Night Wind

by Stephen Mertz

  When he was pretty sure there was no one around, Paul moved aside the branch he'd used to conceal his crawl-space. The pine needles, long dead leaves and even his own body scent gave the narrow little hiding space a snug feel that part of him did not want to leave. But he had to.

  The daylight seemed brighter than usual. He was surprised to see snow, although there wasn't a lot. No more than a quarter inch in spots. Brown earth and rock and scattered pine needles shone through in places that had been shielded from the wind during the night, and what snow there was had a glaze that sparkled in the sunlight.

  He crawled out from the crevice, the pain from the wound like a knife blade ripping into his side. Then he was standing. At first he weaved back and forth on his feet.

  Crawling from the space had taken most of his strength. He almost fell, but managed to stay upright by bracing himself against a rock. With effort, he planted his feet firmly on the ground, maintaining his balance.

  If he headed downhill, taking a southwesterly course, he'd reach the highway before too long, most likely at a point near town, maybe not far from the convenience store near his home. He'd call his mother from the first telephone he saw. She would be home, anxious, worried, waiting for him to call or show up. Mom was the only person he could trust. She would know what to do.

  Paul left the rock formation, moving downhill across snow that in many places was little more than a shellac-like covering of frost. He left footprints in the snowy frost. There was nothing he could do about that. He wanted to run. He could not. It was difficult enough to walk, awkwardly moving sideways to keep his balance, carefully negotiating the terrain. Before he'd gone very far, the sun started to feel warm. Too warm. Hot. The sun was too hot. He could feel fresh blood, soaking the shirt and jacket around his wound. He paused on a level shelf of ground and removed his jacket. In the short time this took, the pain in his side flared, making him dizzy. The world swirled around his head. Take deep breaths, he told himself. He did, and the sharp coldness of the air snapped at his lungs and the dizzy spell went away.

  He became aware then for the first time that he had already traveled below the snow line. Loss of blood making me dizzy. Hurts so much. Can't stop. Don't stop. Keep moving. Have to keep moving. Have to! Have to get down off the mountain. Have to get home. He plodded on, one foot in front of the other. Every step brought more pain. His sneakers were soaking wet from trudging through the snow. Had he guessed wrong? Taken the wrong direction? He was going to die up here, and the wild animals would feast on his body.

  Then Paul saw the house.

  A cabin in the middle of a clearing, no more than one hundred feet away. Telephone wires stretched from it to a pole, and a line of telephone poles continued beyond the cabin, disappearing from sight down the side of the mountain. There were no cars in sight. No smoke rose from the chimney on this frigid morning. The windows of the cabin, reflecting sunlight, looked from this distance like shining squares of gold.

  Everything suddenly began to merge together for Paul—the sun, the bright blue sky, the emerald green of the forest—tilting around his head faster and faster, becoming a blur of color, slowing his forward movement.

  Don't stop, his mind screamed. Can't stop. Stop and you're dead, like Jared and Mr. Flagg.

  He pushed on, blindly taking one stumbling step after another. He had to make it. Had to call Mom. Had to survive. The sky began growing dark, but there were no clouds. He was going to pass out. If that happened, he knew he would die.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  There were two pay phones side-by-side at the entrance to the truck stop restaurant. While Robin called home, Mike used his credit card and dialed a number from memory.

  Gil Gilman had been Mike's CIA control officer in Vietnam. They'd met when they were both assigned to a Special Forces base camp in the Central Highlands. Mike's Long Range Reconnaissance patrol had staged regular insertions deep into enemy territory, and the men's friendship began the time Gilman accompanied Mike's team on one such mission. This was not something a lot of Agency men chose to do. Most CIA control officers tended to resent the military they depended on for the data that was monitored by Saigon before being forwarded to Washington. This resentment stemmed mainly from the fact that the information coming from the recon patrols in the field nearly always fell short of what Washington expected to hear. Most of the CIA guys were either eager beavers just starting their careers or cynical old-timers on their way out. Either way, they viewed their assignment in country as banishment to the armpit of existence, and cared only about getting out, not unlike a whole lot of the GIs they handed out missions to.

  But Gilman was different, as his accompanying Mike's unit into the bush demonstrated on more than one mission; into the mud and the blood, the muck of a dirty war in a jungle of blinding green during the day or pitch black at night, where the smells of jungle rot and death and fear permeated; where the flash of weapons fire at anytime from anywhere could mean you or one of your guys lying there, screaming for a medic. That's what it was like out there. But Gil Gilman honestly gave a damn amount more than the success or failure of a mission. He cared about the men he sent out to risk their lives. Combat forges strong bonds between people like nothing else, and theirs was a friendship that had outlasted that war and withstood the quarter century since.

  Gil had been a rambler and a wanderer well before Nam, and so had looked up his buddy in Denver after rotating back to the States a few months after Mike, whereupon the two had resumed their friendship as if it had never been interrupted. When he left Denver, Gil had been vague, too vague, about why he was moving on and what he'd be doing for a living. They were tight enough for Mike not to push it, but he knew somehow, without a doubt, that Gil was going back to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Occasional postcards from far-off, usually Third World countries, unsigned but with private jokes that only Mike would get referring to some past misadventure, confirmed the suspicion.

  And, of course, there had been Mike's "recruitment" as an on-site "civilian backup" for his old friend on those occasions in Honduras, Peru and Cuba.

  Gil maintained a mail drop in a small town in East Texas and a telephone number that he said only a handful of people knew. He told Mike that the number would get a call through to him wherever he happened to be. Judging from his own three isolated experiences in his friend's world, and from the postmarks and the kinds of things that went on in those places, Mike was willing to bet that Gil's work was every bit as dirty as the war they'd fought together out of Base Camp 112 all those years ago in Vietnam. They hadn't discussed Gil's work the handful of times they'd gotten together in the States for fishing trips over the years. He and Gil had last seen each other at Elephant Butte Lake, south of Albuquerque, four months after Carol was laid to rest. Gil had, as always, phoned out of the blue. At first, Mike hadn't wanted to go on a fishing trip. He hadn't wanted to live, much less go fishing. Yet he now looked back on that trip as the turning point in his being able to accept and deal with his loss. Surrounded by the rugged, spacious, arid beauty of the Southwestern landscape, sitting in a rowboat on the tranquil surface of a blue green lake, he regained the strength to finally accept his loss, to dig down deep and dredge up the inner strength to face a future without Carol. It was during that fishing trip that Gil had read Mike's sketch for a novel. It was Gil who had connected Mike with the literary agent in New York who had gotten him the advance on his book.

  Gilman answered on the first ring. That is, he picked up his receiver. He said nothing, waiting for the caller to speak.

  Mike said, "It's me."

  "Well hey, buddy. What a surprise."

  Gil didn't sound surprised. He sounded his usual cool, affable self. They exchanged a minimal amount of banter, during which Gil mentioned that it was late afternoon where he was, which placed him somewhere on the opposite side of the world. The call had gone through effortlessly. Gil's voice was as clear as if he were standing beside Mike.

 
Mike briefed him on the extraordinary occurrences taking place in Devil Creek, New Mexico.

  As he spoke, Mike watched Robin redial her home number. Worry lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth told him that there were no messages on her voice mail. No Paul.

  Mike said to Gil, "I'm behind enemy lines, buddy. I don't know who to trust except for the woman standing here next to me, and her son. He's the one who's spent the night on the mountain."

  Gil smiled across the connection. "Sounds like hell's popping in that little burg. And I thought they played rough over here where I am. Okay. So you think this Charlie Flagg is tied into something, is that it?"

  "It's a real long shot," Mike said, "but it's the only angle I've got. I'm playing my gut on this one."

  "Your hunches were always on target in Nam and in Denver, not to mention when it comes to finding where the fishies are biting. So what do you need?"

  "I need someone who's plugged in. That's you."

  "I'm plugged in, huh?"

  "You and me talking to each other, with you wherever the hell you are, is proof enough of that."

  "Most of the world doesn't even know about this little country I'm in," Gil said, "and I can't help thinking the world's better off for that. But yeah, okay. I'm plugged in. You want background on Charlie Flagg?"

  "Affirmative. Gil, I'm sorry, but I just can't go to anyone else, and I need it as fast as you can get it to me."

  Another smile crackled across the connection. "Hell, I don't even have to leave this handy dandy little laptop I'm toting. Okay. I'll background Flagg through my channels which, if I may say so, are considerable. I'll backtrack the guy and cross-reference anyone or anything that's even a little bit out of sync."

  "There, uh, is one other thing," said Mike. He recalled the night of the barbecue at his place, when Robin had told him about the strange phone calls from her ex-husband. It had been haunting the back of his mind ever since. "As long as we're grasping at straws, there's a guy in Chicago I want you to check out. He's just gotten a divorce. The wife is living here in Devil Creek. Her name is Robin Curtis. I regret to admit I don't know if she kept his name for her son, or if it's her family name."

  "You've given me enough. I can track him down. What do you want to know?"

  "He made some harrassing phone calls to his ex-wife about a week ago. I want to know where he was when he made those calls, and where he is now. Can do?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Hotshot," said Mike with a laugh. "How's about I grab a bite with the lady and give you a call-back?"

  "That'll work. I should have it before then, but I can wait. Excuse me while I get to work."

  Gilman broke the connection.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  They chose a booth in the rear.

  The well-lit and airy truck stop restaurant was doing a fair business considering the early hour. Around them was the murmur of conversation, the clink of silverware from other tables, and low-volume country music twanging from a jukebox in the corner.

  A toothy waitress brought them glasses of water and menus, then moved on and it was during this time, after they had studied and closed the menus, but before the waitress returned, that Robin realized that she and Mike were holding hands—both hands!—across the table. Robin was mildly surprised by two things. One, that she and this man across from her were holding hands so naturally that it had taken her a few moments to realize this and, two, that she had no overwhelming desire to withdraw her hands from his.

  The need to be with someone this night had not gone away, but grown. If she had been left to herself to worry about Paul, Robin knew she would have been a stark raving basket case by now. It was his presence that held her together, even if she felt like it with all the strength of Scotch tape against a hurricane. But she knew there was more to it than just Mike's presence. There was that easy, comfortable camaraderie when they were together, even in this time of crisis. His nature was peaceful, yet supremely competent. And he had already gone more than the distance expected from a neighbor, friend, or even a lover, insisting on being at her side as he had, just to help her. She thought of how Paul and Mike had taken a liking to each other from the first. She'd tried to fight it, but she felt the same. Maybe she was still fighting it. And if so, she reminded herself, perhaps with good reason.

  "Mike, are we falling in love?"

  He fixated on his water glass, lifting and setting it down repeatedly to leave a design of wet circles on the Formica. "For your part, I think you have to answer that one."

  "And what about your part?"

  He lifted his eyes to hers. "What makes you think I haven't already fallen in love with you? Robin, I honestly never thought it would happen again. I loved Carol so much and I lived with that mindset ever since. And here you come along, competent, a good mother, attractive as all get out. And here's the best part, you're interested in me. I never had a chance."

  "You can add fragile to that list of adjectives, Mike, because right now that's how I feel. Waiting to find out what's happened to Paul, I feel like a wineglass on a window ledge, and all it needs is a gust of wind to tip over and shatter into a million pieces. I can't trust my heart at a time like this."

  He gave her hands a squeeze. "You're the one who brought it up. We agreed to be a couple for the night, remember? That was as far as your commitment went."

  The trace of what could have been a smile touched her lips. "Thanks, Mike." And then more words poured forth from her before she could stop herself. "Oh God, I feel so guilty about what's happened. My son is my responsibility, and he's missing!" And she realized that tears were rolling down both of her cheeks. She reached for a napkin and gave her nose a healthy blow just as the waitress reappeared.

  Mike ordered a ham and cheese omelet with hash browns and coffee. Robin declined to order at first, then gave in to his gentle prodding and ordered a salad. She excused herself and took her purse to the women's rest room to freshen up. She settled for reestablishing a semblance of being presentable, then rejoined Mike at their table.

  He said, "You must know rationally that none of this can possibly be construed as being your fault."

  "Thanks, Mike. But being a mother isn't always a rational condition. We have to find Paul."

  "And we will."

  Their food arrived, and they barely spoke during the meal as if by silent mutual agreement. Robin pecked at her lettuce, tomato, and cucumber listlessly. Twice, she left the table without a word, looking more wound up each time.

  Mike watched through the window as she went to a pay phone and dialed, and each time she returned without saying anything, to resume pecking at her salad. Around them, the world was stretching, slowly coming to life. Bleary-eyed truckers rubbed shoulders with fresh-faced travelers getting an early start after a night at the Best Western next door.

  Mike paid their tab at the register and they left the restaurant, each returning to a pay phone. Mike dialed Gilman.

  Again, Gil answered on the first ring. Again, he said nothing.

  "Scrambler on?" Mike asked.

  "Always." The response was cool, affable, across the connection from somewhere far, far away. "I've gotta say, pal, you do retain the knack I remember so well for getting yourself eyeball-deep in very peculiar stuff."

  "What did you find?"

  "Enough to tell you that you are not, repeat not, paranoid. You, compadre, are an acute observer of the passing scene. It kept you alive in Nam, it made you a good reporter and, buddy, it's got you wired into one hell of a live one this time around."

  Robin had dialed her number again. She hung up and began pacing, staring at the ground. A grossly overweight trucker waddled over to use the phone she'd given up. Mike said, "Okay, Gil, let's hear it."

  "Patience," Gil said. "Let me tell it my way. I accessed Charlie Flagg's telephone records after he moved to Devil Creek. One number called matched a name that gave me that out-of-sync handle we were looking for. Have you ever heard the name Bittman
? Dr. Horace Bittman?"

  "Negative. Should I have?"

  "Not if a certain government agency operating out of Langley, Virginia has anything to say about it."

  "CIA?"

  "Originally it went deeper than that. So deep that no one inside the Agency even knew about it until it was too late."

  "Too late for what?"

  "Too late for three hundred and forty people who offed themselves after Dr. Horace Bittman messed with their minds under a fully sanctioned, highly-classified experiment that our government will never, ever admit took place."

  Mike was stunned. "Three hundred and forty people?"

  "Don't be incredulous. You must've read about the CIA pumping LSD into human guinea pigs plucked from the Army back in the '60s. There was a ton of lawsuits over that. Some of those guys were dosed so heavy on acid, they were screwed up forever. The U.S. government settled on it, but experiments like those are still going on. You remember Jonestown, don't you, all those people going down there to join a religious commune and it ended up a mass suicide with hundreds dead. There were those who thought that was a large-scale CIA mind-drug experiment gone awry. They were wrong, but only about Jonestown, not about experiments being conducted under government sanction, dating back, as I say, to the '60s. That's where Bittman comes in. He was in charge of one such, uh, experiment. Of course, the agency conducting the experiment never existed."

  "What do we know about them?"

  A pause. Gilman said, "Uh, may I offer you some advice at this juncture, old buddy? Do not push in that direction. Don't even try."

  Mike lowered his voice so the truck driver on the phone next to him could not possibly overhear. "Tell me about Bittman and three hundred and forty dead people. How does that tie in with what's happening here?"

  "Bittman was a Harvard psychologist. His key interest was mind-altering drugs. Sort of a Timothy Leary-type, only dangerous nuts instead of just goofy. Back in the day, Bittman supervised LSD experiments on GI's. His specialty was using drugs to control members of an isolated social group, to alter their behavior destructively in order to study the ripple effect such altered actions had on the rest of the group."