Lost Lake

by Phillip Margolin

  “I guess that’s as good an explanation as any, but I still think it’s possible that he did save me. If he’s telling the truth, General Wingate has a powerful motive to kill Carl and anyone else, like George and me, who Carl told about the Unit.”

  “If the Unit exists. We only have Rice’s word for that.”

  Ami was too tired to argue and she was relieved when she saw the Heathman across the street. The hotel restaurant had just opened and there were only a few other diners. The hostess seated Brendan and Ami by the window and a waiter brought them water. Ami ordered a light meal and Brendan ordered pancakes.

  “I want to see Ryan,” Ami said as soon as the waiter left.

  “He can stay with you until it’s safe to go home. I bet he’ll get a kick out of living in a hotel for a few days.”

  “He will. He’s very curious.” Ami smiled. “Sometimes he drives me crazy with all his questions.”

  “I understand he was pretty upset after the game.”

  “He’s better now, but it’s been tough on him. He really likes Carl and he still has nightmares about what happened. He doesn’t need more violence in his life. It took him a long time to get over the death of his father.”

  “That must have been tough for both of you.”

  “Chad was a great father. A great husband, too.”

  Ami choked up for a moment. She was tired and it was tough to control her emotions.

  “I know. Betty Sato told me,” Kirkpatrick said so that she wouldn’t have to talk about something that obviously still hurt.

  “Ryan was my lifeline, Brendan. He kept me going. If he hadn’t been there I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “You would have done okay. You’re tough. You don’t take shit from anyone, certainly not from me.”

  He smiled. Ami thought of Brendan’s own situation, carrying on bravely despite losing someone he loved.

  “How did you do it, all by yourself?”

  “I put one foot in front of the other and kept walking. I’m still walking. I’m afraid to stop. I guess I don’t have to tell you.”

  The waiter appeared with their order. They both looked grateful for the interruption.

  “I’ll check you in after breakfast,” Brendan said as soon as they were alone. “Then I’ll arrange to have Ryan picked up from school and brought here.”

  “This is awfully nice of you.”

  “I’m trying to make up for the way I treated you when we first met. I feel guilty about that.”

  “Yeah, you were a bit of a shit,” Ami answered with a grin. “But I forgive you.”

  “Good. I don’t want you mad at me, at least, not when we’re out of court.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Carl had doubled back after laying a false trail that he hoped would lead his trackers south. From his position behind a tree several yards away, he’d heard everything that Sam Cutler said to Vanessa and he’d seen Cutler give the order to inject her.

  Carl was certain that he had met Cutler twice before, only Wingate’s man had called himself Paul Molineaux during Carl’s first combat mission and the mission to rescue the MIAs. Carl debated killing Cutler and the man who was holding Vanessa, but he rejected the idea. Cutler was right. Carl was out of practice. In his twenties, he could have taken both men out with a handgun from this distance, but Vanessa might die if he couldn’t get his shots off quickly enough or-which was equally possible-if he missed. Carl decided that his best course of action was to wait until Vanessa’s guard took her to the car, but he had to reject that plan when two more men materialized at Cutler’s side.

  “We lost him,” one said.

  “Okay,” Sam answered. “We’ll never get him in the dark after he’s had this much time to get away. Let’s bring the General’s daughter home.”

  Carl watched them go. He’d heard what Cutler had said about the tracking device. When he was certain that Cutler and his men had gone, he disabled it. As he drove, he started working on a plan for rescuing Vanessa.

  Carl abandoned Vanessa’s car in a supermarket parking lot, stole a nondescript Chevrolet, and headed south using back roads. It took him a full day to drive down the coast. On the way, he listened to the radio for the political news. Wingate was giving a speech in Cleveland. If the General went straight home, he and Carl would arrive at the mansion at about the same time.

  After nightfall, Carl broke into a sporting goods store in a small town near San Diego and stole a pair of stiff-soled trail shoes, binoculars, a wetsuit, a fishing bow and arrows, several lengths of sturdy rope, and the strongest fishing line he could find. He put his booty into one of Vanessa’s duffel bags and drove toward a beach a few miles south of the General’s estate, where he’d hung out when he was a student at St. Martin’s Prep.

  There were no cars in the narrow lot when Carl parked around midnight and changed into his wetsuit. The beach was deserted, too. Carl strapped the duffel bag across his back and started swimming up the coast. Fighting through the rolling water was exhausting, but thoughts of Vanessa kept him plowing ahead. Carl knew that getting into the mansion and rescuing her would be much harder than the swim. No matter how many times Carl fine-tuned his plan, it sounded suicidal.

  “Getting old is a bitch,” Rice thought as he dragged his aching body and the duffel bag out of the surf and onto the beach behind the stone jetty at the end of Morris Wingate’s property. He flopped down on the sand to catch his breath. For most of his life, Carl had been in the type of shape that let him endure almost any physical hardship with a minimum of wear and tear; but now he was almost fifty and his body did not hold up the way it used to, no matter how much he worked out. Then there was the fact that he had still not fully recovered from being shot. The only thing that kept him going was Vanessa. He had betrayed her once, when he went into the army without resisting, and he wasn’t going to let her down again.

  When his breathing was back to normal, Carl peeked over the jetty and surveyed the three-hundred-foot cliff that marked the boundary of the Wingate estate. When he saw the old tree still jutting out from the side of the cliff, he breathed a sigh of relief. His plan depended on that tree, and he hoped that he was half as tough as it was.

  Carl’s main problem was the condition of the cliff. Centuries of a relentless assault by nature had made the surface he was about to climb very unstable. The face of the cliff was constantly sloughing. Vegetation grew in cracks in the shale, loosening it. Wind laden with moisture and salt from the sea beat at the rock mercilessly. The net result was a facade that was always crumbling and falling away. Each toe and handhold would be treacherous enough in the daytime. At night, every inch of the climb was going to be a surprise.

  Carl struggled out of his wetsuit and put on his jeans, shirt, and trail shoes before scanning the top of the cliff with the stolen binoculars. When he was satisfied that there were no guards patrolling, he slung the duffel bag across his back. He was about to sprint across the beach when he heard the sound of rotary blades whipping through the night. Rice pressed himself against the jetty and scanned the sky until he fixed on a dot of light moving toward the Wingate estate from the north. Moments later the landing lights on Wingate’s helipad came on and a Computex helicopter dropped out of the sky. The General had come home.

  Carl knew that the arrival of the helicopter was bound to distract the guards, so he ran across the sand to the base of the cliff, then stood in the shadows listening for any sign that he had been detected. When he was convinced that he was safe, he began his ascent directly under the tree.

  Despite arms and legs that ached from the swim, pain from his wounds, and wind that buffeted him mercilessly, Carl scaled the first hundred feet with only minor problems. Then two successive handholds crumbled and a foothold gave way, sending him sliding several feet down the face of the cliff. Carl stopped his fall on a narrow ledge and broke out his gear. After attaching a long length of fishing line to an arrow, he fitted the arrow to the fishing bow. From the b
each the old tree was three hundred feet straight up, but now the tree was a little less than two hundred feet above him-still a long shot, but he had no choice but to go for it.

  Carl aimed so that the arrow would clear the back of the tree. His first shot was short and he had to reel the arrow back. Wind blew his second shot away from the face of the cliff. Carl waited patiently for the wind to die down before taking his third shot. His muscles strained as he pulled back on the bowstring. He sighted and released. This time the arrow arced through the air, sailing over the north side of the tree and across the back. The weight of the arrow pulled the fishing line down the south side of the tree past Carl, and it fell almost to the beach.

  Carl scrambled back down the cliff while letting out more line. When he reached the arrow, he took a long length of rope out of the duffel bag and attached it to the fishing line above the arrow using a fisherman’s knot. Then he let go of the arrow, moved to the north side of the tree, and pulled the fishing line back over the tree until the attached rope hung from both sides of the trunk.

  After detaching the arrow and the fishing line from the rope, Carl tied a bowline loop at one end of the rope and passed the other end of the rope through the eye of the bowline, creating a noose around the trunk of the tree. Carl pulled on the rope until it tightened around the tree, providing a fixed anchor.

  Now, using separate pieces of rope, Carl made a sling that looped around his chest and a seat harness that he secured around his waist, under his buttocks, and through his crotch so that it fitted like a diaper. Then he removed from the duffel bag two more pieces of rope that were roughly twice the length of his body. He tied the first piece around the rope that dangled from the tree using a prusik knot and attached a second prusik beneath the first. The prusik was a clever device that could slide up or down the rope when there was no tension on it, but would tighten and not slide when tension was applied. Carl ran the top prusik under his chest sling and attached it to his seat harness. When Carl sat on the seat harness, the tension on the prusik kept the harness secured to the rope. Carl could dangle in space without fear. If Carl put his foot in the loop formed by the lower prusik he could stand up straight and the tension on the lower prusik would keep him from sliding when he was standing. Additionally, when he stood, the upper prusik loosened and he could slide it up the rope as far as he could reach. Carl had created a simple system that allowed him to slide up the rope by alternately standing and sitting. This allowed him to climb up the tree with a minimum of effort because he could rest by sitting or standing.

  When Carl reached the tree, he paused below the edge of the cliff, sagged back in his seat harness, and rested. As soon as he regained some of his strength, he peered over the edge. No guards were in sight. Carl hauled himself over the lip of the cliff. He left the rope secured to the tree so that he and Vanessa could rappel down it if they were able to escape, but he covered it with dirt and leaves so a guard would not see it.

  Carl had taken two silenced nine-millimeter Glock automatics, ammunition, and a combat knife from the men he’d killed at Ami’s house. The knife was already in a sheath he’d strapped on before the climb. He took the pistols from the duffel bag before concealing the duffel in the underbrush a few yards from the tree.

  Carl thought about the task that was facing him. He had to get past the guards and Wingate’s surveillance equipment, break into the mansion, and find Vanessa without getting killed or captured. Then he had to escape with her, which meant that Vanessa would have to rappel to the beach and swim down the coast in choppy seas. The whole thing seemed impossible to pull off.

  The next time Vanessa drifted into consciousness a man was standing by the door, watching her, and someone else was sitting beside her bed. It was dark in the room. She closed her eyes. Thinking was such a strain.

  A warm hand covered Vanessa’s. She forced her eyes open again. The lights went on and she blinked.

  “Thank God you’re safe.”

  It took Vanessa a moment to realize that it was her father who had spoken and a moment more for her to remember that she hated him. Anger-triggered adrenaline cleared away most of her drug-induced stupor and she tried to sit up.

  The General touched her shoulder. “No, rest, you need your strength.”

  “Get your hands off me.”

  “Vanessa, I love you. I did what I had to do to protect you.”

  “From who, daddy? You’re the only person I’m afraid of.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. Everything I’ve done has been to help you.”

  “Like locking me up in that asylum and keeping me drugged for a year so I couldn’t tell anyone that you ordered Carl to murder Eric Glass?”

  She pointed at Sam Cutler, who was watching from the door. “Like having your little spy kidnap me? Tell me daddy, while he was living with me, did Sam give you a blow-by-blow version of how we fucked?”

  Vanessa’s words were slurred and lacked force. Even so, the General flinched.

  “Carl Rice is an insane killer,” Wingate said. “I have no idea how many people he’s murdered. I had to get you away from him.”

  “You have to murder him because he’s the only man alive who can tell the truth about the dirty little secret that can keep you from becoming president.”

  Wingate sighed. “He’s delusional, Vanessa. That’s what makes him so convincing. He really believes everything he’s told you. But none of it is true. There was no secret army. I did not arrange for Carl to be drafted, and I never ordered Carl to kill Eric Glass. That was all in Carl’s head, and you believed him because you hate me. But I’ve always loved you, even when you’ve hurt me. Do you have any idea how badly I feel knowing that my daughter believes I’m so evil that I could murder my wife, a woman I loved dearly?”

  The General ducked his head, and his voice caught. “I’ve never told you, but there have been nights where I’ve cried myself to sleep because of you, knowing that you…have such a low opinion of me that…”

  Wingate shook his head. To Vanessa it appeared that he had been overcome by emotion, and that shocked her. She had never seen her father lose control-not even at her mother’s funeral. It was one of the things that had convinced her that Morris Wingate did not love his wife. Was the General’s display of emotion genuine or manufactured? Everything she believed about her father convinced her that he was faking.

  “Are you hungry?” Wingate asked. “I’ll have dinner sent up.” He smiled in an attempt to lighten the conversation. “I have a new chef. He’s French. I stole him away from a four-star restaurant in Los Angeles.”

  “It looks like kidnapping is becoming your new hobby.”

  “Yes, well you’ve got a few interesting hobbies of your own,” he answered wearily. “You’ve put me in a terrible situation, Vanessa. You’re a wanted criminal. You helped Carl Rice, a multiple murderer, escape from jail. I’m your father and I love you and want to protect you, but I’m also running for my party’s presidential nomination, not to mention the trouble I could get into for harboring a fugitive. What should I do?”

  “Your political ambitions are no concern of mine,” Vanessa said.

  “I know you don’t believe me, but Rice is a very dangerous man. I had to get you away from him.”

  “So, are you going to turn me in?”

  “No one knows you’re here, and I’m going to keep it that way. I have plenty of connections worldwide from my government days and Computex. It would be an easy matter for me to get you a new identity, even a new face. You could start over in another country. You’d be safe and I’d make sure you had plenty of money.”

  “So that’s it. You want me tucked away in some backwater where I can’t rock the boat.”

  “I do not want you in jail because your delusions led you to help a murderer.”

  “What do you have planned for Carl?”

  “Carl is a problem for the police. They may never catch him. He’s very resourceful. He’s managed to elude capture fo
r years. Maybe his luck will hold out. Did he tell you where he was going, what his plans are?”

  “We didn’t know where we were going. We were going to hole up at the cabin where Sam found us and figure out our next move in the morning, after we’d gotten some rest.”

  “So you have no idea where he might be?”

  “No.”

  Wingate glanced at Cutler. He straightened up and took a hypodermic out of his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Vanessa asked.

  Wingate moved quickly and pinned Vanessa to the bed.

  “Something that will help you rest,” he said. “It won’t hurt.”

  “I don’t want any more drugs,” Vanessa screamed as she struggled to get free.

  Wingate and Cutler ignored her pleas. Sam stood over Vanessa. She bucked and threw herself from side to side. “Hold her still, General,” Cutler said as he bent forward to administer the injection. “I don’t want to miss the vein.”

  It was a little over two miles from the jetty to the mansion through the woods on the south side of the General’s property. Charlotte Kohler liked to stroll along paths she’d had a landscape architect lay down through her private forest, but Carl avoided them because they would be a natural place for motion detectors. After a while, Carl saw the lights of the house through breaks in the foliage. He crept forward cautiously until there were only a few trees between him and the lawn at the back of the mansion. The grounds directly behind the house offered few places to hide, and two guards crossed on the back lawn while Carl had it under surveillance.

  Carl watched carefully as the guards walked their route. One of the men crossed the pool deck near the cabana where Carl had changed into a bathing suit on his first visit to the estate. As soon as the guard disappeared, Carl made a decision.

  It took the guards twelve minutes to complete their circuit. Carl worked his way through the woods as close to the cabana as he could. Everything depended on getting behind it undetected. He sprinted from the woods to the pool and dove low behind the cabana.