news. Wingate was giving a speech in Cleveland. If the General went straight home, he and Carl would arrive at the mansion at about the same time.
After nightfall, Carl broke into a sporting goods store in a small town near San Diego and stole a pair of stiff- soled trail shoes, binoculars, a wetsuit, a fishing bow and arrows, several lengths of sturdy rope, and the strongest fishing line he could find. He put his booty into one of Vanessa’s duffel bags and drove toward a beach a few miles south of the General’s estate, where he’d hung out when he was a student at St. Martin’s Prep.
There were no cars in the narrow lot when Carl parked around midnight and changed into his wetsuit. The beach was deserted, too. Carl strapped the duffel bag across his back and started swimming up the coast. Fighting through the rolling water was exhausting, but thoughts of Vanessa kept him plowing ahead. Carl knew that getting into the mansion and rescuing her would be much harder than the swim. No matter how many times Carl fine-tuned his plan, it sounded suicidal.
“Getting old is a bitch,” Rice thought as he dragged his aching body and the duffel bag out of the surf and onto the beach behind the stone jetty at the end of Morris Wingate’s property. He flopped down on the sand to catch his breath. For most of his life, Carl had been in the type of shape that let him endure almost any physical hardship with a minimum of wear and tear; but now he was almost fifty and his body did not hold up the way it used to, no matter how much he worked out. Then there was the fact that he had still not fully recovered from being shot. The only thing that kept him going was Vanessa. He had betrayed her once, when he went into the army without resisting, and he wasn’t going to let her down again.
When his breathing was back to normal, Carl peeked over the jetty and surveyed the three-hundred-foot cliff that marked the boundary of the Wingate estate. When he saw the old tree still jutting out from the side of the cliff, he breathed a sigh of relief. His plan depended on that tree, and he hoped that he was half as tough as it was.
Carl’s main problem was the condition of the cliff. Centuries of a relentless assault by nature had made the surface he was about to climb very unstable. The face of the cliff was constantly sloughing. Vegetation grew in cracks in the shale, loosening it. Wind laden with moisture and salt from the sea beat at the rock mercilessly. The net result was a facade that was always crumbling and falling away. Each toe and handhold would be treacherous enough in the daytime. At night, every inch of the climb was going to be a surprise.
Carl struggled out of his wetsuit and put on his jeans, shirt, and trail shoes before scanning the top of the cliff with the stolen binoculars. When he was satisfied that there were no guards patrolling, he slung the duffel bag across his back. He was about to sprint across the beach when he heard the sound of rotary blades whipping through the night. Rice pressed himself against the jetty and scanned the sky until he fixed on a dot of light moving toward the Wingate estate from the north. Moments later the landing lights on Wingate’s helipad came on and a Computex helicopter dropped out of the sky. The General had come home.
Carl knew that the arrival of the helicopter was bound to distract the guards, so he ran across the sand to the base of the cliff, then stood in the shadows listening for any sign that he had been detected. When he was convinced that he was safe, he began his ascent directly under the tree.
Despite arms and legs that ached from the swim, pain from his wounds, and wind that buffeted him mercilessly, Carl scaled the first hundred feet with only minor problems. Then two successive handholds crumbled and a foothold gave way, sending him sliding several feet down the face of the cliff. Carl stopped his fall on a narrow ledge and broke out his gear. After attaching a long length of fishing line to an arrow, he fitted the arrow to the fishing bow. From the beach the old tree was three hundred feet straight up, but now the tree was a little less than two hundred feet above him-still a long shot, but he had no choice but to go for it.
Carl aimed so that the arrow would clear the back of the tree. His first shot was short and he had to reel the arrow back. Wind blew his second shot away from the face of the cliff. Carl waited patiently for the wind to die down before taking his third shot. His muscles strained as he pulled back on the bowstring. He sighted and released. This time the arrow arced through the air, sailing over the north side of the tree and across the back. The weight of the arrow pulled the fishing line down the south side of the tree past Carl, and it fell almost to the beach.
Carl scrambled back down the cliff while letting out more line. When he reached the arrow, he took a long length of rope out of the duffel bag and attached it to the fishing line above the arrow using a fisherman’s knot. Then he let go of the arrow, moved to the north side of the tree, and pulled the fishing line back over the tree until the attached rope hung from both sides of the trunk.
After detaching the arrow and the fishing line from the rope, Carl tied a bowline loop at one end of the rope and passed the other end of the rope through the eye of the bowline, creating a noose around the trunk of the tree. Carl pulled on the rope until it tightened around the tree, providing a fixed anchor.
Now, using separate pieces of rope, Carl made a sling that looped around his chest and a seat harness that he secured around his waist, under his buttocks, and through his crotch so that it fitted like a diaper. Then he removed from the duffel bag two more pieces of rope that were roughly twice the length of his body. He tied the first piece around the rope that dangled from the tree using a prusik knot and attached a second prusik beneath the first. The prusik was a clever device that could slide up or down the rope when there was no tension on it, but would tighten and not slide when tension was applied. Carl ran the top prusik under his chest sling and attached it to his seat harness. When Carl sat on the seat harness, the tension on the prusik kept the harness secured to the rope. Carl could dangle in space without fear. If Carl put his foot in the loop formed by the lower prusik he could stand up straight and the tension on the lower prusik would keep him from sliding when he was standing. Additionally, when he stood, the upper prusik loosened and he could slide it up the rope as far as he could reach. Carl had created a simple system that allowed him to slide up the rope by alternately standing and sitting. This allowed him to climb up the tree with a minimum of effort because he could rest by sitting or standing.
When Carl reached the tree, he paused below the edge of the cliff, sagged back in his seat harness, and rested. As soon as he regained some of his strength, he peered over the edge. No guards were in sight. Carl hauled himself over the lip of the cliff. He left the rope secured to the tree so that he and Vanessa could rappel down it if they were able to escape, but he covered it with dirt and leaves so a guard would not see it.
Carl had taken two silenced nine-millimeter Glock automatics, ammunition, and a combat knife from the men he’d killed at Ami’s house. The knife was already in a sheath he’d strapped on before the climb. He took the pistols from the duffel bag before concealing the duffel in the underbrush a few yards from the tree.
Carl thought about the task that was facing him. He had to get past the guards and Wingate’s surveillance equipment, break into the mansion, and find Vanessa without getting killed or captured. Then he had to escape with her, which meant that Vanessa would have to rappel to the beach and swim down the coast in choppy seas. The whole thing seemed impossible to pull off.
The next time Vanessa drifted into consciousness a man was standing by the door, watching her, and someone else was sitting beside her bed. It was dark in the room. She closed her eyes. Thinking was such a strain.
A warm hand covered Vanessa’s. She forced her eyes open again. The lights went on and she blinked.
“Thank God you’re safe.”
It took Vanessa a moment to realize that it was her father who had spoken and a moment more for her to remember that she hated him. Anger-triggered adrenaline cleared away most of her drug-induced stupor and she tried to sit up.
The General touched her shoulder. “No, rest, you need your strength.”
“Get your hands off me.”
“Vanessa, I love you. I did what I had to do to protect you.”
“From who, daddy? You’re the only person I’m afraid of.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. Everything I’ve done has been to help you.”
“Like locking me up in that asylum and keeping me drugged for a year so I couldn’t tell anyone that you ordered Carl to murder Eric Glass?”
She pointed at Sam Cutler, who was watching from the door. “Like having your little spy kidnap me? Tell me daddy, while he was living with me, did Sam give you a blow-by-blow version of how we fucked?”
Vanessa’s words were slurred and lacked force. Even so, the General flinched.
“Carl Rice is an insane killer,” Wingate said. “I have no idea how many people he’s murdered. I had to get you away from him.”
“You have to murder him because he’s the only man alive who can tell the truth about the dirty little secret that can keep you from becoming president.”
