A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (21 page)

“Some Halloween,” he said, smirking in the light of the dash.

“Some trick or treat,” Tasha giggled. And at that the three of them broke into laughter. Laughing and howling until he couldn’t stand the lightness in his stomach another second.

They took the cutoff to Route 293 and sped due north, past Blackcap Mountain. At the large, luminous sign pointing to the entrance to Camp Buckner, they slowed almost to a stop and made the turn onto Mine Torne Road, heading east.

It was a narrow, twisting road; rock-strewn mountains on the left, a creek and swamp on the right. They continued east at a slow pace, approaching the shadow that blotted out the horizon, the Torne.

They crept around it, snaking back and forth, the blackness of a gorge falling away to the right. Around a curve and through a canyon-like swale, they approached Fort Montgomery.

“Slow down and make a right up here, Pegley. The traffic circle west of the bridge is only about a quarter of a mile down the road,” Lou said.

A car came up on them from the rear. Lou instructed Pegley to let it pass; they didn’t want company if they could avoid it. At the circle, they cut off on the causeway leading to the bridge. Ahead, Lou could see the lights reflecting in the steel cables of the bridge, high above them. Far off, on the top of Anthony’s Nose, a green light winked in the cool night air. He saw the tiny toll shack 500 feet ahead, bathed in floodlights. He took a better grip on his carbine.

“Get ready, Tasha. Pegley, pull right up to the booth. When we get out, we’ll take it from behind the truck.” He pulled a nylon sock over his face, handed the other to Tasha.

The tollbooth was situated so that drivers could hand money to the guard from their car windows. When Mack West stopped opposite the shack, the guard simply stood there with his hand out. He must have thought Pegley was fishing for the money.

Lou opened the door, dropped to the ground, and ran around the front of the cab, his carbine up and ready. The girl lagged far behind. As he cleared the front of the truck, Lou saw it all clearly in his mind. He’d race up to the guard and Sherm Wellington would be standing there with a silly grin on his face.
“Trick or treat!”
He almost laughed as he rammed the tollbooth door.

“Hands up!” he bellowed.

The man was young; maybe thirty. He edged out the door, giving Lou a wide berth. He kept his hands high in the air and marched for the bridge railing. Lou could see that Pegley had jackknifed Mack West across the roadway as planned. He could see Pegley and Bruce, with their rifles, sprinting up the road to intercept and turn around any cars that might come up. From the other side of the bridge, he could see a pair of headlights approaching. It wasn’t the other Mack; it was a car. He yelled to Pegley and Bruce: “Hey! Wave this guy through when he gets up here. Just let him on through. He doesn’t have to get mixed up in this at all.”

The car came on at a fair rate of speed. As it drew past Lou, he hid the M-2 next to his thigh. The driver just stared and slowed almost to a stop. Then the car accelerated away, past the two men on the road, through the traffic circle, and up 9W toward Fort Montgomery.

On the other side of the bridge, Lou saw headlights. They weren’t coming across. It must be Red with Mack East. Up to the right of the bridge, on the highway that wound down off the mountain out of Peekskill, three sets of headlights approached. Red would turn them back.

From behind, Lou heard the engine of the three-quarter ton. Working as a team, he and Tasha had to handle the toll taker, drive to the center of the span, and begin work on the blasting caps.

“What the hell’s going on,” the toll guard asked, looking back and forth between Lou and the girl.

“You look and listen and keep your mouth shut tight, understand, Mr. Toll Guard?” Lou snarled. The girl said nothing. She held her carbine in the crook of her arm, her hands nowhere near the trigger. No way was she going to be able to put the weapon into action. It was plain for anyone to see.

“Put your gun on the pavement, Tasha. Check him out. Firearms.”

“I don’t have a gun,” the guard said.

“Just check him out,” he said to the girl. She approached the man slowly and ran her hands through the pockets of his jacket and pants.

“He looks all right to me,” she said softly.

“Okay. You keep your M2 on him. If he makes any crazy motions, you know what to do.”

The man held his hands high in the air, his eyes darting frantically everywhere.

Tasha took up her carbine and turned to face the guard, keeping at least fifteen feet between her and the man. Lou walked over close to her and spoke in a low voice: “Look. Hold the rifle up like you mean business. Put your finger on the trigger. The damned thing isn’t even off safety, so don’t worry about it going off. We need to be a little more convincing. Understand?”

“Okay,” she said, propping the rifle up and moving her hand to the trigger housing. Her hair kept falling in her face. She took her hand off the trigger to sweep it away from her eyes.

Lou trotted down the road toward the traffic circle to check Bruce and Pegley’s positions. They were standing in the shadows on either side of the road. When they heard Lou approach, they turned together to face him. He simply gave them the thumbs up sign and then turned around. That part of the thing was coming off perfectly.

Walking back toward the tollbooth and through the floodlit area, Lou contemplated shooting out the lights, but he didn’t want to encourage gun play. Frawley, behind the wheel of the three-quarter ton, pointed its headlights toward the middle of the span. Off to the right, the guard leaned against the bridge rail. The girl stood in the middle of the road with her carbine pointed at him.

Far up the Hudson to the north, Lou could see the faint glow of Newburgh’s lights. All along the western edge of the river, Fort Montgomery, Highland Falls, and West Point were all lit up. The eastern side of the water was almost totally black. There was no river traffic. A brisk wind blew down toward New York and made his eyes tear. He pulled the zipper of his jacket up against his neck.

Lou went to the rail in an attempt to see past the trucks to the other end of the span. He saw several sets of headlights on the far side. With luck, Wes and Victor would turn them around and send them back to Peekskill. He watched as one pair of lights, then another, and finally a third swung around in a wide arc and headed back up the grade onto the mountain and around the curve.

The girl was doing a credible job with the toll guard at the rail. At least he wasn’t trying anything fancy, likely because there was reason to believe the girl just might pull that trigger. From twenty feet away, Lou heard the guard ask if she minded if he sat down on the pavement. She nodded. The man slid down to the ground and leaned against the fence. Tasha rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, settling in for a long stint. Maybe it was how nervous she looked that made her seem dangerous.

Lou jogged to the three-quarter ton. Frawley slipped out and Lou slid in behind the wheel. The generator and a box of blasting caps packed in sawdust rested on the passenger seat. Lou pushed hard on the accelerator and roared away.

Midway across the bridge, Lou swung the three-quarter ton truck sideways on the road. As he stepped from the cab, the brisk wind off the river hit him in the face. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, jogged to the back of the truck, and lowered the tailgate. They had jettisoned the canvas over the truck bed to permit the explosion to throw napalm high in the air.

Lou stood upright in the truck bed. The five-gallon drums of aviation gasoline and napalm thickener hadn’t moved an inch. The wire was wrapped securely around each drum with a bare end dangling above a gob of C-4. He’d attached one of these to each drum and held it securely with duct tape. The yellow, C-4 plastic explosive was harmless without a blasting cap; but with one of the small, silver, pencil-stub-sized caps pushed into it and wired to the blasting machine, it was a lethal combination.

Dropping one of the caps or striking it against a drum could also be fatal. Lou worked quickly and efficiently; pushing a cap into each gob of C-4; inserting the wire into the end of the cap; and then squeezing it lightly with crimping pliers. In four minutes, the drums were ready and Lou was standing at the back of the truck.

They were only slightly behind schedule. The luminous dial on his watch glowed 9:30. In the next twenty minutes, they’d be off the bridge and out of the area. They’d torch the trucks as planned. Motorists arriving at the bridge and seeing fire would alert police. But cops surely wouldn’t react fast enough to wacky motorists screaming nonsense about armed men on Bear Mountain Bridge, and that delay would allow Lou and his crew to make their escape into the hills.

He felt a surge of pride at the precision the group had shown. It had taken them just a couple of minutes to grab control of the bridge. The plan was perfect. Lou stood in the middle of the roadway and reached to flash the lights of the truck, to signal the next phase of the operation.

He hesitated; pictured himself from above the mountains. Bear Mountain Bridge hung over the river—manmade and mortal—suspended on threads that quivered in the wind. Lou, the bridge, and the others; dangling over the chasm.

He looked down toward the east: the cars had been turned back toward Peekskill. Then, without warning, he saw the blackness below Anthony’s Nose erupt with an orange flash and heard the crack of small-arms fire.

Chapter Nineteen

It was like all chance encounters with the enemy had been in Vietnam: a single shot would ring out as startled enemies met in the darkness, leading to a brief, murderous eruption of fire as each side threw everything they had at the other, finally trailing to a single shot or two as both sides scrambled for cover and maneuvered for advantage.

Lou ran to the rail to get a better view. What the hell?
Get over there, quick!
Drive the three-quarter ton with all the wired napalm in it? Never. He’d have to unwire and then rewire each drum, unless he wanted to take the chance they wouldn’t blow up in the jostling. He didn’t. He broke into a sprint toward the east end of the bridge. In ten seconds, gasping, he slowed to a crawl. Halfway to the end, he ran into Red moving toward the center of the span, counter to the plan.

“What’s going on?” Red screamed, coming to a dead stop. “I told those gorillas not to fire a goddamn shot. For any reason!”

“You’re going in the wrong direction, Red!” Lou barked.

Red turned without explanation and broke into a lumbering jog back toward the eastern end of the bridge.

Lou followed at a slow trot, falling behind Red by fifty yards. By the time he approached the end, Lou was sweating like Mick Jagger in concert and panting furiously. The far side of the bridge was bathed in fluorescent light from the overhead lamps.

From what Lou could see, Victor and Wes were hiding in the shadows, 100 feet on the other side of the apron of the bridge. As he moved slowly toward them, keeping out of the light, Lou saw a police blue-and-white cruiser backing off down Route 9D to the north with its lights out.

The car stopped about 200 feet down the road where its blue and red overhead lights lit up the night. Lou came up behind Red and heard him screaming at one of the two extras crouching at the side of the road.

“You mean they opened fire first?” Red roared. “They didn’t even know what was going on here. Why the hell did they fire?”

Wes, who was on the ground and rolled to his side, stormed back: “Hey, I didn’t want any frigging gun play! The man got out of his car. Started walking up to the bridge. He had his gun out. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I told him to halt. Right then, he opened up with the pistol and started running back to his car. We fired a couple of shots down there. Just to protect ourselves, that’s all.”

“I told you sons of bitches not to fire one, friggin’ shot,” Red screeched.

“Red! Come here,” Lou shouted, backing away from the two men lying there. He said : “All right, it’s too late to do anything about this right now. All this means is that we’re going to have to make our escape off the other end of the bridge. I want you to get Mack East jackknifed on the road according to plan. “Get it doused with gas, ready to burn. In the meantime, until I get back to you, hold on to this end of the bridge. No matter what happens, don’t let them scare you off. They’re not going to charge; not until they get reinforcements. Fire a couple of rounds in their general direction to keep them puckering. Stay under cover yourself. They might let loose with everything in the arsenal, including tear gas.”