The First 48

by Tim Green

“Yes it is,” Dave said in a pleasant singsong voice as he lifted the long metal tube from its packing foam and rested it on his shoulder.

  The jet was screaming now. Jeb covered his ears and yelled something to Dave, who smiled back at him. The whites of Jeb’s eyes had grown large and his mouth was a circle of wonder. The jet started off down the runway and lifted up into the inky sky. Its lights twinkled on and off. Dave put one eye up to the sight, closing the other, lining it up perfectly. Not that it mattered. This was one of the good ones. Fire and forget. A heat seeker.

  The jet was well out over the water now. A good mile away.

  “Jesus,” Jeb said, his shout ringing loud and clear now.

  “Feel free to call me Dave,” Dave said.

  With a chuckle, he released the rocket. Sparks and a pungent chemical aroma filled the air. The rocket streaked through the night with a deadly hiss. It was nothing more than the distant ember of a cigarette when it touched the blinking lights of the jet.

  A beautiful orange ball of fire burst from the darkness. Seven seconds later, the roar of the explosion washed over them.

  Dave couldn’t help the giddy hoot that escaped his lips. He slapped Jeb on the back. He laughed so hard, the corners of his eyes were damp.

  Between gasps, he said, “I told that kid . . . it was a bad night to fly.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Jane pulled herself free of the arm around her waist and the tangle of sheets. She padded to the bathroom of the cabin in the darkness, closed the door, and found the light switch. The room was all light pine and slate, trying to make you feel like you blended into the woods.

  She did. She didn’t know where she was or what time it was. Her source was sleeping in her bed, and she smelled like swamp funk.

  She searched through the drawers of the bathroom cabinet and found it stocked with new toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, aspirin, and deodorant. She sighed and turned on the shower, let the room steam up, and removed her soiled clothes, peeling out of her bra and panties as she made sure the door was locked.

  Naked, she stood before the steaming mirror and washed the caked black mud from her freckles and tied her hair into a knot with a rubber band she found. She washed off her taut stomach and her breasts.

  After she showered, she rinsed her underclothes and returned to the room where Mark slept. She kept the door cracked, and the shower steam escaped into the room.

  With her towel around her, she slid back into her damp underwear. In a closet, she found a small man’s pair of khaki pants and a flannel shirt. She dropped the towel.

  When she turned, Mark was awake. Propped up on one elbow, shirtless.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “More than just your neck. My mother was beautiful like you.”

  “Is that supposed to be charm?”

  “It’s a compliment. She was beautiful inside and outside. You have the same long neck. The dark hair and eyes . . .”

  Jane hustled into the clothes, cuffing the pants, rolling up the sleeves, buttoning up her shirt.

  “Sit with me . . .”

  She walked to the front door and heard the rain hammering the top of the cabin. Dark-as-hell skies turning the forest floor into a river. The thunder shook the house. A jolt of lightning illuminated his angular face as he stood and grabbed her hand. “Sit,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  “What’s it have to do with Senator Gleason?” she asked. “Let’s really talk or I’m gone.”

  Mark drew in a breath and blew it out slowly. She sat.

  He stroked her hair and removed a loose strand that had plastered itself against her wet face. She grabbed his hand, stared into his eyes, and said: “Tell me.”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore,” he said. “I’m sick of all of it.”

  “Well, you brought me into the middle of it.”

  “Not now.”

  Jane stood and turned back to the door. She was reaching for the handle when he spoke.

  “The government is about to award a massive contract,” he said. “Billions of dollars. To inoculate the entire country.”

  “So?”

  “It’s a ten-year deal against bioterrorism. My company, Kale Labs, was going to get it. We’re the only ones who’ve done this kind of thing. For the military. Carson was a colonel in the army. That’s how he started. But Gleason is being paid off; we know he is. You know him—you’ve seen the things he does.”

  She sat back down on the bed with him. He grabbed both of her hands and stroked her fingers.

  “And he’s the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services,” Jane said. She allowed him to touch her. He was talking. That’s all that mattered. “So he controls the contract.”

  “Yes,” Mark said, holding her hand and slipping his arm beneath her back. “It won’t be awarded until the first of the year. If Gleason loses the election, Kale Labs will get it. Easy.”

  She could hear his breath. Labored and slow.

  “Gleason is a pig,” she said. Her voice raspy. His fingers lacing into hers. She peered down at her hands and noticed that her top two buttons were undone. Her bra wet and clinging to the curves of her breasts.

  “We also have a two-billion-dollar loan that comes due in September. If we don’t get the contract, everything Carson and I have worked for will be ruined . . .”

  The thunder broke again. The rain sounded like tiny pebbles spilling onto the roof. She needed him to keep talking.

  His arm caught her back as he leaned her into the bed. “It’s still light outside,” he said. “We can’t move until dark.”

  “You were going to use me to save it all.”

  “It’s more than just us,” Mark said, his face within inches. She could smell his sweat. See her own hand reaching across his wide shoulders. “We’ve got twenty thousand people working for us. Thousands of them are right here. If something happened to Kale Labs, this whole area would be ruined.”

  He kissed her. And she let him.

  “You used me,” she said.

  “Maybe I wanted to be around you.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “You are so beautiful.”

  No one had ever said that before. Not like that. He kissed her again and in the darkness unbuttoned her shirt. Her breath a steady rhythm as their chests touched and he slipped his fingers under her bra.

  “You know,” Mark said. They were under the sheet, kissing, their naked bodies twisting together. “Everything I gave you about Gleason was true. And I could have gotten anyone to break that story. I chose you because I knew you felt the same way about him . . .”

  She grabbed his face and pushed him onto his back. “Quit talking.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Mark grabbed a shotgun, punched in two cartridges, and said, “There’s a path to the airport road and then it’s only about half a kilometer to the nearest boat. Come on.”

  He looped his arm around Jane’s back, taking the weight off her ankle. In his free hand was a small flashlight. By the time they reached the road, the darkness lay thick beyond the yellow beam of light. At the top of the driveway leading down to Dave’s cabin and the bunkhouse, Jane watched the sky behind them suddenly glow. Mark spun around just in time to see the dying orange flash. Several moments later, the air rumbled from the blast.

  Jane gripped his shoulder tight.

  “Jesus,” Mark said. “He’s lost it. Dave has absolutely lost it.”

  They hurried down the gravel drive to the bunkhouse, dark except for a single light in the kitchen. Down past Dave’s cabin to the narrow dock, where up on a lift waited a thirty-two foot Formula cigarette boat, glowing yellow even in the darkness.

  “Unsnap that cover while I lower it down,” Mark said. He tugged at one of the snaps until it popped loose to show Jane how it was done, then started the winch motor.

  Jane was up on the swim platform in the back when headlights swung over their heads. Even with the wind, the clatter of gravel could be heard as a vehicl
e came tearing down the drive.

  “Get down,” Mark said. Jane disappeared in the back of the boat and he dropped down flat on the dock. He scooped up the shotgun and tried to hide his profile as best he could behind the housing of the heavy winch motor.

  The vehicle soon appeared, jouncing through the air past Dave’s cabin and sliding to a halt at the end of the dock. Dust spun up, filling the beam of the headlights with smoky white clouds that were quickly whipped away by the wind.

  When the doors opened, Mark fired three shots at the driver’s side and the final two at the passenger’s. The roar of the short-barreled shotgun left his ears ringing. Behind him, Jane was silent. As the dust settled, nothing stirred. He lay still for nearly a minute, marveling at his apparent luck.

  Mark fished into his pockets and reloaded the gun. Taking careful aim, he shot out both headlights, then jumped to his feet. He sprinted the length of the dock with his finger on the shotgun’s trigger. By the time he reached the vehicle—it was Carson’s Land Cruiser—he could see the dark shapes of two men crumpled on the ground beneath the open doors.

  Mark kicked the passenger-side door closed, and there lay Jeb. Even in the dim light that crept from the cabin, Mark could see the inky hole in the middle of his forehead. Blood poured everywhere. Cautiously, he rounded the back of the vehicle, and there was Dave, sprawled awkwardly on the ground, facedown and still.

  Mark eased up and flicked his toe at Dave’s massive hand.

  It came to life.

  A jolt of panic. A vice on his ankle. Bone being compressed. Mark pulled the trigger. Too late. The shot ripped into the truck frame.

  Falling. Swinging the gun. Pulling off another shot.

  Stars and a sharp pain in the back of his head. The gun torn from his hands. A blow to the side of his head. The weight of Dave’s knee on his chest. The smell of garlic and meat. Dave’s hot breath. His face eased forward. Bulbous pale eyes. Reptilian. Empty. Grinning yellow teeth, fading.

  “Been looking for you,” Dave said. “Boy.”

  Then blackness.

  CHAPTER 52

  Tom had seen the big house when they circled before landing. It blazed with light, and he knew instinctively that the answers were there. He hoped Jane was too, but for some reason he was less confident about that. There was no other way to get there than walk. Exhaustion was lurking on the perimeters of his conscious, but strangely, the walk was invigorating. Maybe it was the sharp wind, or the way the thin beam of the small flashlight from the plane so boldly cut through the darkness, or the sound of crashing surf that could be heard from the road. Whatever it was, Tom felt a spring in his step.

  When the headlights of a vehicle suddenly shot around a bend, Tom didn’t have time to think. He snapped off his light, grabbed Mike, and plunged into the trees. The vehicle—it looked like a Land Cruiser—shot by in a blur of taillights and dust.

  “Why did we hide?” Mike asked. “My feet are killing me.”

  “‘In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them.’”

  “Sun Tzu?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “The big house is our objective. I feel it.”

  Mike had wrapped a piece of cloth around his big head like a sheik and carried a fallen branch as a walking stick. Moses leading the way.

  They stepped back out onto the stony dirt road and continued their march. After a time, Mike’s labored breathing could be heard even above the howl of the wind. Tom passed the small yellow beam of light over Mike’s face. It was beaded with sweat.

  “Do you want to stop for a minute?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Mike said, “we’re almost there.”

  Tom pushed the light button on his watch. 02:57:03. The notion of having less than three hours gave him a jolt and he pressed ahead, dipping his head into the wind.

  There was a sudden flash over the treetops to the west.

  Tom stabbed the beam of his small flashlight toward the dying fireball.

  “That wasn’t lightning,” Mike said, gripping Tom’s shoulder.

  “A bomb,” Tom said.

  “Munch?”

  “No,” Tom said.

  “It was something,” Mike said.

  “Stay focused.”

  Tom kept walking, watching and listening now for more fireworks. After a few minutes, he said, “Munch wouldn’t have left without us.”

  Mike nodded; he was apparently breathing too hard to comment. They rounded a bend and saw a dock out in the water. A single light on a pole illuminated a shiny blue powerboat resting on a hoist.

  Down the road, they found a place where they could see the large stone building. The road wound up ahead, but there was a long wide swatch of grass that ran right up the side of the hill. The Hunt Club on its top, shining gray in the beams of its accent lights. Its rough-cut limestone blocks were staggered and stacked sideways, unlike Tom’s blue beer cans, which rose vertically end to end. But this was the real thing. Intricate crenels topped the battlement, narrow openings through which medieval archers launched their arrows.

  Tom felt heat spread through him. Beside the battlement ascended a round tower. Atop the tower’s pointed hexagonal roof a red pennant fluttered. On the other side of the triangular parapet and the column-studded veranda below stood a stout curved bay, topped by a half-round balustrade. The perfect place for the lord of the castle to sit and observe the battle below.

  Tom licked at his lips and raised his .38 over his head as though it were the hilt to a sword.

  “We’ll storm it,” he said, leaving the road and starting up the hillside.

  “Tom,” Mike said, hustling up from behind, the tail from his ragged headpiece spiraling in the wind. “Let’s look around.”

  But Tom was already bent into the wind, trudging steadily up.

  “Tom?”

  “‘When time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in,’” Tom said.

  “That’s Napoleon, but you told me the first part of that quote is ‘Take time to deliberate,’” Mike said. “And we haven’t deliberated.”

  Tom didn’t even bother to turn around. He kept going and held his wrist up in the air.

  02:49:48

  “Two hours forty-nine minutes and forty-eight seconds,” he said. “That’s all the deliberation I need.”

  Mike started to lag behind, and even Tom was breathing hard by the time he was three quarters of the way up. The wind howled. Tom stopped only briefly as they ascended a set of stone stairs and crested the hilltop. There was a stone path that curved its way from the stairs to the front porch. Halfway along it, the stones had been pulled up. A small mixer, a pile of sand, and some masonry tools lay in the grass.

  Tom marched past the project, along the path and up the front steps onto the veranda. He heaved the thick cast-iron lever that opened the thick-beamed doors. It was locked. Tom stepped back and kicked with all his might. A shudder of pain rocketed through him. The door held fast.

  Tom looked around the veranda. Wicker furniture and clay pots filled with geraniums. Mike stood at the top of the steps, his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Tom skipped past him, down the steps, and jogged back to the mixer. Among the tools in the grass was a rusty six-foot crowbar. Tom returned to the veranda and jammed the pointed end of the bar into the crack of the doors.

  He wiggled it deeper and deeper until it would go no more. With his hands out on the far end of the bar, Tom heaved his weight against it. The bar bent. The door groaned. Still, nothing happened.

  “Help me, Mike,” he said.

  Mike rose up and put his hands on the bar next to Tom’s.

  “Ready,” Tom said, “set, go.”

  Together, they strained against the bar. It bent and the door groaned. There was a sharp crack as it moved an inch, then stopped.

  “Your weight,” Tom said. “Put your weight into it.”

  They leaned and pushed. Their faces grew shiny with sweat; the air was filled with their gro
ans. Just as Tom thought his arms would give out, the door burst open and they tumbled to the veranda floor.

  Tom hopped up and dusted himself off. Mike got up slowly.

  “This is it,” Tom said. He marched straight through the broken doors with his weapon raised. The ceiling in the diamond-shaped reception room stretched twenty feet high and was lined with dark oil paintings. To the left was a library, to the right a drawing room with tasseled furniture. Tom kept going, in through a great hall bursting with stuffed animals whose shadows trembled in the light of a blazing fire.

  Tom felt almost as if he’d been there before, and proceeded without stopping until they were standing just inside the entryway of a long stone dining room. A smaller fireplace crackled at the other end. A grand mahogany table ran the full length of the room, surrounded by leather high-backed chairs. At the far end, behind a glittering silver coffee service, sat a silver-haired man with dark eyes and a strong angled chin.

  “You’re just in time for dessert,” the man said.

  CHAPTER 53

  Jane gasped and ducked down, ready to dive into the water if he came for her. But Dave was busy with Mark. She watched from around the corner of the boat’s broad stern, her hand gripping the thick chrome exhaust pipe. She watched Dave tie Mark’s hands. Watched him drag Mark to the wooden beam stretched between two trees just off the corner of the cabin’s porch. A beam used for hanging deer carcasses.

  Jane had seen pictures growing up. Animals split open. Tree branches wedged between the silvery ribs, cooling the meat. Tongues lolling purple from the corners of mouths. Men in coats and hats. Standing proud with guns.

  Up went Mark. His hands bound together. Hanging from his wrists. Fingers splayed. His body swaying in the wind. Dave heaped firewood into a nearby circle of stones, doused it with fluid from a can, and set it ablaze. Orange sparks sailed up high and far, giving a face to the windy darkness.

  Dave went into the cabin and returned with something long and black, writhing like the water snakes. A knife gleamed in the firelight. Jane nearly cried out, but Dave only used it to cut away Mark’s shirt. The hose made a sickening hiss as it whipped through the air. The slippery sound of rubber tearing into flesh. Mark’s eyes jolted open. His agonized cry pierced the howling wind.