Monkey in the Middle (18 page)

Just what Carter needs. It's like getting a Dear John letter ten minutes before going into battle. Plus, Carter doesn't think Isaiah got it right, not as the lesson applies to Leonard Carter. Even assuming that the ‘your country' part refers to the state of his soul, Carter isn't rebelling. And he's not wounded or bruised. And the last time he looked he didn't find any sores. Yeah, Janie wants to believe that ‘strangers' have corrupted her brother's essential decency. Janie's been trying to save him for the last twenty years. That doesn't make it true.

Still, Carter has to admit that Isaiah isn't all wrong. Carter's life really is a ‘desolate' landscape. The only problem is that he has no desire to change his life. Call it fate, destiny, karma or kismet, Leonard Carter's been paddling down this river for a long time and he likes the view.

Carter decides to ignore the message. He's got a lot of work to do and it's after eleven. ‘I have a dinner date this evening,' he tells his sister. ‘With a girl I met last night. She's from Big Butte, Nevada. A redhead, with freckles. I think we're gonna have a good time.'

And, oh, by the way, if you never see me again, if Maureen blows my head off, goodbye and good luck.

If Carter had his way, he'd take a cab from the nursing home in Manhattan to the garage that houses his van in Queens. But that's not happening. There isn't a bridge or tunnel in Manhattan that's not choked with traffic. No cabbie would take the fare. At another time, Carter might force the issue, but there aren't any cabs to be had in any event. Everyone, it seems, is going somewhere, including Carter, who trudges off toward the V Train station on Houston Street.

Carter enjoys his walk. There's a tension in the air that he finds attractive, an excitement that cuts through the deepening mist. The children seem unable to contain themselves. Prancing about like fractious ponies, they emit little clouds of steam with every breath. After a month of hype, Christmas is almost here. Carter felt this same tension when he walked into Macy's four days ago. Time at once compressed and expanded, the minutes stretching out into a place beyond measurement.

An hour later, Carter opens the door of the garage where he stores his van. He turns on the overhead light and closes the door behind him. Then he methodically assembles the tools of his trade, including a set of long underwear insulated with goose down. He lays each item in a line on the floor, then twice runs a mental checklist. When he's finally satisfied, he loads his gear into a large backpack and drives to The Open Light, an internet café on Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City.

Except for the freak behind the counter, the café is empty when Carter orders coffee and a cinnamon roll. The freak has three earrings in his right ear and the left side of his head has been shaved to the skin. His neck and forearms are covered with tattoos: Popeye, a heart pierced by a dagger, a shamrock, Goofy wielding a scimitar, an iron cross.

‘Hey, what's up?' the freak offers.

This is not the first time Carter's been to The Open Light and the freak has obviously recognized him. But there's nothing to be done. Carter pays the tab and carries his order to a table. A moment later, his back to the wall, he opens his laptop and goes to work.

Over the next two hours, using a variety of satellite mapping services, Carter explores the field of battle. His focus is on the area surrounding the restaurant, Osteria del Sol, where he's to join Maureen at seven o'clock. Carter's specifically concerned with any location offering a clear view of the restaurant's entrance.

Osteria del Sol is located on the bottom floor of an apartment building on the eastern side of Woodhaven Boulevard. The building is seven stories high and part of a larger complex of eight buildings. Though the buildings are set at odd angles, opening unusual lines of sight, none offers a ready position covering every approach to the restaurant. To cover every approach, you'd have to lean out of a window or over the edge of the roof, hold your position until Carter happened along, then fire almost straight down.

But if the eastern side of the Boulevard presents serious drawbacks to even a determined shooter, the western side, flanked by Forest Park, more than compensates. Here, the ground rises sharply to an irregular ridge several blocks long. The ridge is somewhere between ten and twenty feet above the sidewalk. The satellite photos aren't sharp enough for Carter to be more precise, but it's definitely high enough for Thorpe's purposes, and for his own. What's more, though Forest Park is broken up by tennis courts, ball fields and a golf course, this particular corner is heavily forested, with meandering trails that provide avenues of retreat, as well as approach.

Carter leans back in his chair and sips at his coffee. The timing, he admits, is also perfect. With the winter solstice only two days past, the sun will be a distant memory by four o'clock. Thus the odds against encountering an innocent bystander, given the cold and the mist, not to mention the holiday, are enormous. You could find a cozy spot and wait for hours without being discovered. Which is exactly what Carter plans to do.

‘Hey.'

Carter glances at the freak. ‘Yeah?'

‘You want more coffee, dude?' The freak runs on before Carter can reply. ‘Because if not, I'm gonna close up. It's Christmas Eve.'

‘No, no more coffee. I'm finished here.'

Twenty-Three

T
he tiny neighborhood of Woodhaven is separated from Long Island City and The Open Light Café by less than ten miles. Nevertheless, Carter's trip from Long Island City to Forest Park takes over an hour. Carter's not foolish enough to try any of the highways that run through Queens County. On Christmas Eve, they're sure to be packed. His route takes him south on Sixty-Ninth Street, from Queens Boulevard to Metropolitan Avenue, then east on Metropolitan Avenue to Woodhaven Boulevard, then finally to Park Lane South, a residential street bordering Forest Park. Carter encounters unsynchronized traffic lights on almost every block, along with double-parked cars, busses and trucks, but he remains patient throughout, even when it begins to snow. He's been here many times in the past, on his way to battle, and the closest he can come to describing his overall emotional state is purposeful.

With the van finally parked a third of a mile from Osteria del Sol, Carter glances at his watch. Four thirty: plenty of time. He strips, pulls on the down-insulated underwear, then adds a Polartec-insulated jumpsuit and a ski mask before donning his backpack. He arms himself lightly, a Glock 9mm handgun snugged into a large pocket, a seven-inch Marine KA-Bar knife strapped to his right thigh, a small dagger beneath his left sleeve.

Finally, Carter regroups, collecting his energies, restoring his focus. Then he dons the backpack and quickly enters the park, traveling no more than twenty yards before crouching on the far side of a steep hill. There's a bit of light here at the edge of the woods, weak and watery light cast by the streetlamps on Park Lane South. Carter can see perhaps fifteen feet ahead and behind, but the interior of the park is a collection of deepening shadows that he knows to be trees but can't really define. The snow falls around him, light but steady. It sticks on the branches overhead and on the dried leaves that carpet the forest floor, dropping in straight lines through air as wet as the rain forests of Sierra Leone.

Carter works his way through the park in a series of short jumps, like a rabbit moving across a field: stop, check, go. The checking part is about spotting predators before they spot you, and Carter's spotting is accomplished with the aid of an infrared night-vision system. He prefers infrared to the light amplifying devices the army trained him to use. Properly camouflaged, a human being is virtually invisible, even in full daylight. Carter ought to know, given the many hours he spent mastering the art. But the human body gives off detectable heat, and will continue to do so for hours after death. There's no stopping the process. Nor is there any device short of a solid wall that will contain enough human body heat to elude an infrared system.

But Carter's precautions are in vain, as expected, an exercise designed to protect against the smallest of possibilities. Without encountering another warm-blooded animal, not even a foraging squirrel, he arrives at his destination, an elevated knob offering a clear view of the restaurant and the apartment complex across Woodhaven Boulevard.

Carter spreads an insulated ground cloth over the leaves, lies down, finally covers himself with a Space blanket. Designed to reflect eighty per cent of the body's heat, the blanket is finished with a camouflage pattern on the outside. Beneath it, Carter is virtually invisible. True, he gives off a heat signature easily distinguished from the much colder ground. But that signature is very faint compared to the signature given off by a man walking upright. He will not be caught by surprise.

In winter, the mountains of Afghanistan are cold enough to inspire terror. Not so Forest Park in late December. The mid-thirties temperature and windless conditions present no threat to Carter. Not that he's comfortable. Far from it. But the ability to endure discomfort is an accomplishment Carter takes for granted. An incentive, not a drawback.

Remaining alert is another matter, and by far the greater challenge. Carter deals with the time by staying active, as he was trained to do. He first measures the apartment buildings across the street against the images he studied on his laptop. Happily, the templates align as neatly as identical fingerprints. As he suspected, there is simply no way to cover the restaurant without leaning over the edge of the roof, seventy feet above the sidewalk, and firing almost straight down. No sane person would attempt the shot, even if he knew when his target was in view, even if he could overcome the inevitable vertigo. And certainly not Montgomery Thorpe, who never trained to be a sniper and whose marksmanship is adequate at best.

That issue settled, Carter places himself at the center of a circle that must be monitored through its entire arc. He divides this circle into ten segments, five on each side of a ragged diameter that runs along the ridge fronting Woodhaven Boulevard. Each segment has its own landmarks and Carter records these every five minutes when he sweeps the terrain surrounding his position.

The snow stops, then starts again, the flakes larger the second time around. As the dinner hour approaches, the traffic on Woodhaven Boulevard gradually diminishes. Virtually every window in the apartments across the way is brightly lit. When Carter sweeps the front of the buildings with binoculars, he spots dozens of Christmas trees, and even a few menorahs. But when he sweeps the forest, only once does his eye settle on a living creature, a dog with his nose to the ground. The animal zigzags across the stunted winter grass at the edge of a pond before disappearing over a small rise. The heat of its body remains behind, a silvery ghost-trail that lingers for minutes.

Maureen shows up at ten minutes before seven. Carter spots her car the minute she turns on to the block, but initially pays her no mind. Instead, he searches the buildings across the street with binoculars, then sweeps the forest behind him with the infrared system. The forest remains dark and cold, the rooftops free of silhouettes. Even the vehicles parked on either side of the road pass an infrared inspection. The only heat rises from the roof and hood of Maureen's car, and from Maureen herself as she strides across Woodhaven Boulevard, then disappears into the restaurant.

Fifteen minutes pass without incident and Carter again settles beneath the blanket. He's thinking that maybe Thorpe plans to take him as he exits the restaurant. That hope buys him a half-hour, until Maureen reappears. She pauses just long enough to look up and down the empty street, then marches to her car and drives away. Again, Carter searches the terrain, but if there's a threat, he can't find it.

Resigned, though disappointed, Carter returns to his own vehicle. He maintains a careful watch as he goes, taking his time, but he encounters no threat along the way, only a man walking his dog on Park Lane South. The man walks with his head down and his shoulders hunched. If anything, he looks even more bedraggled than his soggy Weimaraner. Carter starts the van, makes a u-turn and heads for Woodhaven Boulevard. He's listening to his divided mind, as he might listen to a group of pre-schoolers arguing about the rules of a game nobody knows how to play. There's a part of him that judges Maureen to be an innocent, that judges Carter to be a complete asshole for missing still another opportunity to join the human race. This argument is aided by loneliness, an emotion Carter hasn't felt in years but which now cuts into him like the neck of a broken bottle.

But there's a second voice, too, this one devoid of emotion. Its message begins with an image: Maureen parked at the end of his block, watching his apartment. Innocence? That's like assuming the Iraqi running toward you with an AK47 in his arms is hunting turkeys. No, there's a bottom line here and it's about slippage.

Carter turns into a side street, pulls to the curb and shut off the lights. Always assume the threat. That was one of Thorpe's many mantras. No matter how peaceful, how friendly the natives, always assume the threat. What was accomplished tonight? By the enemy? The answer is simple enough. The only advantage gained was the knowledge that Carter would be out of his apartment at a certain time. If not to share a dinner with Maureen, then to confront the threat she represents.

Control the battlefield. Another of Thorpe's maxims. Lure your opponent into an untenable position, then attack. Carter closes his eyes. While he was on the rooftops of the three apartment buildings on Janie's block, he'd marked every position offering a clear line of sight to his door. Now he asks himself where he'd wait if he was intent on murdering himself. The first place that comes to mind is the roof of a three-story commercial building, a furniture warehouse on Myrtle Avenue, maybe 200 yards away. The rooftop provides a view, not only of the door, but of Janie's front windows. Given the visibility and the distance, the shot would be anything but easy. Nevertheless, this is a shot Carter would take without hesitation, knowing his target would have to stop long enough to insert a key and open the door.