Terminal Secret Page 17

  “Payday.”

  Chapter 28

  Angel stopped on the side of the Blue Ridge Parkway and rested his backpack on the ground. He put the sole of his boot on the silver metal guardrail and retied his Vibram-bottomed, professional-grade footwear. Standing upright, he slipped his arms through the straps of his backpack, wiggled his hips once to settle the bag, and then checked his watch. He gave a final glance to his car parked at the small lot on the other side of the two-lane thoroughfare and then disappeared into the woods.

  The hike to the cabin was four miles downhill. It was a distance Angel could cover in a half-hour on the treadmill. But without the luxury of running shoes, level ground, and a TV for distraction, he was planning on two hours down followed by three hours for the uphill return leg.

  Dangerous switchbacks zigged and zagged, slithering down the rocky slope for the first mile of the trail. When Angel checked his watch at the forty-minute mark, the first drops of rain were falling through the remaining colored leaves overhead. The rain, the leaves on the ground, and rocks combined for a treacherous second mile. The descent is always worse, he reminded himself. The skies above seemed to rumble in response and the rain fell harder, as if Mother Nature was indicating she would have the final word in which leg would be more arduous. Ten minutes later Angel took his first fall, his backpack cushioning the impact. His second fall was soon thereafter and Angel’s thoughts turned to the contents of his bag.

  The third mile of the trek was only marginally better than the first two, with a small break in the rain that was just long enough to offer hope there would be a more permanent reprieve. The thunder and sheet-like rain that accompanied Angel on the last mile of level ground put to rest all dreams of an afternoon with dry clothes.

  Angel arrived at the clearing near Corbin Cabin thirty minutes later than planned. The cabin—a three-room shack without electricity or water—was the lone habitable structure in the Shenandoah National Forest. The splintered and rotting remains of various other buildings dotted the valley floor; time and the elements having taken their toll and rendering them unsafe. The lone survivor of the original settlements, Corbin Cabin was maintained by a nonprofit trail preservation outfit in Vienna, Virginia. The small organization rented the cabin for twenty-five dollars a night, transportation and amenities not included.

  Angel climbed the wood steps to the porch of the cabin and slipped the key into the padlock that secured the front door. He pushed his way inside, removed his dripping jacket, and used a stack of wood in the corner and jar of matches on the mantle to start a fire in the stone hearth in the main room. Ten minutes later, with warmth edging out from the fireplace, Angel sat in a chair at the large wooden table in the middle of the room and began removing the contents of his bag, confirming that each item had survived the early November deluge and his challenges to remain upright.

  His forty-liter pack was a quarter-full with a day’s worth of provisions. Angel removed two ready-to-eat meals and confirmed the packaging was not punctured. He examined a large Ziploc bag of energy bars and checked the seal. Satisfied, he moved to the next bag and confirmed that his flashlight and emergency water filter were unscathed. The few items on the table, combined with the two water bottles on the sides of his pack, accounted for most of the bag’s weight. The remaining weight was attributable to the Glock handgun and two fully loaded seventeen-shot magazines.

  Angel checked the most important tool of survival without removing it from the bag. He knew well that a man could survive two days without water and two weeks without food. But injury and illness notwithstanding, he knew he could survive most anything else with the company of his favorite sidearm. Real survival could easily be decided by the man with the most bullets. Just ask the Native Americans.

  With the cabin prepared for his guest, Angel took a seat on an old chair on the covered front porch. He listened to the stream babble near the edge of the clearing and remembered camping with his older brother as a youngster. Relaxed, his mind trotted through his teens and twenties. When his jog down memory lane reached the thirty-year mark, he turned his attention back to his work, to past dirty deeds… and to dirty deeds that lay ahead.

  *

  The man Angel had simply nicknamed “Dinero” reached the clearing in the woods near the cabin from the direction of a well-maintained trail. The trail offered a leisurely two-hour stroll from the nearest parking lot, hugging a stream that ducked and dodged in and out of hollers named for settlers who were driven from the land when the government arrived with their plan for a national park.

  Angel watched as Dinero arched his back at the edge of the clearing and slipped the backpack off his shoulder. Dinero’s short frame tilted to the side as he grabbed the pack with his right hand. Angel continued to monitor the man’s approach to the cabin, the backpack tugging at Dinero’s right shoulder, almost pulling him down. The strain of the hike with the heavy backpack grew apparent on Dinero’s middle-aged face as he neared the cabin. Passing the stone-rimmed fire pit in the clearing around the cabin, the man’s slowing gait melted into a shuffle.

  Angel waved his hand slightly as Dinero approached. Angel stood from his chair as the man climbed the stairs to the porch.

  “I need to warm up,” Dinero said, dropping the bag on the wooden porch for Angel to grab.

  Angel gently slapped the man on the shoulder as he passed. Dinero responded to the gesture with a spasm of thick coughs. Angel followed him inside and shut the door, placing the bag on the floor near the table. The newly arrived visitor slowly removed his rain-soaked jacket and hung it on a wall hook fashioned from deer antlers.

  “I wasn’t sure if you got caught in the storm or not,” Angel said. “The forecast was for partly cloudy skies.”

  “You can’t believe the weatherman,” the man replied, rubbing his hands near the fire like a character in a children’s story.

  Angel moved to the far side of the table and sat down so that he had a view of the door. Dinero fumbled with the zipper on his middle layer of clothing and coughed again. Angel heard the man curse under his breath and spit in the direction of the fire.

  “You okay? Angel asked.

  “I will be.”

  “You don’t look well.”

  “Have you expanded your expertise into medical advice?”

  “No. But sometimes I feel like I could.”

  “Perhaps that’s true. Regardless, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Damn cold. The weather doesn’t help.”

  “Did you see anyone on your way in?”

  “Passed a couple of kids. Maybe university students. They were on their way out. Probably caught in the rain. There were a few cars in the parking lot south of Sperryville. Nothing out of the ordinary. Most of them probably on their way to hike Old Rag.”

  Dinero sat down and reached for his pack. He plucked a thick hiker’s guide to the Shenandoah from his backpack and placed it on the table. A single white piece of paper was folded in the book.

  “A hiking book?”

  “Been carrying something related to the park every time we have met here. Sometimes it’s a book on trees. Maybe flora. This time it’s a hiking book. Makes for a plausible story. I even bookmarked the section that references this cabin. Dog-eared a couple of other locations for authenticity.”

  Angel reached over and opened his Ziploc bag of energy bars.

  “How about you? Did you see anyone on your hike down?” Dinero asked.

  “Not a soul. But then again, I have the route no one wants to take.”

  “When you start bringing the cash, we can switch paths.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Dinero pulled a few more items from his bag and placed a bottle of water and a tightly wrapped sandwich on the table. He put a small stack of napkins next to the sandwich and wiped his hands with one. A minute later, half of the sandwich and most of the water had disappeared.

  Angel finished his second energy bar and looked down at Dinero’s backpack on the flo
or of the cabin. “We need to discuss some developments.”

  “What kind of developments?” Dinero asked.

  “The last two assignments have had complications.”

  “I followed both stories in the press. The shooting of the lawyer seems to have gone off without a hitch. The police have no suspects. No leads. Other than the curiosity of a possible urban sniper, there’s nothing unusual about the investigation or indication the authorities have figured anything out. And the waitress who was hit by the bus, well, she didn’t die immediately, but she did pass. I think it provides a nice twist, actually. Makes her death seem even more accidental.”

  Dinero paused and Angel nodded slightly.

  “So, what are the complications?” Dinero asked.

  “As you’re probably aware, the shooter for the lawyer had an automobile accident after executing her assignment. She perished. It was in the news, but it was not in the news in connection with the shooting.”

  “I heard. But I didn’t see any connection between the lawyer and the slightly premature demise of our terminally ill sniper-for-hire. Other than both of them dying on the same day.”

  “The same morning.”

  “Has someone made a connection?”

  “Not yet. It appears that everything has worked out. But the police did investigate. They did ask around. They could work it out. That’s our first complication.”

  “If they had something, we would know.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Our insulation in these occurrences is a two-sided coin. The upside is that we have no previous connection to any of our hired help. No past dealings. No record of electronic interchanges. No history. This is our advantage. Hell, no one in the US has ever even seen you and me together. We are completely insulated even from each other. Isolated. Compartmentalized. But the other side of the coin is that insulation from our hired help prevents us from monitoring potential investigations. We only know what we hear in the media.”

  That’s what you think, Dinero thought. “Following an investigation doesn’t concern me. It’s wasted energy. What would worrying about that achieve?”

  “I would like to know.”

  “The hired help for the EPA lawyer perished in a car accident, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The lawyer is also deceased, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then neither of them will be talking,” Dinero said simply, taking another bite of his sandwich. “And we never met anyone else related to either of them.”

  “True, but…”

  “Good. The lawyer’s case is closed. What was the complication with the waitress who was hit by the bus?” Dinero asked. He reached for his water bottle and twisted the top with his thumb while coughing into one of his napkins.

  “Someone was watching the waitress the night she was killed. Someone saw it happen.”

  “It was on a busy street. There were many witnesses. All of who saw nothing. As planned.”

  “Beyond witnesses. Someone intervened. As a result, I had to get involved.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “The plan was executed flawlessly. But there was a man observing our waitress. He saw our hired help. He pursued her around the block as she changed outfits. I went around the other side of the block to observe. I didn’t expect to engage the man, but our woman dropped the weapon, which was not part of the plan. I picked it up, and proceeded to eliminate the threat.”

  “Eliminate?”

  “Incapacitate.”

  “The police?”

  “No. A private detective. And an attorney.”

  “What was a private detective and attorney doing following the waitress?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I have his wallet and am starting surveillance. He hasn’t been to his office in a couple of days.”

  “And the waitress?”

  “I don’t believe she knew she was being followed.”

  “I told you I didn’t like the idea of using a baton. We should have used a gun.”

  “It’s pretty risky to execute a killing with a firearm on a crowded street surrounded by a dozen witnesses.”

  “You could have killed the waitress closer to her home.”

  “Not all of our hired help are proficient with firearms. Not all of our hired help can blend in to any neighborhood, any environment.”

  Dinero took another sip of water. “So you’re saying she was a poor shot with a firearm.”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “It’s disappointing. For years we didn’t have a single hiccup. Now we have two complications in a row.”

  “You pushed up the timeline. I told you that compressing the frequency of our tasks was inherently dangerous. You want to know why the first few people were easy? Because we were patient. Planning takes time. Training the hired help takes time. Particularly if you don’t want to be caught, which is why we operate the way we do. For years we had a steady pace. Everything was perfect. Then you changed that dynamic. If you want speed, then efficiency will suffer.”

  “Time is no longer in abundance.”

  “Then perfection is something we can no longer expect.”

  “As I can see by these last two assignments.”

  “If you think you can find someone to do it better, be my guest.”

  Dinero looked over at the fire and stood. He walked to the door and confirmed the latch on the inside was in the locked position. He returned to the table, thrust his hand into his bag, and removed five pounds of cash wrapped in cellophane. The cash thudded on the table and Angel reached for his own backpack. Seven additional stacks of currency landed on the top of the table and Angel quickly transferred the money into his large backpack and pulled the drawstring on the top of the bag.

  “That’s a million for the dead lawyer and a million for the dead waitress.”

  “I’ll count it later.”

  “If I had been smart, I would’ve negotiated payment in Euros. They have a five hundred denomination that would have cut the weight considerably.”

  “And I would lose money on the exchange rate, in addition to the laundering fee I already have to pay.”

  Dinero stepped glumly to the fire and said, “This is the last time we will use the cabin.”

  Angel grunted. “That’s not a decision to make lightly. This is the perfect location. No one can tie us together here. We have parked our cars in separate locations that are over forty miles apart via any paved road. As the crow flies, our points of origin are only seven miles apart, but by county and state roads, we are well over an hour away from each other. There is no cell phone coverage to track us. We have a nice little cabin in the woods we can use without being traced.”

  “The cabin has worked well. Though I was never as sold on its perfection as you were.”

  “Do you think we would have made it this far if I wasn’t careful? The nonprofit that maintains this cabin operates out of a one-room office in Northern Virginia. It’s managed entirely by volunteers. In order to get the key for the cabin, you simply need to provide a credit card number.”

  “I assume you didn’t use yours.”

  “Of course not. When I need to use the cabin, I check online for availability. Once my reservation is confirmed, they send an email to a bogus email account I set up. In the email they provide a code to a lockbox. I can pick up the key to the cabin from the lockbox outside the office.”

  “So you never have to pick up the key in person…”

  “You can. You can even have it mailed to your home. But the organization has a lockbox on the outside of the building for after-hour pickups. I get the key from the lockbox. I drop the key off when I am done, also after hours, and I never have to engage anyone. No one has ever seen my face. Using the lockbox is perfect. In fact, I cannot image a better scenario.”

  “You don’t have to be a member of the trail organization to make a reservation?”

  “Therein lies the cherry on the sundae. Because this cabin is i
n a National Forest, by law, membership cannot be required.”

  “Like I said, nothing is perfect. Dragging forty pounds of cash through the woods, for one,” Dinero said. “But regardless, we’ll have to change venues. The next meeting will not be here.”

  “If not here, then where?”

  “I’m working out the details. Something less remote, but just as anonymous.” Dinero again reached into his backpack and slid another Ziploc bag across the table. “Here are a couple more prepaid phones. That should be enough for the final two on our list.”

  Angel opened the bag and removed one of the phones, a basic prepaid model without any bells or whistles. As Angel finished examining the phones, Dinero placed a new Virginia driver’s license in the middle of the wooden table. Angel put the phones back into the bag and picked up the new ID. He read the details of the new identity and then Angel’s gaze slowly returned to Dinero’s face.

  “How intimately do I need to become with my new identification?”

  “Just remember the name, address, and birthday. You’ll need it. Don’t lose it. I don’t want to have to get another one. They are becoming more difficult to acquire.”

  Angel nodded, his mind returning to bigger concerns. “Let’s discuss the final two targets.”

  “Yes, let’s. We have two targets remaining. The final target is yours, as agreed upon originally. You will handle the final target on your own, without any assistance.”

  “And payment for the final target is in advance. Also as agreed upon.”