Cut Out

by Bob Mayer

  “You ready?” Riley asked Lisa.

  She nodded. She was clenching and unclenching her hands nervously. The open ramp right next to them, the high-pitched whine of the turbine engines, the trees going by just below—all combined to make a frightening scene. Riley had seen trained military men verging on panic in similar situations.

  “You go right after Hammer. Just hold on tight and slide. All right?” Riley peered at her, making sure he got eye contact.

  “Hold on tight and slide?” she repeated, incredulously. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Riley said.

  “Five minutes!” The crew chief grabbed a monkey harness off the wall and buckled the straps around his body. He then hooked the end of the tether into an O-bolt on the floor of the helicopter. He played out the slack, walking toward the back ramp, and then cinched down the line to prevent him from falling out the back. He opened up a plastic case, pulled out a set of night vision goggles, and slipped them on.

  Riley peered out the back. The terrain below had changed in more ways than its topography. The lights of civilization had been left behind. Riley assumed that a small glow to the left rear was the town of Cherokee, North Carolina. Beyond that there was only the darkness of the forest. Riley edged his way closer to the ramp and, grabbing the ramp’s hydraulic lift, peered out. High ridges loomed like black walls on either side. The helicopter was still going up the valley, heading toward the crest.

  “Two minutes,” the crew chief yelled.

  A sudden swing to the left caught Riley by surprise, and his fingers tightened on the metal in reflex. Lisa fell to the floor; Hammer leaned over and lifted her to her feet, wrapping one arm around her and the other around a metal strut along the side of the aircraft. He was yelling in her ear, trying to get her to focus on the upcoming event.

  The black walls on either side had disappeared. The helicopter was now flying on top of a ridge, moving to the southwest, barely twenty feet above the highest treetops. Riley peered down: he occasionally could make out a black opening below where a two-lane road also followed the ridgeline. They were right on course.

  “One minute.” The helicopter was slowing. A large open area passed by to the left, about a hundred yards away. Another two hundred feet up in altitude and a quarter mile to the southwest, the pilot brought the craft to a hover.

  The crew chief threw out the fast rope, then leaned over to make sure it was touching the ground forty feet below in a small clearing surrounded by tall trees. “Go!”

  Riley took Hammer’s place holding Lisa, and nodded his head toward the ramp. Hammer reached out and wrapped both massive arms around the rope. His teeth glinted in the glow of the red lights. He shouted “Later!” as he stepped off the ramp and slid out of sight.

  “Grab it tight,” Riley advised Lisa unnecessarily.

  She pulled the rope in tight to her chest and moved her feet back until she could feel the edge of the ramp under her sneakers. The cold night air swirled in the back ramp, chilling her, and the whine of the engines combined with the thunder of the massive blades overhead. She looked at Riley and he nodded. Lisa froze. “I can’t!” she screamed at him.

  The crew chief gestured downward, “Go! Go!”

  Riley had been prepared for this. He pulled the loops on the sling rope out of the ammo pouches, then hooked each end into the snap links on the shoulder of Lisa’s vest, the fast rope now locked in between them. He grabbed her upper arms. “On three.”

  “No!” Lisa screamed back.

  With a deep breath, Riley slid sideways until his feet were also on the edge of the ramp. “Two!”

  “Please don’t,” she begged.

  He stepped back, pulling Lisa with him. Their weight pulled them away from the ramp, and the thick, soft rope raced through between them. The impact with the ground was surprising, but not as hard as Riley had feared it would be. They stood still for a moment, savoring the feel of land beneath their feet.

  “Let go!” Riley yelled over the noise of the chopper, grabbing Lisa’s hands and prying them loose from his jacket sleeve. He popped the ends of the sling rope loose from the snap links on her vest and stepped back. He waved up at the black silhouette of the helicopter, knowing that the crew chief could see him clearly through the night vision goggles. He then unslung the silenced FA-MAS and made sure it was ready for action.

  The fast rope lifted slightly and then more quickly as the helicopter gained altitude. In thirty seconds the sound of the aircraft was a distant mutter to the northeast, and then there was silence. Riley looked around. The observation tower that had so concerned Prowley was to their front. They were standing in a small clearing at the base of the long curving concrete ramp that gave access to the tower. Weather beaten pine trees crowded up on all sides.

  “This tower is the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We’re on top of Clingmans Dome right now,” Riley informed Lisa and Hammer. He pointed off in the darkness to the left. “The Appalachian Trail runs along the ridgeline and is off in that direction a hundred meters or so.” He gestured in the opposite direction. “We’ll go this way about two hundred meters and then bed down for the rest of the night. That ought to be far enough away from the trail and the tower so that even if someone heard the bird and comes to investigate, we’ll be all right.”

  With that, he turned and led the way into the dark woods. Lisa followed directly behind him, her right hand on his rucksack, letting him guide her through the woods. Hammer took the trail position, allowing a little distance between himself and Lisa, his own FA-MAS ready for action.

  KNOXVILLE

  1 NOVEMBER, 3:45 a.m.

  Giannini awoke, slightly better for her couple of hours sleep. Leaving the key in the room and the door unlocked, she went out to her car and started the engine. Riley had said to arrive after first light, but Giannini didn’t feel comfortable waiting. She wanted to get there and enjoy the relative safety of being with Riley. Thirty seconds later she was on the interstate.

  GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS

  1 NOVEMBER, 3:55 a.m.

  Riley scanned the surrounding woods, holding his eyes slightly off-center to use the night-vision portion of the retina. He could hear the slight rumble of Hammer snoring and the uneasy movements of Lisa Cobb’s troubled sleep, but he tuned those out. He could swear he had heard something. He shook his head: he was tired, having not slept in quite a while, and he must have dozed off.

  Shifting position, Riley pulled in the collar of his heavy-duty parka, feeling a chill run through his bones. It was cold up here, the lateness of the season combining with the altitude to drop the temperature into the mid-thirties. He settled down, leaning back against his ruck, and closed his eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, his last conscious thought was to wonder where Giannini was.

  PIGEON FORGE, TENNESSEE

  1 NOVEMBER, 4:43 a.m.

  It was the off-season, and the middle of the night, and for that Giannini was grateful. Pigeon Forge, besides being home to Dolly Parton’s theme park, Dollywood, was the outlet shop, motel, gift shop capital of Tennessee, and traffic on a normal summer day was usually at a standstill along Route 441. She passed a museum advertising Buford Pusser’s “death car” and an indoor skydiving building, where participants could hover in a stationary position above an updraft. She felt a long way from Chicago and wondered what on earth she was doing here. Between what had happened at Tom Volpe’s house and the events of a few hours ago, she knew her life would never be the same. The only thing certain about the immediate future was the obvious fact that it was going to be very dangerous.

  She looked up, beyond the clusters of neon signs. The tops of the Smokies disappeared into a bluish gray haze highlighted in the moonlight. The steep tree-covered slopes beckoned ominously. It was rough terrain, and the road she was on—441—was the only one that cut through the park, connecting Tennessee with North Carolina.

  She passed the turnoff for Dollywood, and then Pigeon Forge was
behind her. Gatlinburg—the last stop in civilization this side of North Carolina—was next. Giannini took the bypass, circling the town to the west, going under the massive cables that carried the tram out of Gatlinburg into the nearby mountains. The four-lane road narrowed down to two lanes, and the terrain closed in on both sides. The Sugarland Visitors’ Center was at the border of the park. Signs flashed in her headlights, warning of possible road closings in case of bad weather. The red metal barriers were open this morning, though, and Giannini passed through.

  As she entered the park itself, the clouds closed in like a ceiling, totally blocking out the stars and moon. The weather report on the radio called for intermittent clouds all day with the possibility of a storm late in the evening or early the next day. Route 441 was now called the Newfound Gap Road; Giannini’s destination lay almost halfway along the road, astride the Tennessee-North Carolina border. It was fifteen miles from Gatlinburg to the Gap, and negotiating the winding road that often switched back on itself to climb the steep slopes gave Giannini time to reflect on the last time she was here.

  It had been in the late spring. She’d driven down from Chicago to see Riley, and they’d agreed to meet in Knoxville. She’d felt tentative about the trip. The only other times she’d visited Riley he’d been laid up in his hospital bed recovering from the wounds he’d received in the Chicago mission. He’d called shortly after he arrived at Fort Bragg and started his new assignment. She could tell he was nervous and uncertain—something that surprised her given the confidence and self-assurance he’d displayed when they had worked together. It hadn’t really occurred to her at the time that in calling her and arranging the “date,” Riley had been entering uncomfortable, unfamiliar territory.

  Driving down for that trip she had also experienced a bit of nervousness, but that had changed to irritation when she met Riley and discovered his plans for the weekend. She had envisioned a nice hotel and a romantic dinner, but instead Riley had handed her a backpack. They were going camping in the mountains.

  She’d hidden her disappointment and gone along with the plan; to her surprise, the effort was more than worth it. The city girl discovered that she loved the quiet serenity of the trails and the spectacular views that would suddenly appear as they crested a ridge or hilltop. They spent two days walking a loop that started and ended at Newfound Gap. The last day—on the way back—they stopped at the Clingmans Dome observation tower. It was there that Riley finally touched her—moving tentatively behind her and taking her in his arms. And this was after spending two nights sleeping in the same tent, inches apart. The lack of physical contact was Giannini’s second surprise of the weekend. Like the first, it initially bothered her; then, as time went by, it became something she appreciated. After two nasty divorces and a job that put her in contact with cops and criminals all day long, Giannini was used to being on the defensive. She was pleased by the respect Riley showed her, and his willingness to have patience. It was a welcome change.

  When Riley told her to meet him at the place where they had “that talk,” she knew immediately what he meant. They’d spent four hours on the observation tower and Riley had opened up to her, talking about his life and the things he’d done, and she found herself doing the same.

  It was a special time—one of those interludes in the hectic craziness of their everyday lives that both had cherished afterward.

  Giannini shook her head as she took a hairpin turn. It had also been a time they had not been able to repeat due to the demands of their jobs. No, she corrected herself, she might as well be honest: she had not made the effort to see Riley because the relationship scared her. She realized she felt closer to him—after that one weekend—than she had to any man, and it made her feel vulnerable. She had told herself that she didn’t want to get involved with a man whose job could easily take him halfway around the world on a moment’s notice and could get him killed just as quickly. And now, Giannini thought to herself, she was the one who had put this man in danger. She wished she had made more of an effort to be with Riley instead of always finding excuses.

  As the road made its way up toward the Gap, the oak-hickory forest gave way to spruce and fir trees, part of an ancient forest that extended along the back of the Appalachians from Maine to Georgia. The cloud cover was only a few hundred feet overhead, reflecting a faint glow from her high beams. On the left side a steep mountain stream tumbled over rocks as it raced down the hillside. On the right, the terrain took off steeply, angling up at almost a sixty-degree slope into the darkness. Giannini had yet to see any other traffic on the road, which would soon be closed for the winter.

  The road slid into the clouds, and wisps of gray flew past like ghosts in the bright light. Giannini slowed further. The road went through a short tunnel and then looped back on itself, crossing over the roof of the tunnel.

  The car punched through the gray clouds and Giannini was surprised by a patch of moonlight that splashed across the windshield and then just as quickly disappeared behind higher white clouds. The road leveled off, and then the parking area for Newfound Gap appeared. Giannini passed the lot and drove toward the intersection of the Gap road with the Clingmans Dome access road. It was there she found the first obstacle. A red metal pole was locked across the tar road, denying access. Giannini turned around, drove the hundred meters back to Newfound Gap, and left her car in the parking area there.

  She now remembered Riley saying she would have to walk in; at the time she had assumed he meant from the Clingmans Dome parking area. She got out of the car and checked the map posted on the wall of the small shelter.

  “Goddamn,” she muttered when she saw it was seven miles from Newfound Gap to Clingmans Dome. She went back to her car and opened the trunk, replacing her flats with the sneakers she used at murder scenes. She also grabbed the set of coveralls, having a feeling she might need them. Leaving the car behind, Giannini slipped under the metal barrier and set off up the road.

  CHEROKEE, NORTH CAROLINA

  1 NOVEMBER, 7:15 a.m.

  While Giannini was making her way to the park from the north, Master and his men had driven up from the south. Two vans were parked in the lot behind the Oconaluftee Visitors’ Center awaiting his instructions. Master was currently seated in his van beside the driver as they negotiated the streets of Cherokee.

  “There,” Master ordered, pointing to the left. “Pull in there.”

  The driver did as ordered, rolling onto the gravel in front of a small round building whose walls consisted mostly of glass. Two helicopters sat in the field behind the building; the sign in front advertised “Mountain Flights, Inc.”

  Master had ignored the presence of Simon for the entire ride across North Carolina, and he continued to do so as he stepped to the back of the van. He pulled open a drawer and thumbed through various IDs until he found what he needed.

  “Wait here,” Master ordered Simon as he put his hand on the door latch.

  “Where are you going?” Simon asked, fingering his attache case.

  “To get an idea of what we’re up against here. Riley picked the Smokies for a reason, and the more I know about the area, the better chance I have of figuring out where they’ll be.” Master stepped out of the van and entered the building. A man seated behind the counter waved at him, continuing his conversation on the phone. The man was burly with long, dirty-blond hair tied behind his neck in a ponytail. Master walked over to a large three-dimensional model of the mountains, which was set up on a table in the center of the room. Color-coded fiberglass tubes arrayed over the terrain showed the routes the helicopters flew and how much the various excursions cost.

  The man hung up the phone. “How can I help you this morning? Looking for a ride through the mountains?”

  Master flipped open the ID case he’d chosen. “I’m Lieutenant Loggins with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency.”

  The man looked at the ID, then at Master for a second before sticking out his hand. “Jim Ferguson.”
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br />   Master nodded toward the helicopters out back. “You the pilot?”

  “One of them. It’s kind of slow this time of year and we alternate days off.”

  Master turned his attention back to the map board. “You know this area pretty well?”

  Ferguson shrugged. “I fly over it. I haven’t been on the ground much except for driving through. But, yeah, I guess I know it pretty well. What do you need?”

  “We’re looking for some fugitives and we think they might be hiding out in the park,” Master said.

  Ferguson whistled. “It’s a damn big park.”

  “If you were planning to hide out, where would you go?”

  “These people driving a car?”

  Master paused and considered the question. They’d spotted the Camaro parked at the Rowe Training Facility. The sergeant major who’d come to pick up the car had professed ignorance, and Master had ordered his men to back off—they had made enough of a scene already around Fort Bragg. There was still that other set of tire tracks leading away from the spot where the two men had been killed. Master could think of no other way they could have gotten up here. “They got here by car, but we think they’re on foot now.”

  Ferguson looked down at the model. “Like I said, it’s off-season here and the whole park is pretty empty, but the least traveled area is here”— he pointed at the southwest corner of the map—“down by Fontana Lake on the North Carolina side. The Tennessee side is much more active.”

  “Where could they leave a car down there?”

  “Pretty much anywhere. You can check with the park rangers. There’s a ranger living down there right along Route 28. If someone’s in that area, it’s likely he’ll know.”