by Neovictorian
I shoulder my small pack, and she does the same. I’ve got the .45 on my right hip under my coat, Bowie on the left, cross draw style. She doesn’t need to tell me she’s got her Tanto somewhere handy. We’ve both got extra warm dry clothes and some drinks and food in the packs. It’s almost summer, we’re only going to be 30 minutes from town…and it’s also Alaska, and it looks to me like if you took a fall off this trail they might not find you until autumn, when the leaves drop.
Or never.
I look Lisa over: Black baseball cap, with her hair pulled through the back, waterproof shell over a silk turtleneck, shiny rain pants and low-cut brown hiking boots. I smile and wink at her.
“You look ready for this. You don’t have a gun though, do you?”
“No. I’ve got your bear spray in the holster and my knife here,” she says, patting her right hip.
“Okay, I’ve got a .45, 2 seven-round mags and a knife,” I reply. “I’ll take point. I’m going to trust you to watch our six—though I don’t expect to see anyone but some locals walking their dogs, maybe a tourist.”
I turn a little so I’m looking her straight in the face.
“I need to know you’ve got my back. There are black bears around here, no brown ones though. I’m not worried about animals, anyway. But something happened up there, and we need to be ready, need to be Noticing.” I put a little extra emphasis on the last word and her mouth twitches, not a smile but the beginning of saying something. Then she decides not to say that thing, decides to say something else.
“Cal, I wa…” she looks down, hesitating, but when she looks back up into my eyes there’s conviction there. She’s decided.
“I want you to know that when the time comes, whenever it is, what ever it is, I’ll know the right thing to do. And I’ll do it.”
We look at each other for a moment. There’s nothing else to say about that.
“Let’s head up.”
I turn and don’t look back. There’s a little wood sign that says “Trailhead” next to an opening in the heavy brush, and I walk in, the smell of green living things so heavy in the wet air that I open my mouth to taste it. A few yards on there’s a sharp bend and after we round it there’s a breath of colder air blowing in my face and in front of me a little concrete building with a metal grill covering the open front. The sign above the opening says “Adit.”
I turn back, standing in the cold breath of the Earth. “There are some shafts on this side.” I tell her. I turn and go on, and after another switchback and a steep little pitch the skinny trail empties into a road, big enough for two-way traffic if you’re very careful. A few hundred yards farther on the trail curves off the road, rising and snaking out of the forest and into the open, around the side of the mountain. There’s no guard rail and it looks like a fall would kill for sure; and in another few hundred yards there’s a little pedestal set into the rock, just before a stream of water that runs across the trail: “In Loving Memory of—“
I look at the name and the dates. A sixteen-year-old boy. Lisa is standing so close to me that I can feel the heat from her cheek on mine, I can smell her, and I take one deep breath of her and my God I feel the Earth humming in the soles of my boots, the echo of a billion billion rocks crushed and melted and molded that I’m standing on, but it’s not the time, not yet, and I turn and walk on.
58. Today, Juneau, Alaska May 27, 7:16 pm
Another mile from the memorial plaque and the trail has wound around the side of the mountain, past a waterfall and back into a lighter, more open forest when I figure we’re close to where Eve vanished. The mining road is occasionally visible through the trees, a few hundred yards down the slope. I’ve been looking around all the time for anything, anything that doesn’t look right or doesn’t belong, a piece of clothing or trash or a flash of color that’s not of the forest, but there’s nothing. Two dog walkers passed us, going back to town.
The place is incredibly beautiful, fairyland, large ferns and something that looks like a giant cabbage growing in the wet places and stalky plants so covered with tiny thorns they look like porcupines. It’s hard to concentrate on the job at hand. It’s Lisa who spots something first.
“Cal, look at this.” She’s stopped behind me and squats at the side of the trail, peering into the brush. I see what she means—there’s a strip of small rocks that look different, unnatural. A mound of chips, gray-brown. Mining product.
Now that I’m really Noticing again I spot a place in the brush that’s just slightly thinner, not a trail but the merest suggestion of one, and I’m drawn to it. I step into the hole, pushing aside branches. I hear Lisa follow.
After about 20 feet the brush begins to thin out, away from the trail the trees are larger and block most of the light, and the thread through the bed of brown spruce needles is easier to see, bare brown earth, and we follow it, both of us sensing we should keep quiet, though there’s nothing here that different from the rest of the wilderness.
There are more mounds of the mine tailings to our left and we work our way up the gentle slope a couple hundred yards and the trees disappear and there’s a clearing and a steep pile of rock and dirt maybe 40 feet high, a faint trail of footprints switchbacking up it and disappearing over the top. I hold up my fist in the “stop” gesture and the faint sound of Lisa’s steps behind me ceases. I turn to her, point to the right. Instead of following the footsteps we’ll go around the mound and see what’s at the top. She nods.
We pick our way through some bigger rocks, push up one last steep slope and we’re on a flat shelf of gravel about six feet wide. We walk back toward where the footsteps disappeared and there’s a big face of bare rock—the mountain itself—with a black oval in it. I can feel the cool from it before we reach the hole. The cool of the deep. There’s a metal grate across it, but the grate is rusty red and from the side I can see that it’s opened a few inches. I hold up my fist again and stop next to it, before anyone inside might see us.
I turn, take a step toward Lisa and put my lips to her left ear. “I’m going to try and draw anyone or anything that’s in there out. Probably empty for 50 years, but let’s see…get the bear spray out.” I take one extra deep breath of her, pull back until I can see her face and we smile.
She reaches in her jacket, shows me the canister while I quietly take off my pack and pull the flashlight out of the side pocket, one of those super brights that’s supposed to blind and stun for a few seconds.
I don’t count on it. I put the light in my right hand and pick up a piece of rock about the size of a tennis ball with my left, give Lisa a warning look, and ease myself closer to the door until my left shoulder is almost touching it. I reach out slowly, showing nothing but half of my forearm, push the rock gently, silently against the grate until I can feel an opening that’s large enough, with a flick of the wrist throw it as hard as I can.
It glances off the metal with a clang, makes a faint crack! when it hits and a brief sliding sound, then…nothing. There’s no response from inside, no footsteps or shouts. We wait what seems like 15 seconds but could be a lot longer. I switch the light to my left hand, look back at Lisa. She’s an arm’s length behind me, chemical spray in her right hand…and the Tanto in the left. She grins, happily.
I turn on the light, it glares off the rocks, and again exposing nothing but my arm shine it into the opening, dart my head around the corner for a split second and say “Hey!” Loud enough to get attention but not enough, I judge, to be heard by anyone down the hill on the trail. I pull back just as fast and we wait again, for a while, long enough for me to be pretty sure nothing is going to happen. I give Lisa a little hand flip, to head back the way we came. We walk to the end of the shelf where we came up, and she stops, turns towards me and waits. When I’m close she whispers, “Why don’t we rest a few more minutes here and watch, just in case? Then we’ll head back down. It’s only going to be full daylight for another hour.”
I nod. It makes sense. “I doubt there�
��s anyone in there now,” I whisper back. “At least, anyone near the entrance.” I raise my voice a little, “We don’t have to whisper, but let’s be low-key. I’ve got a feeling about this. I think Eve may have hidden herself here.”
“I wonder how many people ever come up here?” she says. “Obviously some. That trail’s pretty faint but it’s there. Some of the local kids probably come up here to mess around, drink beer, smoke. I knew some places that were real hard to find less than mile from our Marin house.”
She reaches into her pack and takes out a vacuum bottle. I have one too, that she handed me as we loaded out back on the plane. I fish it out of my pack. Mirror finished stainless, or maybe something more exotic. It’s very light. The only decoration is the Summa corporate logo.
“You didn’t put any more of that martini in here, did you?” I tease her. She giggles but looks guilty at the same time, like she feels maybe she had a little too much, gave away a little too much.
“No, that was my limit for the day,” she says. “This is spring water with some electrolyte powder that my Dad started getting from a pro football trainer. ’Special proprietary formula.’ I don’t know everything that’s in it but I always feel good when I drink it.”
She tips the bottle up and takes a big drink. The way her Adam’s apple goes up and down her long, smooth throat is erotic. I uncap my bottle, tip it up and drink. The stuff is delicious, citrus without being exactly lemon or lime or orange, no sweetness but a hint of sour and hint of salty and a hint of something I can’t quite name that leaves my mouth watering when I lower the bottle. I lick my lips.
“Proprietary, eh? I can see why they wouldn’t let the masses have this stuff. Let them drink their sugar water.”
I take another long drink—might as well finish it. We’ll be taking off in a minute. I remember how Jack told me once that they trained the SEALs to just go ahead and drink their fluids up in a survival situation, instead of rationing them out. You can always drink the urine later.
I open the flap of my pack and slip the bottle back in and when I start to bring my eyes back up to look at Lisa it’s like there’s something on the roof of my mouth, a tingling, and I rub my tongue against it to make it go away but it spreads through my tongue and gums, up my nose and into my sinuses, not numbness exactly but a heaviness, I try to say something to Lisa but I don’t know what to say, I feel that I should say something, to warn her, and I’m sad that I can’t even turn to look at her before things begin to go gray, a dark, dark gray and there’s only a pinhole now in the gray, I can only see a single green leaf, I do realize what’s wrong, just for a second, and then there is no I.
59. 3 years ago, Chevy Chase, Maryland May 18, 11:44 pm
I reach the pickup spot before Jack but I can see the lights in the distance already, I’m certain he drove exactly the speed limit all the way. He pulls up and I come out of the shadow of the trees and I get in and he’s rolling again in five seconds.
He turns and looks at me steadily, no excited “How did it go?” or other amateur crap, just looks me over to assess, then turns back to looking at the road. He lets me take my own time about the debrief.
“He’s dead,” I finally say. Jack nods and looks over at me again, a ghost in the faint dashboard light.
“Any hangups, problems we need to take immediate action on?”
“Not that I can see. He was wearing body armor, though. And he had a gun.”
“Hmm.” Jack’s silent for a few seconds, then says, “We’ll do a second-by-second run through later, back at the house. Just give me the highlights now.”
“Well, the approach and entry was as easy as you said it would be, the alarm spoof worked exactly as planned, and just like we expected there was nothing in the house that screamed “Jihad!”
I turn and look at him. “He had Viagra in his medicine cabinet. Now his dick is never going to get hard again.”
I don’t know why I say it, the voice doesn’t even sound like mine in my ears; but it breaks the tension and like a crack in dam, laughter comes pouring out of me, not really amusement but a long exhalation, every bit of rage that’s built up since the bullet pierced my flesh, and I put my head down almost to my knees and shake, laughing and crying. I flash back to the desert, no, not a flashback, I’m there, I see the stars and they’re connected, by silver strings like spider web, and for the first time in a long time I hear James whisper.
“You did it right, Cal. Now let’s get back to Big Picture,” and now it’s okay, the pressure is gone and I cough hard a couple of times and sit back up.
Jack has been laughing too, I can see it in his face but he’s also concerned I’m losing it. He looks hard into my eyes and nods his head, once, looks back at the road.
“It’s normal and good to let off some steam like this Cal, after an operation. I can see you’re going to be okay. You’ll be even better when we spend a couple of solid hours debriefing and decompressing. Telling it all, every little detail, gives a kind of closure. And a couple of double Scotches.”
We’ve reached a larger cross street, there’s a stoplight but it turns green as we approach and he scans the mirrors and the area and turns left, south toward the safe house.
“But of course I really want to hear how you handled the body armor—and the gun. Did he enter like we anticipated?
“Exactly like. Everything was just like we gamed it out, every little thing, until the Bowie hit Kevlar. You talked about that possibility, what to do, but I gotta be honest, I didn’t remember anything you said, at that moment. He was off balance and the force of it pushed him on his hands and knees, and it looked like he was reaching for something on his hip.
“And you…”
“I just dove on him, and he was too focused on his gun to do anything about it. Pancaked him, put the knife under his chin and drove it in until it stuck in the floor coming out the other side. He never even got the gun out of the holster.”
“Good. Did you get his wallet and phone?”
“Yeah.”
“How about the gun?”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t take it. I never saw it. Now that I think about it, I’m not totally sure he even had one. I just saw him digging at his hip.”
He chuckles. “Not that it matters. Maybe he just had a taser or tear gas. It still would have been bad news if he got anything off, anyway.”
He drives for a minute, silently, and I think about what comes next. I’ve been focused on nothing but Zaludi for days…well, James is right, James is always right. Big Picture…
Jack breaks the silence. “I’m calling this matter closed, Cal, based on the conditions we set on the drive away from the hospital. And I want to say…”
He turns his eyes away from the road and looks at me. “You’re officially an operator now, Cal. You went in and did a job, did it right. We could have done this the easy way, used guns. I could have done it, the same basic plan as with the Iraqi. It wouldn’t have given the cover of a possible robbery gone bad, but that’s not so important. We took what an outsider, hell, the guys in the Teams, would have considered an unnecessary risk. I let you make the decision, well, I didn’t let you. I gave you some alternatives and you chose the hard road.”
“I didn’t see it as hard, Jack. The others didn’t seem right to me.”
“Yeah. So now, what’s the next thing for you? Somehow I don’t see you going back to Senate staffer after tonight.”
I laugh, amused and relaxed now.
I’m free.
“Of course you’re right, Jack. We both knew I was never going back to that world. I learned what I needed already. I’m going to get back to the basics of the Outfit, like the guy who briefed me in, that very first time said. You know stop some bad things, help do some good.”
“Okay, well I’ve been thinking the same thing. I can’t go back to the government, either, but I loved what I was doing, ideal place for an old SpecOps guy. I plan on doing the same thing, and getting paid for
it…call it private investigations, private security maybe,” he says. “Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. A plausible, innocuous business.”
We stop for a red light, and after a few seconds he turns toward me, not just his eyes but his body, leans his arm on the rest.
“It’s may involve an op like tonight’s, sometimes. Mostly, though, it will be intelligence product, that we can share with the right people to do the right things. I have a lot of sources inside the government, the military, and I have the feeling that you have a hell of a lot of contacts that you haven’t mentioned yet.”
The light changes, and he drives on.
“Yes,” I say.
He nods.
“But I have a couple of conditions.”
“Oh, shit,” he says, smiling.
“One, I never have to call you Captain, Chief, Boss or Sir. Two, I’m the business guy. We can do all kinds of good, but we’ve got to get enough paying customers to make some profit, anyway, and three...”
“Wait a sec,” he breaks in. “You said ‘a couple.’”
“Yeah, well I thought of number two after I said that,” I reply. “And so, three. From now on, when we decide to put someone under the ground we both go in, together.”
I think about that for a second.
“Unless tactics dictate that you be watching through the scope on that Remington while I provide the distraction,” I add. “I’ll probably end up doing most of the talking. I’m better at that part than you. You’re probably better at shooting stuff.”
“No shit,” he says.
60. Tomorrow, Juneau, Alaska, 9:45 am
I can see the floor of the tunnel clearly now, and I speed up as much as I can, still crouching a few inches, the guys who dug this thing out were a lot shorter than me, I reckon, I don’t want to rip my scalp open, not now, not when I’m this close to the light.