Eric Walters - The Rule of Three

“I see it. That’s the Olde Burnham Hills neighborhood. I’ve been there before all this happened. I’ve got a couple friends from over there.”

Thank goodness Chad wasn’t one of them. He lived way south of our neighborhood in one of the bigger houses by the lake.

Olde Burnham was a relatively new subdivision, a gated community with a wall around the whole development and a front gate with a gatehouse. It was significantly smaller than our neighborhood, just a few hundred people.

As we closed in I could also see guards—sentries at the gate. I banked sharply to the right, and Lori grabbed onto her seat with both hands.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I thought you’d changed your mind and were doing a barrel roll!”

“That I’d warn you about.”

We crossed above the cement wall and soared over the tops of houses and streets. Down below, people were looking up, pointing, waving, running along to try to keep us in view longer.

“Hang on again,” I said.

I banked hard to the left. The turn cost us speed and height. I leveled off at less than fifty feet and came in low and flat toward the guards at the gate.

“Okay, there’s your target!” I said.

Lori reached down with one hand, undid the Velcro holding the parcel in place under her seat, and pulled it free. The package contained a letter from Herb asking for a meeting the next day and a small gift—thirty chlorine tablets—enough to purify a lot of water.

Lori lowered the parcel over the side and after a moment or two let it go. I banked again, sharply to the left—the better to avoid passing over the guards and to see the parcel with its homemade parachute drifting down.

I held our turn while Lori kept an eye on the parcel. As long as it didn’t land in a tree or on a roof, our mission would be accomplished.

“Direct hit!” she shouted, and then narrated as it landed on the pavement in the middle of an intersection and was mobbed by a group of people.

I pulled back on the stick, banked right, and goosed the gas all at once in an attempt to gain speed and height simultaneously while pulling us away from the area.

“I’m still not sure why we had to do it this way,” Lori said.

“Unexpected face-to-face meetings can be open to misunderstanding, and misunderstanding can lead to bad things.” I couldn’t have sounded more Herb-like if I’d tried.

“How will we know if they agree to the meeting?”

“If they agree, they’ll show up tomorrow at ten in the middle of the big bridge over the river.”

“Seems like a strange place for a meeting.”

“Herb explained it’s the best place for a meeting. Nobody can sneak up on anybody. Herb asked for just two of their people to walk across and meet two of our people in the middle.”

“Herb is a different sort of guy,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong—he’s always supernice to us. It’s just that sometimes I get the feeling that, well, this sounds crazy, but that he could be dangerous.”

I laughed. “Believe me, he could be very, very dangerous. But he’s always thinking of what’s best for the neighborhood.”

A gust of wind shook the wings and bounced us around a bit. She laughed, too, which was like music to my ears. I wished I could do a barrel roll just for her, but really, that was too risky. I’d had some dates that crashed and burned, but not the way that could happen in a plane.

She reached out and placed a hand on my hand. It felt good. Really good. Maybe better than I deserved to feel with everything that was going on around us.

I stopped at our side of the bridge and turned the car off.

“Do you think they’ll show?” I asked.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Herb replied.

Behind us, the rest of our convoy came to a stop. Howie was leading a dozen guards. They were all armed, as were we.

“Sorry I couldn’t be up in the air to provide an eye in the sky.” It was too windy to risk a flight today.

“You can only do what you can do. I’m glad to have you here.”

“I thought you might want Brett here instead of me.”

“He is here.”

I looked around. “Where?”

“He’s on the edge of the cliff, on the opposite side of the bridge. He has a rifle with a scope.”

“I thought we were just going to talk.”

“That’s my plan, but it might not be theirs. You know how I feel about a backup plan.”

Herb always had a contingency plan. I wondered if his contingency plan had a backup plan as well.

There were a few random travelers straggling their way across the bridge. Closest was a family—a man, a woman, and four children, including a baby. They eyed us warily and then passed, trying to keep as much space between us and them as possible. I didn’t see a gun, but there was no question the parents would be carrying a weapon of one sort or another.

Two trucks pulled up and stopped at the opposite end of the bridge. From its bright orange color I thought I recognized the bigger of the two from my overhead pass yesterday.

“Is that them?”

“Looks like it.”

“So do we go now?” I asked. We were doing the old-man-and-boy routine again. My mother knew all about the meeting except for the fact I was going out onto the bridge with Herb. If I didn’t ask, she couldn’t say no—better to ask for forgiveness afterward than permission that might not come.

“No weapons.” Herb pulled out his revolver and put it on the dashboard of the car.

“At all?” I questioned, wondering if he had a backup gun on him somewhere.

“No need. Like I said, we have friends in high places… up on the cliffside.”

I removed my pistol. Somehow I felt undressed without the weight of it in the holster on my belt.

We climbed out of the car. Herb turned to Howie. “Nobody comes onto the bridge until we get back.”

“You can count on it.”

As we started onto the bridge Howie and the guards walked over and sealed it off. There were a few people still in the middle coming toward us. They’d be allowed to leave, but nobody else was going to come on from our side. I’d noticed they were blocking the other side as well.

I looked across to the far side and saw two figures coming toward us from the trucks.

“Not too fast,” Herb said. “We don’t want to look anxious or threatening. We’re just here to talk.”

“I’m just here to listen.”

Slowly we approached them, passing random people on the bridge. Those who had now noticed both ends blocked off looked scared. Herb offered them reassurance.

“It’s just a meeting,” he said to one family. “No need to be afraid.”

The two men from Olde Burnham looked like they were my dad’s age. Both were bigger than Herb and me. Both were empty-handed, as far as I could tell. I tried to read them. They looked like two guys reluctantly shopping at the mall with their wives—kind of annoyed, not really wanting to be there.

“Remember,” Herb said, “big smile, look as friendly as possible.”

Another part of the deception. Herb had told me that assassins often had smiles on their faces to disarm their targets. Is that what we were—assassins? Or were we the targets? I flashed a phony smile. I just hoped they couldn’t read the fear in my eyes.

“Any problems, any gunfire, and you hit the deck and wait for Howie to come and get you in a vehicle,” Herb said.

“Okay.”

“Now, stay right here, I’m going the rest of the way on my own.”

I took another half step before his sideways glance stopped me completely. As much as I didn’t want to be here and didn’t want to go any farther, I wanted to be by his side.

He kept walking, eyes forward. The two other men hesitated in response, exchanged a few words, and then did as we had done, one waiting and the second going forward.