Edge of the Pit

by Bill Thesken

  Tonight however, the people going in and coming out of this building seemed relaxed and happy, unstressed and cool. I rubbed my tired eyes and yawned. Maybe I was like a dog that was barking up the wrong tree. There was nothing here.

  And then I brought the scope to bear on the entrance again and I saw this tall brooding guy with short hair walk slowly out the front doors, and it was the way he walked out, his entire body language and the way his eyes quickly scanned the edges of his vision, seemingly ready to jump out of the way of danger if it came at him out of nowhere, he was poised and balanced as if he could instantly spring in any direction if needed like a cat.

  His face was serious, not seething and angry, but all business. He slid over to the wall, out of the open and kept to the corners of the building as he moved. He looked like he was military grade, special forces, trained in weapons, survival, and hand to hand combat, and I recognized him from Baghdad. It was Parnell. First Lieutenant Justice Parnell, Fifth Army Division in one of the platoons in the Green Zone during the surge. He was a sniper and one of the best we had. He might have even saved my life one night.

  It was a three platoon raid on an entire city block. A little after midnight we cordoned the whole place off and started knocking down doors, dragging guys out into the street. We were hustling to our portion of the block when a couple of guys on a motorcycle flew out of a nearby alley, scaring the hell out of us, and we scattered for cover, the guy on the back was ready to fire a rocket propelled grenade at us, he had it aimed and was pulling the trigger, when he seemed to be yanked right off the back of the bike, and the RPG went straight up into the air and came down in the middle of the street and exploded. He’d been shot off the motorcycle and the driver lost control and crashed into a telephone pole.

  The motorcycle took us completely by surprise and none of us in the platoon had fired a shot, we all confirmed it on the spot as we re-grouped. Each platoon had a dedicated sniper on a nearby roof top with a straight line of sight to our target location and since we weren’t at our target location yet, we surmised it must have been one of the other platoon’s snipers.

  “I’ll bet Parnell got him,” said my buddy, and we never really found out. It was on a need to know basis, and we weren’t on the list of people needing to know anything. I tried to sit down next to him one day at lunch in the mess hall and introduced myself.

  He was a real cool character, eyes set close together with a flat forehead, square jawed and it was the eyes, blackish brown and they had no sparkle of life in them, I remember they looked dull and he sort of gazed at me as I introduced myself.

  “I’m Badger, fifth platoon, mind if I sit down sir?” He looked away and didn’t say a word, just kept eating his beef stew and potatoes and watching the TV on the other side of the room, and so I cautiously set my tray down and sat across and one seat over from him so I wouldn’t crowd him. “I think we owe you one sir. The other night when we raided the city block some guys on a motorcycle with an RPG came out of an alley, and a sniper took them out? Some of the guys said it might have been you.”

  He finished chewing, sucked in through one of his side teeth, and slowly looked back over at me.

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Badger sir, Badger Thompson, fifth platoon.”

  He nodded and then spoke very slowly and firmly, his eyes like pits filled with black stones. “Now listen here Badger Thompson fifth platoon, I don’t talk about my kills, to anyone, ever. What’s in the past is in the past. And that’s where I want it all to stay. Understood?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. War didn’t always bring out the best in people. Sometimes in a war zone you’ll come across people that are dulled by the overwhelming experience, worn down mentally and physically by the horrible sights and sounds of people being killed and maimed on a daily basis, and they don’t want to remember anything. They try with all their might to hide it all in some dark unused back corner of the labyrinth of their minds and block it out as best they can. All that effort, and the stress of constantly thinking that your number might come up next, and you get people that are borderline walking zombies, unable to carry on a normal conversation. Or it could be that they’re just natural born jackasses and their true nature is on full display for all to see. I couldn’t figure out which peg this guy fit. But I figured it was probably the latter when he turned his head back to the TV and said simply:

  “Now you can leave.”

  Giving me permission to vacate the table.

  Justice Parnell, sharpshooter, army sniper, coming out of the headquarters of the guy who owned the building where I was shot off my bike a couple of days ago. What a coincidence. I checked my weapons and got out of the car and stretched my legs for a stroll down memory lane. Time to re-acquaint myself with an old buddy.

  He walked around the building and down the street, and I followed. This was an upscale part of the city and prime real estate as it was, the street was lined with posh restaurants and shops, clothing boutiques and art galleries, most of which were still open, especially the bar and restaurant combos, winding up their dinner hours and heading into the early night cap hours with expensive cognacs and ports flowing into glasses while the money flowed the other way, into the cash register. Each of the establishments had a combo doorman security guy at the front, times being what they are these days and I pulled the cowboy hat low over my eyes while enduring suspicious stares from a couple of them.

  Following someone is an art form in a way, whether it’s in the middle of the uncharted wilderness or a well-travelled street the theory is the same, stay close enough to keep them or their trail in sight, but don’t let them know that they’re being stalked.

  Parnell had a funny way of walking, he zigzagged down the sidewalk, walking slowly for a while and then speeding up, sometimes next to the buildings, and then out onto the curb, walking close to the cars parked on the sides, and every few zigs or zags he’d casually look back as though he’d dropped something, or was thinking of going back into an establishment that he’d just passed. He’d stop and lean against a lamppost and look down at his watch, and then start his zigzag walk again. Haphazardly making his way wherever it was he was going.

  He was watching for a tail, and I kept far in the background, at least a block behind, sometimes more. My old cowboy hat was a giveaway, easily marked in the thin crowd that I was flowing with, and I took it off and left it on a car’s windshield.

  He walked slow and I walked slower, he turned to look at his watch or back down the street and I was already stopped and reading a billboard, squinting at the writing, or rummaging through a trash can like a bum, non-threatening and in my own dismal world as far as he could see, my eyes were never looking forward and I moved with peripheral vision. I shuffled as though I could barely walk, and needed new shoes and a bath. My head would tilt to the side from time to time like I was hearing voices or had a nervous tick. I was the crazy bum in the crowd, and would probably be picked up by the cops soon, or be asleep in an alley with an empty bottle of cheap wine in my lap. Non-threatening.

  He stopped for an unusual amount of time, looking at his watch and back down the street and I blended into a small crowd of tourists, and from the corner of my eyes could see him slip into the front entrance of a posh apartment building. I made sure he wasn’t peering around the edge of the entrance and I picked up my pace, still not looking straight ahead and moving with my peripherals but moving quickly now I closed the gap.

  It was an open entrance that lead to a wide flight of stairs in the middle and a single elevator on the right hand side. The elevator indicator, green digital numbers showed that it was moving up, two three four, and it stopped on the fifth floor and stayed there. Maybe he was there to pick something up and would be taking the elevator back down, or maybe he would be staying put at one of the rooms on the fifth floor.

  I made a quick choice and made for the stairway. Taking two steps at a time I was up three flights in less than half a
minute and got blindsided as was I heading up to the fourth floor. He was crouched behind a wall next to the stairway and caught me with a kick to my knee that sent me sprawling into the railing and he was on me. My head hit the second stair while my chest imploded on the first stair knocking the wind out me and I saw stars shooting from the sides of my eyeballs while he got me in a headlock from behind.

  “Why are you following me?” he whispered in my ear as he put the torque on my neck.

  How in the hell did he expect me to answer while he had his forearm jammed into my windpipe was beyond me. I was running out of air, my lungs burning.

  “I’m visiting a friend,” I wheezed with my last full breath and he increased the pressure on my throat.

  “Wrong,” he hissed.

  He was a top notch sniper but a lot of times those kind of guys neglect the hand to hand combat aspect of the equation. Sure they can end you from long distances, but get them up close and they have weaknesses, flaws in their armor. I wrapped my back right leg around his right leg that was splayed out for support and he tried to keep his balance as his foot was slipping on the ground, and then took off his front right hand that was pulling on his arm wedged across my throat and punched me once in the side of the head, and once in the mouth. Wrong move. He’d given up the locking part of his choke hold and I made him pay for it, circling my left arm up and around his left arm and flipping him over onto his back on the stairway.

  “My turn,” I said and continued flipping him till I had his back and almost had him locked in a full naked choke hold until he blocked me with an elbow and flipped me around, the bastard. He pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and tried to get a shot at me and I karate chopped down on his wrist and the gun fell out of his hand and clattered on the ground, but not before a shot rang out.

  “Badger,” he scowled and fell to the ground clutching his stomach.

  “Parnell,” I spit blood from my broken lip, and kicked the gun away. “Shot anyone off a motorcycle lately?”

  “You’re supposed to dead.”

  “Surprise.”

  “Kevlar vest?”

  I nodded. “Double layer on the backside. Somehow I must have known a back stabber like you would try to get me from behind.”

  “That wouldn’t have saved you from the car bomb.”

  “How’d you know about that? So that was you too, huh?” I shook my head. “How’d you even know I had a car there? I parked it there once and never went back.”

  “We’ve been watching you for half a year.” He grinned when he saw my reaction. “We watched you park it there, I knew what it was for, a weapons stash. What, did you think we planned this overnight? Hell, We know everything about you. When we found out you were still alive and then escaped from the hospital we rigged the car. I knew you’d head straight there, but I didn’t have time to monitor the results.”

  “Too bad some punk kids tried to steal it before I got there.”

  “Yeah too bad about that.”

  “So you’re the guy who kidnapped Gale? Does her billionaire boyfriend know about it?”

  “You know how much they pay us grunts after serving our country. Putting our lives on the line. We come back and we’re like beggars in the street. Highly trained beggars. Well I’m not gonna take scraps from the rich man’s table Badger. If I see an opportunity I’m gonna get it.”

  “What the hell happened to you over there, in Iraq?”

  He coughed from deep in his chest, and blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth and out of his nostrils, and he laid his head back on the ground. “I died there.”

  His face was turning white and his hands began to tremble.

  “I better get you an ambulance,” I said.

  “Too late,” he wheezed.

  “Where’s the girl?” I asked him. “Where’s Gale Nighting?” I reached over and grabbed both his shoulders and gently shook him. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered and closed his eyes. “I did what I had to do. I did my job. Follow the money…”

  And just like that he stopped breathing, a final slow breath whistled out of his mouth the sound getting smaller and smaller till it faded to nothing, and his hands became still and cold. I took the stairs down two at a time and slid out of the building with my cap over my eyes.

  21.

  Follow the money, Parnell said it with his last words. It was an old cliché and people bandied it around like a common phrase, but at one time it really hit home and meant something big. It was from the seventies, and the Watergate investigations, dirty tricks and political espionage, governments taken down by simply following the money being handed around to cover up crimes. Dirty money, hush money. Influential people with a lot of cash held sway over corrupt politicians and police and could get away with murder.

  Alright, I’ll follow the money.

  At the present time the most money in the immediate vicinity was sitting at the top of the ivory tower in the back pocket of one Charles H. Washington the second. I wondered what kind of man Charles the first was, humble and kind, or ostentatious and flamboyant like the second. Maybe something in between. And how in the hell did he get a name with ‘the second’ on it when everyone knew he was an orphan? Was he really a second, or did he just add that title to his name so he could be cool with all his rich friends, to fit in at the country club.

  What traits carried over in the gene pool from his real Dad, the bum, to the guy sitting on all that cash at the top of the tower?

  I thought my own Dad then, raising me up as best as he could on his own, with a steady stream of part time temporary Moms on the side. Some good, some worse than a proverbial snake in the grass, like the one who we caught stealing my lunch money of all things.

  He had an old saying whenever he was going to teach me or show me something new that he thought I’d need in the future. It usually went something like this: “Say pal, have you ever jumped off a cliff? No? Well this is your lucky day!” He’d pound his fist into his open hand, crack his knuckles and laugh as he said it.

  Whenever he told me this was going to be my lucky day, it usually meant I was going to get my ass kicked. He told me straight up many times: you make your own luck, it was never just handed to you.

  One day we took a ride down to the beach and the waves were giant and scary, rising up and crashing on the sand. I was young, maybe five years old when he pulled it on me the first time, but I remembered that day like it was yesterday. He pulled into the parking lot in front of Laguna Beach and pointed to the ocean.

  “Say pal,” he asked. “Have you ever played chicken with the waves?” I shook my head no.

  “You haven’t? Well this is your lucky day.” And I got excited since lucky days sounded like good days. And then his voice got low and conspiratorial, like we were in on a secret together.

  “You see, you wait until there’s a lull and no waves at all, the water receding back, and you get as close to the ocean as you can and when a big wave comes along you wait as long as you can stand it, the longer you wait, the braver you are, and then run like hell and hope it doesn’t catch up to you.”

  It sounded like a lot of fun, and we went down to the edge of the ocean and it was just like he said, the water receded and we went as close as we could, but when the giant wave came at us towering above me, my little legs couldn’t run fast enough up the beach and it picked me up and ground me head first into the sand with a ton of water grabbing at me and swirling around and just about drowning me, then dragged me back down the steep beach into the maelstrom for another drubbing that went on and on for an eternity.

  My good old Dad finally dragged me by the seat of my pants out of the soup and up the beach and we both caught our breath in great gulps.

  “I thought we was goners,” he said, and scratched his head like he’d just learned a life lesson. “I guess that’s why they say never turn your back on a wave.” Then he winked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Want to go again?”
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  All these things I pondered in the back of my mind as I studied the building and the entrances, and windows, and guards stuffed here and there, some visible, some invisible. This was a fortress.

  I felt like my Dad was looking down at me from Heaven and telling me that this was my lucky day. I could almost hear him pounding his fist into his hand and cracking his knuckles.

  With my night scope I could clearly see the doorman at the entrance, opening doors when cars entered the Porte-cochere, directing traffic, he was packing a big gun, I could see the bulge at his waist under the coat.

  Just inside the quadruple sized glass slider doors sat a security guard with a white shirt and tie, gold private security badge, sitting on a big stool, tapping his foot, and wearing a gun on his hip right out in the open for everyone to see. Parked to the side in a black sedan with tinted windows and the driver’s side window down sat a guy in a black suit and tie and shades.

  He looked menacing enough with a pock marked face and square jaw, but it was hard to tell if he was watching the entrance or was asleep. These are the guys that I could see, and as I scanned the surrounding area I saw little places and cubby holes that could have more security stashed and ready. The invisible ones, the perimeter.

  I knew that if I had this guy’s money, and the way the world really was, I’d have a sniper team positioned on the second floor in both of the buildings that looked over the front and rear entrances with infra-red scopes, and long range metal detectors, while inside the building itself I’d have explosive device sniffers hidden in the walls, full-body-scan cameras in the doorframes hooked up to x-ray machines in a side room. A couple of German Shepherds in dog houses by the front and back entrances ready to attack on command. Train them night and day to smell a thief or a terrorist. No one would get near this building with a gun or a bomb unless it was my idea to bring one in.

  Reality came into focus, and I realized without a doubt that there was no way I was going to penetrate the security of this place on my own, not tonight anyways, and I threw that idea out the proverbial door. If I was going to penetrate this building, I needed a team that could hit five points at once, create lot of misdirection and then, and maybe only then I’d have a chance to slip in un-noticed.