The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne

by R. S. Darling

  Virgil leaned down until their faces were only inches apart, sharing the same chill air. “You must forget everything you know about the Tower and the FBI. There’s money enough in here to start a new life.”

  For a few moments Virgil thought he was asleep, but then Harry opened his eyes wide. “Thank you.” They shook hands and Virgil departed, knowing he was sending away his dead son’s confidante and the one man he could converse with about Dorl.

  Later that day he sat in Mr. Boetie’s oak paneled office, drinking a vodka martini. He had picked up Alexis an hour earlier at Michael’s house where the babysitter had sat shedding tears that convicted Virgil of his sin of placidity. Now Alexis sat in the waiting room, playing with a doll and avoiding the only other child, a boy, who watched her and sometimes tried to interact.

  “Did you contact your man in the state department?” Virgil asked.

  Boetie busied his hands with a rubber band as he spoke, an annoying nervous habit. “It’s been taken care of.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, they should be moving Mr. Durden as we speak. I am told he’ll be paralyzed for life, but he’s stable, so they’ll be driving. Now, what about your granddaughter?”

  Virgil inhaled and looked through the open doorway to where Alexis played. He wondered if she understood death, feared that she did and was like him. “I don’t want her in the system. She deserves a normal life.”

  The rubber band twined in Boetie’s fingers, occasionally snapping. He retrieved some papers from the other side of the desk, papers—Virgil was sure—Boetie had prepared after their last phone conversation. “Then you will have to sign these.” Boetie sighed and did a poor job of suppressing a smile. “Because of your, ah, vintage, it is my duty as your lawyer to inform you that you should look for a more permanent situation for the child.”

  Becoming serious, “But I know men half your age in worse shape.”

  Virgil signed the papers and stood to leave, then turned back. “Thank you,” he smiled. “I appreciate complete discretion as always, Etienne.”

  Boetie’s voice was a summer breeze behind him. “And you have it, as always, Virgil.”

  He took Alexis’s tiny hand and led her out to his two year old Dodge Ram, comforted by its sturdy presence there in the lot, standing bold and sharp, free of the oxidation which had taken the life of his last Dodge. He lifted Alexis into the passenger seat and leaned down to face her and buckle her in. “Alexis honey, do you understand what has happened?”

  “Mommy left and now daddy is gone,” her little voice, so earnest, broke something in him.

  He nodded, noticed a small dark circle on her arm. The edges were purple over green. “Where did you get this?”

  Alexis flinched and turned her head away. “That boy in there threw something at me,” she said with wandering eyes and smacking lips.

  She just lied to me, Virgil realized.

  Chapter 36

  Lexi watched Brinks through the flashes in her sight. Even as she fought the vision bleeps and the rolling waves of fatigue, memory struck. She had read about this somewhere during her thesis on insomnia. A smile creased the dirt flecked face behind mussed hair.

  “Insomnia,” she recited in whispers while leaning against the hummer’s surprisingly plush interior, “is usually a symptom of other disorders, and is especially prevalent in the wake of . . . stress, recent grief or mental disorders such as anxiety or depression. Often accompanied by visual hallucinations, such as streams or flashes of colors and auditory hallucinations, such as whispers and . . . et cetera blah blah blah.”

  Her breathing leveled out as the conscious mind tried desperately to hold on to this line of logic. “They’ll kill me,” she murmured to Brinks. “And they’ll kill you if they find out what I know and what you will know from that drive. People have died for what’s on it.” There had to be a way out. But a part of her was relieved that it might soon be over. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve been caught.

  Maybe the military doesn’t even know about the Tower.

  “What do you know about Arfion?”

  Brinks turned his head at the name. “What do you know about it?” His tide-voice was still calm. “No civilian should be aware of it. How did you find out?”

  “My Gramps,” Lexi said. Her voice seemed far away, someone else’s even. “He was there, sixty years ago. Only . . . there was nothing there at the time.”

  She watched as Brinks stared at her in the mirror. “The facility in Arfion—” He paused but continued to glance at her in the mirror. “Screw it. The Tower in Arfion was abandoned for a few years in the fifties. Supposedly Howard Hughes was outfitting it. Since then, it’s been mostly quiet. But a few days ago the lightning started up again. Only . . .” He sighed deeply. “I shouldn’t be talking with you.”

  She thought there was something about his words which should bother her, but couldn’t decide what. Sirens screamed from behind, but there was only endless road as desert. “Gramps knew Howard Hughes.” She trailed off as sleep abruptly took her.

  The waking world came back in a splash of sun beams on her face. Her groin ached and itched and the vice-like grip of pain in her head had not eased. It spread to her cheekbones.

  “Welcome back.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Nellis Air Force Base.”

  “How do you feel, Miss Montaigne?” said a different, hard voice. “Can you hear me?”

  She cracked her lids, saw a pock-marked face inches away. “My head.”

  Brinks gave her some water through a straw while the other man spoke. The water froze halfway down, making the desert of her throat constrict. She coughed and spat and her head exploded with the sound and the fury.

  “We put you through rapid detox.” The hard-voiced man said. “Judging by all your scars I’m sure you can fight through the pain. Now focus. Who do you work for?”

  And, miraculously, she found that she could focus. However much her various agonies distracted, she could think clearly. “I don’t work for anyone.”

  Is this what happened to Gramps?

  “That won’t fly, Montaigne,” the man spoke with the calm confidence of someone accustomed to getting answers. “Do we need to up the pain? I could call the Doc and have him give you some real eye-opening meds.” This was no empty threat; she could hear him already making ready to call.

  “I’m CIA!” Yelling almost made her shake. “I’m a deep cover operative working alone. I was on my way to the facility in Arfion when this idiot Corporal Brinks intercepted me. We don’t have time for this.”

  “I’d think the Company would frown on agents using illegal substances,” the man in charge pointed out.

  “I’m not on drugs you idiots! I finally figured Dorl out and then you take me. Look, Wormwood is coming, right? Well that’s how he’s going to get away with it.” She grunted through the pain, wondering why anyone would become an addict when this was the reward. “He’ll use the damage Wormwood causes to cover his destruction.”

  She looked up at Brinks, noticed he was tapping his right foot in slow cadence to the rubbing of his hands. He was nervous about something.

  The man in charge stroked the shadow stubble on his chin as he stood with toes pointed out—a sign Lexi recognized as that of a man contemplating new information, not hoopla.

  “I’m going to contact the Company. Corporal Brinks, you stay here.” He stooped down and leaned in close enough for Lexi to taste the flavor of his mouth wash. “You better hope the CIA claims you, Miss Montaigne, or you’ll find yourself in the ass-crack of the world. The United States military has very specific methods for dealing with domestic spies.” His shoes tapped a confident trail down the smooth concrete floor.

  When silence resumed Brinks knelt down beside her, one hand on hers. “How did you get this?” He held the flash drive so close Lexi was forced to cross her eyes to make it out.

  “If you’ve opened it then you know I have to go. How long have I been out?”

&
nbsp; “These are classified FBI files.” Beads of sweat fell from Brinks’ face, splotching his pea green fatigues. “How did you get this? Is the General right, are you a domestic spy?”

  “Just let me go,” the cuffs rattled, echoing across the pipe-lined walls. “Look, I know you’re smart or you would have given the General the drive. You know that what I say is true, that the Tower needs to be destroyed.” He might be more pliable if you squeeze out a few tears.

  Corporal Brinks scrutinized her for two long minutes. Lexi remained silent, letting her recent words simmer in the stir-fry of his mind. He looked around at the empty hallway. Withdrew a key—a single, tiny, glorious key—and unlocked the cuffs from Lexi’s chafed wrists. With his help she stood, wobbling on Jell-O legs. Woozy was now officially the word of the day.

  “Punch me,” Brinks said.

  Brinks stood at least a half foot taller and had a good eighty pounds on her. That General isn’t going to believe for a second that you overpowered Brinks. But there was no time to argue or worry about such trivialities. She threw a right hook with all the weight there was to summon. Brinks’ head jerked back but his shoulders remained square with his feet. He clutched his jaw and the corners of his mouth twisted perceptibly.

  Handing her a small black and green compass and a bottle of spring water, Brinks said, “Your truck is three miles west northwest. You’ll have to go on foot. When you reach it, drive north for twenty-five miles.” He returned her keys and placed his hands on his hips. “You’ll be lucky if that little yellow Dodge takes you five miles through this terrain.”

  “Hey, that truck has taken me across the country. Show some respect.” Without another word she turned on her heels and tore through the door he’d indicated. It felt good that he had seemed impressed with her punch. The simplicity of it was beautiful.

  Sunlight struck her already burnt flesh as she exited. It was auspicious though: until seeing the light she had feared she might already be too late. She crossed the lot on shaky legs, ignoring the heat radiating up from the concrete. Behind a hummer she checked the compass.

  “They must all be in the mess hall or something,” Lexi breathed. The ache in the back of her skull demanded she stop, but she didn’t. Pain she could deal with, pain gives focus. She had always known this, always embraced the simple and unequivocal truth that physical pain reveals truth by pulling back the veneer of lies, the façade of fear behind which everyone lies.

  Looking around and seeing no one, she mounted the eight foot chain-link fence, shaking as a jet screamed thousands of feet overhead. She fell hard, the sudden probing needles in her left leg momentarily stealing the triumph of the pain in her skull. But this latest punishment soon dissipated and the compulsion to flee returned. This was her drug. This was life, pure and raw.

  This is why Gramps did it.

  The revelation froze Lexi in her tracks. A smile emerged.

  Resuming her escape, Lexi limped as much as ran, feeling like a mouse with one leg in the trap, endless energy expended without ever going anywhere.

  The desert stretched for miles. Perhaps the world was not so small a place after all. Faint tinctures of white and tan shadows indicated roving clouds, while one large streaking shadow warned of something far more threatening. And still she ran. The Base slowly shrank until it appeared at last no more distinct than the horizon line in a Da Vinci painting.

  The compass needle danced despite the smoothness of the desert; her movements were erratic. The flat stretch allowed for an almost endless reflection of sunlight, like one colossal mirror. (Light everywhere, except where Wormwood cast its long shadow.) It sucked. But this limping was a welcome change from long days behind the wheel. And at least now she knew where she was limping to: an oasis in the desert or instant death.

  A jutting stone caught hold of her left foot. Lexi dropped in a tangled heap of sweat-lined limbs and rank clothes. Here appearance was now more an idea of a woman than the genuine article.

  While down there she decided to catch her breath and check Brinks’ compass. Her tiny metallic guide might’ve burned her palm had her palm not been burning already in the sauna.

  Another half mile that felt like the Boston Marathon and then she reached it. The Dakota seemed a mirage as she sighted it through the haze. Seeing the truck sitting, barely visible, between an amber horizon and a tawny foreground, she finally understood why Leslie had chosen to paint it yellow.

  To anyone flying over it would be practically invisible.

  She ran the last few dozen yards, gasping for air and pining for shade. Completely out of breath now, she attempted one final lunge—and stumbled to her knees in the shadow of the Dakota. With a shudder she realized the truck was parked in the middle of the desert and not on a road as she’d expected, as she’d recalled.

  Chapter 37

  Contentious heat and wind whisked her breath away. Lexi stood, looked out across the expanse and knew that if she survived the night, the sight of sand and open spaces would make her sick. Fortunately the driver’s side window was open. When she fell into the cab, the hot wind whisked inside. Every inch of her body leaked sweat.

  Brinks’ water helped; Lexi took a long swig from the bottle, letting the liquid cool her from the inside out. The good old Dakota turned over instantly, almost as if it’d been waiting for Lexi’s touch. With the compass in her lap she threw the Dakota into drive and headed north.

  The rumble of the engine and the purring tailpipe proved rapturous after the insufferable silence of her run, but as she sat and drove, sweat continued to bleed through the calm. It fell from her forehead, trailed into and burned her eyes, cascaded down in between her breasts. The beads drained from her arms and chest, coating the remains of a blood stained shirt. Her groin and the healing cuts on her thigh itched by turns as her jeans caught all the heat of her run and encased her legs in columnar saunas.

  She cringed at each divot and jostle, fearing another busted ball joint—and with no Lewis to fix it she’d be up a creek.

  The steering column had been replaced four years earlier, but what good would that be when the ball joints—upper and lower—needed replacing every few years and the tie-rod ends weeble-wobbled so often she practically needed to keep new ones in stock. The only relevant question was which would crash and burn first: Lexi, or the Dakota?

  Together they trekked across the back of the sand, surviving violent bumps, roughshod holes, hard packed, cracked and rippled desert. The sunglasses found under old soiled clothes merely dulled the laughing gaze of the sun.

  Why is it still shining? The New Yorker in Lexi received this heat as an affront to the normal process of autumn. She thought about the October when she had visited Gramps to watch the Series, mocking both the Rangers and Phillies, and how, the October before that they had both gotten drunk after watching the Yankees destroy the Phillies in six games.

  A shriek broke her reverie, snatched the driver’s side tires, and thrust the truck up with a vengeance. The front tires smashed against the wheel wells, unleashing the cry of claws on metal. A metallic rattling sound began up front, and increased in both frequency and volume as the seconds zipped past.

  Fingers searched for the radio, flying wild as the truck danced over the sand. Thumb and index found the dial and switched on 104.5 KDOT, unleashing the clamorous tones of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the perfect foil for drowning out the death moans of the Dakota.

  “How many miles Alexis?” Lexi mused aloud, focusing sun-blasted peepers on the odometer, amplifying the stabbing sensation in her head. “Five miles?” Her next words were swallowed by a scream as the Dakota mounted an unforeseen hill and her tires trod empty air. When they hit the ground they bounced and the truck rebounded high enough to lose touch with the floor of the desert for a petrifying moment.

  The Dakota began veering northeast as the clanging up front grew louder.

  With a white-knuckled effort Lexi gripped the wheel, desperately trying to keep it going in the right direct
ion. After a few minutes of this the muscles in her arms began to burn. Vision blurred and pain mounted ever higher to thresholds that would test the resolve of even the stoutest tough-guy. Flames of pain stretched outwards to include her shoulders and chest and even her jaw. The odometer displayed ten.

  “Ten miles,” she said with such distaste that the words lingered in her mouth like milk after rhubarb. A vulture screeched deep and long as the Dakota came barreling past it, smattering the entrails it had been consuming. A screaming Avril Lavigne ditty replaced the colorless electric guitar of the previous band, Avril’s voice blending well with the screech of tires and the grinding of worn tie-rods.

  Suddenly hysterical laughter escaped Lexi’s mouth. She could hear the madness in her laughter, the unbearable distance from sanity that it indicated. She turned the radio up. This time it was the raspy, sultry resonance of Nicki Minaj erupting in the simple predictable beat of a substandard word-slurring artist.

  The truck bounced in time with the piece.

  At last the sun began to set, its light waning in incremental stages outside the windshield. Lexi fought the crippled truck into the twentieth mile. “Come on baby,” she caressed the dash. “Just five more miles—” she lurched half out of her seat and over to the passenger side as the old truck slammed into a ravine. It recovering only enough to hobble forward on a now almost useless chassis.

  Lexi pressed on through the dwindling light with her dying friend, laughing, screaming.

  The landscape was a miracle of interwoven plains and sharp angular features punctuated by cacti and mangy carrion. And she understood why he had hidden out here, why Dorl kept returning to this land of solitude and suffering freedom. It was empty, the kind of emptiness which conspires with loneliness to destroy the weak and reward the strong with endless miles of continued suffering and frustration.

  Only he could like it here.

  As the gathering darkness pruned the last sprig of light, an explosion rang out in the rear of the Dakota. She lurched to the right with titanic force, jumped and skittered. Lexi squeaked and cried as each revolution of the rims loosened the tires and Dakota hacked in accordance with her dead limbs.