PRECIPICE (6 page)

“Yeah, yeah. Daddy’s little girl. Call me when you get outta class. Stuart’s coming by later…” he left it open ended, an invitation.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, I have to study,” she deferred, momentarily ashamed to even be here.

He rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head.

Samantha headed for the door and stopped cold when she saw her image in the mirror tacked to the inside. Her long, thin, blonde hair was a rat’s nest of tangles sticking out in all directions. Her skin was pasty, and the black pits under her eyes made her look like a zombie. The baggy t-shirt ballooned out above the top of her jeans, obscuring her shapely figure. She thought she looked like a shabby homeless person. She ran her fingers through her hair, wincing as she pulled out the tangles and smoothed it against her pounding head. Why did she even hang out with Brett? She didn’t belong here. She stepped into the hall and slammed the door behind her a little bit harder than necessary to get his attention. This was all his fault. This wasn’t her.

Outside, she kept her head down as she made her way across campus.
Fucking California sun never quits in fall
, she thought. It was eighty-seven degrees out still. What was wrong with this place? It wasn’t this hot in DC in October. She missed the crisp mornings and fall colors. That was about all she missed, though. She’d chosen Stanford because it was as far from DC as she could get while still meeting her mother’s Ivy League standards. She was especially happy to escape the DC culture and her place in it as ‘the senator’s daughter.’

She ducked into the campus grocery to buy a Cherry Coke to settle her stomach, grateful for the moment of reprieve in the air conditioning. Feeling a little better, she sipped her Coke on the five-minute walk to the arched portal into the courtyard of her dorm. Her footsteps echoed loudly in her head, and she was acutely aware of the raspy sound of her own breathing. She felt like she was walking beside herself. She made her way across the courtyard, skirted the fountain, and entered a vaulted lobby that felt more like it belonged in a church than a dormitory.

Back in her room with thirteen minutes to spare, Sam splashed some cold water on her face. There wasn’t time for a shower. Her suitemate was nowhere to be found, which was a relief. She was embarrassed enough that she’d had to walk across campus looking like this, embarrassed by what she had done last night. Little miss perfect would never understand. She pulled off Brett’s t-shirt and her jeans and threw them in the hamper, pulling on some pajama bottoms and her own clean tank top. She could still smell alcohol sweating through her clammy skin, but at least she didn’t feel quite as dirty. She collected her thoughts as she slumped onto her bed and finished the last of the cherry Coke, wishing she could simply will away the headache for a few minutes while they talked. She’d have to fake it, but that was her specialty.

At 12:53, she figured she might as well get it over with. She scrolled through her contacts and tapped the entry for “Daddy.” He picked up on the second ring. She could tell he’d been waiting.

“Hello?” She wondered why he always said that. The older generation must not be down with caller ID yet.

“Hi Daddy!” she bubbled as best she could.

“Hey sweetheart! How’s my little girl?”

“I’m OK,” she said with not quite enough enthusiasm.

“What’s the matter darlin’? You sound tired.”

Shit. She wasn’t bubbling hard enough. Think fast. “I pulled an all-nighter for my first econ exam this morning.”

“Oh. How’d you do?”

“Pretty good, I think.”

“I’m sure you did fine,” he reassured her. She had been a straight ‘A’ student in high school and her freshman college year, and he expected nothing less from her now.

“How about you? Did you get anything this weekend?”

“Well, that tropical storm came through on Saturdy, so I got rained out. Got five on Sundy, though.”

He sounded even more like a bumpkin to her now that she lived in California than he had when she’d lived in DC. “Oooooh!” she crowed. “Are you gonna cook ‘em?”

“Yeah, I put ‘em on the grill Sundy night.”

Sam was grossed out. She’d become vegetarian about three weeks into her freshman year, and the thought of gnawing on a bird carcass was disgusting. As long as he was eating healthy, though, she could tolerate it. “Have you been exercising?”

“Well, I was gone all weekend, but I’m planning to go downstairs and work out this afternoon.” It made him feel so good that she cared enough to keep prodding him about it. Her mother couldn’t care less. “Do you need anything, darlin’?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve got to get a dress for my fall formal,” she said, making sure to sound reluctant.

“What happened to the spending money we sent with you?” She had only been gone three weeks, for Christ’s sake.

“I had to use it on sorority dues, and my books were more this quarter.” She had quit the sorority this year and needed neither dues nor dress, but he didn’t need to know that.

Sheldon inhaled sharply as he thought of the cost of a formal dress. They’d been down this road with the prom for her private high school. It was a pissing contest to see who could buy the most expensive dress, and his wife had insisted that they not look like hillbillies by falling short. He’d be lucky to get away for under a grand. College was milking him dry. He sighed in resignation. “I’ll talk to your mother, and we’ll send you a check. Everything else is OK?”

“Yeah, it’s good. I’m just tired. I’ve gotta clean up and get across campus for my 2:15 class. Take care of yourself, Daddy.”

“You too, sweetheart. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And she was gone. Sheldon sat back and slipped the phone into his shirt pocket then raised the glass of Basil Hayden’s on ice to his lips with his other hand for a long sip. Hopefully the stress would end next month, and he would be able to give her everything she needed. He swallowed the last of the bourbon in one final gulp and set the glass on his desk. He stood from the enormous chair and grabbed his coat, heading for the Health and Fitness Facility for his afternoon workout. He wouldn’t let his little girl down.

3

Tuesday, October 11th

MULTIHUED LIGHT STREAMED through the tall, stained-glass windows. The hardwood floor creaked as Chip made his way through the maze of tables toward one in the far corner, coffee in hand. It was good to warm back up after a weekend of rafting and camping in the fall chill. There weren’t many places for a morning meeting in this area of West Virginia, but this old church-turned-coffee-shop was a nice one.
Breakfast meeting
, Chip chuckled to himself. He couldn’t remember ever having one before. The Cathedral Café’s tall walls were lined with bookshelves, and people filled most of the tables, quietly eating, reading, or surfing the internet on their laptops before a day of adventuring. This anomalous hideaway had sprung up in the small West Virginia town of Fayetteville as an oasis of culture for the hordes of whitewater paddlers, rock climbers, and mountain bikers who swarmed to the area for its world-class outdoor recreation.

He placed his coffee carefully on the table and shook hands with the two men, who both stood to greet him.

“Chip, we really appreciate you joining us this morning,” Sutherland began with characteristic politeness and polish.

Chip slid into a chair across the table from Harris and next to Sutherland, who returned to the seat with his back to the wall. In a concession to blending in, Sutherland was wearing only slacks, a button-up shirt with no tie, and a windbreaker. He still looked out of place in a room full of outdoors people in ball caps and fleece. Harris fit in nicely, his athletic frame covered in a forest-green fleece sweater, jeans, and hiking boots, and his cheeks and chin shaded with dark stubble.

“No problem,” Chip replied cautiously, increasingly curious as to what this was about. He’d expected Harris at the meeting after receiving his call last week, but Sutherland’s presence was a surprise. Authority figures sometimes made Chip uneasy, and the physically unimpressive Sutherland somehow carried an aura of command about him. He’d been told they would pay him five hundred dollars to look at some images of a river and give his opinion. He thought they might be taking this adventure race thing too seriously, but he would be happy to take their money for nothing. Maybe he’d even buy a new kayak to take to Ecuador. He couldn’t understand how these guys had so many funds to put toward a race, but he wasn’t complaining. There was no use trying to understand people with money. They existed in a world completely apart from Chip’s carefree, hand-to-mouth lifestyle.

Sutherland spoke quietly so that his voice wouldn’t carry to the other tables. “Before we begin, I need to insist that you keep what we’re about to discuss completely confidential. We’re willing to pay you twice what we offered, but it’s imperative that you don’t speak about this with anyone, not even your coworkers or river friends.”

Chip blinked in a moment of surprise. This wasn’t what he had expected. Now they were getting all cloak-and-dagger about an adventure race? They were definitely taking this thing too seriously. “Yeah, OK,” he shrugged. He would play along, especially if it meant more cash.

They paused for a moment as a waitress brought food for Harris and Chip. It seemed that Sutherland was sticking with coffee. Chip figured him for the type who ate a bran muffin at 6 AM.

The older man reached down into a briefcase next to his chair and extracted his laptop. He placed it on the table in front of him, opened it, and powered it up. He pulled his glasses from a pocket and put them on while Chip and Harris attacked potatoes and eggs. Sutherland waited patiently for the computer to boot then entered a password to gain access to the encrypted hard drive. He slid his finger across the trackpad and then tapped and tapped again, pulling up the same satellite imagery that he had looked at with Harris the week before. There it was: the green jungle with a ribbon of white meandering through it, the cliff walls, waterfall, and pool. He beckoned for Chip to scoot his chair around where he could see, conscious of keeping the screen hidden from everyone else in the room.

Sutherland pointed a slender finger at the screen. “We need to get our team down the river here, and then stop right here.” He indicated the point just above the white smudge entering the pool.

Chip was instantly intrigued. This was his kind of river: remote, steep, and obviously littered with waterfalls. His heart rate increased just looking at it. He immediately saw the problem. “How big is that falls?”

Sutherland zoomed in for a better view. “We think it’s about sixty feet.”

Chip tried to play it cool and hide his growing excitement. The landing of the drop looked clean. He had kayaked off a couple of waterfalls that tall—one in British Columbia and another in Chile. The idea of being the first person to run a new falls as beautiful as this one instantly had him wondering where it was and how he could talk his way into going along. He crammed a forkful of fried potatoes into his mouth to hide his excitement and peered harder at the screen while he chewed.

Then he noticed the quality of the image. Chip had spent countless hours scouting for new rivers using Google Earth—popular free software that accessed satellite imagery of most of the globe. The picture was never this detailed, though. He could make out individual rocks in the river, and individual branches on the overhanging trees. Where did they get this data? Something was wrong here: Navy SEALs, a mysterious grey-haired gentleman, high-resolution satellite imagery, and a promise of silence? He sat up straighter in his chair, got control of his racing heart, and noisily swallowed the mouthful of food. He took a deep breath and leaned in to look more closely at the screen, both frightened and fascinated by the possibilities.

Sutherland registered Chip’s change in manner. This kid was smart—too smart for the prepared cover story. He hadn’t had high hopes for that anyway, counting more on paying him to keep his mouth shut. If they were indeed going to recruit this young man for the mission, they would have to tell him what this was all about at some point. He didn’t like how loose they were playing this; but on a hurry-up, proof-of-concept mission with limited resources, it was the best that they could do. He hoped they weren’t making a terrible mistake. He’d have to trust Harris’ judgment.

“It would help to know generally where this is, what time of year the photos were taken, and when you’re planning to go,” Chip said cautiously. He was now extremely wary of asking too many questions, but also burning with curiosity about this mysterious and alluring canyon. Besides, he would have to know in order to give an accurate answer.

Sutherland’s and Harris’ eyes met across the table. Harris raised his eyebrows. He was starting to get the picture of the complexity of what they were trying to accomplish and was grateful that they were learning more from Chip’s experience before diving in.

“Just tell us if it can be done, please,” Sutherland said sternly, turning has gaze back toward Chip.

“At the water level shown in this picture, no. At lower water it might be possible to stop, although that eddy is still gonna be really small for a raft. Overall, I’d say the water looks too high for running the river at all when these pictures were taken.” It was the best answer Chip could give based on the information.

“What about in a kayak?” Harris prodded.

“I could probably catch that eddy, especially at lower water.” Chip used ‘I’ instead of ‘you’ in a subconscious indication that he would like the chance to try.

“Then could you throw us a rope?”

“If there was an anchor in the rock, maybe I could rope you in before you went over the falls.” This was starting to sound crazy, but he’d realized on the river just over a week ago that ordinary rules didn’t apply to these SEALs. Chip looked more closely at the picture, noticing the thatched roofs on the canyon rim for the first time. Until now, he had been so excited that he’d only focused on the river. “Would it be possible to get down to the river from these buildings ahead of time to set an anchor?”