PRECIPICE (36 page)

“Jump,” Chip commanded in a loud voice over the water’s roar when they reached the edge of the torrent.

Ortiz turned and looked at his captor in surprise, the whites of his wide eyes glinting in the dim light.

“What!? What the fuck, man? I was just the messenger. I didn’t do anything! I didn’t kill anybody. I had no choice.” His Hispanic accent sounded thicker as he shouted the emotional protests.

“Jump,” Chip shouted again, raising the gun and straightening his arm to point it at Ortiz’s head. “Jump, or I’ll shoot.”

Ortiz hesitated a moment more, looking frantically back and forth as if searching for some opportunity for assistance or escape. Chip cocked the pistol and ominously took aim over the suppressor at the center of Ortiz’s forehead.

Facing certain death from a bullet or taking his chances with the river’s might, Ortiz turned and jumped. He hit the water and was instantly swept up in the rush. Chip watched him flail in the swirling water, trying in vain to struggle back toward shore. Then he disappeared over the lip of the falls and was gone.

Chucho stepped from the Malibu where he was parked halfway across the parking lot and followed his quarry at a discreet distance as they headed into the dark woods. As soon as he left the parking lot, he pulled the shiny .357 revolver from the back waistband of his jeans. The two men had made things surprisingly easy for him by traveling to such a remote location.

As he walked through the woods, the shadows played tricks on him. Occasional flickers of brightness danced through the trees to startle him, shining in his eyes and racing through his field of view before disappearing without a trace. The dark ground seemed to undulate beneath his feet, giving him the terrified impression that he was walking across a carpet of snakes. Chucho was terrified of snakes, although he’d never seen one in L.A. He was going to have to slow down on the crystal if he was going to keep it together for this job.

Chucho had dumped the girl’s body in the backwoods of Virginia some time around dawn on Saturday morning. Soon afterward he had arrived in DC and gotten a hotel room, where he had finally fallen asleep late Saturday night and slept until just before dawn on Monday. He’d spent a miserable day watching CSPAN2 on the cable TV in his hotel room, and had finally been forced to resort to a few more bumps of crank just to stay awake through the monotonous drone of US Senate procedure. When he finally saw that the international trucking bill had passed, he’d set out to find the home of his first target and had followed his quarry to the airport and back. He still had not sorted out who the blond stranger was with Juan Ortiz, but it mattered little. The guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it made little difference to Chucho whether he committed two murders today or only one.

He fell behind the other men while trying to make his way through the woods in the dark. When he finally reached the forest’s edge, he could barely make out the silhouettes of two men standing by the edge of the raging waterfall. He was shocked when he saw the other man raise a pistol to the head of Juan Ortiz. He was even more surprised a moment later when Ortiz leapt into the swollen river and was carried over the raging precipice by the flood.

Chucho watched as the remaining man began to make his way down the rocks along the water’s edge. He contemplated following the man and killing him or maybe attempting a shot from here, but this man was not his assignment. Plus, the writhing rocks still had him terrified that he might step on a serpent. It was time to move on to his next, more difficult task. He turned around and headed back through the woods to his stolen Chevy Malibu. He was about to start the car up when he changed his mind. Someone would certainly be looking for this car soon, so it was time for a change. He wiped down all of the surfaces that he had touched and retrieved his gym bag from the back seat. He walked to the back of the lot and tried the door of Ortiz’s silver Audi, and was pleased to find that it wasn’t locked. He was even happier to discover that the keys were in the ignition. He started the car and pulled slowly out of the lot.

Chip picked his way carefully down the rocky bank, watching to make sure that Ortiz didn’t resurface downstream. He wasn’t too worried. Even with proper dry gear and a lifejacket and helmet on, a trip over the falls would almost certainly lead to death at this high flow. Even an expert in a kayak would be hard pressed to survive it.

Ten minutes of scrambling later, Chip reached the crevice where his kayak was stashed. He pulled out his gear and began suiting up. He donned his drysuit over his street clothes and pulled the heavy waterproof metal zipper shut to seal himself inside. Next he put the pistol and his phone into his drybag and sealed the watertight closure, then he stowed the bag in the back of his kayak and clipped it in place with a carabiner. He struggled into his spraydeck, lifejacket, and helmet, then sat in his boat and sealed the deck. He picked up his paddle and scooted off the rocks into the flow.

He settled into a rhythm of paddling steadily through the dark. The section of the Potomac below Great Falls was called Mather Gorge. He had paddled it before. It was a surprisingly remote-feeling shallow canyon right here in DC, with generally easy intermediate rapids that were no problem for someone of Chip’s high level of skill, even in the dark. It was his second night paddle in only a week, and the experience brought back a welter of memories from the fateful night of the attack. He could still hear the rattle of gunshots and see the faces of his friends. Although his grief was still vivid, it helped him to know that they hadn’t died in vain. The problem had been much deeper than any of them had expected. There was a U.S. senator involved, and the cartels had been buying American policy with their ill-gotten gains. It consoled Chip to know that most of the people involved had been brought to justice. There was only one thing still left to take care of.

Two miles below his starting point at the falls Chip pulled over on the Maryland side of the river. He shouldered his kayak and walked three hundred yards through the woods to the lot where his Toyota was parked across from the Old Angler’s Inn. Ten minutes later he was back in his street clothes and driving away with his kayak secured on his makeshift roof rack. He soon pulled onto the Beltway and made his way to I-68.

Chip’s mind was swirling as he settled into the long interstate drive, trying diligently to rationalize what he had just done. Although he objectively knew that it was the right thing to do, it felt different than the men he had killed last week. This one wasn’t a reaction. It wasn’t done in the heat of the moment or out of a primal will to survive. Although he hadn’t actually ended the man’s life with his own hands, he admitted to himself that he had committed murder nonetheless.

His emotional response surprised him. In place of the remorse or regret that he had expected, there was only righteous satisfaction of a necessary job well done. Yes, he had taken a life; but he’d also fulfilled a duty he held toward his friends and which now was more clearly a duty to his country as well. He hadn’t ever necessarily considered himself a patriot, but he had certainly always felt proud to be an American and lucky to be born in such an amazing country. Not only had the man he’d just killed betrayed Chip’s team, he’d betrayed his country as well. It made his death seem justified—it was less about revenge or retribution and more about defending what was right. The realization helped to increase his resolve for the next thing that he had to do. It was time to take it to the next level.

23

Wednesday, November 30th

REDDISH DAWN LIGHT glowed softly through the Alabama pines as Chip locked up his truck and put the keys in the pocket of his river shorts. The old Tacoma was parked in a wide spot on the shoulder of a remote country road just outside the gate to the Little River Canyon Mouth Picnic Area. He couldn’t park inside because the truck would be here overnight, and the lot was designated for day-use-only. He’d swapped the plates for a set of Alabama tags that he’d swiped from a mechanic’s yard in the nearby town of Fort Payne well before dawn this morning. He’d pulled them off an old Camaro that looked like a long-term restoration project, and he hoped that it would be days before they discovered them missing. He would be long gone by then. His Toyota would draw less attention sitting here if it didn’t have out-of-state plates.

He turned around and began the one-mile jog back to the highway, where he hoped he could hitch a ride to the top of the river. It felt a lot easier since he’d been running almost every day for weeks, although the cut in his leg still ached. At this hour of the morning there was nobody on the rural road. He reached Highway 273 and put his thumb out. It wasn’t long before a Ford F-150 pulled over and invited him inside. There were plenty of people heading to work on the main thoroughfares. Chip had counted on it. Seven miles up the road his ride let him off in front of an old country store at the junction of 273 and Highway 35. The white cinderblock building looked more a storage shed than a store except for two weathered 1970s era gas pumps standing forlornly outside. It was only five more minutes before he caught another ride that took him the final three miles up Highway 35 to the parking lot at Little River Canyon Falls. Chip thanked the gentleman who had given him the ride then walked across the parking lot and into the woods to retrieve his kayak. He had hidden it there before dawn.

It had been a long couple of days. He’d driven a straight shot down I-81 on Monday night, sleeping in his truck at a rest area thirty miles northeast of Wytheville, VA. Another five and a half hours of driving had followed on Tuesday morning with a stop off to buy some supplies at the Bass Pro Shops outlet near Sevierville, TN. He had ended up at a hotel room in Chattanooga that he’d rented with his new debit card under his new name. Eric West had gotten a nice room—it wasn’t like he was short on funds. He’d gone for a quick run and then settled in and spent the afternoon using the hotel’s wireless connection. Unlike his improvised adventure in DC on Monday evening, he had carefully planned every detail of this mission by poring over Google Earth imagery, property plat maps, sun and moon position charts, and river flow graphs, as well as the published schedule of hunting seasons from the website of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. He had also carefully checked the DC news for any reports on the death of Senator Moore’s chief of staff, but apparently nobody had noticed that he was missing yet. That suited Chip just fine.

His plan was inspired by his trip to the jungle, and he had mimicked the careful preparation that his former team had done in every way except for one. There would be no one to cover his back this time. He was going alone. The other thing that he fervently hoped would be different is that nobody would be waiting to ambush him when he arrived. His move would be a total surprise because he was the only one who knew what he was planning. He was determined to keep it that way from now on.

Chip located his kayak in the woods and took a few minutes to struggle into his paddling gear. In the boat were two drybags loaded with lightweight camping equipment, food, and the other things that he would need. Once he was geared up, he shouldered the heavy boat and made his way back to the parking lot and across to the other side. A short boardwalk led down to Little River Falls. When Chip reached the smooth bedrock shelf at the river’s edge, he put his kayak down and had a look.

The wide river plunged over a thirty-five foot precipice in front of him. There were two common routes over the falls. The first was a sheer thirty-five foot plunge off the center, but the flow was a bit too low for that today. It was easy to land flat there, and the water on that route would not be aerated enough to cushion the blow and prevent a broken spine. Chip eyed the usual route near the left bank on which he stood. It began with a ten-foot drop onto a shallow rock shelf cushioned by the water’s flow. There would be time for maybe one more paddle stroke in the rushing water before the final twenty-foot plunge into the pool below. Chip had done it literally dozens of times before.

He walked upstream and climbed into his boat, then covered the cockpit opening with his spraydeck and made sure it was secure. As he slid his hands into the protection of neoprene sleeves velcroed to his paddle shaft, he watched the puffs of his breath in the morning chill. This was going to be ‘invigorating,’ which was paddler-code for freezing cold. He slid swiftly into the water, taking no time to contemplate a move that he knew by heart. He was swept up by the current and accelerated toward the drop. He took one final paddle stroke to lift the front of his kayak as he launched off a curling wave of water at the lip of the falls. He sailed through the air and landed softly on the shelf of rock ten feet below, between the two tiers of the waterfall. With a thick layer of water running over the sloped rocks, there was little noticeable impact at all. He took one gentle stroke and was airborne again, this time leaning forward as he fell to pierce into the deep pool at the base of the falls.

Chip paddled across the pool and settled into a steady rhythm of strokes as he continued down the canyon. The whitewater started slowly and gradually built in intensity over the next mile and a half. When Chip saw a set of high-tension power lines spanning the canyon and river high overhead, he knew the harder whitewater was about to begin. He slowed his pace and carefully paddled through a complicated rapid called Cable Falls. Shortly below that he ran the largest rapid of the day—a monstrous curling flume known as Pinball. After a couple more rapids, the river mellowed a bit as giant sandstone cliffs loomed high overhead on both sides. He looked around as he paddled, taking in the splendor of his surroundings and the peacefulness he felt here in a small pocket of wilderness tucked in Alabama’s northeast corner.

About two miles below Pinball Rapid, the pace picked up again. Chip carefully launched himself seven feet over the dangerous recirculation at Roadblock Rapid, then steeled himself for the final major paddling challenge of his trip. This one was called Humpty Dumpty—a long, dangerous rapid that demanded a lot of respect. He dropped into the swift flow and over the first ledge, careful to avoid a dangerous slot on the right. It was soon over, and he once again relaxed into a rhythm on the easier rapids that followed. He was now traversing one of the deepest and most scenic portions of the gorge. It was still barely 9 in the morning, and he had traveled about four miles down the canyon. He was making incredible time.