The day after: An apocalyptic morning (19 page)

              "And what if you are wrong?"

              He looked at her levelly. "Than I'll die. Sometimes you have to gamble. I think this is a good one."

              She said no more. She only turned her face from him and wept softly. Beside her, Jack was fighting not to do the same.

              It was late afternoon again when he departed; about two hours before sunset. He kissed Christine, shook Jack's hand, and then gave both of them a few encouraging words and some final instructions. He then left them, climbing up the rise again. He traveled lightly, absent of his pack and his sleeping bag. He left his M-16 and his hunting rifle behind as well, taking only his trusty .40 caliber, which was strapped to his waist. He wanted to be able to maneuver freely and, most important, he did not want to appear to be an immediate threat when he was finally discovered.

              His observations throughout the day had shown him exactly where the daytime guards of the bridge were located. They had hidden their bunker well but had foolishly given away its location by the muzzle-flashes of the guns they fired to keep intruders away. Predictably it was near the crest of the hill overlooking the bridge. Keeping this location in mind, Skip always kept boulders between it and him once he reached the top. He then started down the far side, the side that was not visible from the Garden Hill side of the canyon.

              The going was a little rough at first and several times he very nearly lost his grip and went sliding downward. But at last, about three-quarters of the way to the bottom, the angle leveled out to something a little less suicidal and he was able to move more freely. He nearly trotted the rest of the way down until he was once more in the safety of the trees and shrubs. Being in the open had scared him more than the threat of falling.

              Once at the bottom, he worked his way carefully, moving tree to tree, keeping a sharp eye and a sharp ear out around him. There were probably a lot of people about, camped out in the woods trying to figure out a way across the bridge. He had no desire to run into any of them.

              It took him the better part of an hour to reach the road. In a way it was surreal seeing a stretch of two-lane blacktop after so many days of wandering in the wilderness. Though it had undoubtedly been washed out in many places and rendered all but impassible, this section was still intact. He paused near the edge of it, watching both directions carefully for any signs of life. Seeing nothing he finally crossed, doing it at a full-out sprint and diving into cover on the other side. He kept another watch on that side for a few minutes to see if he had attracted any attention.

              When he began to move again, he paralleled the pavement, sticking to the woods to travel but walking exactly twenty yards from the roadbed as he closed with the bridge. In front of him loomed the large granite ridge that had been opposite the one he and his group had observed from. The two hills had once been connected until high explosives had blown them in two so the roadway could be constructed.

              Skip, during his observations of the Garden Hill security measures, had noted a fatal blind spot in their plan. The crest of the upstream hill was hidden from the view of the guards by the bulk of the downstream hill. He exploited that blind spot now by climbing to the top. The going was a little steeper than what he had endured on the other side and it was doubtful that anyone with a full pack could have negotiated the ascent, but less than ten minutes after he started up, he was at the summit, crouching behind a rock and looking out over the small portion of bridge that was visible to him.

              He looked out over to the summit of the other hill, which was about a quarter mile away. He couldn't see Christine and Jack there - they were too well concealed - but he waved at them anyway, knowing that they would be glad to see that he had made it that far. They did not wave back - he had taught them better than that - but he knew they had seen him.

              The downside of the hill was even steeper than the upside over here. He worked his way towards the canyon, necessarily confined to a narrow portion of the hill that was hidden from the guards view. He slipped several times and had to grasp for dear life onto boulders or rocks to keep from bouncing and tumbling all the way down. For the first time he began to wonder if this was really such a good idea as he realized that, if he fell, he would not stop at the bottom but would instead continue over the edge of the cliff, falling several hundred feet into the rushing waters below.

              "Relax," he told himself, taking a few breaths and regaining his equilibrium. "Just take it slow."

              He took it slow. He continued to work his way downward and finally, after nearly twenty minutes, he was resting on a narrow outcropping of rock that protruded out over the canyon. He was below the roadway of the bridge itself by about twenty feet. A narrow ledge led from where he was to the point where the steel support section joined the walls about a hundred yards away. He edged along the ridge slowly, trying not to look down into those rushing waters, until he had gone as far as possible without being spotted from the guards' lookout. He then began looking for a place to conceal himself.

              He forced himself into a tight ball between two outcroppings of rock and kept his head down. From here he was able to peer through a small gap and see the two SUVs at the front of the bridge but hopefully, not be spotted when the guard came to set up the cameras. He thought he was fairly safe from detection as long as they did not look directly at the spot where he was hiding. To help minimize this threat he put his fingers into the brownish muck that had accumulated under the rocks and smeared it all over his face, hair, and any exposed clothing. When he was done he was nothing more than a shadow among shadows.

              He waited.

              As the light faded from the landscape and night began to fall, he saw the guard approaching the SUVs that guarded his end. It was another female, different from any he had spotted the night before. She went through the set-up procedure quickly and then spoke into her walkie-talkie. Apparently receiving the answer that she wanted to hear, she turned and began to move back across the bridge, passing out of his line of sight.

              He waited some more, staying in place as the landscape around him grew darker and darker. He had a narrow window in which he would be able to act. He had managed to place himself so he could approach the bridge without being detected by their cameras, but he could only avoid detection by the guards themselves if he waited until it was too dark to be seen by them. At the same time however, he needed some light so he could see where he was going as he moved along the ledge to the bridge. Trying to negotiate that last fifty yards in complete darkness was a thought that did not even bear contemplating.

              Fortunately it was easy to tell when that particular window had been reached. When Skip could no longer see across the canyon, he knew it was time. He pulled himself out of his hiding place and continued his trip along the ledge, taking each step carefully and slowly. Several times he dislodged loose rocks, sending them tumbling downhill and over the edge. Thankfully the deafening roar of the water below easily masked the sound that this created.

              At last he reached the bridge. He ducked under one of the massive steel supports and, utilizing the last of the light available to him, scrambled up another ridge until he was able to put his hands on the maintenance catwalk. This narrow access was suspended from the bottom of the bridge by steel support beams that were located every twenty feet. During his examination earlier that day, he had counted these beams, finding that there were exactly 198 individual supports on each side. Now, he pulled himself up and ducked under the handrails that had been mounted along the length on both sides. He put his feet on the grated metal surface and breathed silent thanks that he had managed to make it to relative safety without falling to his death.

              Just behind him was an L-shaped platform that protruded outward to the edge of the bridge. It had a ladder bolted to it that allowed access up onto the roadway. Skip knew that there was another such platform at the other end of the bridge, exactly 192 support columns away from where he now stood. The townspeople had foolishly left the two ladders in place. He had no interest in the ladder behind him since it only would have led him directly up to where the cameras were pointing. But the ladder on the other end, that one he had uses for.

              He began to walk along the catwalk, keeping his hands on the handrail as he went. He stepped carefully, his boots treading along the grated surface. Each time his hand passed over one of the support beams he counted off silently to himself, thus keeping track of his progress. He was disconcerted to discover that the entire catwalk was rocking gently back and forth in the wind, the sway increasing the further out over the canyon that he went. He began to wonder about the structural integrity of the surface he was walking on. Was it possible that the earthquake had loosened the catwalk but left the bridge intact? Not being an engineer, he simply didn't know. But he had gone too far to turn back now.

              By the time he reached column 96, the light had disappeared completely, forcing him to move by feel only. Though this was part of his plan he still was forced to struggle with doubts about his ability to ascend back to the roadway blindly. True he had obsessively studied the ladder on the other side of the bridge through his rifle scope that afternoon, and true, he had the layout of the platform memorized to the last detail, but now that the reality of what he was doing was here, worry assaulted him.

              Nevertheless, he pushed on. Skip was not a quitter. The closer to the far end of the bridge he came, the slower and more carefully he walked. For the first time he wondered if maybe the guards up above had another night vision equipped video camera that they used to periodically check the catwalk with. It would be a simple Micker of climbing out of their SUV from time to time and leaning over the access ladder to point the camera downward. Surely they hadn't completely disregarded the possibility that someone would infiltrate them in the manner that he was now utilizing. After all, despite a few glaring security breaches they had proven themselves to be rather clever.

              Oh well, he finally concluded, if that was the case then they would catch him. There was simply no way for him to counter that possibility. He continued on.

              Nearly thirty minutes after he had started walking across, Skip's hand finally touched the 192nd structural support beam. He stopped, listening carefully but hearing nothing but the rushing water. This did not make him feel any better.

              He shuffled forward a few more steps, using the handrails to support his weight while his left foot stretched out over the side of the catwalk. It encountered nothing but empty air for the first couple of steps but finally, right where he had thought it would be, it encountered the grated surface of the ladder platform stretching out to the side. He withdrew his foot and stepped two more steps forward, turning to his left as he went and facing out over the canyon. He moved his foot around again, familiarizing himself with the small dimensions of the platform. It was narrower than the catwalk surface, only about eighteen inches wide, barely enough to squeeze between the rails.

              He ducked under the catwalk handrail and made his way out onto the platform. Moving as slow as ever, he began to move outward at a 90-degree angle. The platform extended out a little more than ten feet, to just beyond the edge of the bridge, and then it made another 90 degree turn to the right. This last section was only about two feet long, just big enough to house the ladder that led up to the guardrail and the roadway. When he reached the turn in the platform he looked upward into the darkness, the rain falling on his face. He saw absolutely nothing, nor did he hear anything. He took the fact that no one was challenging him or shooting at him to be a sign of his success so far.

              He turned his body around and, groping blindly, finally found a rung of the ladder. He pulled himself over to it and gave it a soft, experimental tug to see if it was loose or if it was going to rattle as he climbed. It seemed relatively solid in its mountings so he put his foot on the first step and pulled himself upward. He climbed one step at a time, pausing as he went up each rung, until finally his hand touched the top of the guardrail itself.

              He pulled himself up two more steps until his head was up over the rail. The end of the bridge would be about ten feet to his left. The two SUVs that constituted the guard shack were about twenty feet to his right. He could see the closer of the two SUVs plainly despite the darkness because of the small televisions that the guards were using to monitor the cameras. A faint blue glow emitted from the cab, just enough to allow him to see the outline of the vehicle. For perhaps the hundredth time since he'd started watching the townspeople's security measures, he wondered why, in the name of God, they had positioned those SUVs in front of the bridge's access ladder. Had they just not considered that someone would do what he had just done? Or had they maybe run out of the power or coaxial cables that connected the two ends of the bridge? If that were the case, Skip would have moved the SUVs on the far end backward instead of moving the Garden Hill ones forward. Whatever the reason, this lapse served to convince Skip that he had a decent chance of convincing them that they needed him.