The White Mountain (21 page)

“You’ll find out.  Soon
enough.  My, uh, my associate was so thrilled by the idea that being here in
person was a requirement.”

Mary kept her head trained
forward, never looking at him, never taking her hands off the steering wheel. 
She refused to show any more of her growing uncertainty.  “Being here for
what?”

“Call it—eh, call it a twist
on the ending.”

“What kind of twist?”

“Again…depends on Randall.”

“How am I supposed to know
what that means?”

“You don’t, obviously.  This
ain’t the movies, Mary.  The villain doesn’t give away
all
his secrets
in real life.  If he’s smart, he just acts, instead of handing over the
information that’ll hang him in the end.  There wouldn’t have been twelve Bond
novels if all the bad guys hadn’t been so cocky.”

“You’re insane.”

“Yeah, well, my Section Eight
would probably agree with you there.  That’s how I got my free ride home from
the jungle.  Mentally unfit for service.”

“You hide it well.”

“Like you.”

“Ha, me?  Crazy?  I’m not the
one running some—some murder game and stealing the prize money.”

“Listen to me—listen—that’s
not what I’m talking about.  Deep down under all that woe-is-me crap you hide
behind, you’re strong.  Strong, Mary, and that’s why I wanted to give you a
chance.  I could pull the trigger right now, walk out of here and sit down to
dinner without blinking an eye, but what fun would that be?  It’s too easy.  I
gotta say, you’ve impressed me.  You got a fire in you that you’ve buried way
down deep, but it’s in there, and I respect that in a person.  So, you get an
opportunity to redeem yourself.  To save your own life.  To get that fire back.”

How odd, how dirty, how
alien
it felt to be positively psychoanalyzed, to have a confidence-building session
bestowed upon her by her captor.  She didn’t need it.  Didn’t want it.  She
imagined herself spitting in his face.  “Am I supposed to be thankful?”

“Yes, you damn well should.”

“But what does any of this
have to do with Randall?”

“You know I can’t—”  His
ringing cell phone interrupted him.  “Hang on, let me check this.” 

Mary tensed, hoping for an
opening, subtly monitoring him.  She saw it playing out in her mind, slow
motion, in blocks, image by image.  Billy switching the gun to his left hand,
reaching into his pocket, pulling the phone out.  Maybe fumbling with it. 
Maybe dropping it on the floorboard.  Cursing, leaning over to pick it up.  Her
moving, reaching, grabbing for the barrel, yanking and pointing it away from
herself, up at the hood of the car.  Surprise and instinct causing his finger
to squeeze.  The
pop
of the silencer filling the enclosed space as the
bullet ripped through the cheap, beige upholstery overhead.  Driving a fist
into his left ear, wrenching the gun out of his confused and disoriented grasp
as she pushed herself away, back against the door, firing into his chest.

It didn’t happen.  Billy was
fluid.  Efficient. 

He kept the barrel pointed
steadily at her as he removed the phone from the inner pocket on his lapel,
fingers tapping out the security code, answering with a quick, “Talk to me.”

Mary nibbled at her raw
bottom lip.  She tasted blood.

Billy said, “Right…yeah…you’re
kidding.  Seriously?  What about the others, the rest of them?  Yep…right…son
of a gun, I didn’t expect that.  So who’s left?  Just the two of them?  Good…
goooood
. 
Keep on it.  Let me know.”  He returned the phone to its rightful place, almost
giddy with excitement.

Mary tried to think of some
snarky insult, something deflating, but the best she could come up with was a
pitiful, “Those penis enlargement pills back in stock?”

“That, Miss Mary, was some
highly positive news for the both of us.  Looks like the game is down to
Randall and one other.”

“He’s alive?”

“For now.”

Thank God.  For now.

“And what does that mean, for
me?”

“If he’s as good as you say
he is…if he survives…you may just get a chance to see tomorrow.  But only if…”

“If what?”

“Only if
you
win.”

CHAPTER 20

Randall landed on top of the
smaller man, hearing one of Geisha’s ribs crack, hearing the handgun skip
across the sidewalk.  Randall rolled with the momentum, lowering a shoulder as
he went.  Unable to slow his body, he went too far, and by the time he pushed
himself into a crouching position, Geisha was already on his feet, delivering a
series of lightning fast kicks.  Each of them landing with unbelievable
accuracy as Randall tried to block, a half-second late for each one.  By the
time he’d lift his arms to cover his face, there was a foot in his solar
plexus, knocking the wind from his lungs.  Moving to block his chest, his
vision would blur from the foot to the side of his head.

He growled, leaped, tried to
wrap his arms around Geisha, finding only empty air and a stinging wallop at
his leg.  He dropped to one knee, got up again, stumbled backwards with the
taste of shoelace on his lips and blood on his tongue.

The difference in attacking
speed between Mein Kampf and Geisha was incomprehensible.

Mein Kampf was a bicycle with
square wheels.

Geisha broke the sound
barrier with each strike.

Randall felt the pain from
each punch and kick before he heard contact of fists and feet on muscle and
bone.

If this onslaught continued,
he’d be too dazed to react, too slow to keep Geisha from going for the gun. 
Randall wasn’t even sure he’d need it.  Before long, Geisha would turn him into
nothing more than a red puddle on the concrete.

Not that he was thinking
clearly enough to remember, but Randall was certain he’d never taken a beating
like the current assault.

Geisha hammered and
hammered.  For such a small guy, the force of each repetitive blast felt like
someone throwing bricks at Randall’s head, stomach, sides, and back.

His eyes watered.  He choked
on the blood in his mouth.

Geisha backed away for a
moment.  Pointed, and laughed.

Randall put up his fists, got
into a boxer’s stance on shaky, wobbly legs, as Geisha took two quick steps to
his right, stepped onto the low wall and jumped, spinning in mid-air, leg
flying at Randall’s skull, surely to be the knockout blow.

Randall ducked at the last
possible moment, feeling the
whoosh
of air over his head, felt a pants
leg skitter across his scalp.  He turned, following Geisha’s trajectory and
lunged, catching him before he fell.  He felt the little man squirming in his
arms, tightened his grip, and slammed him to the ground.

The location of Geisha’s
landing point was coincidental.  Randall’s luck, unintentional.

Geisha’s neck snapped on the
sidewalk’s lip, and just like that, it was over.

Randall took a deep breath,
then another, and emptied his mouth of the gathering blood.

The loud, braking growl of a
slowing rig caught his ear.  He turned, saw a flatbed hauling logs, easing down
the rest area’s entrance ramp.

Go, go, go
, Randall thought.  He hobbled over to
his truck, bruised and aching over every inch of his massive frame.  Thoroughly
defeated, but knowing he was the last man standing.

On to Mary, if she was still
alive.

The rig continued its dawdling
descent as Randall pulled away slowly, like he’d simply stopped in for a leak. 
Nothing to see here, just a weary traveler heading back out on the road again.

In the rearview mirror,
Geisha lay lifeless on the ground, a good thirty feet from the open middle of
the restroom building.  If the trucker came in from the proper angle, he’d
likely never see the dead man on the sidewalk, providing Randall with an
undiscovered exit.  He watched until it was time to merge onto the interstate,
saw nothing of consequence behind him, and then focused on the road ahead.

He’d made it.  More or less.

If the trucker found Geisha
and radioed the state troopers, if he’d even been looking in their direction,
the most he’d be able to identify was a late model pickup, and given the area
populated by farmers driving any and all manners of clattering, rattling,
muddy, rust-bucket pickups, the police would have a hard time discerning one
from the other.

He reached over and grabbed
the GPS locator from the seat, examined it, saw the pulsating blue dot of
Mary’s coinciding device, emitting from somewhere in the outer fringes of
northern Virginia, some place that he wasn’t familiar with.  It remained
motionless pulsating, pulsating.  Stationary. 

Enough time for a thousand
horrible thoughts to careen around inside his head.  Was she dead?  Was that
area full of forest, where she might be buried in the middle of nowhere?  Or
captured, injured, contained in some secret facility?  Surely, with the power
behind Ares, if Mary had discovered the truth, she could be whisked away and
never heard from again.  Just another missing person story that would never
grace the six o’ clock news.

A multitude of people go
missing every day, and Randall wondered why some of them received special
attention and others didn’t.  What was the difference between the pregnant
mother of three in Arkansas, the one whose face had been all over television
for the past month, and possibly some random, pregnant mother of three in Oregon,
who no one had ever knew about, who went out for groceries and vanished?  Why
did the former get plastered all over the national spotlight while the latter
remained nothing more than a cold-case file, mourned only by a distraught
family?

If Mary’s locator beacon
vanished, she’d be all over every network channel.  He’d make sure of it.

But, fortunately for him, and
her, he could pinpoint her last known location, providing a solid starting
point for a search and rescue (or God forbid,
recovery
) team.

Randall checked his device
again and breathed a small sigh of relief.  She was on the move again, even
though the reason behind it remained a mystery.  She could be doing it on her
own, driving around, chasing down a lead.  Or, she could be in the back of a
black van with tinted windows, lying immobile beside a shovel, or maybe on her
way to some vacant airfield where she’d be thrown on a transport plane and
delivered to an undisclosed location, the kind that appeared blurry when viewed
through satellite images.  Off the record, off the grid, wasting away in some
dark, moldy cell, identified only by a number and her unintentional crimes
against the state.

Quit it now, Randall. 
Think positive.  She’s probably fine.

If what The Devil Himself had
told him was genuine, then the chances of Mary discovering the complete truth
were slim.  Right before Devil had died, what’d he’d uttered through his death
rattle was this: “Ares…is three—three people.  Herb Richmond…some guy named
Billy Bart,”—
cough, wheeze
—“Billy Barton, and the last is…”

He’d breathed his last breath
and expired, right before revealing the third person’s identity.

The revelation that Ares was
made up of three people would’ve been enough of a shock by itself, but the fact
that Herb Richmond was involved had sent a wave of panic coursing through Randall’s
body.

He knew of Herb.  Knew of him
from television, knew of his work with homeless veterans and had admired the
man.  Ask any American that had ever served their country and they’d tell you
the same.  His involvement alone both shocked and disappointed Randall, yet it
was his blood relation to the White House, the First Lady, that had completely
terrified him.  A discreet phone call, a simple request over lunch, and Mary
could easily become one of the vanished if she’d gotten within a mile of the
truth.

Had she been less competent,
less skilled at unearthing information, Randall wouldn’t have been so paranoid,
but she was good.  Too good, especially with Chuck’s help, and the fact would
likely cost her if he didn’t get there soon.

And then there was this Billy
Barton character.  Some unknown, some outlier that Randall had never heard of,
one of three that provided yet another outlet for Mary to find trouble.  Or for
trouble to find her.  Who could he be?  Someone close to Herb Richmond,
obviously.  Close enough to be trusted with the knowledge of a death game that
had been going on for a hundred and fifty years.  Close enough to be trusted
with the information that the First Lady’s brother had a hand in it.  Likely,
it was a buddy from Herb Richmond’s time in the jungles of Vietnam.  Someone
that had saved his life.  Some battle-tested friend whom he could trust with
such intimate and inconceivable details. 

Randall knew that if he were
in Richmond’s place, if he were part of the Ares Three, Lakeland would, without
a doubt, be one of his two faithful, trustworthy members.

Damn, Jeff.  Wish you were
here
, Randall thought. 
Sure
could use your help on this one.