Barry Lando: Deep Strike

He reached the peak and paused for breath, took a drink from his thermos, and remounted. The slope now pitched downward; his bike jounced and slithered between the trees, picked up speed, ever faster, the wind whipping by his face as he careened around the notorious switchback he’d been expecting. He jammed on his brakes and found himself staring out over the edge of the trail. The precipice dropped away sharply to the gray granite boulders of the canyon some forty feet below, where the Fountainhead River ran through.

The state police had placed yellow tape to mark where Brian had skidded off the trail and tumbled to his death. The tape was still there, but were already falling away. Soon there’d be nothing to mark the place. The wooden guardrail had been knocked away, its supports black and rotted.

So that’s it, thought Steve – all that sweating and cramps for this. He took the sandwiches and fruit from his backpack along with the thermos of water and sat in the deep grass on the side of the track away from the precipice. A gnarled pine bough lay on the ground. Steve removed his parka, sat with his back against the bough. He smelled the fragrance of the pine and damp grass.

As he ate, he listened to the birdsong, watched an eagle circling lazily overhead, and then traded stares with a dewy-eyed deer, which paused for a moment, trembling in the glade. If he could only share this moment with someone. This is what life should be all about – not the tormented, lonely world of spies and intercepts, treachery and deceit, that he’d known over the past thirty years.

He looked once more at the crumbled remains of the wooden guardrail. And again could not understand how Brian could have plunged through it. It was a hazard they all knew about, even joked about. In fact, it was Brian who wrote the formal letter to the park board demanding that it be fixed.

The police had already checked the scene, but if Steve had learned anything during all his years with the agency, it was that investigators – even the best – regularly fuck up, miss the obvious. He walked fifty yards back up the trail and carefully followed the different routes Brian might have taken through the mud and rocks and boulders. Not a hint of anything suspect. Hard to distinguish any particular bike tracks. Then he began searching along the tall grass by the side of the trail. Some of the grass was covered by the large, gnarled pine bough that he’d earlier rested against. The limb had probably been blown there by the storm the night of Brian’s disappearance.

Steve hoisted the bough with both hands. It was heavier than he’d expected, and he shifted it to the edge of the clearing. It was then that he saw the bright crimson object that had been hidden by the bough. He bent to retrieve it. It was the front of Brian’s biking helmet, with the image of a leaping tiger. There was no mistaking it. There were matted hair and bloodstains on the webbing inside. Steve turned it over and over in his hands, studying it for almost a minute before he slid it into his backpack.

Then he left his bike propped against a hemlock and took a steep winding path to the bottom of the ravine, navigating fallen moss-covered boughs, and large gray boulders, and treacherous patches of thick reddish-brown muck. To control his descent, he grabbed birch trunks as he slithered down the slope. At the bottom, he found the yellow tape the police had put to mark where Brian’s body had been found crumpled on the rocks by the river.

Why had it taken the searchers more than a day to find the body? The vegetation was not thick. There were puddles of water covering some of the smaller boulders, but the burbling river was certainly not deep. It would never have covered the corpse.

He sat on one of the boulders and looked back up the mountain to the spot from where Brian apparently plummeted. He took a few photos and started back up the trail, then paused, and returned to the river. He emptied his thermos and filled it with water from the Fountainhead.

The next morning, he phoned the State Medical Examiner’s office.

“I’d like to know who signed the death certificate last week for Mr. Brian Hunt,” Steve said.

“Who wants to know?” the woman sounded like a wannabe Oprah Winfrey.

“Steve Penn. I’m a colleague of Mr. Hunt.”

“Hold on.”

He heard her talk with someone else in the office; then she was back. “We don’t normally give out that information,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” said Steve. “It’s public. If I were to come to your office you’d be obliged to show it to me.”

Again, she conferred with someone else.

“It was Dr. Stone,” she said. ”Dr. Roger Stone. Goodb…”

“Hold it,” said Steve. “I’d like to talk with Dr. Stone.”

“About?”

“Brian Hunt’s death.”

Again, a pause and the doctor came on the line.

“This is Dr. Stone, Mr. …”

“Penn, Steve Penn. I worked with Brian Hunt. You signed his death certificate last Monday, I believe.”

“And?”

“I’d like to talk briefly with you about the cause of death.”

“I’ve already said what the cause was.”

“I’ve got new information that might change your mind.”

“You are with the CIA?”

“Yes. I can come to your office this morning.”

“I can only give you a couple of minutes. I don’t usually do this.”

“I’m nearby. I’ll be there by 10:00 a.m.,” said Steve.

The Medical Examiner’s office was on the ground floor at 400 East Jackson Street in Richmond, Virginia. It was 9:50 a.m. when Steve arrived wearing a backpack. He asked the receptionist for Doctor Stone. The heavyset woman put down the latest edition of Hollywood Stars and eyed him warily.

“Just a minute,” she said. She pushed a button and spoke cautiously into her intercom. He could hear her add, “He’s got a backpack.”

“Here – you want to see what’s inside?” said Steve, opening the backpack for her inspection.

She glanced into it, and then muttered, “You’ll have to sign in first.” She pointed to a register on the counter in front of him. After he’d filled it in, she glared once more and nodded towards the corridor, “Second door on the left.”

Steve walked down the hallway past a portrait of the state governor, and next to it the state seal depicting a triumphant young warrior holding a spear, his boot atop the chest of some fallen despot. Underneath was the state’s motto: Sic Semper Tyrannis. Thus always to tyrants, Steve thought. Couldn’t be more appropriate for the occasion. He knocked on the door.

“Come in.” The tight-lipped doctor glanced up from his computer and motioned Steve to take the brown vinyl seat in front of him.

“You’re ten minutes early,” he said.

“Traffic was lighter than I expected.”

The doctor continued staring at his computer screen. His gunmetal desk was crowded with stacks of reports and files. Three rows of bookshelves on the wall behind him were filled with weighty tomes on human pathologies and the requisite framed degrees from the University of Virginia Medical School.

Steve placed his backpack on the floor and sat silently as Stone continued with his digital notes. He was in his early sixties, bald, and beak-nosed, with thin bloodless lips. Like some bird of prey, thought Steve. The stark shadows cast by the reading light give his face an even more sinister look.

At precisely 10:00 a.m., the doctor swiveled to inspect Steve with piercing gray eyes. “Go ahead. It’s your nickel.”