Chapter13
A bizarre madness stirred in the headset as voices screamed across several crossed lines with instructions and panic.
For a long time, the screens remained blank except for static-like bits of color that rippled from bottom to top indicating the life in the monitors, but not a signal.
After a time, the screens flickered with images again, as someone somewhere rebooted and regained control of the system.
Exactly who hacked into the system remained a mystery to those who sat and waited, if not to those assigned to make the repair.
Gradually, voices somewhere began to raise more fundamental questions as to where the targets went, and to slowly backtrack.
“Ground pursuit lost them somewhere near the George Washington Bridge,” said the voice of the supervisor.
“Do we know if they crossed over to the Jersey side?” another voice asked.
A third voice said, “We’re checking the bridge cameras.”
Someone else suggested toll cameras, but still someone else said, “there are no fucking tolls coming from New York.”
“Watch your tone,” the supervisor said. “We’re still being professional here.”
“Someone found the signal on the woman’s cellular phone,” a more distant voice said.
“That’s something,” the supervisor said.
“Apparently abandoned along Route 80 near Fort Lee.”
“That tells us something.”
“We also have a phone record from her room at the hotel. A hard line call to a cellular phone.”
“Do we have a location on that cellular phone?”
“Yes,” a distant voice said. “It’s stationary, slightly west from where the woman’s phone was abandoned.”
“Then we know where our subject is headed. Get resources there. Now!” the supervisor said.
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The motel was a dinosaur, a throwback to an era when people still used old Jersey highways for recreation trips even this close to Manhattan.
The Empire State Building’s upper spire was not visible from this point along the highway – too far south with the large bulk of The Palisades in-between. But the glow of the George Washington Bridge outline the nearby ridges in a blue haze not too different from a false dawn, showing the dip in the road as it lead down the western slope.
Gravel filled in the holes in the model’s parking lot, stones kicking up under the car as Ponci steered towards the line of doorways opening out onto the lot.
Few lights showed anywhere this early in the morning except the tiny red neon lettering which outlined the word “vacancy” under the larger, unlit sign that said “Palisades Motel.”
The car’s headlights illuminated bits of landscape beyond the single story building as the car pulled into one of the parking spaces. Nearby, a rusted guard rail bordered the front of the motel office with a sagging ice machine and 1960s style soda machine decorated with the picture of an old fashioned bottle of Coca Cola. Beyond the office, a closed gate marked the entrance to a swimming pool. A sign said: “closed for the season.”
One of the motel doors flung open just as Ponci pulled the car into one of the slanted parking spaces.
A stream of blue light from a wall-sized TV poured out onto the walk through the door. A short-haired man dressed in a New Jersey Jets jersey staggered out, clutching a beer can in one hand and his stomach in the other, managing to reach and grip the pillar holding up the awning before he started to vomit just between the front bumper of the car Ponci and Sara were in.
He did not seem to notice them, but turned and staggered back into the motel room as if ready to pick up where he had left off, closing the door behind him.
Sara’s eyes remained wide open with horror for moments after the man had gone. Ponci’s fingers unclenched the hilt of the pistol in his belt, and then he reached over and touched her arm. She jumped a little as she glanced at him.
He held a finger up to his lip and then tilted his head to indicate she should get out of the car. He did the same, but took great care to open the door. She seemed to get the message and opened the passenger side with the same care, closing it as quietly as he did again, but even the click of the closing doors sounded loudly in the pre-dawn.
Ponci moved carefully onto the covered walkway, aware of how he placed each foot, managing to avoid the party trash left strewn at intervals. He kept one hand on the handle of his Mauser, and his elbow tight against his side so that his jacket did not swish as he moved. At times like these, he felt almost like a spirit, and perhaps lived on the edge that world so that he could easily draw from it what he needed. He moved along the doors, motioning for Sara to follow behind him.
Then he stopped, waved his free hand for Sara to come up to his side, and with deliberate care, stepped around the still fresh remains of vomit. Sara complied, and once beside him, she glanced back at the parking lot. A tractor trailer roared by along the highway, reverberating in the quiet, then was gone, leaving the quiet behind.
Ponci heard first something move in the parking lot up the walk from where he led Sara – not a loud sound, perhaps only a missed step in the dark that struck a piece of gravel. But a glance in that direction told him they were not alone, dark shapes moving amid the cars – dressed in dark clothing that did not reflect the passing headlights along the highway.
Too late to go back to the car, he thought, suspecting that there were more such shadows waiting at the other end of the walk, creeping over or around the fence near the closed pool.
He recognized kindred spirits, and knew these were professionals, and could not easily be overtaken by flight, even if he could get the car started and moving before they filled it with bullets.
He glanced at Sara. She looked scared, but did not seem aware of the new danger.
A good thing, he thought, since he did not yet know how easily she might get rattled.
With one hand gripping the butt of his pistol, Ponci tugged on her sleeve with his other, nodding his head for her to follow him up the walkway.
She did, but not noiselessly, her heals scraping the rough concrete walkway at intervals, making Ponci wince.
There’s no help for it, he thought, forcing her to slow down just a little, which reduced the noise, but make the short trip to the apartment door he wanted almost an unbearable torture of waiting. He halted her just before the door marked number 8.
The covered light in the awning above the door was dark, hinting that someone may have put it out, although Ponci noted that several other lights in the string that clung to the underside of the awning blinked on the verge of extinction, creating a slow-motion strop effect. Darkness was lifting with the arrival of dawn, and Ponci wondered how long the shadowy figures would wait – once stripped of their dark cloak.
He motioned Sara to one side of the door as he slid to the side with the door handle, then keeping himself to one side, reached over and knocked on the door.
From inside, a muffled voice said, “Come in.”
Still remaining to one side, Ponci reached over and turned the door handle – the door was not locked and opened inward onto a dark interior.
“Well?” the voice said from out of the darkness. “Come in already. Do you want all of Jersey to see what we’re doing here?”
Ponci motioned with his gun for Sara to step in first. She glared at him and gave a stiff shake of her head. He motioned more firmly. Finally, she sighed, her shoulders slumping as she went in. With her as a shield, Ponci entered behind her.
Except with the weak glow coming from behind from outside through a gap in the shade casting a single weak wedge of light across the floor, the room was utterly dark. A slight bit of the light showed a portion of Southerland’s face as he sat backwards on a chair near the corner, one hand holding an automatic Glock machine pistol pointing in the direction of the door.
“Shut the door,” Southerland said, once they were inside. Ponci complied with his bloody hand while he held tight his own pistol. The wedge of light seemed brighter for the lack of the glow from the door.
“Who the fuck is she?” Southerland growled.
“She’s the soldier’s sister,” Ponci said, shifting sideways deeper into the dark so that he was no longer where he had been when he closed the door.
“Why the hell did you bring her?”
“She has the stuff you want,” Ponci said.
“Show them to me.”
“She doesn’t have it here.”
“What kind of fucking game is this?” Southerland snapped. “You call me to meet and they you say you don’t have the fucking stuff.”
“We have it, but not here,” Ponci said, leaning back against the wall.
Sara shifted from one foot to the other, and squinted as if to make out Southerland in the nearly non-existent light.
The slash of light through the shade only emphasized his angular face, giving him to look of a church gargoyle, especially the eyes that seem to catch the glint of light to look almost evil.
“You’re wasting my time,” Southerland said, “and trying my patience.”
His voice sounded strained, and the slash of light showed him shift as he glanced around.
“There are others who want the stuff,” Ponci said.
“Others?”
“They followed us across the bridge. Some of them are outside right now.”
“Who?” Southerland asked, fear sounding in his voice for the first time. “Terrorists? Russians?”
“Maybe them, too,” Ponci said. “But I would think closer to home.”
“The CIA?”
“Them or someone affiliated with them.”
Southerland grunted, then mumbled a low curse.
He glared at Ponci and Sara, eyes glinting with a look of extreme annoyance and hate.
“You led them here?” he snarled.
“I tied not to,” Ponci said. “But those guys have their ways as you well know since you’re in the same business.”
“Not quite,” Southerland said.
“Needless to say, we need to meet someplace else for the exchange,” Ponci said.
“And what’s to keep them from following you there?”
“You leave them to me,” Ponci said, “and worry about keeping them off your tail. They know who you are by now and that’s dangerous for all of us.”
In the visible band of light, Southerland’s machine pistol wavered, hinting that the hand in the shadow shook as well. The light glimmered on the beads of sweat that peppered his brow, and then caught on his eyes as he turned his gaze towards the window and what might lay beyond it on the gravel lot outside.
When the gaze shifted back and focused on Ponci, they bore an even more anxious look.
“They’ll stay here,” he said. “They’ll think you gave me the stuff and they’ll come in after me once you’re gone.”
“Which means you should leave here when we do,” Ponci suggested, as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket with his blood-stained hand, leaving a slash of red on it as he came forward and dropped it on the bed. “We’ll be at that address tomorrow night at that time. If you don’t come exactly at that time, we’ll be gone and you won’t get the stuff.”
Ponci tilted his head in the direction of the door, singling Sara to leave.
She moved to the door, grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door open, allowing Ponci to back out with pistol still pointed in Southerland’s direction. When Ponci was through, she followed and closed the door behind her.
“Get in the car,” Ponci said, following behind her as she scampered down the walkway.
Daylight was peaking over the top of the ridge to the east, but did not illuminate the deeper shadows in which Ponci knew shadowy people waited and watched.
Sara yanked open the passenger side door of the car, climbed in and then reached over to open the driver side door for Ponci. He kept his back to the car until he got to it, and then leaped in, putting down his weapon in the gap between the seats so he could insert the key into the ignition.
When the engine started, his face showed an intense expression of relief. Only the grinding of gears as he shifted the car into reverse suggested his agitation.
“Don’t look back,” he warned Sara, whose head had half turned, her nervous gaze alternating between the motel room door they had just exited and the deep shadows shaped by pre-dawn light.
The tires popped gravel as Ponci steered the car towards the highway.
“What now?” Sara asked, both her hands forming tight fists on her lap.
“We dump the car and find a new means of transport before the cops see us,” he said, as the car bumped over the last pothole of the parking lot and reached the smother surface of the highway beyond.
“What about him?” she asked, tilting her had back at the motel that was rapidly fading in the rear view mirror.
“If he survives, he’ll meet us.”
“He has to survive. I need to know why he needed to kill my brother.”
“You’re assuming that he even knows,” Ponci said. “He’s a middle man just like I am. He probably doesn’t even know what’s so important about the stuff he’s hired me to collect.”
“Then I want to find out who does know,” Sara said, staring straight ahead, but not at the road. “And if this man survives, I want him to give me the name of the person who hired him.”
“If he survives,” Ponci said, glancing up into the rearview mirror. But even the sign had faded with distance in the dim light. “They are going to be very angry when they find out he doesn’t have what they want.”
“You mean they’ll kill him?”
“My guess is they’ll do it either way. They would want to clean up this mess.”
“But if they kill him, how will then get the computer and the thumb drives?”
“From us, of course.”