PRECIPICE (38 page)

Thursday, December 1st

THE ALARM ON Chip’s phone startled him awake at 4:30 in the morning. He involuntarily groaned as he struggled to shut off the annoying noise, fumbling around for the correct spot on the touchscreen in the dark. The cold air stung his hands and the exposed skin of his face. It took a lot of willpower to exit his cozy, down-filled sleeping bag in conditions like this, but he resigned himself to the unpleasant task. He struggled into his thermal long johns and a fleece top, then pulled his camouflage clothes on over it. He also crammed the camouflage fleece hat onto his head and pulled on a pair of Thinsulate-lined black leather gloves. He had a quick breakfast of granola bars then washed it down with a 5-hour Energy drink. He winced at the disgusting taste of the thick liquid, but he needed the kick to get him moving. It was the most caffeine he could get in a tiny package that would fit easily in his boat. He rinsed his mouth out with some water to rid himself of the bitter aftertaste from the artificial sweetener.

Ten minutes after waking up he was walking by the dim red light of his headlamp toward the gully he’d used to reach the rim of the canyon the day before. It was slower going in the dark than it had been the previous day, but it helped that he remembered the circuitous path he’d taken around many of the obstacles on his prior trip. When he reached the top he used the driveway next door to Moore’s house to get quickly to the gravel road, and then he walked along the road toward the trail that led into the field near Moore’s deer stand. The going was much quicker on this route, and he had little worry of being spotted by anyone this long before dawn. If a vehicle came down the road he would hear the motor and see the lights in plenty of time to duck into the woods and hide. Once off the road, he stayed in the woods so as not to leave footprints in the soft earth of the trail or the muddy edge of the field.

He reached the base of the oak tree and located the deer stand high above him. As he looked up, he couldn’t believe that the burly old senator regularly made that climb. It was no problem for Chip. A few seconds later, he pulled himself onto the wooden platform. He took the suppressor from his pocket and screwed it onto the threaded end of his Sig’s barrel, then he lay down on his back on the rough-cut wooden planks to wait.

The low-slung Audi bottomed out as it bounced along a potholed gravel road between rows of southern long-leafed pines, the undercarriage making scraping noises that occasionally made Chucho cringe. It had taken forever to find the turnoff to the obscure country road, and he hoped that he was finally headed in the right direction. He was far more at home in a maze of city streets than he was in the backwoods boonies of Alabama. Ghostly shadows flickered around the edges of the cone of light cast by the small car’s headlights. Chucho drove with his muscles tensed and hands clenched around the steering wheel, half expecting a bear or a sasquatch to charge into his path from the murky forest at any second.

He found what he hoped was the correct turn onto another dirt backroad and made a right, then wove his way painstakingly along the new route. He eased down the road turning ninety degrees first one way and then the other and then back again, following the vague directions from the Audi’s navigation system as it led him to the address that he’d extracted from Senator Moore’s wife. It was still about twenty minutes before dawn when he saw the proper address displayed in plastic letters nailed to a tree near the end of a gravel drive. He slowly pulled down the driveway and parked in front of the house near a white Ford F250. He twisted around to open the gym bag that was resting on the back seat and fetched his sawed-off pump-action twelve gauge. He racked the slide to put a double-aught buckshot shell in the pipe, then he opened the door and stepped out of the car into the pre-dawn chill. Despite the fact that he was still wearing only the sleeveless t-shirt, the bite of the cold air only energized him more.

He started toward the house with the shotgun held in front of him. He could see that there were lights on in the other side of the rustic, cabin style home despite the early hour. He walked around to the side and climbed a short staircase onto a wooden deck that overlooked an enormous, dark canyon below. Through a sliding glass door he could see the large, open living room and kitchen area of the home with a couple small lamps casting dim light throughout the room. There didn’t appear to be anyone at home.

Chucho tried the sliding door and was pleased to find that it wasn’t locked. He entered the house and quietly checked every room, finding that the house was, in fact, deserted. He let himself out the door which led from a small mud room to the gravel parking area where the Ford pickup and his Audi were parked. As he walked down the steps, he noticed boot prints of dried, red mud leading from the driveway and up the stairs. He ducked back inside the mudroom and rustled through some shelves piled with hunting equipment until he located a large black Maglight. Flipping the flashlight on, he went back out the door and began following the muddy red boot prints down the gravel drive. Whoever had made them was a very large man. Despite his relative lack of experience in the outdoors, Chucho was easily able to follow the giant tracks down the driveway, across the road, and onto a trail that led into the woods on the far side.

As the minutes stretched out toward dawn, the morning chill set into Chip’s bones. He alternated between tightly tensing and releasing all of his muscles in an effort to stay warm. All of this waiting was definitely an uncomfortable game, and he longed to be moving—doing anything other than lying here completely still. Every time his mind wandered to what he was about to do, his heart started racing and butterflies rose in his stomach. He tried not to think about it and distracted himself instead with thoughts of his upcoming trip to South America. Those thoughts only brought him another dose of melancholy as he remembered that he would be making the trip without Sam. It was amazing to him that he could miss someone who he barely even knew, and with whom he had only spent three bizarre days. The pang of grief took him back around to thoughts of his current mission, a vicious mental recirculation that brought on the palpitations and butterflies again. He was actually relieved when he finally heard plodding footsteps approaching through the dark. He rolled silently onto his stomach and waited with the pistol clutched tightly in his right hand.

It didn’t take long. He heard the footsteps reach the bottom of the tree. Next, he heard the metal-on-metal sound of a rifle’s slide pulling back slightly, but not the rack of it slamming home a round. Chip surmised that Moore was making sure gun didn’t have a round in the chamber before he climbed the tree, just like Chip’s dad had taught him many years before. He waited breathlessly and listened to the older man grunting as he climbed ponderously up the stakes pounded into the trunk of the tree.

Chip saw Moore’s arms first as they crested above the level of the planks. He could hear the man puffing and wheezing from the exertion of the climb. As Moore’s head peeked over the top of the boards, Chip reached out and pressed the fat, cold end of the pistol’s suppressor against the older man’s head. Moore’s eyes widened in surprise, and Chip though for a moment that he might lose his grip and fall to the ground.

After a moment, Moore regained his composure. “You’re in my deer stand, young man,” he rumbled.

It was the first time Chip had heard his deep voice in person, and he was struck by the southern drawl.

“I’m not here to hunt deer,” Chip answered quietly. He slowly climbed to his feet without letting his aim waver and motioned for Moore to finish his climb. Moments later they were both standing on the small platform with Chip’s pistol trained now on Moore’s barrel chest.

Moore seemed resigned to his fate. It didn’t take a huge leap of reasoning for him to figure out what this was all about. He should have known it was coming. He almost welcomed it. This young man would finish the task that Moore couldn’t complete for himself.

“Put the gun down—slowly,” Chip instructed, then watched as the older man unslung the Remington from his shoulder and leaned over to lay it carefully on the bench in front of the trunk of the oak. Then the man straightened up and looked resignedly at his captor.

“You killed her,” Chip said frankly, and then gave his words a moment to sink in.

In the back of his mind, Sheldon had known this was coming too. For a moment, Chip thought the big man was going to break down and cry; but no matter how much Chip searched his soul for some forgiveness, he felt nothing but contempt for the man who had caused him so much turmoil, heartache, and pain over the last ten days.

Sheldon looked sadly into the young stranger’s fiery eyes, seeing nothing but righteous rage and knowing that even this unbridled ferocity was far less than what he deserved. It wasn’t because of the money, and it wasn’t about forsaking his country or pushing the accursed trucking bill. For him, it was about his betrayal of his own flesh and blood, and the thought of it finally brought tears to his eyes. The large man began to tremble and struggled not to collapse into sobs.

Chip watched the other man’s reaction. He searched his soul for pity as he watched the older man’s heart breaking before his eyes. He could see the entire sordid story written in Moore’s anguished expression, but the truth was that Chip didn’t care. This man had killed his friends. He’d even caused the death of his own daughter through his greed. No matter how deep his remorse, it wasn’t anywhere close to enough. It wasn’t enough for Roberts and Mendez, not enough for the crazy, ever-reliable Duval or for sweet, beautiful Sam. He thought back to the first morning he’d awakened with her on the banks of the river in the middle of the Mexican jungle. He could still hear her broken-heartedly crying in her sleep and calling out to her dad in hope of rescue. Chip was consumed not by pity but by hatred for this weak, duplicitous man. The tears now served only to raise Chip’s ire.

“All she wanted to do was please you,” his words lashed out viciously.

He could see the message slam into Moore harder than any blow, and he was satisfied when the older man dissolved finally into uncontrolled sobs.

“She loved you, and you let her die,” Chip continued, his statement of truth twisting like a knife through the other man’s heart for a second time.

Moore looked into Chip’s hard eyes with an expression that said without doubt that he knew the words were true. His destruction was complete. No bullet or torture could cause him more hurt.

Chip stepped forward with one foot braced and reached out, planted his left hand in the center of Moore’s chest, and gave a contemptuous shove. He was careful not to shift his weight so far forward that his momentum would carry him over the edge, and he quickly jerked his hand back lest the other man grab it and take him along for the deadly ride. The large man teetered for a second as he lost his balance. As he toppled backwards his eyes finally took on a look of calm. He seemed to hang suspended for a long moment, his considerable weight tottering but not yet traveling its grim transit from the edge of the platform to the jagged rocks below. And then suddenly he was gone.

Chip heard a sickening crunch as the huge man impacted on the uneven, boulder-strewn ground eighteen feet below. He peeked over the edge in the first blush of dawn light. He could see the silhouette of the large figure splayed out where he had landed flat on his back.

Chip calmly unscrewed the suppressor and replaced it in his pocket then returned his Sig to the holster in the waistband of his pants. As he turned to descend the ladder of spikes nailed into the tree, he heard the rumble of a shotgun blast. A section of the platform beside him exploded, showering him with shards of wood and startling him so badly that he almost lost his grip and joined the senator on the jagged rock pile below. A burst of adrenaline surged through him, and he vaulted himself back onto the precarious wooden perch to find whatever cover he could from his mysterious assailant, arriving prone on the platform just as the shotgun rumbled a second time, and another shower of wood chunks pelted across his face.

Chucho was terrified as he made his way into the dark woods. The trail of boot prints had disappeared, blending into the muddy track from which they had originally emerged. His vision was distorted from seventy-two sleepless hours, and there was a loud buzzing noise ringing continually in his ears. He gripped the Maglight so tightly in his powerful grasp that he threatened to crush the metal. He brandished the sawed-off shotgun before him in the other hand, with his massively muscled arm tensed and raised. He swung nervously back and forth as he heard sounds or saw flickers of movement in the trees, only to find that there was nothing lurking near him in the darkness except for the shadows of his own fear. He was totally removed from his element and a long way from L.A. He wanted to escape this land of horrors as quickly as possible, but he knew he had to finish the job first.

After a short distance through the trees, the trail broke into a large open field. Chucho turned off the flashlight with relief. He reacquired the trail of footprints in the soft mud and followed them along the south side of the field before turning a corner to head north along the eastern fringe. He passed an area scattered with spent shotgun shell hulls, and then saw the tracks veer off toward a jumble of rocks along one edge of the field. He was just about to step onto the stones when he was startled by the sickening crunch of something large falling from far up in a nearby tree. In his altered state, it took him a few moments to locate where the object had fallen from. He strained his eyes in the dim dawn light, peering into the heights of a large oak where he could barely make out a wooden platform high above the ground.

As his hazy view slowly resolved to clarity, Chucho suddenly saw movement on the platform. He was sure it was real this time. He raised the shotgun without hesitation and unleashed a thunderous blast of buckshot at a man who was moving on the perch high above. He was gratified to see a shower of wood chips fly as the double-aught pellets disintegrated a section of the platform. He tensed his sinewy arm, racked the slide, tightened his hand on the shotgun’s grip, and banged off another heavy round.