Pitfall

by Cameron Bane

Three minutes later I was back in the rental car, heading down the road. As I said, I had no idea how to decode Sarah’s file.

  But I knew who could.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Ice-cold Stoly.” The slim, elegantly dressed bearded man in front of me smiled, lifting high the thin clear bottle. “There’s really nothing in the world quite like it. But I can’t even get you to try.”

  I regarded him with a wry look. Marcellus Tertius Plumb: bon vivant, raconteur, gourmand of gracious dining, computer genius of the first water. And an unashamed pusher of that vile and nasty stuff he always drank, Stolichnaya vodka served at a mean temperature of no more than thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit.

  “Keep that liver-dissolver to yourself, Marsh,” I said.

  “Yes, I know.” The twinkle in his burnt umber eyes took the edge from his words. “It’s all about keeping control, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. A humble vice. But mine own.”

  Marsh’s sigh was full of exaggerated defeat as he poured a glass for himself. “Well. Have it your way.”

  We were at my friend’s Tudor-style house in Kenwood—in his living room to be exact—a space opulent enough to impress Marie Antoinette. Still holding his glass, he turned to his well-stocked, teak liquor cabinet. When he faced me again he was holding what he knew I couldn’t resist: a cold Sam Adams in a frosted bottle.

  Handing it to me, his tone turned mock-scolding. “So you keep your provincial ways, Johnny.” He calls me that only because he knows how much I hate the diminutive of my first name. “See if I ask again.”

  He would, of course. He always does. We ramble through this vaudeville routine every time I visit, which isn’t nearly often enough.

  It was now nearly two in the morning, and Marsh Plumb, still trim and youthful at fifty, remained dressed in evening finery he’d donned before a night of wining and dining one of his many lady friends. I was lucky to have caught in him at this hour; I’ve known his trysts to sometimes run until dawn and after.

  The two of us go back a ways, nearly ten years, when Marsh was asked to testify as a government expert against a guy in my unit, a man I knew only peripherally, and who’d been accused of treason. It was a weird experience. Marsh was working for the ones who wished to crucify our soldier, while I was doing everything I knew to keep him out of Leavenworth. But in the midst of it all Marsh’s honor had impressed me, even as I disagreed with him.

  And in the end he’d been proven right. Our guy was convicted of selling secrets to the Libyans, of all people, and to this day he’s enjoying a second career playing Solitaire in the jug. And his chief accuser is one of my true friends. As Marsh always says, go figure.

  His soft gray suit tonight was Armani, naturally fitting him like a glove, his black Bally shoes shining up like mirrors. The man continually gives new meaning to the term “fashion plate.” I’ve never seen him in anything less than designer shoes and clothes, shined and pressed and starched to perfection. For all I know he sleeps propped up in the corner, like a pool cue.

  All I can say for certain is he’s a great friend, an inveterate sucker for jazz and blues albums, especially old 78s, and he has one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever encountered. And he uses it very well. He’s a stone ace at cracking computer codes.

  His house is a one of a kind architectural oddity, a meandering little number left to him by his deceased parents nearly twenty years ago, and nestled deep in the environs of one of Cincinnati’s most posh neighborhoods. To this day I don’t know what Marsh does for a living, though if needed I could find out easily enough. With his abhorrence of manual labor and his opulent lifestyle, I figure it has something to do with investment banking. Or maybe organized crime. Same difference.

  He hadn’t commented about the lateness of the hour when I’d shown up, or of the way I was dressed. I’d known he wouldn’t. He has a singularly sanguine approach to living and let live.

  “Enough of this tomfoolery,” he said with finality, taking another sip of his Stoly. “As to why you’re here, seeking my electronic wizardry…”

  “Right.” Reaching in my pack, I pulled out the flash drive. “See what you make of this, Gandalf.”

  He took it from me, peering at it. “Let’s see. Two-inch rectangular aluminum tube, small LED light, removable cap …” He smiled in triumph. “I’d say it’s a flash drive.”

  “Funny,” I scowled. “Did you ever consider taking your show on the road?”

  Barking a laugh, Marsh put his hands out in front of him, still holding the drive. “Oh for pity’s sake, Johnny. Lighten up. It’s a beautiful evening.”

  “Sorry.” But I wasn’t sorry at all. “You say it’s a beautiful evening. I’m seeing it differently.” I dry washed my now camo-free face and ran my hands through my thick mane. “You simply cannot believe how badly the last forty-eight hours have gone. And my client is way past being desperate for answers. So can the jokes, all right?”

  “Okay, okay.” He waved the flash drive at me. “So what’s on this? Wandering wife? Unfaithful husband?”

  “No. Medical records, I think.” I sighed heavily, sitting down. “Put it this way. I hope.”

  “Medical records?” His ascetic face was marred with a frown. “The law takes a dim view of you having these. Unless they’re yours.”

  “They’re not. They belong to the young woman I’m trying to find.”

  He glanced at what he was holding, then back down at me. “I don’t want to know how you came by this, do I?”

  “No. All I’ll tell you is that when you run it, you’ll find the girl’s name and a few of her stats, and the words Locksmart Systems. After that, it’s encrypted.”

  “Locksmart Systems?” The furrows in his brow deepened.

  “Yeah. Why? Are you familiar with that?”

  “I am. And you’re right, it’s an encryption program. Very elaborate and very, very tough.”

  “For you?”

  His smile was wintry. “Never for me. Although breaking it down may take a while.” He stood and began making his way down the hall toward a room at the back of his house, a room I’ve never been allowed to enter. It’s where he keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars of the most up-to-date computer equipment and its attendant systems that can be had.

  “With your shield or on it, Marsh,” I said to his back as he left. “Make me proud.”

  “Help yourself to the Stoly, Johnny,” he called over his shoulder.

  I got in one final shot. “Only if you have a barf bag handy.”

  He waved and chuckled and kept moving.

  “But I’ll tell you what I will do, old buddy.” Walking over to Marsh’s enormous oak entertainment center, I squatted down before his record collection. “I’ll drink more of your very good beer and enjoy some fine Billie Holiday tunes while you slave away in there.” Putting my finger on a record of hers that had to have been seventy years old if it was a day, I slid it out with a smile. God Bless the Child.

  It seemed appropriate.

  *

  Two hours later I was a happy camper. I’d progressed my way through my friend’s excellent music library, going from the aforementioned Miss Holiday to the buttery-smooth stylings of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn. After that I’d immersed myself for a time in intricate instrumental geniuses like Bix Biederbecke and Charlie “Bird” Parker. Now I was slumped deep in one of Marsh’s custom-made gray leather easy chairs, eyes shut and taking the occasional pull on my beer as I listened in awe to Leadbelly tearing out his wounded heart for all and sundry to hear.

  My reverie was ended with a sharp tap on my shoulder.

  “If you’ve scratched any of my 78s you’ll never make it to the front door alive.” Marsh’s tone carried dark promise.

  I opened my tired eyes, regarding him. “That’s what those were? I was using them for coasters.”

  “Not funny.” I swear the color had drained from my friend’s face. “Don’t even joke about such things.”


  I stood up with a stretch. “So were you victorious?”

  “I’m not sure.” His face was grave. “I suppose it depends on your definition of victory. I partially breached the firewall, and what I saw there is tantalizing. And not in a good way. There’s more there. A lot more.” He started to speak again, and then paused.

  “And?”

  Nervously he pursed his lips. “Johnny, this is one of the most puzzling things I’ve ever come across.”

  “Good grief. What is it?”

  “I hate to say for sure, not until I dig more.” Turning his head, he mused, “But maybe what I found is just a harmless file name.” He looked back at me. “I mean it would have to be, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “As I said, I’ll hold off on that until I’m sure. I will say this, though. GeneSys Technologies has one of the toughest firewalls I’ve ever encountered. Almost military grade, or like you might find used by a deeply-buried government agency. It’s far beyond what corporations normally use. Legal corporations, that is. And that makes me skittish.”

  I gazed at him. “You’re serious.”

  “I am. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll keep trying to crack it, of course. When I do, God knows what I’ll find.” Marsh took a deep swallow of his drink, as if he needed fortification before trusting himself to speak again. “But whatever this is, it’s going to be very, very bad.”

  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 Betty
s. 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.