by Larry Crane
Lou flushed deep red. He could feel it. The snickering. It was a big, Sherm Wellington joke. They were laying it on. In a second, Sherm would start calling from outside. It all flashed through his mind and he slumped with relief.
But they were quiet now, as if they interpreted his actions as anger. And he waited until he had to speak again. “I don’t know about you guys, but I intend to come out of this thing alive and without a scratch. The only way that’s going to happen is if everyone takes it seriously. Now, if any of you think this is going to be a stroll on the boardwalk, let me know and I’ll kick your butt out of here now. I don’t know where you got the candy ass idea that the New York State Police carry lima beans in their revolvers.”
They sat in front of him in silence, looking at their shoes. He saw no smirks, not one.
“Again, we carry out anybody who’s hurt. No dead. If you’re wounded and can move, get yourself to the east end of the bridge. If you can’t move, stay put and we’ll get to you. We never leave anyone alive behind.
“The alternate escape route is off the west end of the bridge, across 9W and into the woods. Only use this if the east end is closed off. I’ll make that decision. I’ve got a map. I’ll show both Red and Frawley the primary and secondary extraction points, along with the pickup time at each.”
“About the broad. Do we have to bring her along? I know you were opposed to her in the beginning. We could ditch her right now. She’s going to hold us up.” It was Red, looking around for approval from the others.
“Tasha is key to our success. She goes along. End of discussion.”
Dusk turned to night. Red flared a match with his fingernail and pushed it through the glass of a small Coleman lamp. The flickering yellow light behind the group cast their shadows on the wall of the trailer.
The talk went on for three more hours. What if the cops show up before they’re through? What if the napalm doesn’t blow? What if some crazy motorist decides to investigate? He covered their actions at the rendezvous point, the signals and the responses, over and over.
Who goes in which truck? Who drives? It was a good briefing. As good as it could be with the little time they had had to prepare.
They were keyed up for his inspection, shifting on their feet at Lou’s approach. Their shadows moved on the wall in a ghostly dance. The flame from the lamp flickered in Lou’s eyes. They all had old, World War II M-2 Carbines—the smallest, least effective rifle ever. Good. With better weapons they could be dangerous. He checked their clothing; knowledge of their assignment; willingness to follow instructions; and, most important, their ability to handle a weapon.
* * *
Thinking as a team for five hours—talking, joking, sweating it out—they bonded as comrades. As they neared the end of the operation’s prep phase, they could feel tension like a thin wire stretched ’til it sung. The deadly seriousness of it grew. A silence settled in.
When it came down to the bottom line, it was up to him now. Lou Christopher. The leader. Not only was he going along; he owned the show. Success or failure—on him. The sons of bitches had gauged him perfectly.
At 8:00 p.m., Red and his men jumped down from the trailer—carbines hidden tight to their legs—and boarded Mack East, moving out.
In the trailer, the rest of them were bathed in a yellow glow. Frawley, Bruce, and Pegley, hunched in a circle and wolfed down burgers like they were their last ever. Tasha rocked nervously, watching Lou for some sign. Lou stared at the wall, burning the plan into his memory.
At 8:15 sharp, Mack West rolled out. The three-quarter ton truck followed, heading north.
Chapter Eighteen
Lou dialed the number from the phone booth in Central Valley.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mag. It’s verboten, but I’m calling anyway.”
“The kids were darling. Two little hobos with spotted ’kerchiefs on a stick.”
She sounded drained, sad.
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“No, you’re not. Arden House.”
“Yes. I can see the lights of the traffic down on the Thruway.” It was only half a lie.
“Have your fun, Lou.”
“Maggie, please...”
“I’m obviously not in California.”
“I’m glad, darlin’. I’m really glad.”
“Come home when you can,” Mag said, and hung up the phone.
The night was not especially cold; a typical, late fall evening on the east coast, when the night wind bites your cheeks and burns your earlobes.
Only the back of the truck was visible in the light from the street lamp at the far end of the lot. Pegley had killed the lights, as ordered. Lou dropped coins, dialed again. The phone on the other end rang once.
“Red?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait a full five minutes, then take off. Got it?”
“I got it.”
“Red?”
“Yeah.”
“Make it good.”
“No sweat,” Red said. Click.
Lou slid open the phone booth door. He trotted to the back of the truck and yanked the door handle down. One of the heavy doors creaked open. The emptiness of the semi-trailer shocked him—they had left Bruce back at the trailer park! Disaster already! Fuck! Then suddenly he recalled that Bruce had jumped in beside Frawley in the three-quarter ton. Steady boy. He jogged to the smaller truck.
“Okay, the next time it’s the real thing. It’ll take us about fifteen minutes once we start rolling again. We stay here for about five minutes more. Check?”
“We gotcha,” Frawley said.
Pegley and the girl were dragging on cigarettes when he climbed back into the cab. He rolled down the window to get some air. “We wait another four minutes, and then we’re off.”
“I guess the other guys are in the right place?” Tasha said.
“Perfect,” Lou said.
“That was more than you expected, wasn’t it?” she added.
“Everything’s going fine so far. Let’s just say I’m happy right now.”
The minutes seemed to crawl by.
Then, show time was upon them. Backing the Mack semi-trailer out of the service station, slow and easy, seemed to take forever. They headed out onto Route 6, snaking back over the Thruway going east. Up ahead, the headlight beams tracked every bump in the pavement. Inside the cab they were silent; the three of them bobbing as one with each bounce.
The road continued due east for half a mile and then rose in a broad arc that took them north up a steep climb over the mountain in front of them. Off to the left, the valley spread out below them, the long line of headlights on the Thruway below moved like a snake in a field of daisies. Pegley knew his job; he operated smoothly behind the wheel, working through eight gears on the way up. Then the road leveled off. They topped the incline.
The truck picked up speed now. The road forked to the right, carrying them due east again, directly toward the target. Ten miles to go. Now they moved through the Palisades Park area, bordered by cliffs rising fifty feet above the highway, gleaming wet in the headlights. Since leaving the service station, they’d passed only two cars.
So the crazy thing was underway. If it came off perfectly, they’d be all clear in an hour. One hour. The whole unlikely, goddamn adventure behind them. Lou could feel the adrenaline, the same wave of excitement he’d known in the chopper headed into a hot LZ. Something like terror. And euphoria. Alive again. A mover. Did the president really know his name? Had he really been hand-picked?
He could feel the heat of it burning on his face, glowing red in the night air. Was he a fool? Or a player? Bang-bang, in and out. Home free, an hour off. And the world would never be the same again. One more time. Just once more.
Pegley and Tasha were silent beside him, all three mesmerized by the bobbing beams on the pavement and keeping deep within themselves. A stick of paratroopers about to jump. Tasha slid a cigarette from her coat pocket; offered one to Lou a
nd to the driver. Lou refused with a shake of his head, his eyes fixed on the road. She struck the match and her face flared up in the mirror. Then they all fell back into the dim light from the dashboard.
The smoke seemed to float on the tension in the air, almost palpable. How did Red get into this? An ad in the paper: Wanted: soldier of fortune? How about the others? What kind of nutcase volunteers with the chance of getting his ass shot off for five hundred bucks, no questions asked? Goddam. What kind? My kind! Goddammit to hell.
Finally, he broke the silence.
“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.
