Stuart Woods - Mounting Fears

He stopped the truck in the trees a hundred yards from the airstrip and got out, taking care not to slam the door. He walked to the edge of the moonlit field and looked around. No sign of an airplane. He stood still and listened. No sound of anyone walking or coughing or talking. Taking his time, he walked the perimeter of the field, staying in the trees. Once he awakened a rattlesnake a few yards away, which gave its warning noise, then slipped away into the woods. He was glad he hadn’t stepped on it.

It took him an hour to walk around the whole field, but finally he was satisfied that no airplane had landed there. He walked back to the truck and drove back to the inn, then returned gratefully to bed.

Teddy, on the other hand, was still at work. Judging the airstrip to be too far from the slave village to carry his equipment, he had landed on the beach in the moonlight and had pushed the aircraft between two dunes and partially covered it with brush.

Then he had picked up his case and the other gear and begun walking up a rutted road that led to the slave village. He did his work there, then returned, less burdened, to the airplane, where he got out a sleeping bag and made his bed under a wing, having first slathered himself with mosquito repellent and donned a sleeping mask.

It was mid-morning before he woke, ready to do what he had come to do.

Will Lee sat up in bed, a breakfast tray in his lap, and watched CNN. The news network had somehow gotten hold of a videotape of a closed talk given to a group of his faithful by the Reverend Henry King Johnson, who was nakedly gouging them for money for his new monument to himself. This went on and on, for some twenty minutes, before they cut back to the anchor.

“Also on the campaign front,” the anchor was saying, “our investigative reporter Jim Barnes has unearthed a document from public records showing that the Reverend Johnson had legally changed his name when he was in his early twenties, adding the middle name King. Many people had apparently thought that he was somehow related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which is not the case. Members of the community in Reverend Johnson’s neighborhood are expressing shock that he had never denied the relationship.”

Will switched channels to find the same stories playing elsewhere.

Kate came into the room, still dressing. “That’s good timing,” she said, fastening her belt. “I hope it will have the desired effect.”

“The name-change thing won’t make much difference,” Will replied, “but after that tape has been played a few hundred times on TV and the Internet, Moss Mallet thinks it’s going to have a very big effect. I think that now we can concentrate on Bill Spanner’s lack of a record, without worrying so much about Henry Johnson.”

“You think there’s anything to those death threats from white supremacy groups Johnson says he’s been getting?”

“They may be real enough, but I think it’s just hot air.”

“It would be awful if he were assassinated this close to the election.”

“You think people would think I had something to do with it?” Will asked.

“People are crazy.”

“Not crazy enough to try and kill Henry Johnson, I hope. I think after this he’ll be back to his preaching and out of politics.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Kate said. She was about to walk out the door when her bedside phone rang, and she picked it up. “Yes?” She listened for three or four minutes. “Right, I’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up and turned to Will. “There was a weather delay in launching our reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan, but they’re in the air now.”

“The sooner the better,” Will said.

Will sat in the Oval Office an hour later, listening to his campaign staff.

Moss Mallet was up. “It’s too early to see any effect from this videotape of Johnson,” he said, “but my polling shows that, if he gets out of the race or suddenly becomes less of a factor, it will put you within two points of Bill Spanner. That’s within the margin of error.”

Tom Black spoke up. “I’m hearing that a liberal group has got hold of some tapes of some of Johnson’s sermons where he’s being blatantly anti-white,” he said. “Word is, they’re going to run TV commercials using the tapes.”

“You’re staying away from that, I hope,” Will said.

“Wouldn’t touch it with a fork,” Tom replied. “These are just rumors, of course, but I wouldn’t be sad to see those commercials happen.”

“Don’t let anybody ever hear you say that,” Will said. “I want us to run our own campaign, without any attacks on anybody.”

“Spanner seems like the kind of guy who would have something in his background that would come out in a campaign,” Sam Meriwether said.

“If that’s so, then let it come out without our help,” Will said.

“I’ll bet there’s something sexual,” Kitty Conroy said. “He’s too good-looking not to have dallied with the ladies at some point in his marriage.”

“Let’s not count on anything like that,” Will said. He wanted terribly to tell them about the Afghanistan mission.

Tom Black was looking at him oddly. “Mr. President,” he said, “you look worried. Is there something you want to give us a heads-up on? Something that might affect the election?”

Will took a beat to think about that, then replied, “No.”

Todd Bacon sat in his rented pickup at the edge of the landing strip on Cumberland Island and watched a King Air, a twin-engine turboprop, set down on the grass-and-sand strip, followed a few minutes later by a Cessna 340, then a Beech Baron. These aircraft disgorged their passengers who were met by cars ferried from the mainland in the inn’s old World War II landing craft and then driven north toward the slave village.

The reverend’s published schedule on the Internet said that he was leading a prayer service on the front lawn of Plum Manor, the empty Palladian mansion on the north end of the island, immediately before the wedding, so Todd got the pickup started and drove toward the slave village.

Teddy Fay had some breakfast from a cooler aboard his airplane, then slipped on a light backpack and began hiking toward the slave village. After half an hour’s walk, he sat down on a fallen tree and checked his equipment. His transmitter had a range of a mile, but he had stopped half a mile from the village. He could do everything from here, guaranteeing himself a clean getaway. Television news had told him that the Reverend Henry King Johnson had not requested Secret Service protection, and Teddy was relieved about that.

Todd reached the deserted slave village and got out of the pickup. He walked from cabin to cabin, checking each one thoroughly, then walked to the church and went inside. Two ladies, one white and one black, were arranging flowers at the altar, and they greeted him politely.

“Are you part of the wedding party?” one asked him.

“No,” Todd replied, “I’m a guest at the inn, and I was just taking a little tour of the island. Is there a wedding today?”

“Yes, and they should be arriving any minute,” one woman said, consulting her watch.

“I wish the couple every happiness, then,” Todd said, and left the church. He walked slowly around the little building. It was set on stone pilings about four feet high, elevating the building over the rest of the village. The area from the floor of the church to the ground was covered with wooden latticework. Everything looked in order here, but Todd wanted to walk the perimeter of the village and check for intruders. He pulled the Sig pistol from his belt and checked its readiness, then kept it in his hand as he walked. From what the late Owen Masters had told him, his chances in an encounter with Teddy Fay would be poor, and he wanted to improve the odds.