Down In The Valley

by James Strauss

  As they drove to the upper resort parking lot, Matisse asked questions. “Will Farrell? Isn’t he an actor, or something? Like a movie actor? Or television? Arch didn’t answer, as he didn’t feel like explaining his own sense of humor about identities that he’d picked up from Chevy Chase’s role in the movie Fletch. After a moment of silence Matisse went on to his next question. “What you want me to do here?”

  “Wait in the car. I’m going to Virginia’s room to get to the bottom of this mess. Either something major is going on or this is one of those ridiculous and idiotic dog and pony shows that happen every once and awhile in the business. I can’t imagine anything like that happening with Virginia involved though.

  It was a short walk to the lobby. Arch had dumped the .45 under the rug of the Bonneville’s back floor, along with the extra ammunition. He carried a pocketful of shot shells and hollow points for the magnum. The gun itself was in its shoebox. Innocuous enough. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning. Maids were already working the wing that Room 217 was in. His luck was good. The door to 215 was propped open with a maid’s cart just outside. A short Filipino woman moved from the room to her cart.

  Arch backed behind the elevators and looked over to where the ice machine stood.

  Carefully and laboriously, with one arm and shoulder he eased it away from the wall, and then pulled the plug. He shoved it back in with his back as best he could.

  When he got to the maid’s cart he removed an extra plastic ice bucket from the backside. He waited for the woman to come from the room.

  “The ice machine is broken,” Arch said, holding out the ice bucket in his good hand. Could you get me a bucket of ice?” Arch asked, as the woman continued unloading some supplies from her cart. He produced a twenty when she accepted the bucket into her hand. “For housekeeping,” he smiled, hoping she wouldn’t notice his swollen head or the damaged hand clutching an old shoebox.

  The woman’s eyes were glued to the twenty. She accepted it, looking down the hall once before slipping it into a small pocket of her apron. As he hoped, she left the room door to 215 propped open.

  Moving quickly, once the maid disappeared on her way to the service elevators all the way at the end of another wing, Arch pulled the gun from the shoebox, stuck the box in the maid’s trash bag, and eased quietly and carefully to the sliding glass window. He jammed the short but bulky weapon into his right front pocket. Once on the small lanai he stared over at the lanai to 217, Virginia’s room. The railings to the two rooms were within a couple of feet of one another, which would have been no problem if Arch weren’t so injured. Arch looked down. It was about twenty-five feet to the roof of the lobby. If he fell he wouldn’t be walking again for months, if ever.

  Using his good right hand Arch gripped the horizontal top rail and stared at the two-foot space separating the lanais. He brought his left leg up and over the rail and then his right. Balancing on his butt, and leaning into his grasping right hand, he moved to insert his feet between the opposite bar railings. Once positioned with his butt on one railing and his feet between the rails of the other he heaved his upper body forward and plummeted over the railing in front of him and onto the floor of 217’s lanai, wondering if the thudding sound his body made would wake Virginia. If she was asleep. If she was even there. The move succeeded and the sound of his body hitting the floor was only slight compared to the muffled scream that was forced from his throat when his damaged hand hit the opposite railing.

  The window was fully open but the drapes were closed and billowing outwards, disturbed by early morning trade winds. Arch got control of himself and then peered into the darkened room. There was no sign of Virginia, but the two men who’d once stood on her lanai talking, and then ended up in the surfer’s shack with him, were asleep side by side on their backs atop the king size bed. Neither of them had apparently been disturbed from sleep by the noise of Arch’s landing.

  “Screw it,” Arch whispered to himself inaudibly, and then entered the room. As quietly as possible, and without turning, he closed the sliding glass window behind him. It took several minutes because of the blowing drapes and Arch’s inability to touch or manipulate anything with his damaged hand. Once the slicing door was closed, with the drapes unmoving and drawn, the room was in near total darkness. Arch had memorized the placement of every object in the room, however. Without any hesitation he moved to the bed, grabbed one of the extra pillows discarded to the floor and removed the Magnum from his pocket. With his bandaged hand, his pain somehow held in abeyance, he placed the pillow over the raspy-voiced man’s extended right hand. Jamming the short barrel of the .44 into the pillow he pulled the double action trigger.

  The sound was similar to that of striking a wooden desk hard with a baseball bat. The sound of the gun was changed to something else. A very loud sound but not identifiable as a gunshot. The man screamed in anguish. Arch turned on the sidelight, his revolver aimed directly at the head of the second man, the one who’d worn the spit-shine shoes. The man didn’t move or make a sound, although his unblinking eyes grew round as he recognized the intruder.

  “Shut up,” Arch hissed at the injured man, pressing the holed pillow down hard on his shattered hand. The man continued to cry softly, clutching the pillow and his hand to him, but there was no more screaming.

  “There were some questions you forgot to ask. So I came back to help. Surely you can understand,” Arch said, staring deeply into the very dangerous man’s eyes.

  V

  What do you want?” the formerly dangerous man on the bed said, his voice imploring, extending his arms out before him with both palms turned upward in question.

  “You forgot to ask a few questions you needed the answers to. Answers that would have avoided this very meeting. I thought Virginia was smarter but it appears fairly obvious she left a few things out.” Arch said the words without emotion, standing well back from the bed so both subdued men could be kept sufficiently far from the steady end of the magnum’s short but cavernous barrel.

  “I worked for the Agency for twenty years, performing various mission in wet work,” Arch went on. “I’m responsible for the departure of 37 targets, not including collateral damage from area weapons. There was no chance on God’s green earth that you would be able to handle somebody like me without killing me. So here you are, waiting for me to decide what to do with you. What should we do with you, by the way?”

  “Shit,” the man with his palms upraised said very softly, slowly lowering his hands. “We’re dead men? Over something like this?”

  “Dead?” the wounded man mewled out, clutching his bloody hand with the punctured pillow. “Dead? You’re going to kill us?”

  “Idiots,” Arch spat out in disgust. “Total idiot knuckle-draggers. Where in hell do they find you people? I can’t kill you. You’re with the Agency. I’d love to kill you. Cook you slowly for days over a charcoal spit. I can, however, maim you for the rest of your lives. So, given that prospect, what in hell was this all about?” Arch held up his own injured hand. The man laying on the bed carefully shook his head, and then looked over at his wounded companion.

  “It wasn’t Ms. Westray’s idea,” the man on the bed said. “The general thought you might need some motivation to give us the information. My name’s Lorrie, and this is Kurt,” the man pointed at his bloody companion.

  “What general?” Arch asked, mystified, and also wondering why the man hadn’t used Virginia’s first name. Last names were sometimes used in fieldwork but almost never with any kind of honorific.

  “The Marine general at the base. The one running this whole thing. Dewar. The one star.”

  “Brigadier Dewar? The Brigade Commander at Kaneohe?” Arch lowered the magnum. A Marine general. It made sense. The strange goings on over at Bellows with radiation. The totally screwed up mission with agents working against one another instead of together. The whole thing stunk of military involvement leading to misunderstanding and violent failure. The famous
President Carter mission to save the hostages in Iran came to Arch’s mind.

  “The woman’s real close to the general but he doesn’t tell her everything,” Lorrie said, beginning to visibly relax for the first time.

  “Real close?” Arch asked, putting the magnum back in his pocket. He couldn’t even maim the men for what they’d done. They simply didn’t know any better.

  “Yeah, they’re an item. He’s married but his wife has no clue. She doesn’t seem to care. I heard her tell him she preferred married men. No obligations.”

  Arch wanted to sit down. His mind had been a hot bed of angst and anger, thinking Virginia had turned him over to torturers without a second thought. But the news from Lorrie was even worse. He looked closely at the man for any hint of deception. He couldn’t pick up a thing. He was almost certain neither man knew of his previous intimate visit with Virginia. What motive would the man have to lie? His relief at not being hurt further or killed was just too evident.

  “Get your little package of DZ sick crap out,” Arch ordered harshly, in an attempt to bring his mind back into some kind of mission orientation.

  “Look, I used that to be humane. Please don’t give any of it to me,” Laurie begged while gently easing a little black leather case from inside his left front pocket.

  “Please? That’s the best you can do, after using it on me?” Arch grimaced, taking the case from Lorrie’s hand. He put it into one of his own pockets. “I’ve no intention of using it on you. Do you suppose the general had some other reason for sending you guys?” Arch’s mind ran to its darkest depths as he considered the situation. Was the general having an affair with Virginia? Everything pointed to it. Had Virginia come to bed with Arch straight from the general’s bed? Unanswerable questions rolled through Arch’s mind, like waves coming at the beach in a never-ending set. One thing was for certain; Arch wasn’t going to get anything of real use out of the two minor players in front of him.

  “Get him to the base,” Arch said, pointing at the man with his bleeding hand. “Any civilian ER will have you both taken in custody, where you belong, but we can’t have that, now can we?” Arch laughed but the sound rang hollow in the room, even to Arch’s own ears. “Get out quickly. Using that pillow for a suppressor probably didn’t fool too many people and security in this place will probably be along anytime.”

  “Thanks,” Lorrie answered with obvious relief, working to get his partner Kurt vertical and off the bed.

  “Think nothing of it,” Arch replied, his voice laced with acid. “When you see Virginia tell her that I’ve gone rogue, and I’m damn sure going to put a huge monkey wrench into all of their plans. And please report to the general that certain body parts of his are going to look like what’s left of Kurt’s hand when I’m done.” Arch was disappointed in himself as soon as the words were out. He was getting old. Predators in the business, players, never threatened. They simply did. If anything they sent waves of kindness, respect and even love before them, before they killed the intended prey.

  Arch made it to the elevators unimpeded. The maid’s cart was still in front of 215 with the door propped open, but there was nobody to be seen.

  Once inside his own room Arch went to his laptop and started to work. It took seconds to discover that a scintillation detector a device was used to measure how much irradiated iodine was present in a sample. A regular Geiger counter was not sensitive enough to measure dosages so low as to cause cancer-producing radiation in iodine. Irradiated iodine isotopes are the first and most damaging elements to be released from a spill of nuclear fission material. Most fissionable metals are comprised of up to three percent iodine. A good dosage of irradiated iodine would cause thyroid cancer in only a few years, to anyone so exposed.

  Arch sat back in his chair. He thought about the events he’d just been through. Scintillation had been mentioned by Virginia and Lorrie both. Scintillation was not a common word for any intelligence agent to know about or understand. Lorrie was lying about some of what he said. Was he lying about the general and Virginia? And what in hell was going on at Bellows? No wonder the Marines were spooked by Matisse and his unlikely band of sovereignty idiots. The poorly timed venture of the islanders, parking themselves on an island right in the middle of whatever was happening, must have been shocking to the players running whatever show they were running. Arch laughed out loud, imagining Matisse running around nearby holding out a Geiger counter.

  He headed out to join Matisse. It was time to encounter Bellows Air Force Base up close and in person. Arch had trained there while attending his last two years of military school. Bellows, in the fifties, following its deactivation as an actual flight base for the military, had served as the Oahu home for the Civil Air Patrol. Arch had soloed there in a glider before being dumped from the program for crashing three gliders and being dumped for insubordination behavior directed at the group commander. Arch remembered the base well, and also the fact that there was a nearby peak off base that he’d used to circle and gain altitude in his glider training days. From the top of that peak, just below the huge menacing Koolau range, every part of Bellows could be viewed with high definition binoculars. The Leica binoculars might, once again, prove invaluable.

  Matisse was waiting, just as before, when Arch completed his hike out from the resort. The dependability of the man was disconcerting. Islanders, particularly Kanakas, were notoriously undependable. They were late or didn’t show at all. But Matisse was punctual. That quality in the man faintly disturbed Arch, but he couldn’t understand why. He wanted to dislike Matisse. He’d every reason to dislike Matisse except one. The man had always been true to him. Loyalty was the single quality valued above all others in field intelligence work. Without loyalty there was no life.

  The drive across Oahu took more than an hour. They came at Bellows from the Lanakai side, not the Waikiki side. The peak Arch was looking for was just across the main road leading in to the base. It was part of the Waimanalo area. Waimanalo was the worst island enclave for Kanakas on Oahu. A Haole could not walk the street on that small part of the island without being encountered by high threat locals. Most Haoles who were encountered never understood that the locals were all threat and no bite. The incidence of violence on Oahu was the lowest in the nation, while the incidence of car burglaries and petty theft was the highest.

  Matisse decided to wait at the bottom of the peak, smoking pakalolo, what the locals on Oahu call marijuana. Not grown on the island, it was imported from the other islands where it was known by various powerful names for its kick. Matisse preferred purple Kona gold and smoked what he called a cigarette but was in reality something about the size of the cigar Bill Murray had smoked in Caddy shack.

  It took an hour for Arch to reach the peak. The morning dew and earlier rains had made the going tough and slippery. Tea leaves covered the ground under the bigger unnamed vegetation around. Tea leaves were slippery when wet. Every step Arch gained had been followed by a short slide back. His OP shorts and Lauren polo shirt were totally soaked when he arrived at the peak, but the view was worth it. And the thermal action of swirling trade winds affected by the afternoon radiation of the sun was wonderful. The same effect that had propelled his glider thousands of feet into the air many years earlier served to cool and invigorate Arch in a most satisfying and comforting way. He wanted to plunge himself into finding out what was going on and not in thinking about Virginia.

  Being at the top of the peak, which he’s flown around and around many times in his youth but had never climbed, was euphoric. Swinging the Leica binoculars up to his eyes Arch was instantly transported. Back in time. To a mission of technological advancement in the Soviet Union. He was staring through the lenses down at an Ekranoplan Caspian Sea Monster. He was staring at an airplane. The airplane was stretched out on the refurbished sixty-two hundred foot runway that had not seen real air service since the Second World War, except for tiny gliders. The plane was the largest airplane ever to fly, by far, but it co
uld only fly in ground effect. It wasn’t a real airplane because it flew just a few tens of feet above ground or water. It weighed in at over a million pounds and flew with another million pounds of troops and supplies aboard. That amount could be the most part of an entire armored division. Arch had not seen one of the three prototypes he witnessed over twenty-five years before. But there it was, revealed by the remarkably clear German lenses. Somehow, at least one prototype of the huge aircraft had survived and astoundingly it was lying there on the old runaway right in front of him.

  Arch sat back against the taro leaves and palm fronds propping him up in the filtering wind. He breathed in and out. The Ekranoplan. It was invented to transport huge amounts of men and armor across great distances. It had one fatal flaw. The eight huge jet turbines powering it ate fuel at a rate of ten tons of fuel per hour. Ten hours of three hundred mile an hour flight time was two hundred thousand pounds. No real long-range flights were possible because of the fuel-limited rand. Arch’s mind turned cold. Unless the turbines were driven by fission generated steam. Then, given the size and power of the nuclear power plant, range might well be unlimited. With nuclear power, a plane of such size could deliver half a Marine division, in one unit to the opposite side of the earth in less than two days. Suddenly, the scintillation detector made sense.

  The Apache caught his attention. Arch frowned in question. How could anyone know anyone was at the top of the peak, but somehow the approaching Apache helicopter seemed to know? That the Marine Corps had no such attack helicopters in its inventory would not even occur to Arch until later. The airborne beast came at him from high in the air, as if it knew exactly where he was concealed, nestled deep inside the green moist bracken. The Apache was a frightening mechanical beast, like a five-ton attacking wasp, except a whole lot more dangerous and deadly.