The elevator door opened to a freight dock. A shiny black and red armored truck was backed to its edge. Mark recognized the logo—a shiny circular blade with jagged red and black lettering. A uniformed Trail Blader stood guard beside it. The diesel engine glugged as they approached it. The guard stepped to the rear of the truck and swung open its steel doors. “Welcome,” he said, turning to face Mark and the crew.
“I’m not going anywhere in that truck,” Mark said immediately.
Nanette smiled. “Trust us—it is the safest ride you’ll ever have.”
“We don’t have far to go,” Morana added.
Trail Bladers had an excellent reputation around town. A peek at their operation and a chat with its founder could be fascinating. After a quick assessment of his options, he decided to go along.
Raphael and Teddy stepped into the truck first and lowered the legs of a modified bench. They rotated it to face backwards and then clicked its feet back into floor slots. Morana gave Mark a gentle tug on his arm, urging him to enter. He leaned forward to keep from bumping his head and sat down. Teddy and Raphael went back toward the building and disappeared through an unmarked door beside the freight elevator.
“It is such an honor to meet you,” Morana said.
“What do you mean?” Mark asked, still perplexed by the excitement of his four escorts.
“Papa can’t stop telling us about your heroic, selfless act on the Brennan building. We’ve seen the clip of your dive a thousand times at our office.”
“I can’t believe I’m really sitting here with you,” Nanette giggled.
“Well, here we are,” Mark said. It was the only reply he could think of. He knew his act was admired by many, but he didn’t understand the level of his new escorts’ fanaticism.
Raphael and Teddy reappeared, carrying metal chairs. They clicked their chairs into slots in the floor of the truck so that they faced Mark and the women on their bench. The Trail Blader who greeted them outside, closed them in and locked the door before climbing into the driver’s seat. The truck had two small windows high on the back doors. A console sat on the wall of the truck—identical to the one that had opened the door in the building.
They sat in darkness until an interior light blinked on, giving them only enough light to stave off claustrophobia.
The truck jerked ahead. As they drove, Mark could see only sky and an occasional tree, power pole, or street light sinking from view through the back door windows. Inside, he noticed scrape marks on the walls of the truck.
His four Trail Blader escorts smiled a lot, but spoke little while in the truck. Mark had no sense of direction as he felt the vibration and shifting motion of the truck. He felt the truck stop and turn a few times, but he had no bearings on his location or distance traveled. After ten minutes of stop-and-go travel, he felt the speed of a freeway.
The ride was taking a bit longer than he had expected—especially after Morana’s assurances that his entire meeting with Pop would be short. “I need to know where we’re going,” he said to Morana.
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you specifically. The secrecy of our location is part of our business protocol.” Her face drooped in sympathy. “But we’ll be there in less than ten minutes,” she promised.
“Seven and a half minutes,” Teddy said. Raphael laughed.
They offered Mark water, but he had grown too uneasy to drink. His concern grew each minute he spent locked in the back of the armored truck.
When they stopped, Mark strained to look out the tiny back window. Raphael leaned forward in his seat ready to stop Mark from standing up, but Morana raised her hand to him.
Mark peered out, but saw only a garage door sliding down, and then the window went dark.
“Papa’s going to be so jazzed that you are here,” Teddy said to him.
“Are you kidding? He’ll be beside himself,” added Nanette, who had kept quiet, with a star-struck gaze fixed on Mark for the whole trip.
“It would be great to get out now,” Mark said. Although he wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, being packed inside an armored truck in dim light with four strangers had him antsy.
“Sure,” Teddy said. “We’re dropping in. We’ll be down and out in just a moment.”
Mark felt the truck bump and heard the whine of a motor. His four escorts sat comfortably, wearing satisfied smiles as if waiting to exit a roller coaster. The truck bumped again as it stopped its descent.
When the doors swung open, the driver stood outside, his arm extended to assist the occupants out.
“Mark, you will want to leave your bag here in the truck, please,” Teddy said. “Believe me, it is safe.”
Mark tucked his computer bag under the bench and stepped out of the truck. His laptop was fully encrypted so he wasn’t concerned about anyone snooping on it. The rest of his bag’s contents were unimportant.
The whine of a motor sounded again, this time louder, not muffled by the truck’s closed doors. They stepped out into a clean, white-walled garage that held four shiny black and red armored trucks—identical to the one he’d exited. Shiny truck maintenance tools hung in orderly rows on one wall. Another wall held cabinets and a large sink.
High above them, he saw two slabs sliding closed to form the ceiling through which they had descended. Mark leaned down and saw a hydraulic lift underneath the truck.
The Trail Bladers ushered Mark to a side door. Raphael placed his hand over another glass console and the door clicked open. Inside, a small group of uniformed Trail Bladers stood in a foyer. They began to clap and cheer when they saw Mark, greeting him as if he was a long lost family member.
Morana beamed and gestured for Mark to enter the foyer to join his admirers, but Mark was too dumbfounded to move. He forced the best smile he could muster and gaped at the cheering strangers. He felt like someone whose friends had thrown him a surprise birthday party on the wrong day.
After the applause subsided, Teddy addressed the group, saying, “Back to work—Papa has only a few minutes with Mark before we must return him.”
As the Trail Bladers turned and filed out of the foyer through a black door, some of them saluted Mark and gave him a thumbs-up sign. One hollered, “Welcome, Mr. Denny. We’re glad to have you!”
As the last Trail Blader exited the foyer, Mark stepped in. What he saw next took his breath away and his mouth dropped open. An enormous floor-to-ceiling photographic mural covered the foyer’s far wall. It was an image of Mark, standing in his underwear moments before he leapt to rescue Al. The resolution and detail of the photo were excellent, but the angle was odd—it was as if it had been taken over Al’s shoulder, or shot long-range with a telephoto lens from another building top. In the image, Mark’s hand extended toward Al. His toes were curled under from the cold and his other arm was pressed against his side as he shivered. His discarded clothing was visible in a heap a short distance from his feet. The photo caught a portion of the crowd three stories below, cropped by the building’s edge. The camera had captured Mark’s worried expression, but also his slight smile of encouragement and his eyes wide with hope as he reached out. Below Mark’s image, three words, printed in bold white type read, “THEY STILL EXIST.”
“That, my friend, was amazing,” Teddy said, jabbing his finger toward the wall. He shook his head and repeated, “Simply amazing.”
“Thank you,” Mark barely whispered, unable to pull his eyes from the mural of himself. He remembered the blitz of flashbulbs every time Al had made a gesture to the crowd. He remembered the gasp of the spectators when Al pulled the fake jumping stunt. But he was positive that he and Al had been alone on the edge of the building. And Al had no visible camera. Certainly the police who eventually arrived couldn’t have taken the photo. They got nowhere near Al while he was still standing.
“Who took…how did you get this photograph?” Mark asked, still fixated.
“You’ve already met Papa,” Morana said. “He took the photo moments before you risked your li
fe for him.” Mark turned to her as her perfect smile grew larger.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Nanette, holding a black felt-tip marker. “Mr. Denny, would you do us all the enormous honor of signing your wall?” she said. The marker quivered in her hand and she averted her eyes from Mark’s.
Mark took the pen. The faces of the four Trail Bladers beamed, as they celebrated him with clear pride. Raphael nodded and pointed to the wall, coaxing him.
During the last week, public focus had made Mark uneasy. Now his celebrity had risen to an entirely new level within this clandestine operation—some secret world that he never knew existed and maybe no one knew existed—except these people who lived in it.
Mark felt light headed. “I need to sit down a minute. I need a drink—please,” he said.
“We’re on it,” Nanette said to Morana and Raphael. She and Teddy ran to the black door. Teddy placed his hand on the console, the door clicked open and they disappeared through it. On the opposite side of the foyer was a red door with no handle or hinges showing. Mark wondered what it was for.
Morana took the pen from Mark and said, “You can autograph our photo in bit—if you feel we are worthy.”
“Worthy?” Mark had gathered himself enough to cough a nervous laugh.
Morana didn’t laugh. “Yes, if you feel we are worthy,” she repeated, her face serious.
Morana and Raphael led Mark through the door that Teddy, Nanette, and the other Trail Bladers used. They wound their way through a maze of door-lined hallways bathed in fluorescent light. Raphael split off at an intersection, and entered a room at the end of a short hall. Each door had a glass hand-console mounted in the wall beside it.
As they turned a final corner, Morana said, “I’m taking you to a place where you can rest while I check to make sure Papa is ready to meet. Nanette is on the way with some refreshments for you. We will return you to the ALCO building the moment your meeting is finished.” She stopped at a door and placed her hand on its console. The door clicked opened.
Inside, Mark saw accommodations that rivaled a presidential suite in any five-star hotel. A hand-tiled entryway led to a great room with plush furniture and tables decorated with fresh flowers. A sitting area separated the full kitchen from a polished dining table that seated ten.
In the rear of the suite, a master bedroom featured an enormous bed with grand, carved bedposts. On the far wall, silk draperies hung from ornate wrought iron in a graceful ceiling-to-floor fall. A marble master bath included a sauna and a sunken whirlpool bath. Every fixture and surface glistened. Just outside the master bedroom, a den with a television, sofas, fridge, and snack bar was bigger than Mark’s apartment living room. Attention was given to every detail of the room, from the number of stems in the flower vases to the pearly white bathroom wash basin, beside which plush towels were fanned.
Morana followed Mark as he toured the various areas of the suite. “Is this someone’s home?” Mark asked. “I thought we were at your offices.”
“We are at corporate headquarters. We have a number of suites and some of us live here. Please make yourself comfortable. This suite is yours for as long as you stay.”
They made their way back to the kitchen, Morana pointed to the countertop and said, “Nanette and Teddy have already been here and left you some refreshments. I’ll be back to take you to Papa in a few minutes.”
Morana exited, pausing in the hallway to wait for the door to click shut before she left.
Not a bad way to live underground, Mark thought. He assumed they were in some sort of bunker after seeing the ceiling through which the truck had been lowered and an absence of any windows.
He went to the counter for the refreshments. A bottle of chilled peach iced tea, his favorite, was in a bucket of ice. “Wow,” he said out loud. Bagels and cream cheese sat to the side on a silver platter. He helped himself and walked across the room to where the drapes hung. If they were underground, he wondered why the room needed drapes. He parted them and discovered a shiny, black screen of some sort—made of plastic. He drew his fingers across it, pulling the drapes back further. The black plastic was a panel screen that covered the entire wall. On the wall’s edge, he noticed an electronic control panel with the words Open, Close, Day, Evening, Sun, Rain, Snow, Audio, Intensity, Brightness and Contrast. He pressed Open and the long drapes slid apart, swinging their bottoms to either side of the wall in a lazy flop. The huge screen was as pristine as the windows of a limousine.
He pressed Day and a bright, high-definition moving image of a rolling green lawn, a garden, and trees covered the entire wall. He backed away for a better look. The trees swayed, birds flew by with muffled chirps, and for a few moments the bright green lawn dimmed and then brightened as though a passing cloud had blocked the sun. He pressed Evening and the wall darkened. Orange lines of a sinking sun shimmered on a beach and the sound of the waves splashing filled the room. He turned the screen off and thought of six clients who would purchase this system on the spot—without regard to cost—based on his description alone.
He went back to the den and sank into a sofa in front of the TV. The cushions swallowed him up and he laid his head back, taking in the wonder of these magnificent accommodations.
As he reached for the remote control on the coffee table, something caught his eye. A box of Rotherings on the opposite side of the table. He hadn’t seen Rotherings chocolate caramels since he was a young boy and didn’t know they were still manufactured. He loved them so much then, he would eat them until he was sick. He grabbed the box, feeling giddy as he examined its nostalgic logo and lettering that brought back so many memories.
He flicked on the TV and popped a Rothering into his mouth. The delicious flavor of childhood made him smile. He would ask Morana if he could take the box with him.
He flipped channels until he found a news update on the missing people. CNN had a “Breaking News” banner scrolling across the bottom of their broadcast. A third and fourth body had been found, and a press conference—now becoming a daily occurrence—would be held at the Santa Monica Police station at 6:00 p.m. Mark checked his watch. If the meeting with Pop was indeed short, he should be home in plenty of time to see the press conference live.
For the next ten minutes, he watched coverage of the victims. Psychologists and profilers speculated and argued about the motive and next move of the killer. The debate became heated with experts disagreeing on almost everything except that the dead were, indeed, dead.
Because of the peach iced tea he had guzzled, Mark had to use the restroom. He entered the master bath and marveled again at the spaciousness and beauty of its spectacular polished fixtures. Approaching the toilet, he saw a dark green object protruding from behind the pearl-laced shower curtain. He pulled the curtain back, exposing a long sniper rifle with a large mounted scope. He stood, frozen, surprised by the inappropriate location of a weapon. It made as much sense as a jackhammer stored in a library. A fully loaded ammo pouch strapped to the gun’s stock contained five rounds that protruded from it like glistening bear claws. The rifle gave him a chill and he checked over his shoulder to make sure the bathroom door was locked. His curiosity about the gun competed with his fear of it.
He let the curtain fall back to conceal the gun and then he used the toilet. After washing his hands, he opened the bathroom door to listen for Morana. The suite was quiet. He closed and locked the door and went back to the gun. He picked it up. Mark knew little about guns, and this rifle fascinated him. He rotated it carefully, examining it. The steel was cold and the gun heavier than he had anticipated. It was pristine and polished to an intense shine. At nearly four feet long, its barrel tip reached Mark’s stomach while the gun rested on the floor. On the end of the stock, he found an engraved tag that said, “Tango-51 Tactical Operations.”
He saw a switch on the scope, flipped it on, and aimed the rifle at the doorknob fifteen feet away. When he put his eye to the scope, he saw a digital readout beside a red-dot r
eticle on the doorknob. The readout showed blank values for windage, distance, and elevation.
Mark placed his finger on the trigger, but quickly removed it. He placed the gun exactly as he had found it and left the bathroom.
When he went back to the den, he saw Morana waiting for him out in the kitchen. She leaned on the counter turning the pages of a magazine. She looked up when she heard him.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Papa said to take you by the diner on the way to his office. He wants to make sure you are well fed. Follow me.” Morana tossed the magazine onto the counter and they left.
After they had taken two long hallways, Morana consoled through a door. When it opened, the aroma of an active grill engulfed them. Inside was a full diner, complete with a black and white checkered floor, red vinyl stools, and a few matching tables. An old fashioned jukebox flashed in the corner.
Behind the counter, two chefs in red and black chef hats and aprons worked over a grill. One stirred a large silver bowl. The other cut vegetables for the kabobs generating the mouth-watering smell. They smiled at Mark. One raised his hat with both hands and the other hollered, “Welcome, Mr. Denny!”
“Let’s find a seat,” Morana said. “Would you prefer the counter or the dining area?”
“Um, counter is fine,” Mark said, looking up at the shiny soda pop fountain behind the counter. Other fifties memorabilia lined the walls and oldies played in the background.
They each took a stool and Morana pulled a paper menu from beside the napkin holder and then handed it to Mark. When he opened it, his face lit up. “Wow,” he said. Then his expression became serious. He scanned the menu, gave Morana a hard stare, and then looked back to the menu.
“See anything you like?” she asked.
“What do you think?” Mark said, closing the menu. He put it down on the counter. “In fact, why don’t you just order for me?”
Dire Means Page 19
