood-lined streets of the abandoned industrial
park.  Nearly on two wheels as he took each corner, he fought to keep the truck
in control, listening to the roar of all eight cylinders, choking on the thick
smell of burning oil.  He found the proper street, whipped the truck to the
right, and bounced up over the curve, cutting the corner and flattening a
mailbox.  Screeching to a stop outside of the
Whitestone Controls
warehouse, he checked the time.  Five minutes to spare.

He’d brought with him his
bolt-action .270 Winchester rifle with its high-powered scope and synthetic
stock, which he preferred for the lighter weight and weather resistance,
allowing for increased mobility and long hours hunting in the forest back home. 
It had been a birthday gift from Alice some years back, and how appropriate
would it have been to liberate her and Jesse and Mary with a long-range shot
from a distance. He was comfortable with it; an extension of his body that
provided smooth, efficient recoil and a scope that all but guaranteed
incredible accuracy.  In such close quarters it would be useless, however, and
he regretted having to leave it behind.

He fished under the front
seat for his Springfield Subcompact 9mm.  Small, efficient, and weighted
perfectly, it enabled the shooter to fire off an accurate and reliable second
round, in the event the first was off-target.  The grip extension allowed for a
sixteen-round magazine—Randall figured he’d only need one, two at the most, but
he had no clue what he was about to walk into, and the extra security gave him
comfort.  He tucked it into the waistline of his jeans, and then strapped a
hunting knife to his right calf, hiding it under his pants leg.

The 9mm, the knife, they
weren’t much, but it’d have to do.  When he’d stormed out of the house, leaving
behind a pile of dead assassins and one unfortunate detective, he hadn’t
expected a fight within a contained unit.  Any fight at all, for that matter. 
Finding Mary, and getting her to safety, had been the only goal.

But now, here he was, lightly
armed and ready, heading straight into a known ambush.

Ready to face the
unknown
details ahead.  Ready to face one of the Ares Three.

Where were the other two? 
Where were Herb Richmond and the other guy?  Were they inside?  Were they
inside waiting for him, too?  If that were the case, would sixteen rounds be
enough if they got into a live-action round of target practice? 

Better safe than sorry,
big dawg
.  Randall
reached underneath the front seat again, grabbed an extra magazine, and then
tucked it into a back pocket. 

Three minutes remaining.

He craned his neck, looked at
the roof of the storage building, expecting to see the reflection of a scope up
above.  Empty.  Around and to the side, searching the windows and rooftops of
the neighboring structures, searching for any sign of a lookout.  If the
remaining members of Ares were good enough, as he anticipated them to be,
they’d be invisible to the untrained eye, able to drop a man before his second
boot hit the ground.

A shadow passed across a
nearby wall.  Randall tensed, ducked, then shook his head, realizing it was
nothing more than that of a tree, after a blowing gust of wind pushed it to
just the right angle.

Too jumpy
, he thought. 
That shit will get me
dead in a hurry.  Relax.

One minute left.

Time
to go break some skulls.

CHAPTER 23

Mary sat in a metal folding
chair, hands in her lap, good leg bouncing nervously.  Untied, free to move
about, but captive nonetheless.  With nowhere to go, with no possibility of
escape and three automatic weapons guarding her, she waited for Randall,
praying that he’d be able to help.

Alice and Jesse weren’t so
fortunate.  They sat on the cool concrete floor to her left, gagged, hands and
feet bound, tied to a support beam roughly fifty feet away. 

A breeze blew through an open
bay door near the warehouse’s west-facing side, but it did little to stymie the
suffocating, heated air inside.  The sun warmed the metal roofing overhead,
turning the interior temperature into that of a kiln.  Removing her jacket
hadn’t helped.  She baked as she sat in an open area near the front door. 
Yellow painted strips on the concrete formed a safety zone walkway at her
feet.  Around her sat row upon row of half-empty shelving that stretched and
stretched all the way to the back.  Tall, metal racks that once held the bits
and pieces of whatever it was that
Whitestone
had stored there.  All
that remained were a number of cardboard boxes sitting in various stages of
disarray and openness, scattered throughout.  A lone fluorescent light burned
above her head, while the rest of the area sat in shadowed silence. 

Her three watchmen strolled
back and forth in their dark suits, dark ties, and even darker sunglasses. 
Mute.  Stone-faced.  Cradling their weapons, content to wear ruts in the
concrete with their continuous pacing.

One blonde with a hooked nose
and freckled face.

The next with greasy, sweaty
skin and greasier, sweatier hair.

The third, short and full,
built in the shape of a postal drop box.

Their leader, the one barking
orders earlier at the subservient automatons, stood over by the clapboard
office, waving his hands and talking to Billy in an irritated, but hushed
whisper.  She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he was annoyed with the
older man, whatever the case.

He had deep brown skin and curly
hair.  A wide-set, protruding jaw with a chinstrap beard.  Eyes guarded by
wraparound shades.  A black t-shirt that struggled to contain biceps the size
of softballs.

And strangely enough, he
looked familiar.  Mary couldn’t place where she might’ve seen him before, or if
the fact was even possible, and instead, she settled on the idea that he looked
like someone from a movie she’d seen recently.  One of the action flicks that
Jimmy liked to watch in the afternoons before he went to work at the radio station. 
He said they pumped him up, gave him the juice to be energized on the airwaves
overnight.  She typically ignored them, largely because they reminded her of
all the things she wasn’t capable of anymore.  Running, jumping, shooting, and
chasing criminals; all bygone memories of her days as an officer, the days
before Sledge.

Earlier, when they’d put an
end to her escape, blocking the road with their SUVs, stepping out with guns
drawn and wires dangling from their ears, wearing suits and ties, her first
initial thought had been:

Secret Service?
 

She remembered Billy saying
something about the third Ares having restrictions on their mobility, which had
led her to another thought:

Billy.  Herb Richmond. 
Secret Service…oh God, Jessica Walters?  The First Lady?  Is she the third
Ares?

The thought was so
incomprehensible that she’d almost given up right there.  Truly, if Jessica Walters,
formerly Jessica
Richmond
, was the final third, the final piece of the
puzzle, who’d made the trip to watch whatever was to transpire with her Secret
Service guardians in tow, the implications pointed toward an inevitable end to
her life.  Mary knew that she’d never be able to outrun the unlimited reach of
the government.

At the time, it had made
sense.  Cousin Billy and Brother Herb, the original Ares, taking on a
“partner,” bringing in Sister Jessica to conspire against Daddy Richmond, steal
his money.  After all, she’d been cut out of the will for marrying a Democrat. 
She’d have motivation, definitely.  The hidden ecstasy of getting away with it
over the years, doing something taboo like murdering a murderer in a shady warehouse;
an unsuspected entity when encountered, due to her national visibility, all the
while smiling for cameras and interviewers, schmoozing with daytime TV hosts
and chairing childhood welfare programs.  A sinister secret hidden behind a
sweet, benevolent, coiffed-hair public persona.

Boiled down, reduced to the
remainder of her motivations, Jessica Walters would be nothing more than the
shoplifting soccer mom that Billy had described back in the bar the night
before.

Mary had sat in the car,
engine running, as the four men approached, one foot on the brake, one lightly
resting on the gas pedal, ready to launch herself at them, taking a couple with
her to some unmarked grave.

In the end, she couldn’t do
it.  Surrendering herself to the afterlife wasn’t an option.

There had to be a way out. 

She thought of Randall and
how she hadn’t had time to warn him, to tell him to turn around and go home,
back to Alice and Jesse.

He would come.  They could do
it together.

Once they had taken her
prisoner, had sequestered her in the storage building, her confusion ballooned
when the First Lady never made an appearance.  She wouldn’t have waited in one
of the SUVs for hours, leaving Mary to think the four men were there alone.

Next came Billy’s phone call
to Randall and her last second decision to tell him to run, referring to Billy
as
Chuck
, since Randall had no idea.  The choice would seal her fate,
she knew, but she’d rather give her sister’s family one last chance to be
together.  But, as Billy toyed with Randall on the phone, the
whop-whop-whop
of a helicopter outside renewed the idea that Jessica Walters was on her way.