The White Mountain (6 page)

But what if?

Who knew what actually went
on in the subterranean, back-alley dealings of D.C.?  Some of the stuff that
got out was believable, expected even, by men in powerful positions.  A blowjob
in the White House, clandestine affairs, abuse of privileges.  These simple,
visible, easily discoverable indiscretions were likely just a shark fin
cresting the surface.  The threat of something sinister above water, the real
danger hidden below.  For every intern found dead in a city park, a victim of
passion, how many more people went missing because they knew something and
threatened to tell?  Something so deep, so dark, that it required a complete
disappearance—no body to ever be found, a believable story spoon-fed to the
media so inquiring minds wouldn’t be suspicious enough to look beyond the
jealous boyfriend or random act of violence.

How much money changed hands
on a daily basis to keep something hidden, to save careers?

Randall’s theory, such that
he believed it to be true, was so far out there that even the shadiest of
corrupt, conniving politicians would laugh at its absurdity.

The old saying goes,
the
truth is often stranger than fiction
.  You couldn’t make up shit like
this.  At least not Randall.  He was a simple, lovable, trained killer that
followed orders and did as he was told.  A small-town son of an Appalachian
farmer, who had deadly aim and a decorated military past.  Not somebody that
would go around concocting fantastical stories in hopes of escaping an arrest
for murder. 

If he was trying to establish
an alibi, it was a fairly goddamn dumb way to go about it. 

Mary used the heel of her
palm to massage her aching leg.  It didn’t help. 

She turned off the aging
hatchback’s failing air conditioner, which did nothing more than provide a cool
puff of air that was weaker than a baby’s breath, and rolled down the window. 
Even at seventy miles per hour, the rushing wind was dense with mugginess as
the late afternoon sun burnt away the moisture. 

But for once, it felt good. 
Comforting.  Familiar.

Completely unlike the
situation she now drove toward, and away from.

***

Mary hit Northern Virginia’s
rush hour traffic with unintentionally perfect timing and joined the massive
horde of drones being ushered through a construction zone.  Multiple lanes
jammed down to two lines that crept forward, moving at inches per hour instead
of miles.  The sense of urgency around her was palpable—each driver desperate
to hurry up and wait.  Orange lights blinked on the tops of striped
construction barrels.  Horns blared.  Middle fingers were extended.  Cars edged
and nudged and forced their way into the tiniest of openings.  Bass thrummed in
the jet black SUV to her left, vibrating her windows, rattling every loose
fitting in the hatchback.

She slapped the steering
wheel, took a sip of her soda, and felt the oncoming singe of heartburn.

Insanity like this was the
exact reason she chose to stay in Smythville, rather than moving to a bigger
city where her one-woman private investigation firm might actually earn her a
living, where Jimmy might get a spot on a morning drive-time talk radio show.  Where
she knew he would excel.  He was warm, friendly, and funny.  Quick-witted and
sharp.  His talents wasted, night after night, as he talked to the handful of
people listening at 3AM.  She knew it, and regretted her selfishness, but Jimmy
seemed happy to keep her content.

Regardless of everything else
that had hindered her enjoyment of life over the past five years, she was happy
with all that Smythville provided.  Easy trips to the grocery store without
having to fight twenty-five stoplights.  Nights spent on the front porch
looking at the stars, so quiet that you could almost hear the lightning bugs
illuminating their abdomens.  Breakfast at the Corner Café on Main Street where
she knew everybody, and everybody knew her.

In Smythville, life moved at
the speed of free will, rather than being dictated by the millions of
hindrances that bombarded the NOVA populace as soon as they stepped out their
front doors.  Being a part of it, having it forced upon her already before she
even reached her destination, heightened her sixth sense of impending trouble. 

It was an omen.

Mary couldn’t exactly place
what it was she was feeling.  Danger?  Helplessness?

She was still clueless as to
where she should even begin.  Randall’s CIA contact was the obvious choice, but
what questions should she ask?  How would she begin to approach the subject of
Randall’s insinuations without sounding like a crazy woman?  She imagined
herself sitting down at a desk, across from some clean-shaven, stern-faced
agent in a suit and tie with his hands folded in his lap, politely asking how
he could help, and then being promptly ushered out the door by a security guard
with a tight grip on her arm.

The wail of a siren grew and
a moment later, a squad car zipped past on the shoulder, lights flashing,
temporarily burning bright splotches into her vision.

Mary sighed, closed her eyes,
and tipped her head back against the headrest.  She accepted the fact that the
situation was out of her control for the time being, and tried not to let it
increase her anxiety.

Which was futile.  Unlike the
methodical slog she found herself in on the highway, her forty-eight hours slipped
away, in a hurry, with no regard to her looming anxiety and impatience.

CHAPTER 6

With Alice and Jesse on their
way to a new location, not far but far enough, after hours of arguing that it
was the best and safest option before he finally got them out of the house, Randall
opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Pepsi.  He pulled the tab,
listened to the
hiss
of release, and then took a long swig.  An
injection of caffeine, with plenty more to follow, was necessary.  The need for
a boost damaged his pride a little, but he’d barely slept over the past few
days.  If at all.  He couldn’t remember.

After such a long time
without rest, the mind begins to break down, begins to wither away like a houseplant
without water.  The edges turn brown, fragile, curl up, and commence their slow
march toward expiration.

The longest he’d gone without
sleep had been sixty-eight hours during a mission through the jungles of South
America.  He couldn’t remember the exact details, some guerrilla warlord needed
a hole opened in his skull—after a while, they all blended together—but the
number of sleepless hours and remorse from that trip into the wild would always
stick with him.  The  ‘
68 – In Memory of JL’
tattooed on the inside of
his right forearm made it so.  A reminder of what he’d endured to complete the
mission, suffering through hunger, bug bites by the hundreds, and a venomous
snake crawling across his cheek for what seemed like days.  The same snake that
had bitten and eventually killed his spotter.

How his partner had been able
to withstand the neurotoxins’ affects as the venom traveled throughout his veins
and shut down his respiratory system over that godawful twenty minutes, how
he’d managed to slowly suffocate to death without panicking and giving away
their position, was both heroic and legendary.  Randall still told the story
with pride and reverence.

Randall, ever intent on
completing the operation and with nothing to be done, had crawled away, leaving
behind the body of Jeff Lakeland, with the intent of coming back for him once
the job was complete.  It was the singular, most regretful moment of his life. 
Abandoning a friend for the sake of the mission.

He recalled the last, waning
blink of life in Lakeland’s eyes.  A hand reaching for his leg as he slithered
away.

He’d never made it.  After a
fierce gunfight, after eliminating the wrong target, he’d been forced to
retreat, and never got the chance to recover the corpse of his friend, his
brother.  The phrase, no, the
demand
to
never leave a man behind
followed him to sleep at night, invading his dreams with guilt and shame.

Randall took another swing of
soda, sighed, and then gave a half-hearted, regretful salute to the memory of
his friend.

He was tired.  So tired.

But resuscitation wouldn’t be
coming any time soon.  He had work to do.  There were preparations to be made. 
His house was to become his fortress.

Randall looked at the clock. 
Mary would be in D.C. by now, chasing down leads that weren’t there, that never
existed in the first place.

He hated lying to her and was
more than surprised that he’d gotten away with it.  As good as she was, he’d
thought for certain that she’d notice a subtle eye-twitch or an unavoidable
tick that would reveal his attempts at subterfuge, nearly every ounce of it
made up on the spot, bits and pieces stitched together in a patchwork quilt of
lies.  Some of it from plots of novels he’d read, some from movies he’d seen,
and some plucked from the depths of his imagination. 

Some of it true.

The real reason he’d sent her
to D.C. was even more unbelievable than his story about the compromising
positions of the politicians in South Korea.  People were hunting him all
right, but not for the reasons he’d told her.

The inkling of truth out of
the whole thing was that he
had
fought with some superhumanly fast man
in his front yard, but he had no idea that he’d show up so soon after the
drawing.

Months, not years, earlier,
over a slew of beers in that Norfolk bar, the German (codename: Enigma) had
said they would get at least a week to prepare after their name had been drawn.

But, now that Randall had
unknowingly shot his contact point in the chicken coop, he wondered if the
rules had changed, wondered why Enigma had been in southwest Virginia on his
farm in the middle of the night.

***

Randall paced between four
different spots in the attic, each containing a rifle situated firmly on its
mount.  Up here, it was bare bones.  With no insulation or sheetrock covering
the interior and just a few sheets of plywood covering the flooring, it
reminded him of a great, wooden skeleton, or maybe the belly of a schooner.

It was the only place in the
house open enough to have all four walls facing all four points of the
compass.  Five days ago, when he found out his name was chosen, he’d gone in
one day while Alice and Jesse were out fishing.  He’d cut out holes big enough
to accommodate a sniper rifle and its scope, then climbed onto the roof and
disguised each with a vent cover.  Alice never noticed the new additions—she
wasn’t the most observant person—and if she ever did, he planned to tell her
that it was something he’d read about—a ventilation escape for the heat that
accumulated up there during the summers that could be plugged during the
winter.

Satisfied that each location
was as ready as it could be, Randall clambered down the thin stairwell and into
the hallway of the second floor, then scurried from bedroom to bedroom checking
that each of the windows were locked and secure.  Not that such a minor
impedance mattered.  If the men coming for him wanted to get in that way, they
could, likely without any kind of warning sound.  To prevent that from
happening, he ran down to the basement where his stockpile of 2x4s laid waiting
for their day to come.  He grabbed as many as he could carry, along with the
nail gun, and hustled back upstairs.  He fixed enough planks over each window
so that they looked like they were guarded by their own oversized and
individualized picket fence.

He left the downstairs
windows alone and unlocked.  The front and back doors, too.

It was an invitation.  A tease. 
Try to get me
.

But that itself was an
attempt at trickery.

If they managed to sneak past
his eyes on the world while he was up in the attic and made it into the house,
a miniature, homemade seismograph built into the underside of the bottom stair,
leading up to the second floor, would send a radio signal and alert him to any
movement.  On the day he tested it, he found that a signal would fire off as
far up as the fifteenth step. 

Not all of the others would
be as brazen as the man he’d fought earlier that morning.  Some would plan to
wait him out, thinking he’d have to leave at some point to stock up on
supplies, and make their move then.  He would be oblivious as to when or where.

Once he was prepped, ready,
and securely stationed up in his stronghold, Randall knew that the upcoming
clash would only last for a couple of days, but he figured he could hold out
for weeks, maybe even months if necessary.  At most, he’d have to run down to
the basement to grab another rack of pork and beans, creating a maximum time of
exposure of twenty-six seconds.  He’d tested it.

At this point, he figured the
risks of dying from something other than a knife, gunshot, or Garrote wire were
minimal, considering the fact that Krakatoa, the demolitions expert, had taken
a double-tap to the chest from The Devil Himself during the last round.  The
only thing Krakatoa would have a chance to blow up now would be his own
handbasket on the way to Hell.