SURVIVAL ( PART 2)

17.

Fat Jack turned from one of several spotting scopes he had set up in the blind to look at Indian’s face. Indian’s entire face looked as if it had been beaten with an ugly stick. In fact, as a boy on the reservation Indian’s face had been permanently disfigured by a severe beating applied by a drunken stepfather.

Fat Jack had met the scarred boy as a scarred man coming out of a restroom in a bar. As Fat Jack approached the restroom, Indian, in the doorway, gave him an eye signal about something behind him. In one motion Fat Jack had whirled to quickly dispatch the man behind him who was just starting to raise a shotgun from under his raincoat.

After that, Fat Jack learned to trust Indian’s eye.

“No see her approach,“ Indian had told him. So it was Fat Jack took the time to see for himself. The girl came down the hill to Estevez’s house several times a day. She had alternate routes. She could come down the rocky lane or on several intertwined paths that came through the woods.

At first Fat Jack could not see her until she was almost at Estevez’s house. It took him two days to pick her up halfway. Even then, he suspected, he wouldn’t have seen her so soon if she didn’t do things, he suspected deliberately, to attract his attention. She might change her gait in a subtle way or suddenly stop and start again.

Indian had noticed something else that was so obvious that nobody else had noticed it. The girl sat in the grass and changed position frequently. No matter where she sat she offered a view that was completely unobstructed from their spotting scope in the blind. Considering the myriad of intervening branches and foliage this was truly remarkable.

The placement of her sitting positions in the grass, as far as offering an unobstructed view to the spotting scope, were perfect, too perfect.

If Fat Jack believed in such things, and he didn’t, he might have put down the placements today to coincidence. But the placement had been perfect yesterday and the day before that.

Fat jack wasn’t even sure he could place two men in the grass across the creek completely in the open without giving them directions with walkie –talkies from the blind.

Even, he thought, if he knew how she did it, he didn’t have a clue as to why she did it.

18.

At the kitchen table she had two long, inch wide strips of paper, four one inch long pieces of cellophane tape, and a laundry marker.

She laid one strip of paper on the table and put two pieces of tape on both ends.

She asked him to draw a line, it didn’t even have to be straight, down the middle of the paper without moving the marker.

As with most of her games, he had not immediately understood the object. At least, he thought, she was finally starting to present him physical challenges.

He accomplished the simple task and, as she knew he would, asked, without looking up, “What’s the purpose of the tape?”

Ignoring his question she asked, “Why didn’t you put the line on both sides of the paper?”

Watching her holding the strip of paper in the air and twisting to show the line on one side and not on the other he stated logically, “In order to have done that I’d have had to pick up both the paper and the marker.”

Without saying anything she held up the other strip of paper, gave it one twist, and carefully taped the ends together with the remaining two pieces of cellophane tape.

Skeptical, Estevez picked up the twisted three dimensional strip and looked it over.

Faithfully, using his control, and the patience she had taught him, he placed the marker on the middle of the part of the strip flat on the table. Then, without moving the marker or picking it up, and sliding the paper carefully under it, he was able to draw a single line that not only covered both “sides” of the paper but also met itself in the middle.

“The strip only has one side, “ he said unnecessarily.

“Estevez,” she said, “Your body is growing up. It has already locked into a pattern like that flat paper on the flat desk. You must unlock that pattern.”

She had had Estevez practicing staying under water for some time now when they were in the springhouse. In part, this involved deliberate lowering of heart rate and more efficient breathing. However, to get real results he would have to invoke the reflex that allowed young children submerged under water to survive after long periods of time.

Despite his fear he had repeatedly found the courage to hold his breath until she had to pull him, unconscious from the water.

He had not found the key, as yet, to give in to the reflex that would shut his body down without completely shutting it off.

19.

Fat Jack was back in the Oval Office to look at specification sheets on this target. He had been offered the sheets each time he had accepted an assignment, but had always respectfully declined, preferring to use his own investigators.

This time was different.

Outside Estevez’s little community he had not found a single person, or even a scrap of paper, that could verify that the girl had ever existed. As for the scientist, records showed he had already died on the other side of the country and was buried. There was, of course, a real body in the grave with the proper degree of composition.

Eleven Sears and Roebuck catalogues – that’s what Fat Jack thought the girl’s specification sheets looked like.

Most pages had missing words or passages and many pages were completely blank. The four star general and the Marine guards posted inside the room indicated that leaving the word “and" on a page and leaving all other words out was not a joke.

Uncharacteristically, the President sat impatiently in a chair next to Fat Jack where the books were spread out for inspection. This, he assumed, was a professional courtesy. He made no immediate assumptions about why the President was surreptitiously signing the letters N, W, and O under the table.

Not long after that the President excused himself saying he needed to leave to catch a plane to fly to Geneva to make preparations for the upcoming worldwide summit aimed at limiting weapons of mass destruction.

After the president left, it took Fat Jack over two hours to find the letters N, W, and O in the glossary of abbreviations in the back of book nine. There was a page number next to the abbreviation, but that page, of course, was blank. However, next to NOW in the glossary, barely discernable because it had been whited out but not completely obliterated, was an explanation for what the letters stood for – (N)uclear (W)eapons (O)ption.

Fat Jack stretched out in the chair, closed his eyes, and thought about it. After a long time his thoughts were interrupted.

“She won’t run, “ interjected the general. Fat Jack had assumed that all generals could do, at least in the Commander-in-Chief’s office, was glare and be seen.

Fat Jack opened his eyes and watched the general as he explained in the same unbelievable smug matter –of –fact tone used by defendants at the Nuremburg War Trials what they had done to the girl.

The girl had been isolated and tested and prodded more than any other human being who had ever existed. Now, her usefulness was almost gone for two reasons. First, she was dying physically. Secondly, she had gained almost total control of what was left of her vital organs. She could, if she wanted to, will herself to die. She had them over a barrel. The deal was they would let her and the scientist out in the world, well, at least a limited part of the world for a limited time, in return for continued, but limited, samples and tests.

“So you see, “ explained the general, “We’re not monsters. You will be doing the girl a favor, I promise, by saving her from what will otherwise be an unnecessarily painful death.”

“Lying through his teeth,” thought Fat Jack as he politely thanked the monster for the information he had just gained.
20.

Sitting on the stump of what had been the large old pear tree Estevez watched the large insect, a hummingbee, move mechanically from flower to flower. At a distance the large insect could be mistaken for a hummingbird.

Nobody could mistake the snorting, pawing, and butting of the fence posts by the bull as anything other than pure noisy meanness. The bull was coming across the lane that fronted his yard before making the turn up the rocky path to the upper pastures

Estevez ignored the bull and continued studying the hummingbee. Unseen, behind him, coming down the rocky lane, was the girl.

Across the creek in the blind, Indian wandered why the girl had not gone in the side gate to the upper yard since she surely must have seen the bull.

The bull continued ripping and snorting across the front while the girl continued down the rocky lane flanked by barbed wire fences.

When the bull turned the corner the girl just kept on coming. By now, she was much closer to the bull than she was to the gate she had walked past.

The bull bellowed in rage when he saw the girl and pawed the ground in preparation for a charge. The girl just kept on walking toward the bull.

At the bellow Estevez had glanced up seeing the tableau unfolding to his right. He was off the stump and running a split second after the bull started its charge. The fence had rusty barbed wire and was taller than he. He had the angle, but he didn’t know if he had the nerve or the will.

Meanwhile the girl just stood still, unmoving, right in the center of the lane.

Estevez was over the fence and running in front of the bull before he knew it. He pushed the girl to the side getting spun around himself by the bull as it rushed past. The girl just lay where he had pushed her, unmoving, but unhurt. The bull had skidded past, and spewing spittle, was trying to gather its feet under it for a charge back the other way.

With the girl on the ground he knew his options were limited. Without hesitation he ran toward the bull before it could start its charge and, planting his feet, hit the bull squarely between the eyes, dropping it as though it had been poleaxed.

Estevez picked up the girl and carried her toward the gate as the bull, cross-eyed, tried to regain its feet.

Nauseated by his own adrenalin rush, he lay next to where he had laid her on the grass, waiting for his heartbeat to slow down. He was suddenly overcome with fatigue so did not hear what she said before he drifted off.

“I knew you would come,” she had murmured.


21.

After Fat Jack left the Oval Office he headed directly back to the blind on the hill across the creek from estevez's house.

Indian was dressed and had all his equipment in pockets or the backpack he was wearing before Fat Jack walked into the blind, so he had sensed, somehow, that time was short, and they would need to be on the move, and quickly. Fat Jack would have simply talked the situation over with Indian had not the general insisted on sending along a driver/body guard who, of course, was with him now.

The driver took them in a jeep to the fields where the general said he had sent back up teams. The President knew he didn’t need, or want, back up, so the fact that the body guard and backup were there meant, probably, that the general had his own agenda. Fat Jack was ninety nine percent certain the President would not have sanctioned a back up or a bodyguard, but needed to play along until he had a chance to find out with one hundred percent certainty what was going on.

When they got to the isolated farm, which served as the staging area for the backup forces, ugly small vehicles with mounted anti –aircraft guns that would depress fully were practicing going up the sides of rugged hills. Fortunately, thought Fat Jack, there was abundant terrain even these amazing vehicles couldn’t reach. Then there were the trucks with the mortar tubes, but they weren’t pinpoint accurate, weren’t really effective in rocky and wooded areas, and, anyway, needed to know where to aim, which was difficult in areas like this with so much cover and variations in altitude. The snipers with long rifles could go anywhere and looked very professional, but Fat Jack knew from long experience he could handle them with proper preparation and , especially, forewarning.It was for this reason, if no other, that he was glad he overcame his initial hesitation and came along on the general's arrogant little tour. The clincher, however,were the tracking and attack dogs the general didn't mention that were deploying from trucks at the edge of the field. Fat Jack, especially with Indian's recon team's help, could handle a lot, but not all, of these forces. It was only a question of sheer weight of numbers, logistics, not a question of individual will or skill. He was confident he could handle the men and machines, but would have to give some quick thought as to what to do about the dogs if they were brought into play.

It didn't take Fat Jack to analyze his options and decide that now, not later, was the best time for him to act. When he got out of sight of the military staging area he overcame the driver and put the driver's body deep into the woods alongside an alternate route he took back to the blind. Trying to buy more time he stopped and told a man at a garage that they had tried to fix a broken jeep, but couldn’t, and that other men would be coming along later looking for the jeep but that it broken down and a tow truck was on its way to pick it up. The bread crumbs left leading to a false conclusion were feeble, but Fat Jack would reinforce that conclusion to anyone who checked by calling two nearby garages that had tow trucks and sending them to false locations to look for a broken down jeep. The fact that he knew all the nearby garages, bus stations, and rental agencies in advance showed that what he did was more about preparation than execution.He could not continue his assassination business if he couldn't get away. Because he had gotten away so many times before he could collect in advance, but collecting in advance meant literally nothing if he couldn't get away because he had the feeling, a correct feeling, that authorities wouldn't let him spend his money while he was in federal prison. Worse, he had the feeling that no one would accept his pleas that the death penalty was simply deliberate murder by the state. After all, it was the state that employed him and they were not likely, under any circumstances, to admit that.

Not too far from the blind he drove the jeep far into the woods and camouflaged both the jeep and its tracks.

When Fat Jack returned Indian told Fat Jack outside the blind what had happened with the bull, the girl, and Estevez. “She no run,” Indian had said. An alarm went off in Fat Jack's mind then. At the White House the general had also said, “She won’t run.” Fat Jack didn't know what the alarm meant, but he trusted his hunches just as much as Indian's.Paying attention to these unexplained hunches had saved his life more than once.

Continuing on to the blind they spent just enough time chatting with other members of their team to establish the seeds of a plausible reason for the military driver of the jeep not to have made the return trip with Fat Jack.

It was now closing in on noon and to make the plan he had hastily devised work Fat Jack had to hijack the mail and then deliver it, and Indian had to go to the agreed upon meeting point, which was where the creek emptied into the river, and prepare a reception for uninvited guests who were almost certain to be in pursuit of Fat Jack when he made his escape.

From the meeting point, if he survived, Fat Jack hoped, he could simply float in the dark, at least at first, down the middle of the river on the first leg of a desperate gambit to reach, eventually, the international airport located on the banks of the river not too far from where the river emptied into the bay.

On that plane, if they could catch it, they would cross the ocean. If he couldn't catch the plane, and Fat Jack now suspected that he couldn't, Fat jack had a number of safe houses set up along the way. How safe they were was, of course, questionable. The houses in the big city were safer than the ones on the way. There people lived, literally, on top of each of each other. Paradoxically physical proximity lead to less intimacy and knowledge than the spaced out rural area in which he now operated/


22.

The mail truck pulled up to the mailbox by the road and Fat Jack had said cleverly, “Hey kid.”

Estevez had been standing at the place at the barbed wire fence he had jumped over earlier that day. He knew he had cleared it because the barbed wire had not scratched him or torn his clothes.

Fat Jack looked ridiculous in the mail lady’s clothes because they didn’t fit him, but come to think of it, the clothes hadn’t fit the mail lady very well either, and Fat Jack kept the hat on and stayed in the truck.

Fat Jack explained quickly to an unblinking Estevez what he had to do and drove on to the next mailbox. As luck would have it, he hadn’t even had to put someone else’s mail in the mailbox to make it look convincing since there was a legal letter to that box today, even if it was only a light bill. “Don’t forget the rope,” he reminded Estevez as he drove off.

Later, as Estevez tied the rope to the top of the post and stretched it to the place from which he had started his leap to measure the distance, the girl, silent, just stood and watched. She had sensed something was wrong almost as soon as she walked down the path.

“Why didn’t you run?” he had asked, already knowing part of the answer.

She had started an answer in her usual convoluted way, explaining that over half the calories a person burns are used just for survival, to operate vital organs and the brain.

He interrupted her. He didn’t have time for this today. He knew she had not run, in part, to test what he could do. She knew that he knew it.

“Why didn’t you run?” he asked again, more pointedly and harshly.

She could see in his eyes, and tell from his tone, that the charade was over. She hesitated a long time and looked at the earth, and the sky, but not at him. Finally, with her head down, barely audible, she explained that it would not have mattered if the bull had killed her because they had poisoned her already. She went on to explain that it just wasn’t her. The scientist’s wife had not committed suicide, but, like her, had been given the poison and, they said, was kept alive by antidotes delivered every other day only if she and the scientist did as they were told.

“It’s not much of a life, but I still want to see what tomorrow will bring," she concluded sadly as both explanation and apology. Estevez had never gone on a vacation, or eaten at a restaurant, or stayed overnight anywhere except home. But she had never had a pet, or free time to just play, or a friend her age, until him. She had never been to school, or church, or town. It was an unremittingly sad tale of survival.

Estevez felt exactly as he had that day, when only eight months old, he had fallen asleep in the arms of his mother only to be awakened in the arms of a strange woman. She looked like his mother. She had had on the same dress. But she didn’t smell like his mother. She didn’t have fingers as rough as his mother. She didn’t hold him in the way his mother had.

They had calculated, incorrectly, that he wouldn’t notice and couldn’t remember because he was too young. So it was that he had hidden from them, whoever them had been, in plain sight all these years hoping they would make a mistake giving him a clue as to what they had done to his father and mother. That hadn’t happened, but now he was strong enough to strike out and start searching on his own. It was too bad he couldn’t take her with him.

His farewell to the girl, like most of his life so far, was bittersweet. She had gone quietly with him to the springhouse and let him tie her up without resistance. She was more clever and experienced, but she knew he was stronger. Her being tied up and left behind was absolutely necessary for both him and her. It gave him a head start on getting away, and it gave her a chance, at least, to live beyond today. He knew he had her undying love, but they, whoever they were, had her antidote, so the only chance for her survival, for the time being, was with them, not him.

"You lied to me," he told her unnecessarily and flinched when he saw that it hurt her.

"Everybody lies," she had replied. "I unselfishly wanted to save the scientist's wife, and I selfishly wanted to meet you. If they had not sent me they would have sent someone else."

"So that makes what you did right?" asked Estevez.

"Not right - just necessary," she called as he left her in the springhouse where he had first met her.

Fat Jack had been right. It was a long shot, but it was Estevez's only chance. The President was the only one with access to enough resources to find both the antidote and his parents. He would have to help Fat Jack save the President before he could have any chance of saving her.

It was all a gamble. Fat Jack could have been lying just like everyone else in his life when he said things were not as they appeared.