by Gene Riehl
Monk’s body seemed to flatten as it recoiled from the thunderclap of sound, and his brain stopped dead as the blast hammered them toward the ground.
Bethany began to twist, to buck like a wild horse as she tried to throw him clear, but somehow he managed to hang on.
Now he could hear her screaming.
“Too fast! … Too fast! Let go of me! … You’ll kill us both! … We’re both going to die!”
Monk tucked his head into the back of her legs and held on even tighter.
He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, and he knew she was right. Her sport chute was designed for one jumper. Together they were too heavy. Without him on her back she was sure to make it … and that thought alone strengthened his grip.
Suddenly she was beating on the backs of his hands.
It felt like she had a hammer, but Monk knew exactly what it was.
She had a handgun, of course, and she was using the barrel to smash his fingers until he let go. He slid toward her feet and locked his arms around her legs this time. He waited for the same agonizing blows, but this time a shot rang out instead, and a new pain—a horribly worse pain—tore across his right side.
Monk heard himself screaming as he buried himself even deeper into her legs. It was his only chance. He heard another gunshot, then a third, but now she was afraid. Afraid she’d shoot herself instead.
The gunshots stopped.
But now the hand battering started again.
Somehow it was even worse this time.
More frantic, more desperate.
Monk bellowed as he tried to hang on, but it was no use. He was out of strength … he could no longer stand the pain. He felt himself losing consciousness, slipping away now, falling on his own now …
His legs struck the tree first as he crashed through the heavy canopy, through the foliage, past limbs and branches, his mind too numb to direct his movements. The world turned to slow motion as he tumbled toward a narrow branch without leaves. He twisted frantically to avoid being impaled, but almost immediately a limb too big to escape rose to meet him.
“No!” he roared, an instant before he hit.
FIFTY-TWO
The world tilted and spun as Monk opened his eyes, his brain fighting to make some sense of where he was.
In a tree, he realized … in the same tree he’d hit when he’d fallen out of the sky. And then it all came back to him. Bethany’s treachery … his instinctive leap after her when she left him to die … the horrendous explosion … Dear God, Monk thought, as he remembered the rest of it, but he shook the thought out of his mind.
Bethany was lying. Lisa wasn’t in that chopper when it exploded. He tried to form a mental picture of her sitting at her desk back at WFO, but for some reason he couldn’t. It was shock, he realized … he was in shock. Lisa was safe, he absolutely refused to believe otherwise. She would be at the loft when he got back, and he could put her out of his mind until then.
He looked over his right shoulder for any sign of Bethany, but didn’t see her. He struggled to lift his head and check the other side, then as far below him as he could see through the dense foliage that had slowed his fall enough to save his life. Nothing.
Next he checked his physical condition.
He was battered, bloodied, bruised, and in shock, quivering like a banjo string, with a nose so broken he could hardly use it to breathe. Its steady throbbing matched his heartbeat, and grew even worse when he looked down at the ground that seemed a hundred miles away. He reached up and touched his nose very carefully, tracing its new profile, lumpy now, and pointing a bit sideways. Painful as hell but not enough to disable him. He groaned as he tried to move, then decided he shouldn’t until he’d checked for broken bones.
He lifted his shirt first, looked down at his side, relieved to see that the bullet wound was hardly more than a deep scratch. Plenty of blood, but already drying and crusting over. His crash into the tree had done him worse, much worse. Thank God for the thick canopy of foliage, or he’d be dead. He breathed deeply and exhaled. Good. None of the stabbing pain that would indicate a broken rib. Lots of blood on his arms and hands, but bright red, not the kind to worry about. He felt along his face—careful to avoid his nose—and came away with even more blood, again none of it the seriously dark color of blood from somewhere deep inside his body. He wriggled his toes, then his feet, before deciding he was ready to get started.
Unfortunately, that didn’t mean much.
Ready or not, he was still stuck in the top of a very tall tree.
A black oak, he realized, as he looked at the serrated edges of the leaves. He was wedged between a massive limb and a smaller branch shooting up and to the left. He used his arms to dislodge himself from the crotch he was stuck in, to pull away slowly, groaning and sweating as he made his way to a limb big enough to hold his weight.
Monk sat for a moment, pushing aside the foliage and staring down, trying to guess how far off the ground he was. Seventy feet, maybe more. This was old growth, the trees as tall as buildings. To fall from here would be nearly as bad as tumbling out of the sky.
He gave himself five minutes to regain enough strength for his descent, then lowered one leg in the direction of the branch below him. Eight or ten feet away, and that was a big problem. In his condition a steep flight of stairs would be a challenge, trying to swing from limb to limb on the way out of this tree was crazy. But so was staying here. Unless he could figure out a way to fly to Battle Valley Farm, he had to get to the ground. Had to use the deeply furrowed bark of the trunk for hand and foot holds, until he was down.
And that’s what he did.
Clutching the bark, kicking his feet into the furrows, he shinnied downward, through the leaves, past the branches, until after what felt like an hour he reached the bottom branch, where he sat for a few moments, staring at the ground. Christ. It was still ten feet away. Ten feet didn’t sound like much, but right now it looked like a mile. He took a deep breath through his mouth, then lowered himself until he was hanging from the bottom branch for an instant before letting go. The last four feet felt like an endless plunge. Monk rolled as he hit the layer of leaves and soft forest soil, but lay stunned and breathless anyway, gasping like a fish in the bottom of a boat.
A full minute later he rolled onto his back and stared at the dense forest around him, the towering black oaks and sycamores, the sparse undergrowth. He lay there and tried to think, then found himself reaching to his pocket for his cell phone to call Lisa before remembering once again that he’d left it in the Ferrari.
Bethany had to be close.
They’d been falling together until just seconds before he hit the tree. She must be somewhere in this tree with him. Then he realized he was forgetting something … that he’d been unconscious, that she could easily be miles away by now. Through the headset in the chopper, he’d heard her telling Franklin to expect her in an hour. It was best to admit that she had a huge head start and that he wasn’t going to catch her sitting here.
Monk pulled himself to his knees, then stood, his head spinning for a moment before his equilibrium returned. Gradually his mind began to focus. He had to make his way to the nearest road, then hope to find someone willing to drive him the rest of the way to the farm. He was out in the country. Country people were good about helping out. Then he looked down at himself and realized it might not be that easy.
His slacks were torn—one knee shredded—and there was blood all over them. One shoe was gone, somewhere up in the tree, he guessed, and that made limping around on the other one useless. He kicked it off. His socks wouldn’t last long, but they’d be better than nothing until they fell apart. Even worse, his sports jacket was still in what was left of the helicopter, along with his credentials and badge. He was too exhausted to curse. Without his ID and badge, he was just another injured man who looked more like a homeless bum than an FBI agent. No one would pick up a man his size, looking like this. He could claim he’d been in an accident, bu
t they’d insist on taking him to a hospital, not to Battle Valley Farm.
In the next instant, Monk realized he was getting ahead of himself.
He didn’t have to worry about hitchhiking until he found a road, and he didn’t even know which way to begin looking.
What he did know was that Bethany had none of his problems.
She was expected at Franklin’s farm shortly, which meant she had transportation nearby, a vehicle stashed in the woods or a car and driver waiting for her. He’d seen a road from the sky, northwest of their heading, just before he heard Bethany’s voice through his headset, and she would have planned to come down near one. She wouldn’t have put herself in the position of having to hike for miles to get to her transportation.
He had to get his bearings before doing anything else. The forest was so dense he couldn’t see the sun. He tried to remember his Boy Scout training, to recall other ways to determine which way was north. He looked around for moss on the trees, but realized he couldn’t remember for sure what that meant.
The sound of a horn brought his head around.
A car horn.
No … more like a truck horn … one of those air horns the diesel trucks used.
But where? From which direction?
The sound had come from his right, Monk guessed, but he had to hear it again to make sure. He strained to listen, but heard nothing. He remained motionless for two minutes, but still heard nothing. Not good, but at least he now knew the road was nearby. Now all he had to do was find it. He would have to guess, then take his chances. To his right, that’s where the sound had come from. That was the first direction he’d try.
He slogged through the underbrush, shoving aside the occasional low-hanging tree limb, trying to keep moving in a straight line. A dozen steps later he tripped and fell, crashing to the ground, but managed to protect his nose from the worst of it. He lay there for a moment, then heard another noise. A car passing, it sounded like … a car close by.
He struggled to his feet, staggered a few paces, then fell again when the ground suddenly sloped away sharply. He seemed to shoot through the last of the brush, then downward into a shallow ditch. He lifted himself to his knees and felt a rush of adrenaline as he saw the road.
FIFTY-THREE
This time there was no banter.
As Sung Kim reached the head of a line of cars that stretched at least a quarter mile from Battle Valley Farm’s main entrance gate back toward State Highway 15, she could see from the look on Steve Batcholder’s face that there would be no kidding around today.
Today Steve’s guard shack at the big iron gate was crowded with stern-faced men and women, walkie-talkies in their hands and earpieces in their ears. Watching them closely, Sung Kim pushed the gear lever up into Park, zipped her window down, and smiled as they approached. Steve was in the lead, and he was shaking his head.
“I told you the other day this would happen, Mary Anne,” he said. “Not that I don’t like seeing you again so soon, but I’m sorry it has to be …”
He stopped talking and stared at the bruises on her face.
“My God, what happened to you?” he said. “What happened to your face?”
She smiled. “I fell getting into the van, back at the flower shop. It’s nothing. Looks a lot worse than it is.”
He shook his head slowly, then turned to the woman at his side, a thirty-something Secret Service agent in a dark blue suit with light gray pinstripes, and a sour look on her square face.
“I know this woman,” Steve told the bodyguard. “Her name is Mary Anne White. She delivers flowers to the farm. I see her all the time. Just a couple days ago, as a matter of fact.”
The woman took a step closer to Sung Kim’s van. “Good afternoon,” she said. “Would you mind stepping out of the van please?”
Sung Kim smiled. “Of course not.”
She swung the door open and got out. The Secret Service agent moved closer. She was holding a wand in her right hand, a metal-detecting wand that looked a little like a whisk used in the kitchen for beating eggs or sweet cream.
“Extend your arms, please,” the agent said.
Sung Kim did so. The agent ran the detector up and down her body, up the inside of each leg, then along the length of both arms, which were just as bruised as her face, although the injuries were hidden by the long sleeves of her blue and white shirt.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the agent said when there were no beeps from the detector. “What’s in the van?”
“Flowers, lots of flowers … and a few plants.” Sung Kim smiled. “Mr. Franklin sure loves roses. I brought a load a few days ago, but I got the call today to bring even more.”
The agent stepped up close to the van, inspected the driver’s compartment, then turned back to Sung Kim. “I need to look in the back.”
“It’s not locked.”
“Please, ma’am, I need you to open the door for me.”
“Of course.”
Sung Kim led the way to the rear of the van. When she got there, she turned around and saw three more Secret Service agents walk up. One of them—a tall skinny man in a dark blue suit—was leading a gorgeous dog, an immense German shepherd. The bomb dog, of course.
“Open the door, please,” the man said.
Sung Kim did so. The man looked at the dog, then uttered a sharp command. The shepherd leaped effortlessly into the back of the van. Sung Kim watched as the dog zigzagged among the plants and flowers, his big nose darting and sniffing, before he came back and jumped to the ground.
Next, the woman agent stepped up into the van and moved around on the same path as had the dog, her eyes playing over the same plants and flowers. Suddenly she stopped, bent over, and picked up a small unmarked cardboard carton from the floor of the van and brought it back to Sung Kim.
“What’s this?”
“Timers,” Sung Kim told her. “Watering timers. They run on batteries. I use them to regulate the water lines to the various indoor plants in the house, and around the farm.” She reached for the carton. “I can show you what they look like.”
But the agent opened the carton herself, picked out one of the timers, a green plastic device about the size of a pack of cigarettes, with a yellow dial on the front, and stubby armlike extensions for the plastic tubing that carried the water.
“It’s just a valve,” Sung Kim said. “An electrically operated valve, connected to a tiny computer chip that opens and shuts it according to the settings on the dial.”
The agent brought the carton up closer to her eyes, inspecting the rest of the timers, then put the one she was holding back into the carton, closed it up, and set it back in the van, next to a pink azalea that Sung Kim could see was already starting to wilt in the heat.
“Can I close up?” she asked the agent. “Are you finished back here? I’ve really got to get these plants out of the sun.”
The agent nodded. “I just have to call the house and make sure you’re on their list, then you can go on in.”
Sung Kim smiled. She was on the list, all right. One thing she knew for sure was that she was on that list.
FIFTY-FOUR
Monk pulled himself to his feet and stepped into the road.
He looked in both directions but saw no one. He’d been lucky to hear the horns. He might have stumbled around in the woods for hours. He turned to his right. The road ran north. He didn’t know how far away from the farm he was, but the road had to run right past it. He could follow the road until he was close enough to see the golf course that he knew from his two previous flights lay south and west of the mansion.
Monk started walking. His nose ached, his whole body hurt. He hadn’t walked a quarter mile before he heard a car behind him. Turning, he stuck out his thumb. A pickup truck, Monk saw, slowing down when the young male driver saw him, then pulling over toward the ditch and stopping a dozen yards past him.
“Man,” the kid said, when Monk limped around the pickup and stood at the driver’s
window. “What the hell happened to you?”
Monk tried to look sheepish. “Got a new motorcycle, one of those motocross jobbies. Had to try it out. Just about ended up killing myself.”
“Trail-biking?” He stared at the thick woods on both sides of the road. “How can you trail-bike in there? Be hard enough just to walk.”
“Tell me about it.”
The driver glanced at his feet. “No shoes? You go riding without shoes?”
“I fell. Got into some loose leaves and fell into a ditch … I thought it was a ditch, but it turned out to be a gully.” He shook his head. “I went in bike and all. Only had one shoe when I crawled out again. I looked around for it, but …”
Monk glanced back toward where he’d come out of the trees.
“Christ, I’m lucky I’ve got any clothes on at all, as hard as I went through that brush. I couldn’t walk in one shoe, so I tossed the other one back there by my bike.”
The kid stared beyond Monk, toward the woods, as though looking for the bike and the shoe. Monk reached down to massage his knee.
“Bike’s all bent up,” he said. “Front wheel collapsed on me.” He paused. “I think I marked the spot pretty good. I’ll come back later and get it … look for my shoes at the same time.”
The kid shook his head. “You do much riding?”
“First time.” Monk glanced back toward the forest. “I’m going to sell the son of a bitch the second I get back to Washington.”
“Where you staying here in Gettysburg?”
“Up the road … just this side of town. The wife and I rented a place for the weekend.” He shook his head. “Christ, she’s gonna kill me. I’m an hour late already. Can you take me?”
“Sure, but it’s gonna be a while.”
Monk stared at him.
“Franklin’s farm,” the kid said. “Thomas Franklin?” Monk nodded as the kid continued. “There’s something going on at Battle Valley Farm.” He gestured toward the road ahead. “Got a roadblock up there by the main entrance. A checkpoint. Had to come through it an hour ago, and I’ve never seen it like that.”