Sleeper

by Gene Riehl

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re used to the Secret Service around here … Franklin and the president hanging out and all … but this time there were Japanese guys, too. A dozen, at least. Traffic backed up half a mile. Took me an hour to get through.”

  “Japanese?”

  “All over the place.”

  Monk turned away from the kid to look up the road. Japanese bodyguards at Battle Valley Farm. Sung Kim at the farm. Despite the pain in his legs, Monk had to fight an urge to run after her, run her down, and kill her before she …

  “Look,” the kid said. “I can take you, but we’ve gotta go right now.” He gestured toward the bed of the pickup, at the stack of lumber in the back. “My boss is waiting for this stuff at the job site.”

  Monk nodded, then limped around the back of the pickup to the passenger door, pulled it open and climbed in. “Thanks,” he said. “It would have been a hell of a walk.” He bent to make a show of looking at the odometer. “How far?” he asked the kid. “How far to Gettysburg. I’ll never find my bike if I don’t keep a pretty close check.”

  “I dunno, three miles, a little less maybe.”

  “What about the checkpoint at the gate? Could I walk to town from there?”

  “Be about a two-mile walk, but why bother? Even with the delay at the checkpoint, I’d get to Gettysburg a long time before you could walk there.”

  Monk nodded. “Have you got a cell phone?”

  The kid shook his head. “I’m lucky to have enough money for my lunch,” he said, before pulling back onto the road.

  A few minutes later they caught up to a car, a red sedan, then another car, and another, until the traffic began to slow.

  “Damn,” the kid said. “It’s even worse going this direction. Gonna take an hour just to get to the gate.”

  They crept along toward the checkpoint, although the bend in the road ahead kept Monk from seeing the main gate. The golf course was on his left. He couldn’t see it through the dense forest, but he knew it was there. With this level of security at the entrances to Battle Valley Farm, getting onto the golf course was his only chance of making it all the way to the mansion.

  He craned his neck in an attempt to see the checkpoint, but it was still too far away. From the elevated cab of the kid’s truck he could see many of the vehicles ahead of them, but he had no idea what he was looking for. Bethany could be in any one of those cars or trucks, but Monk had the feeling she wasn’t. He had the feeling she was far ahead of him, already inside the property.

  He turned to the kid. “Sorry to abandon you,” he said, “but I can’t just sit here. I’m gonna walk up ahead. I’ll catch a ride with somebody up front.”

  The kid shrugged. “That’s what I’d do if I were you. Anybody’ll give you a ride to town.”

  Monk opened the door and slid out of the seat to the ground. He closed the door and gave the kid a wave, then limped toward the car ahead, then past it, limping in the direction of the checkpoint until he was around the bend in the road and out of the kid’s sight.

  Monk saw the looks on the faces inside the cars and trucks as they reacted to his battered appearance, but nobody met his gaze or said a word to him. He couldn’t blame them. The worse you looked, the harder people tried to ignore you, and he was counting on their reaction. It was best if they didn’t see him at all. There were enough guards for him to get past already. He walked another hundred yards, turned to his left, and limped between two cars, crossed the road, and disappeared into the trees.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The White House press corps didn’t know quite what to do.

  On his way across the lawn to Marine One, the president had to laugh as he saw the confusion on their faces. Linda Fiegler had done her job perfectly. The White House press secretary had told them of his plan to visit Thomas Franklin’s farm this evening—she had no choice about something like that—but they weren’t prepared for him to go this early. Even Tom himself didn’t know. He and Nakamura would still be on the golf course when the president arrived.

  If all went well, the president told himself as he returned the salute of the Marine Corps guard and climbed aboard the big green chopper, he could nail down his deal with Prime Minister Nakamura and still be back at the White House in time for a late dinner with the first lady.

  It took Monk ten minutes of hacking with his hands and shoving with his arms through the heavy undergrowth before he came to the fence that surrounded the golf course, and he didn’t like what he saw.

  The steel chain-link structure was eight feet tall, for starters, but that wasn’t the problem. At the top of the fence, a two-foot barbed-wire extension had been added, an extension that slanted out over Monk’s head, designed to make the fence next to impossible to penetrate. To get over the barbed wire, he’d have to climb the fence until he could reach up and grab the extension, then pull himself up and crawl over the razor-sharp barbs to get to the other side. There was no way to do that without cutting himself to shreds.

  Limping directly to the fence, he reached out and touched the chain links, then stared through them at the golf course. He’d seen it from the air, but up close it was even more impressive.

  Rimmed with the same large oaks and sycamores that made up the forest, along with bushy rhododendrons and dogwoods that stretched away in both directions, the course was magnificent. Through the gaps in the foliage Monk could see the fairway and a single bunker filled with white sand, but he couldn’t see much more than that. More important, he couldn’t see any guards. They had to be around somewhere, probably close by, but they weren’t here. He thought about electronic surveillance. The golf course might be covered with cameras. The same security people who’d busted him upstairs at the mansion might be looking at him right now, might have dispatched guards in his direction already.

  Maybe it was time to surrender.

  To go around to the main gate and tell them who he was, then join the Secret Service to go after Bethany. After Sung Kim.

  But even as he thought about doing that, Monk realized he couldn’t.

  To the presidential detail he would sound just as crazy as he looked.

  He had no badge, no credentials, no kind of ID at all. They would listen to his insistence that he was an FBI agent, but they wouldn’t believe him. They’d listen to his insistence that a North Korean assassin was on the property, but they wouldn’t believe that, either. They would handcuff him instead. And by the time they had made enough phone calls to verify his identity it would be too late.

  No, Monk decided. To stop her, he had to get to the mansion, and the Secret Service wouldn’t take him there. He’d be sitting in their car when Sung Kim struck.

  He looked up again at the barbed wire.

  He had to find something to lay over it, something he could use for protection as he crawled to the other side. He looked down at his clothing. No help there. His cotton shirt was about as useful as Kleenex against the stiletto-like barbs, his Dockers were not much better, and the already torn socks on his feet were worse than useless. He turned away from the fence, looking for a solution in the forest. A piece of tree limb, maybe, or a chunk of bark big enough and strong enough to use as a shield. He headed into the foliage, but a couple of minutes later gave up. There was debris everywhere, branches, bark, a layer of leaves and twigs beneath his feet, but nothing he could use.

  FIFTY-SIX

  This time Sung Kim didn’t bother going through the charade of asking Grace Woods for the keys.

  This time she went directly to the skeet house and opened the front door with her own key, then hurried to the door of the ammunition depot, opened that door and ran down the concrete tunnel to the short wide bunker. From behind a stack of cases of dynamite, she retrieved the steel tube filled with C4 explosive, and ran back to the door of the bunker. She closed it but didn’t bother locking the door again. There was no longer any point. After today it wouldn’t matter.

  In the main room of the skeet
house, Sung Kim hurried to the wreath that hung on the two-legged stand leaning against the wall, where she’d put it the other day. She pulled the stand away from the wall, then attached the steel tube to the other two legs to form the tripod that would support the wreath once it was taken to Franklin’s study. With the tripod secure, she used her fingers to unscrew the tiny head of a bolt near the top of the explosive tube, almost completely hidden from view by the evergreen branches that formed the wreath. She dropped the bolt into the breast pocket of her blue and white shirt, then pulled a green plastic timer out of the same pocket, along with a small coil of insulated wire with the ends bared. She attached one pair of bare ends to the tiny terminals on the green plastic timer, then stuck the other pair through the hole where the bolt had been, embedding them firmly in the plastique. She checked the timer to make sure it was set correctly—so that the electrical charge wouldn’t detonate the C4 until she was well clear of the farm—then pulled the wreath into place so that it covered both the timer and the wires.

  Sung Kim stepped back and studied her work. It was perfect. Without removing the wreath, there was no trace of what she’d done. She carried the wreath to the van and forced herself to drive slowly toward the mansion. Her body tingled with the need to get inside the big house, to get the wreath into Franklin’s study before he and Nakamura got there, but she knew better. Right now the most important thing was to do nothing to call attention to herself along the way.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Franklin?”

  Franklin looked at his caddie. The caddie stared at the phone in Franklin’s hand. “Is there something wrong, sir?”

  Franklin handed him the phone. “I’m fine,” he said.

  But he wasn’t.

  He stepped to his ball, stared down at the Titleist and realized it must be his turn to hit. “Three-iron,” he said to the caddie, then waved at Nakamura to apologize for the delay. He addressed the ball, took the club back and hit a slicing grounder toward the deep rough on the right. On his way to the ball his mind swirled with questions.

  Where in the hell was the woman who’d destroyed his life?

  What had she done with Puller Monk?

  Was he still alive?

  Dear God, was she still alive?

  As Franklin considered the possibility that she wasn’t—that Monk had somehow survived and managed to kill her instead—his vision began to blur. Monk could very well be on his way here now. Franklin swallowed hard. He saw again the images that continued to haunt him: Monk and the rest of the FBI agents showing up at the mansion; the handcuffs; the walk to the car.

  And the president would see it all.

  He was already on his way to the farm.

  He’d be standing there watching when Monk hauled him away.

  The images grew stronger.

  Disgrace.

  Prison.

  He glanced toward Nakamura, then turned and hurried toward the rough and his ball.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Monk took a few steps along the fence, looking for a flaw, somewhere he could get through without taking on the razor barbs. Maybe the fence wasn’t perfect all the way along.

  But it was, he discovered, as he checked along the fence a hundred yards in both directions before stopping, breathing through his mouth to minimize the pain in his nose. He looked up at the top of the fence again, but this time noticed something else. Twenty yards down the line in the direction of the mansion—a dozen yards into the golf course side—a huge black oak towered above the fence, but that wasn’t what had caught Monk’s eye. What made him hurry toward the tree was the matching oak on his side. Another giant whose branches reached toward the fence as well.

  A moment later he stood between the two trees and saw that at a point high above his head they came close to touching each other. The last thing he wanted was to go up another tree, but this looked like the only way. He moved to the trunk of the oak on his side, reached up, and got a secure hold in the bark furrows with his right hand, scrabbled with his bleeding left foot until he found a place to hold his weight, then began to climb. Curiously, he felt no pain. His body seemed almost numb, almost beyond feeling anything at all.

  Three minutes later he’d battled his way past the heavy branches and through the leaves until he was twenty feet up the tree, standing on a branch that extended straight toward the black oak on the golf course side. Monk stared across. Damn it. From the ground he’d guessed that the tips of the branches were only a couple of feet apart, but it was more than that. Six feet, at least. And they weren’t directly across from one another, either. His branch was five feet above the other one. He would have to jump away from his tree and catch the other one on the way down.

  He flexed his knees, ready to try, when he heard a groaning sound from the limb he was standing on. Flexed to the breaking point, Monk realized. He looked down at the fence. Christ. If the limb broke, he’d land on top of the fence. If the fall didn’t kill him, the barbs just might. He couldn’t stay where he was, that much was certain. Life’s a gamble, he told himself. Once again it was time to let it ride.

  With a quick bend of his knees he propelled himself into the air and grabbed for the opposite branch as he fell … but he missed. Arms flailing, he snatched at the branch below that one … somehow managed to catch it … to clutch it with one hand … to feel himself swinging into the tree, hitting hard as he folded himself across it. He held on and edged toward the security of the trunk before pulling himself up and sitting on the branch. He was still sitting there, breathing hard, when he heard the whine of a golf cart approaching, then a voice directly beneath him.

  Monk’s body stiffened, straining to hear.

  “Nothing,” the voice said. “I’ve checked the fence line all the way along. There’s no sign of him anywhere.”

  Monk wasn’t surprised. Bethany would have called in an anonymous report of his presence to the Secret Service, just in case he’d survived the fall from the helicopter. Or the kid had seen him go into the woods … or someone else had, anyone in the line of cars leading up to the main gate. And Franklin, of course. Sung Kim would have told the traitor immediately that Monk was on his way.

  Suddenly he heard a second voice, this one electronic, a voice on the other end of the radio the agent was using. Monk could hear the sound, but he couldn’t make out the words of the second agent.

  “Yeah,” the louder voice responded. “I should be at the corner of the property in a few minutes.”

  A moment later Monk heard another golf cart approach and stop. Then a new voice. “Follow the fence north when you get to the corner,” the voice said. “Matt Williams and Jeff Ruland are starting from the other end. They’ll meet you somewhere around the middle.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Both carts drove off. Monk’s adrenaline subsided, leaving his legs shaking. He edged around the trunk until he could see the golf carts in the distance. There’d be more, of course. The presidential protective detail would be all over the golf course, all over the rest of the farm, the mansion, and the road going in both directions.

  Slowly Monk’s breathing normalized enough for him to consider what he was doing. The Secret Service people were the best-trained bodyguards in the world. He didn’t have a chance in hell of getting past them. They would kill him if he tried. Monk stared at the ground, but before he could make any kind of decision, there were more coming. Two carts this time, two men in the first, a man and a woman in the second. Too far away to see him, but he couldn’t stay here. With no time to climb down, Monk dropped straight to the ground, hit with an impact that seemed to shake the fillings in his teeth.

  He turned to his right and started to run, keeping low behind the bushy azaleas, grunting with each stride from the pain in his bleeding feet, until suddenly he came to the corner of a building and pulled up short. A maintenance building, he thought at first, then changed his mind when he came to a window, when he looked through and saw a round table covered by a white tablec
loth and surrounded by a number of chairs. On the table were plates and silverware, and the obvious remnants of a small meal. A snack shack, at least that’s what it would be called on a public golf course. The building was painted forest green to match the trees and shrubbery, with white framed windows, like a little cottage in the woods.

  Monk hurried to the door, tried the knob, and wasn’t surprised when it opened. With a fence like Franklin had built around the course, it wasn’t necessary to lock anything. His eyes darted around the room, looking for a place to hide long enough for the Secret Service to check the cottage, for them to realize it was empty and move on. To give him a chance to make a break for the mansion. He saw nothing suitable. Except for the table and chairs, the room was empty. There wasn’t even a broom closet, no doors at all, no …

  Then he saw it.

  A small closed door, maybe three feet high, a couple of feet across, set in the wall beyond the table.

  He ran to the door, saw that it could be opened by sliding it upward. He pulled the door open. Now he could see a couple of silver serving dishes inside, and he realized what he was looking at. A dumbwaiter. A delivery system to bring food to the cottage from the kitchen in the mansion.

  He dashed to the nearby window, looking for the housing that would cover the conveyor belt as it ran back toward the main house, but he saw nothing. He hurried back to the dumbwaiter, peered into the enclosure. Now he could see how it was built. He looked for a button in the wall next to the doorway and saw it immediately. He pushed the button and the platform holding the serving tray began to descend. He pushed it again and the platform stopped.

  There was a tunnel underneath, Monk realized. A subterranean passage that had to go all the way back to the mansion, to the kitchen in the mansion. And the opening was just big enough. He could climb into the dumbwaiter and ride all the way to the kitchen. He stared at the opening and felt a shudder strong enough to buckle his knees. Someone might be able to do that, but not him. Not in a million fucking years.