Code name, p.22
Code Name, page 22
Mark led Laura to the black Ford, unlocked and opened her door and helped her inside. She cradled her tummy in her hands and winced a little as she lowered herself to the seat. Both physically and emotionally, the ordeal of the past many days had been a nightmare.
She had been held prisoner, bound and gagged, compelled to move when she was told, sit when told, eat only when permitted and sleep when she could. She was about to give birth, and this was a time when she should have been allowed comfort and rest. Instead, she had been treated cruelly, deprived of the things an expectant mother needs; and it had taken its toll.
Mark slid behind the wheel, started the engine, wiped the rain from his eyes and backed out of the parking space. The pouring rain made it difficult to see, even with wipers sweeping the windshield at top speed.
They drove down the ramp to Canal and headed toward Highway 90. The streets were all but vacant. Trees bent double under the weight of the storm. Rain pounded the car. Mark reached over and took Laura’s hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I ate early this morning. I just need rest.”
“Why don’t you lie down, put your head on my lap.” She unbuckled her seatbelt, and lay across the seat. He stroked her forehead softly. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to find you. You’re my whole life. Without you, I would have no reason to go on.”
“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said with an exhausted voice. “Elizabeth didn’t really want to kill me. She came up with the idea to falsify my death and sold it to Gates.”
“You think so?”
“She wanted to give me every chance to live. I think she fell in love with the idea of our baby being born. I believe she felt like she was in a trap herself and was scrambling to find a way out.”
As they drove southwest through the increasing intensity of the storm, words spilled from both of them in a rush, tripping over each other in expressions of love and worry and relief that they were both safe and together again. Gradually, Laura’s voice weakened and was replaced by a deep rhythmic breathing.
He smiled, content to have his wife so comfortably sleeping this way.
They had traveled only ten minutes, when suddenly a flashing blue light appeared in the rearview mirror. It was a State Patrol car. Mark could see the silhouette of the Smoky the Bear hat worn by the trooper.
Through the rain-washed glass, he saw the officer speaking into a hand-held microphone. Mark knew the officer was reading the license plate information and giving a description of the car to dispatch. It was only routine procedure, but it was troubling.
He was driving a stolen car that might be traced back to bloodshed in Pucataw. Should he make a run for it, or take his chances that nothing had been reported yet? To run was to declare guilt, initiating a chase that would put Laura at risk, so he just sat still.
In his mirror, he watched as the trooper fought against the wind. The officer held a tight hand over his plastic-covered hat, and his long yellow rain slicker flapped wildly. Mark noticed that no firearm had been drawn, and the officer wasn’t waiting for the arrival of a backup unit to assist with this stop. Those were good signs.
As the trooper approached, Mark lowered the window a few inches and pointed to his wife so the officer would see that she was asleep.
The trooper glanced at Laura, nodded and spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the storm, “Sir, Hurricane Carli is due to make landfall within the next few hours. We’re advising everyone to get off the coastal highways as quickly as possible and move inland. Where are you heading?”
“Texas.”
“Well, you’re going the right direction to avoid the worst of the storm, if it follows the predicted track. Please drive carefully and monitor local radio broadcasts as you travel.” Nodding toward the sleeping Laura, “You don’t want to risk losing something so precious.”
“No I don’t,” Mark replied.
“Thank you sir, have a nice day.” The trooper turned and fought against the wind until he reached the patrol car.
Mark rolled up the window, sighed with relief and hoped that the storm and brevity of the officer’s visit would prevent him from recognizing Mark from any manhunt information that may circulate later.
Through the mirror and rain-streaked rear window, he watched the trooper reach for his police radio microphone and talk with the dispatcher.
The only reason I’m not standing spread-eagle right now, Mark thought, must be because, somehow, the car isn’t showing up as wanted.
He was relieved, but confused. More than enough time had passed for the events in the coroner’s office to become known. There was no doubt that NIA knew the car was missing. So why did nothing show up?
His only conclusion was that NIA had intentionally concealed everything in an attempt to keep the whole incident private. They obviously wanted to take care of it themselves. By now, he figured, a sweeper team had been called in to clean up the mess. Life went on as usual in Pucataw. Another couple body bags or coffins wouldn’t mean a thing, with the neighbors never having clue about what happened in their fair village.
The question was: what would NIA do next?
He pulled back onto the near-empty highway and continued the final few miles toward Houma. On the seat beside him, Laura slept peacefully, unaware they had been stopped by the police, or that they were being overtaken by a hurricane.
Just beyond Houma, Highway 90 took a welcome turn to the northwest, easing the impact of the wind and rain that had been beating on the car from broadside. Twenty-three miles later, the road butted against a ‘T’ with Highway 20, near the town of Gibson. Mark turned the car west through Morgan City then continued for another ten miles.
The wind seemed to be easing, but he knew this was no reason to conclude that the storm was actually subsiding. He thought about what he knew about hurricanes. Radiating outward from the eye wall are spiral rain bands. Viewed from above, the cloud formation looks like spokes of a child’s toy pinwheel. Between the spiral of clouds, gaps often form where cloud cover thins and rain diminishes.
As the outer edge of a hurricane approaches, the normal sequence progresses from rain to a period of relative dry and then back to slightly more intense rain, repeating the pattern over and over with each period of rainfall being more intense and lasting longer as the pinwheel spins.
Just east of Patterson, Mark pulled the car off the highway onto the shoulder and studied the Louisiana road map. He looked at the foliage growing along the other side of the road, comparing something he saw there with what was indicated on the map.
It was faint, but he could see where an opening had once existed in the brush. Years of non-use had allowed the gap to nearly grow shut.
As the car came to a stop Laura stirred. “Where are we?” she asked sleepily.
“Right here …” He marked the spot on the map with his finger. “See that thin opening in the trees over there? I believe that’s the entrance to this old dirt road. It leads to an abandoned salt mine about eleven miles down on the toe of the peninsula.”
She followed the route his finger traced on the map. “Is that where we’re going?”
“Temporarily; I want to get off this highway. A state trooper stopped us a ways back and said that this storm is the approach of Hurricane Carli. We’ve got a break right now, but it won’t be long before the next band of rain and high wind hits us. I want to make it to the salt mine before the hurricane comes ashore.”
“And if we don’t make it?”
He flashed her a comforting smile, “We’ll make it. “
He wished he was as confident as he sounded, but he didn’t want her to worry. “I don’t trust the situation yet. I don’t want to risk someone tracking this car to us. We’ve got to get out of sight. We can lie low there, let the storm blow over and plan our run for Xulakan.”
“Okay.” Her voice was calm.
“Got any money?”
“No money, no purse, nothing but the clothes on my back.”
“We need food. Without money, we’ll have to do it the Carlos way.”
She looked quizzically at him.
“I’ll have to tell you all about Carlos one of these days. But in the meantime, I bet Patterson has a grocery store with a dumpster out back.”
He put the car in gear and drove the last mile into town. Everything was dark. Windows had been boarded up.
At the grocery store, he swung the car around behind the building and parked next to the dumpster, then jumped out and started rummaging through the trash. Laura watched, dumbfounded at the sight of her husband digging through a garbage bin in search of food.
“Ah ha!” He turned with a triumphant look on his face, holding two loaves of bread whose plastic wrappers had been cut during shipping.
He tossed the loaves to Laura, and she inspected them, winced and tossed them in the back seat. A crushed can of pre-cooked ham, some damaged cans of fruit and several dented soup cans followed. A black bunch of bananas, an injured cantaloupe and a bag of smashed dinner rolls was the last of it.
“Pretty good haul,” Mark said as he climbed back in the car. “This’ll keep us going for a while.”
“Somebody named Carlos taught you to be a bag lady?”
“Yeah,” he said soberly, “and a lot more.”
Moments later, the car was adjacent to the opening in the trees. “Hang on,” he shouted, then steered the car through the thinnest growth of underbrush.
Branches and leaves momentarily blinded the windshield then just as quickly they could see again. Sure enough, there were the faint parallel tracks of a sandy road. According to the map, the thin brown strand snaked along the highest ground between a series of swamps forming a low-lying peninsula known as the Atchafalaya.
With eyes fixed on the path, he followed the thin line of soil that provided a base for the road. The whole peninsula was barely above sea level, in a constant struggle to keep its nose above water against the ocean and bayou.
“I’ll bet the salt mine was abandoned years ago because it was too difficult to keep the road open against this hostile environment,” he said.
As they drove, he told Laura about Carlos, relating everything right up to the man’s death in the coroner’s basement. Twenty minutes later, the sky darkened, and a solid curtain of rain stopped them in their tracks.
“I can’t see a thing. We’ll have to wait here until the next break in the rain band.” He shifted into Park, switched off the ignition key, and turned to Laura. “But the good news is, we’re together and nobody is going to find us here.”
“Yeah, nobody but Carli,” she said nervously.
“So, what’s for dinner?” he quipped.
“Hmmm, let’s see,” she rummaged through the food that was lying on the back seat. “How are we going to open these cans?”
He reached in a pocket and pulled out the tiny fold-down military can opener. “Just like this.” They opened two cans of fruit, drank the thick juice, savored every slice of sweet peaches and pears, and ate the entire package of rolls. It felt like a feast to their hungry stomachs. Mark opened the car door and reached out to set the empty cans on the ground to catch drinking water.
“We should rest. There’s nothing more we can do until this rain slows down so I can see to drive.” She nodded and slipped into his arms as naturally as a hand into a well-fit glove. He stroked her hair gently, caressed her forehead, then pulled her toward him and kissed her tenderly.
“I love you with all that I am.” Then, thinking about it for a minute, he joked, “Of course, I’m not much right now, but whatever I am, I’m all yours.”
She smiled warmly. “All that you are is plenty for me. You’re all I really want out of life … and her, of course.” She patted her tummy.
“Her?” His eyes raised.
Laura became excited. “Yes, it’s a girl. I found out the last day when I went to the doctor. By the time I got back to the office, military trucks were everywhere, and you were on the run. So, you never knew … yes, we’re going to have a girl.”
“A daughter. That’s great.” He truly meant it. His next words came slowly. “But what kind of life will she have?”
Laura gripped his hand reassuringly. “She’ll have parents who will love her, care for her, provide for her, teach her good things and raise her with character and integrity. So many children in the world have none of that. Even some who have everything money can buy don’t have that.”
“You’re right.” He brightened somewhat.
They wrapped themselves in each other’s arms and quietly drifted off into their own private thoughts and from there into their own private dreams.
It was full night when Mark opened his eyes and realized that the rain no longer pounded on the car. He wondered how long this phase of relative calm had been over them, and shook his head at the regrettable loss of time.
“Laura,” he whispered, and she came awake. “This may be our last break.”
He sat up behind the wheel, turned the key, and the engine roared to life. The windshield wipers easily kept up with the rainfall, and the headlights beamed a path through the marsh. “We’ve got to make some distance before the next round hits, ’cause that one could be the real thing.”
“You think so?”
“I’m betting on it. But even if we aren’t in the path of the eye, these rain breaks will get shorter. The periods of heavy storm will get longer and more intense until the whole thing passes. That could be ten or twelve hours, depending upon how fast the storm is moving.”
Another six miles passed by, as the road bobbed and weaved through the swampland. They were making good time. Mark was getting the hang of steering a full-sized sedan along a barely visible strand of dry ground in the middle of a pitch-black night.
Then it all came to a screeching halt.
There before them was the skeletal hulk of an ancient single-lane timber bridge that once carried traffic back and forth to the salt mine. It was a low structure, just high enough to span the water at high tide. And it was narrow.
The framework had obviously been built to good standards of engineering, with hefty rough-cut timbers supporting the roadway. But years of abandonment had not been kind, leaving the bridge just a phantom of its old self. Missing roadbed planks, loose timbers, and a tumbledown railing made the archaic wooden structure appear feeble.
Mark stepped out into the headlight beam and walked to the near edge of the bridge, to decide if it was passable. They were still about four miles short of the salt mine and the thought of walking the rest of the distance on such a night did not appeal to him. That, as much as anything else, helped him come to the conclusion that the bridge was worth a try.
Back in the car, he gave Laura the news. “I think it will hold … if we go slow.”
“I don’t know, honey, it looks pretty rickety.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got to give it a try. There’s no other way around.”
A sudden wall of water hit the windshield, and they knew their reprieve was over. The pinwheel had spun once again.
“Ready?”
She nodded. “I guess there’s no point in waiting.”
He squeezed her hand, patted her lovingly on the tummy, and winked. “I sure do love you – both of you. We’ve got to make this work. We have a daughter to raise.”
Wax Bayou bridge stretched out before them, spanning 125 feet of shallow, slow-moving swamp river. Even in full daylight, the water was black from carrying a suspended burden of liquefied byproducts from eons of organic decomposition. It wasn’t silt, it was black water. Purely liquid but stained the same color as the greasy black mud that was everywhere in this swampland.
On this night, everything from the water to the sky was black. Only a dim yellow glow penetrated the gloom, illuminating a meager few feet of space in front of the car.
Slowly, the car inched onto the near edge of the bridge. Howling wind muffled the sound as timbers groaned under the burden. Through the steering wheel, Mark felt the tires roll from one roadbed plank to the next, felt the wood give slightly beneath the heavy sedan, and listened through his hands for any complaint.
There was nothing but rotting wood and maybe twelve feet of air between them and the bayou. Dead and black as that water appeared, Mark knew it was alive with water moccasins, alligators and leeches. That was information he didn’t share with Laura.
Much of the bridge railing was gone, leaving nothing but black open space for him to guess at. Three car-lengths onto the bridge, he guessed wrong, and the right front tire suddenly fell off into mid-air. The car dropped then stopped, as the lower suspension A-arm caught on the timber.
“Whew,” was all Mark could manage. Laura’s eyes were wide with fear.
He shifted into reverse and feathered the accelerator. The tires spun on the wet wood, then caught and he eased back up the planking. He looked up at Laura’s frightened expression and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for a lifetime.
“I think I have a better idea.”
“I’m ready to listen,” she agreed.
“I’m going to guide you across.”
“You want me to drive?”
“Uh-huh. I’ll stand out front and keep you pointed so the tires will stay on the roadbed. You just creep across. Okay?”
She blew her cheeks up like a balloon then let the air escape through tight lips. “Well, okay, if you think this is best. Just don’t fall in that water!”
“Don’t worry, that’s high on my list of things not to do.” He opened the door and stepped into the blinding fury.
For the next twenty minutes, Mark guided and Laura moved the car forward an inch at a time. Four times there were broken planks to be crossed. Mark replaced bad planks with good ones that were loose enough to be ripped out and borrowed from a section they had already crossed.
The storm grew more powerful. Rain pelted him so hard it felt like marble-sized hail, and one heavy gust nearly blew him off the bridge. But finally, they reached the far side and drove onto solid ground.
