A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror Page 22

  The vehicle came straight at them, bearing slightly southward as it approached the gravel turnoff to Borrow Pit. It was below them. It was white. It slowed only slightly to make the tight curve at the base of the Torne, and then picked up speed again on the straightaway. Turning, they kept the car in view for another half mile. Its headlights vanished as it made the curve at the far end of the Torne. They had seen no parked vehicles near Borrow Pit turnoff.

  “Listen, I want you to stay here alone for about half an hour. I don’t want you to move from this spot, understand?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going down by the pit. There’s a building there. I’ve written a note for Stanfield. I want him to find it on the door.”

  “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “Keep them guessing.”

  “They probably won’t find it.”

  “They’ll find it. If we don’t make contact with them right away, the building will be the first place they’ll look.”

  “If they look at all.”

  “They’ll look.”

  “For chrissake, don’t get caught! I’m no good out here. I’d go, like, completely cuckoo.”

  “Just stay right here. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  The ground slanted steeply to Cranbury Brook. Lou slid on the seat of his pants until he heard the gurgling of the water below him. He didn’t bother to try to keep his feet dry. The stream was less than a foot deep. On the other side of the water, he stopped, crouched, and strained to detect movement, any at all, in the area of the pit directly in front of him.

  Two cars whined down Mine Torne Road as he crouched there. As they passed, Lou looked back in the direction of the Torne to see if he could spot Sydney in the headlights. He could not. He crawled toward the pit, only a hundred feet in front of him. The rocks tore at his knees and elbows. It was agonizingly slow going. He was vulnerable. He couldn’t be careful enough. The pit yawned suddenly just below him.

  He had maneuvered slightly off course to the north. Looking down into the pit, the building was to his left. He lay there watching for a full fifteen minutes, straining his eyes for any hint of movement: a flash of metal, anything. He listened for a cough, a whisper, a clink of metal on metal, or a loose stone tumbling down the side of the pit. There was nothing there. Then, he saw the van—Yes!—tucked into the trees and swathed with underbrush. It was definitely the U-Haul van. It looked empty, he thought.

  Slowly, Lou raised himself to his feet. He stood erect on the rim of the pit and then slid down the embankment. The dirt and stone rushed down in front of him, engulfed his boots. He was to the van and the door quickly. It was locked; no keys in the ignition. He slid the small piece of paper into the crack at the driver’s side window, and then raced back to the edge of the pit, up over the rim, back toward Cranbury Brook; running this time, not crawling.

  Sydney was not hard to find. As he climbed toward where he knew she was hidden, he heard her calling to him in a small, frightened voice. He found her and they came together hard.

  “We’re in luck. I found the van. They must’ve stashed it there before the whole thing began—just in case they needed it—so they could drive to the spot in another vehicle without having to do a lot of explaining to police roadblocks. Smart. Okay. We still have some walking to do.”

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “Wait and hope.”

  “I could’ve used some music on my Walkman,” she said.

  * * *

  He’d printed the note on a back corner of the map sheet: “Stanfield—Drive north on gravel to creek crossing. Get out. Open back doors. Wait.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Lou and Sydney watched from among the trees, above the streambed and the road. From there, they could observe any vehicle that approached, without revealing themselves. They could see very clearly exactly what happened when the van stopped at the crossing.

  It was a short wait to midnight. The chill wind had them both shivering as they listened to the brook clapping over the rock-strewn bed. A quarter moon hung low in the sky, providing just enough light to cast a faint glimmer in the ripples.

  There were very few certainties at this stage. One thing was certain though: what had happened had been unexpected. Stanfield and Copeland were frantic now. They had to be. At their age, how much experience could they have? How many men had ever wanted to kill them in war, or any other time? The facade had to be cracking, especially in Stanfield.

  But even Copeland, the stabilizer, had to be scared. Everyone was afraid of the unknown. No textbook exercise, no amount of calculating or sweating over a spreadsheet, could reveal what would happen from now on.

  Sydney was the first to detect the van creeping along the road. She just pointed off to the left. At first, he heard nothing; but then he heard the crunch of gravel and, through the trees, saw the dim, yellow glow of the parking lights and the “U-Haul” lettering on the side. The van came to a stop in the middle of the creek.

  The light inside the van came on and the right side door opened. One man stepped out into the water; another sat at the wheel. The first man, looking slowly up and down the stream, directed his eyes straight at them but couldn’t see them. He looked back at the van. The headlights blinked on and off. Finally, the driver opened the left side door and got out. He came around to the front of the vehicle and the two of them stood together at the edge of the water.

  “Christopher! Come on. We don’t have time to waste.” It was Copeland, talking in a loud, stage whisper.

  “Okay, we’ll play the little password game. Where are you, Joe DiMaggio? For chrissake.”

  Finally, one of the men went to the back of the vehicle, opened the double door, and flashed a light all around the cargo compartment. It was plain there were no other people in the van.

  “Christopher! Do you have the girl with you?”

  Lou leaned close to Sydney and whispered: “You stay here and don’t move until I tell you to come out. I’m going down there.”

  “Free at last,” she said.

  She clung to his jacket. He had to pull himself away from her.

  “Look, Christopher. If you don’t get over here now, I’m leaving you high and dry.”

  Lou got to his feet and slipped, as quietly as possible with a weapon in hand, through the trees. He stalked upstream from the van, approaching it from the rear; from behind the two men.

  “Christopher, the cops are all over this place. You want us all fucked?”

  Lou’s voice came loud in the blackness and closer than they anticipated: “Copeland! I want to see both of your hands in the air.”

  Copeland and the other man whirled to face him. “What the hell, Lou? We’re here to take you out of this place, remember?” It was Stanfield, in his high-pitched, whining voice.

  Lou pressed close to the trunk of a tree, the M-2 trained on them.

  “Why all this fooling around, pal?”

  “Just do what I say, and right now,” Lou barked.

  “All right, what do you want?”

  “Turn around and go back to your car. Leave the keys in the van. Just get out of here. Right now.”

  “Can’t do it, pal. You know that.”

  “Do it.”

  “We’ve got some talking to do.”

  “Now.”

  It happened abruptly: Copeland jabbing Stanfield with his elbow; a slight sideways turn; a sudden crouch. The darkness exploded as the two men opened up with handguns; wicked, deadly hornets flew everywhere, stinging Lou full of panic and fear. Then everything turned into slow motion.

  Bullets winged past Lou and through the branches, imbedding themselves in the trees to his left. His reaction was reflexive: he went to the ground and snapped the carbine into firing position. It was on automatic. He flipped it off safety, pressed the trigger. The weapon pulled away from his line of fire, up and to the right.

  Tracers seared the night. The two men at the van separated ex
pertly, peppering the area around Lou with well-aimed shots. It was a trap. Bastards! He had to escape. Had to get out of the area. No time for trading gunfire in the dark.

  “Lou!” he heard from across the stream. “Lou! Are you all right?”

  “Get down, Sydney! Stay there!”

  She was on her feet at the stream’s edge; caught in the beam of Stanfield’s flashlight; her scream laced with terror. Then she was down in a fusillade of gunfire, face-down in the stream.

  Lou rolled to the next tree trunk and pressed the trigger again. The weapon jolted in his grasp as he sprayed the van with .30 caliber bullets. But the weapon was empty now.

  He hid only a hundred feet from her limp form in the middle of the stream. Copeland yelled to Stanfield to start maneuvering to get Lou in a crossfire. The darkness in the trees to Lou’s right ignited as Copeland opened up again.

  Sudden, burning pain drilled into the back of his thigh. He rolled over and over to get away from his last known position. Every time his thigh met the ground, he felt the stabbing pain. Copeland fired again, but he was off the mark. Stanfield moved like a rhino through the underbrush to his left. The van was lost in the darkness, as was Sydney’s inert form.

  “Sydney!” he screamed. “Get up!” No response. “Get up!”

  Stanfield fired. The bullets twanged against a rock at Lou’s feet. He could never let himself be caught, never. He stood and started to run, ignoring the pain in his leg. He plunged through the trees, warding off branches from his face, crashing through the brush in the direction of Mine Torne Road. He cut to his right and crossed over the gravel.

  He careened into the woods on the other side, up toward the slopes of Cranbury Mountain. They’d never take him, never. Now his lungs were aching. He was gasping for air. His thigh felt on fire, as if a glowing coal were lodged against the bone. The slope was too steep, the woods too thick. He stumbled and hit the ground and lay there spent, his heart pounding against his sternum.

  He had left her. She was dead or they had her. But he was free. They’d never take him. He was alone in the bush, on the ground. His face was in the dirt with the smell of dead leaves, moss, and his own blood all around him. Gasping. Drained. Sputtering against rotten bark and twigs and bugs. Old. Terribly old. Panting. Hiding.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  He’d seen her drop, but that was all. He lay only a hundred yards or so from the spot. Copeland and Stanfield still waited out there. He had to go back, even if it was to find her dead. He got to his knees, tried to get to his feet, but seized up and fell back to his side. A great lump of swollen tissue pressed against his pants leg. He reached to relieve it; tore at the bullet holes until the pants leg opened and the throbbing fell off to a dull ache.

  He crawled to a small tree, pulled himself to his feet, and looked all around to get his location fixed in his mind. He was south of the creek where Sydney had fallen, at least fifty feet above it. They had rested near here while waiting for the van to appear. Stanfield and Copeland lay in the darkness somewhere, waiting for him to move.

  Lou waited. He heard nothing but the wind in the trees, the stream below. Quietly, despite the rocks and underbrush, he shambled down the slope. He couldn’t betray himself with haste, but there wasn’t much time. Surely, the police at the roadblocks had heard the gunfire and would be coming fast.

  Then, far back down the gravel road to his left, Lou saw the sudden flash of headlights and heard wheels spinning in gravel. A car fishtailed and then disappeared in the faint, red glow of taillights. Stanfield and Copeland getting clear of this spot. They had figured the police the same as he. Fuck caution.

  “Sydney!” he screamed.

  His voice fell weakly onto the cold ground, skittered between the rocks. Then, no sound, save the slapping of the brook against the rocks. He hobbled to the spot where she had fallen. She was gone.

  “Sydney!” Nothing.

  Slowly and painfully, he groped on hands and knees all around the area where they’d been. He hobbled to the van. Nothing. Then he saw lights on the gravel road again, moving slowly toward him: several sets of lights and the sound of vehicles. He turned to the high ground; fought the searing pain in his leg; pulled himself up, far above the brook and the van; far above the police and the bullet-riddled U-Haul. He fell to the ground and bent against waves of pain.

  It was the chill wind again that brought him back. ’’When he moved, he generated warmth that camouflaged the coolness of the night air. But now, lying on the ground, the chill crept in at the waistband of his pants and around his neck, giving life to the immobilizing knot at the back of his thigh.

  He reached down to where he’d been hit. There was dry blood on the back of his trouser leg; and on either side of the muscle, a sticky, cold mass. The bullet had passed cleanly through. As he coiled to get to his feet, it felt as if a marshmallow fork had been plunged into his buttocks.

  He was right. With him alive, there was the danger that he would talk. He was a threat to them: to Buck and, ultimately, to Jord Bliss. They never expected he would get away from the fiasco at the bridge. He was too old, too weak. They might’ve assigned Red the job of eliminating both him and Sydney right there at the site. The rendezvous was just a safety valve by which to locate him in the event he did manage to get away. They had covered all the possibilities; had come close to eliminating him, but not close enough. Where was Sydney?

  The police had to be thinking that he was in the woods near the pit, so they would be blazing away at the area with all the light they could find. They’d be moving to seal off the area around the van; keeping the roads locked up tight; reasoning that he was laying low until he ran out of food or tried to cross one of the blacktop roads that encircled the area. With daybreak, they’d be all over these woods with searchers and dogs.

  Lou knew without looking at the map what the situation was. To the west, south, and north of him lay acre after acre of thick woods and rocky spines rising up like the ridges of a washboard. To the east were the river and the built-up area that paralleled it. The map revealed a trailer camp, just on the eastern side of the Torne. He’d passed it when he reconnoitered, before the operation even started. The camp was off Mine Torne Road, high up in the woods.

  It was time to do something outrageous—something they couldn’t expect—to get out of the area. The longer he stayed in the woods, the longer they had to box him in. He had to strike now, tonight; to get out. He had to get cleaned up and eat. Had to plan what to do.

  The Torne Ridge was steeper than anything he’d climbed before. With his left leg a throbbing mass of flesh he had to drag along, it seemed to take hours to move a hundred yards. Instead of high stepping over fallen logs and rocks, he had to hop and lurch from tree to tree, log to log, rock to rock. The M-2 became a crutch. Empty of ammunition, it didn’t matter that he rammed the muzzle into the dirt.

  It was bitter cold atop the Torne. The wind was strong across the top of the ridge. The view from there was spectacular. To the south he could clearly see an occasional car’s headlights snaking around Bear Mountain. To the west and north, blackness possessed the hills except for a faint corona at the horizon. To the east, the streetlights of Fort Montgomery flickered through the trees. And beyond the town, the bridge seemed disconnected from the hills around it, hovering alight in the darkness like some alien space ship.

  The span floated in a cloud of mist lit by searchlights and framed by blackened girders and cables. The inferno hadn’t twisted the steel. Its roadway was alive with worker ants who’d already replaced the approach lights on both sides. All the lamps along the roadway glowed. Above the bridge, atop Anthony’s Nose, the green beacon gleamed in the blackness. And at the level of the river, just under the eastern end of the bridge, a single white light—the one he’d seen from the gorge—flickered.

  Now with the wind blowing straight into his face, the image of the bridge blurred and dissolved, along with his fleeting wish that the crew that had so quickly put the b
ridge right could do the same for him. He turned and plodded down off the Torne toward the trailer camp.

  The faint moon shadows in the camp concealed him. A set of headlights bobbed on the winding gravel road and crept by. Lou hobbled after it as it pulled up beside one of the trailers. From thirty feet behind the car, he called out to the driver as he emerged: “Hey! Hold on there for a second, will you?”

  A short man whirled. He stared down at Lou as he limped up the road. In the darkness, the man appeared to be about five feet, five and about two hundred pounds, most of which resided at his belt line.

  “Geez man! You scared the livin’ bejesus out of me, yelling like that. Don’t be doing that to me now.” It was a tenor voice.