A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (25 page)

The cut was grooved into the rock a good hundred and fifty feet below the level of the surrounding ground. The inlet, its edges laced with boulders, was shallow and sluggish. But up ahead, the stream clapped on the boulders as it cascaded down from the high ground. To the sides and straight ahead, the stream was punctured by flashing specters of white. Above them, overhanging branches made silhouettes against the night sky.

They stopped to rest for a minute and looked back down the inlet from where they’d come. Across the Hudson a white beacon flashed at the level of the water beneath the bridge.

Ahead, up the gorge, the Popolopen Bridge, that carried Route 9W across the chasm, loomed against the sky. Hundreds of the curious were out on the highway. Good. They’d be in the way, clogging the highway, slowing the police moving to cut them off. The media must have picked up the story almost immediately. He looked down at the luminous dial of his watch. Midnight.

“Let’s go,” he said. They tried to hurry beside the rushing water. They cringed against the clacking of rock against rock in the rushing stream. The police wouldn’t hear anything down in the gorge because of the commotion caused by the buzzing oglers. Still, at any second he expected to see a cop peer over the edge and train a spotlight down on them. It would have to be a strong light to reach them.

The inlet narrowed even more past the bridge. The wet air muffled the roar of the rushing stream as it crashed down the incline. Then the gorge narrowed sharply; and they were on their hands and knees beside the torrent, picking their way through the rocks and boulders.

It was rugged and exhausting work. The rigors of the long night were creeping into his bones. He didn’t dare admit it. The girl would surely collapse. He climbed, scratching and clawing, to the top of the incline. There was a small dam, and beyond the dam, a tiny lake and then more flashing water as they continued to pull themselves gradually out of the Hudson River channel.

“We have to stop,” he heard from behind. He turned and went back to the girl. She was down on all fours beside the water, her head drooping between her shoulders. He dropped down to her. Her breath was coming in short, desperate pants. Her cheeks and forehead were hot to the touch.

“All right, we’ll stop here for a while. Take it easy,” he said.

He remembered the map of the area perfectly and didn’t consider taking it out of his waistband, where he’d put it before the operation started, neatly folded in a plastic bag. There wasn’t enough light to see it anyway. He had memorized the primary and secondary escape routes.

First, get out away from the bridge and into the gorge. Once there, stay with it until it rose up to almost level ground near Queensboro Furnace. It would be dangerous as long as they were confined to a gorge dominated on both sides by high-speed roads. The going would be slow for them, while the police would have the opportunity to speed ahead. Also, the cops would be able to patrol the roads to prevent them from crossing to the other side, boxing them into a narrow corridor they couldn’t escape. It was important to keep moving at least until they reached the Furnace. Once there, they’d be able to strike out into the woods in any direction, making it difficult to track them down. But now, they still had some climbing to do and a road to cross.

She took in long, deep breaths. He scooped some water out of the stream and patted it onto her face. For the first time in an hour, he noticed that the rain had nearly stopped. Far above them, on the left, he heard the faint rush of cars on the Palisades Parkway. He imagined a driver speeding along the four-lane highway, listening to a news report and wondering if there might be some fugitive lurking on the side of the road ready to jump out and wave him down.

On the right, Mine Torne Road meandered through the rock-strewn terrain. An occasional headlight blinked and then vanished as some traveler wound back and forth between the hills. The whole area was dominated by the Torne, surging 250 feet in the air and blotting out the night horizon.

“We can’t stay here any longer. They’ll figure out where we are pretty soon. They’ll be all over the roads. It’s just a little further now; about a mile more. We’ll be able to stop and rest for the night.”

“You go ahead. I can’t move. I’ll follow you later. I’m dying.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he snapped. “You’re not giving up now, after all you’ve been through. C’mon,” he said, pulling at her arm. She got to her feet and started walking again.

Queensboro Furnace was just a name on a map. It was etched in his memory as the spot where the stream split in two. One branch curved due north, running past Camp Shea, leading upstream to Weyants Pond. The other led south beside the interstate. They would slip between the streams, cross Furnace Road, and make their way overland about a mile to Turkey Mountain; a long ridge, but inconspicuous enough to afford them a haven.

It was a full two hours since they’d escaped the bridge. Daylight was only five hours away; plenty of time for the authorities to begin to react effectively to what had happened. If they were thinking at all, especially if they had seen him duck away, they’d be patrolling the roads west and north of the bridge. It was the obvious place to go.

He saw the gravel road, a chalky ribbon ahead, as soon as they came up onto level ground. He immediately sank and pulled the girl down beside him. She was gasping frantically again.

She slumped to the ground and lay on her side. Lou kept his head up, staring straight ahead at the road. He could see no movement. Up to the left was the Parkway. An occasional car
swooshed
along in a broad curving sweep. There was no traffic on Mine Torne to the right. The rain was falling very gently again. He kept his head perked up with all of his senses attuned to the gravel strip ahead. He heard nothing and saw nothing.

“Hey,” he whispered, ducking to speak into her ear. “I’m going to move ahead just a little bit to get closer to the road. You stay right here. Understand?”

“Don’t leave me here alone. I’m coming,” she said, starting to rise.

“Shh! For chrissake, I said stay here! When I see that it’s okay, I’ll whistle and you come up.”

“Please.”

“Goddam it, are you going to do what I say or what?”

“I want to come with you.”

“You’re staying. Listen up, and come when you hear the whistle. This is crucial. We can’t blow it at this stage of the game.”

He slowly got to his feet and began to move forward, out of the creek bed and through a grassy marsh. He’d taken the carbine from his shoulder and now held it tightly across his chest, ready to put it into action if need be.

With no cover, this was the most vulnerable area of all. Fifty feet from the road, he stopped and crouched in the marsh again. He lifted his head up above the grass, listened, and watched. He’d spend an hour here if he had to, just to be sure they wouldn’t be caught crossing the road in the open.

Off to the right, he heard the approach of a vehicle on Mine Torne Road. He watched the headlights come from a long way off, disappear at a curve in the road, and then reappear a few seconds later. Directly opposite his position in the marsh, the car turned to the right on a curve. The headlights swept across the marsh, and he ducked. Then, the red glow of the taillights dimmed into nothing. It was silent again.

He whistled as loudly as he could, trying to sound like some bird.
What kind of bird whistles at night?
Then he heard the sloshing through the swampy ground behind him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

“I could swear I heard a robin,” she said.

“Shh. Can’t I get you to be quiet?”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“We’re going to move very slowly up to that road. When we get to it, I’ll stay on this side. ’You run over to the other side and duck into the bush. Understand? No pussy footin’ around now. I want you to move as fast as you can.”

“Do you think there’s something up there?”

“I don’t think anything. I just don’t want to get caught in the open. I know you can’t see or hear anything, but this is the worst place for us. They could be sitting right up there waiting.”

He kept her beside him as they edged toward the road, pausing to listen every couple of feet. Now he began to discern a sound in the night air that was familiar: a
whooshing
sound, like an acetylene torch, coming out of the darkness, off to the left.

“Down!” he rasped, plunging to the ground and pulling her with him. “Lie still. Don’t move.”

Then they both heard it, loud and clear, from a hundred feet up the road: “Foxtrot thirty-two, this is Alpha six...”

“Foxtrot thirty-two, pack it up and move down here to the junction with the blacktop, over.”

A sudden, groping beam of light shot from a car on the road and flooded the gravel at their heads, sending a shiver of fear down his spine. The engine spun to life and the vehicle—an olive, military police car—crept down the road, passing directly above their huddled forms at the embankment. They crouched, frozen, until they no longer heard the crunch of gravel. Then, when the taillights flashed brightly in the distance by Mine Torne Road, he said:

“C’mon. Now’s the time to go.”

* * *

PRESIDENT AT THE SCENE, CONDEMNS GUERRILLAS

NEW YORK—President Jordan Bliss, here for a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria, boarded a military helicopter and, in an unprecedented show of presidential activism, flew to the scene of the bizarre attack on the Bear Mountain Bridge north of the city last night. At the height of a blazing firefight with members of a strange, paramilitary organization, the president directed the pilot to circle the bridge and land at the west end, only three hundred feet from where two guerrillas lay dead.

Mr. Bliss remained at the scene until the threat was over, upon the surrender of three stragglers from the so-called American Revolutionary Army. Responding to media representatives, the president said that, as commander in chief, he would continue to participate directly in anti-terrorist police operations. He said he was proud to be in the first rank, leading the fight against lawlessness.

This startling and peculiar incident seems to have turned the previously dull election campaign on its ear overnight.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Maggie flicked on the TV in the den. All the major stations were covering the bridge attack
ad infinitum
. Scenes of helicopters hovering over the bridge, fire trucks, whirling lights, flames, and black smoke rising from the middle of the span filled the airwaves.

Some crazy bunch of terrorists had blown up the bridge and gotten away, except for a couple of them. The police had two suspects in custody. There were three bodies. The cops had killed them right there on the bridge. They found a note talking about this being just a warning… the something-or-other American Army… some agenda, some girl. It was such a stupid act. Keystone Kops stuff almost, the way they described it. How did they ever think they’d get away with it? Now some of them were dead. It was doomed from the start. God, what next?

And then Bliss, for goodness sake, racing up there from the Waldorf, still in his tux, buzzing around in his helicopter, no less. Bounding out of the thing like Schwarzkopf on the banks of the Tigris, a crowd of aides all around him. Pundits making a big deal out of the timing; the show of command and all, so near the election.

By midnight, they had reported it to death. The story in the
Atlantic Monthly
couldn’t hold her. She rose from her chair and walked around it, then sat again. A sort of agitation invaded her hands and fingers. She couldn’t stop them from interlacing, knuckle against knuckle, clasping and unclasping, tip-to-tip, tapping, sliding over each other. There was nothing to do but go to bed. But sleep was up in the air, on the ceiling, darting around on the walls, outside buzzing around the streetlight; everywhere but on her pillow.

What in heaven’s name was going on? Lou had left the car parked and shared a ride with someone to Arden House. Why didn’t he just have them pick him up here? It was all very strange. Ever since the new account and all that money, there was this unreal aspect to everything. To start with, nobody gives you anything free. And if it seems as if they have, you ought to be looking very closely at the gift; studying the situation to make sure you understand what’s going on.