PRECIPICE

by Leland Davis

  “Perhaps when this is over, you’ll be open to us giving you a call from time to time?”

  “Yeah,” Chip said softly as he nodded, and he knew he’d crossed over a line. In his youthful imaginings, he’d dreamed of how cool it would be to have the life of a secret agent. The reality was surprisingly empty in comparison.

  “Be discreet,” Sutherland warned. “There’s only so much we can do to bail you out.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Chip reassured him, then he stood.

  Sutherland reached out and shook the young man’s hand. “Good luck.”

  Chip silently met the older man’s eyes as they shook hands, then he turned to leave.

  “Oh, and Eric?” Sutherland called after him, trying out Chip’s new name. “Anybody can shoot a man. The elegance of it lies in learning not to use the bullets at all—especially with targets like this. Don’t make a mess unless you have to.”

  Chip met his eyes again and slowly nodded before continuing out the door. It was food for thought.

  Back on the street, Chip climbed into his old Tacoma and started it up, listening to the familiar grumble of the exhaust leak as the four cylinder engine puttered to life. It seemed so normal to be driving his own truck, which was essentially his home, after the events of the last month. He’d spent two nights over the weekend camping in the truck bed in the cold rain at the deserted rafting outpost, relishing the peace and quiet. Then he’d driven back to DC yesterday to wrap things up. He couldn’t leave things like this.

  There was a part of him that wanted to get on a plane to South America and put the whole episode behind him, to immerse himself in his old life and forget the mission ever took place. But the more he thought about that, the more wrong it seemed. Although he still had some desire for retribution or revenge, that alone was not enough to make him risk his life yet again. What compelled him to stay and finish it was a new feeling that made running away seem like a childish notion. It was loyalty, or maybe duty that drove him now. Duty to a team that had accepted an outsider as one of their own. Duty to a girl who had relied on him for rescue and hope for her future. Duty to an organization for which he had agreed to do a job that he still didn’t fully understand. All he knew was that he was compelled to finish it, and finish it he would.

  Chip pulled his new smartphone from the envelope and turned it on, then launched the maps application. He entered his destination and followed the device’s directions onto the Leesburg Pike. Twenty minutes later he swung onto the Capitol Beltway heading north, crossed the Potomac River into Maryland, then took the next exit onto Clara Barton Parkway. He paralleled the river heading upstream as the road merged into MacArthur Boulevard, then he followed a bend to the right in front of the Old Angler’s Inn. A few minutes later he was parked in the large lot for the Great Falls Visitor Center. He locked the truck and followed a wide path along the canal, then took a smaller trail that led to a boardwalk over the man-made fishladder channel of the river and into the woods on Olmsted Island. He was soon looking over the wide Potomac River from a viewing platform.

  The water was raging, and Chip spent a few minutes lost in his own thoughts, soothed by the roaring flow. Many people didn’t know that one of the most intense pieces of whitewater in the eastern U.S runs right through Washington, DC. The enormous Potomac River drains large portions of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland before tumbling over one last cataract then flowing past the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the Capitol Mall and dumping into Chesapeake Bay. In front of Chip was a gushing series of dramatic falls dropping a total of sixty-five feet. He had kayaked them before, but always at a lower flow than the river held today. Chip knew that tackling the falls at this flow would mean certain death; but he’d come here to clear his mind and think, not to kayak. He suddenly realized that certain death was just what he was looking for.

  Chip retraced his steps to the Tacoma and climbed in. He opened the maps application on his new phone again and highlighted another destination on the other side of the river. He followed the phone’s directions as he backtracked to the Beltway and across the Potomac to the Virginia side. He took the first exit and headed north on Georgetown Pike, then a little later found his turn onto Old Dominion Road. It took him a half hour, but he finally parked and walked through a strip of woods and viewed the falls from the other side of the river. There was no boardwalk here, only a short distance through the trees from the parking lot to the craggy rocks at the water’s edge. This would work.

  Chip walked the hundred and fifty yards back to his truck. He quickly assembled his kayaking gear and crammed it into his kayak. Then he shouldered the kayak full of gear and headed back into the woods. He worked his way downstream along the craggy rocks at the edge of the river until he was just below the falls. He made his way down the treacherous rocks and found a crevice where his kayak and equipment could be hidden out of view. He stashed the boat, double-checked that it wasn’t visible from the trail above, and headed back to his truck. He started up the Toyota, drove back around to the other side of the river, and parked his truck in the lot between the road and the river across from the Old Angler’s Inn. Then he called a cab to take him to Dulles.

  *

  Moore couldn’t get from the capitol to his office fast enough. He was more anxious than he’d ever been. He lumbered across Delaware and then Constitution Avenue, wiping sweat from his brow as he went. After a few cool days in early fall, the last week had been unbearably hot for November. There were tourists walking down the street in shorts, but Sheldon was confined to a suit, as usual. Once his Senate term was over, he’d never wear one again. His vote for the international trucking bill today all but guaranteed that he would not be re-elected. What choice did he have? He didn’t know whether to be dismayed or relieved. All he wanted was his daughter back, and if this was what it took, so be it.

  He rumbled up the marble stairs and into the Russell Senate Office Building, then bee-lined for his suite on the third floor. The place was frantic when he walked in. There were a few bloodthirsty reporters milling about looking for the inside scoop, and none of his staffers would meet his gaze. The sons-of-bitches were probably all trying to figure out where they were going to get their next jobs, Sheldon thought with a sardonic grimace. To hell with all of them—he had bigger problems. He ignored Candace’s usual squeaky greeting as he shoved open the door to his office and then slammed it behind him with some relief before the startled reporters could catch up. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, so hopefully his staff would go home before he left the office. They were obsessed with the political repercussions of what he’d done, but dealing with that would have to wait. What mattered most now was getting Sam back.

  With one hand he dialed Ortiz’s number for the third time from the contacts on his new Samsung as his other hand poured three fingers of Basil Hayden’s into a glass with no ice. He was frustrated to hear his chief of staff’s outgoing voicemail message drone in his ear again. Ortiz had been here to support him all morning, acting like his best friend. Now that the vote was over, his betrayer was nowhere to be found. He disconnected the call without leaving a message and raised the glass of amber liquor for a long drink. If that scoundrel Ortiz had crossed him again there would be hell to pay. He sat down heavily in his enormous office chair to wait, worried sick about his daughter.

  Ortiz checked the caller ID on his Blackberry and was annoyed to see that it was Senator Moore calling for the third time. He ignored the ringing and let the call go to voicemail. He wished the man would stop calling. It had been a week since he’d talked to his cousin and three days since he had received the last text, and he was really worried. The vote had gone through—he had done his job. Although Ortiz still held out some small hope that the rest of the money would be transferred and he could increase his payday, he knew that the senator was now certain to want his daughter back immediately. If Ortiz’s fears were realized and something had happened to Héctor or the girl, he needed to cover his ass before t
he senator found out that his daughter was gone and that his money was not forthcoming. In the back of his mind, Ortiz finally admitted to himself that there was no way he could pursue his dream of going into politics on his own now. It was time to run.

  As soon as his Blackberry stopped ringing, he used his pre-paid disposable phone to call his cousin’s satellite number again. He was frustrated to hear the outgoing voicemail message for what seemed like the millionth time—a generic computer voice in Spanish that simply listed the phone number he had dialed. He hung up in frustration. He was out of time. He had to make the next call before the banks closed.

  Ortiz scrolled through his contacts and found the number for the bank in the Bahamas where he’d opened Moore’s secret account. He read the account number and access codes to a representative and then asked to open another account to transfer the money into. After an interminable twenty minutes on the phone, he had the two million dollars safely moved to the new account. He noted the account number and passcode on a slip of paper that he crammed into a pocket of his slacks. It was too bad he wouldn’t get the whole seven million, but he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Things were about to get very hot around here.

  He stuffed several sets of clothes into a rolling suitcase that was small enough to fit in most overhead airplane bins. It killed him to wrinkle some of the beautiful suits that he’d collected, but he couldn’t afford to be slowed down by a hanging bag. He was almost finished packing when his cell phone rang. His relief at seeing his cousin’s satellite number on the caller ID was tempered by frustration that Héctor had once again called him on his personal phone. At least maybe this meant that he could get his hands on the other five million dollars, and at the very least it meant that his cousin was still alive. A surge of hope shot through him that maybe his dreams weren’t shattered after all. He answered the phone.

  Chip slowly rolled down Belmont Road in the trendy Adams Morgan neighborhood of northern DC. The residential street was lined with shoulder-to-shoulder apartment buildings that butted up fairly close to the pavement, separated from the sidewalk only by a few raised bricked-in gardens. Leafless trees thrust up like grim sentinels from evenly spaced gaps in the concrete along the edge of the street. He peered through the darkened window of his rented Cadillac CTS, looking carefully for the proper address. His eyes also scanned the parked cars, searching for a 2009 Sahara-Silver-Metallic Audi A5. It was almost too easy. The car was parked one house over from the address on the side of the street. Chip was surprised to find the car here at 4:30 on a weekday, but maybe Ortiz used public transit to get to work. Parking his rented Cadillac nearby proved to be a bit more challenging than finding the Audi. He ended up having to turn around to find a spot fifty feet away from the Audi on the opposite side of the street.

  He sat and watched for a few minutes, but at this hour on a Monday there wasn’t much happening along the residential street. He rifled through the brown envelope that Sutherland had given him. He removed the Sig Sauer pistol and screwed on the suppressor, mentally noting that the width of the suppressor meant he wouldn’t be able to use the gun’s sights. They weren’t tall enough to look over the fat metal tube. He had trained to shoot with this setup at The Woods, but he wasn’t as proficient as he would like yet. Hopefully he wouldn’t need to fire the gun at all. He pulled the slide back to chamber a round and flipped the decocking lever. Then he lifted himself up off the driver’s seat enough to stuff the pistol in the waistband of his pants, and pulled his shirt down to cover it. He wished he still had the shoulder holster he’d used on the mission, but he had abandoned it in Mexico when he’d changed out of his fatigues. It was too warm today to wear a jacket over the holster without being conspicuous anyway.

  Next he pulled out the satellite phone and turned it on then scrolled through the call history to locate the DC number for Senator Moore’s chief of staff. Hopefully he could stir the man up a little bit and get him to head for the car before work let out and the streets filled up with people. He pressed the call button on the phone and waited while it rang.

  “Hola, Héctor. ¿Dónde chingatos te metes?!” Where the fuck have you been? The voice sounded frustrated on the other end of the line.

  The Spanish startled chip, although he realized he should have expected this. He paused for a minute and tried to figure out how to handle this turn of events.

  “Héctor?” the guy asked again, his frustration growing.

  “No, not Héctor,” Chip finally broke the silence with a grim answer.

  “Who the fuck is this?! Where is my cousin?”

  At least the answer was in English. Time to rattle the guy’s cage a little, Chip thought.

  “Your cousin is rotting in a pit in Mexico. I shot him in the head. You’re next, Mr. Ortiz.” Chip listened to the nervous breathing on the other end of the line as it sunk in that he knew the man’s name. He waited a few seconds then disconnected the line.

  Less than a minute later the man from the picture in the brown envelope came out of the house. He looked around frantically as he walked to his parked car, towing a small rolling suitcase behind him. The guy was going to split town. How had he possibly packed so fast? Chip realized that his plan of calling the target might not have been the best idea. He hoped he would still be able to intercept Ortiz before he got on a plane. He noted in the back of his mind that next time he should think things through more carefully before he acted.

  When Ortiz pulled away from the curb, Chip almost panicked as he realized his next mistake. His car was parked facing the wrong way. He pulled out and headed down the street in the opposite direction from Ortiz, looking desperately in the rear-view mirror to see which way the Audi was turning. His view was partially occluded by an old maroon Chevy Malibu that had pulled down the street behind the Audi. The cheap car looked out of place in the upscale neighborhood. He circled the block and tried to catch up, and was relieved when he finally located the Audi about a block ahead of him on Columbia Road. He followed as Ortiz took a left onto Connecticut Avenue and headed south.

  As the traffic thickened with the onset of rush hour, it was tricky keeping up with the silver Audi in the fading light. It was fully dark and over an hour later when they finally pulled into a parking deck at Dulles. When the car came to a stop in a parking space, Chip took the next spot over and swiftly stepped from the Cadillac. He pulled on a black zip-up Patagonia down sweater. Although the day had been warm, the November night would be too chilly for a t-shirt. He looked around to make sure nobody was nearby then discreetly pulled the silenced Sig from the front of his jeans. He stepped around to the back of the car. Ortiz was still wrestling his suitcase out of the small trunk opening of his Audi when Chip poked the Sig’s silencer into his ribs. The man froze.

  “Put it back. Close the trunk.”

  Ortiz did as he was told.

  Chip prodded him around to the passenger side of the Audi with the extended end of the gun and told Ortiz to climb inside. He kept the gun trained on his target and instructed the other man to climb over into the driver’s seat. It took an awkward few seconds for Ortiz to struggle around the gearshift in the small car, then Chip climbed in as well with the gun’s aim never erring from his new prisoner.

  “Drive,” he said.

  Chip kept the gun down and his head turned as Ortiz paid for the parking, hoping to avoid any security cameras that might be stationed at the airport’s exit. He indicated the way as Ortiz drove onto 287 back toward town. Traffic was lighter in this direction, and it only took a little over thirty minutes before they pulled into the lot on the Virginia side of the Potomac at Great Falls. Chip had Ortiz park the Audi in the back corner of the lot, far from other cars.

  “Call your boss,” he instructed in a quiet voice as soon as the engine was off. “Tell him that his daughter will be brought to him in Alabama, and that he should wait for her there.”

  Although he was relieved to hear that the girl had survived, Ortiz’s mind scrambled for some
reason why he couldn’t make the call. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Senator Moore right now. He had betrayed the man and was running away with his two million dollars. Then he was struck with a small ray of hope. Maybe it was only his boss that this young blond stranger was after. Maybe if he helped the guy get to Moore, Ortiz would be let go. He hadn’t really done anything, after all. He had only lined up a political and financial deal—it wasn’t like he had killed anybody. Ortiz was grasping at straws, but it was all that he had left.

  “Do you want me to tell him anything else?” Ortiz asked, sounding a bit more hopeful now as he stalled for time. Maybe he could still talk his way out of this.

  Chip pondered this for a moment. Once again, his plan only went so far. He had thought ahead only to getting the senator to leave DC so that he could find the man and see what his involvement was in all of this. There was no way he wanted to go after such an important public figure here in the middle of a strange city. Then it hit him. He had the solution. But first, he needed to know what else Juan Ortiz’s knew.

  “What was the deal? What was he supposed to get out of this?” he asked his prisoner.

  “Five million dollars.” Ortiz was suddenly more than happy to spill the beans. He would cooperate, and maybe he would live. He was just the messenger, after all. He had to convince this grim stranger that he was really after someone else, anyone else except for Ortiz.

  “How was he supposed to receive it?”

  “Two million when the bill cleared his committee, and the other three million when it passed.”

  Chip had no idea what bill Ortiz was referring to, but he didn’t let on. “Did it pass?”

  “Yeah,” Ortiz replied cautiously. “It passed today.”

  It suddenly made sense to Chip why Ortiz had been packed up and fleeing when he arrived. The guy must be splitting with the cash. “Where’s the money?”