Authors: Lewis Perdue
Castello Da Vinci's barrel-aging caves were rough semicircles in cross section and huddled deep inside the base of the old volcanic cone. Sprayed concrete and reinforcing mesh coated the rock walls to prevent the odd piece from falling onto the heads of winemakers and distinguished guests.
The floor trickled damp from some deep and ambitious aquifer. The French-oak barrels came from trees near Limousin and reached to the ceiling, eight-high on metal racks that held two barrels each. All bore the General's coat of arms burned into the heads.
Durable paper stapled to each head detailed the varietal, vintage, vineyard, winemaker; and other pedigree. A small alcove hollowed out of the rock walls off the main cave held a long, rough oak table around which sat twelve straight-backed chairs. A strikingly modern light hung over the table where barrel samples were tasted, admired, fawned over, and worshiped by the high priests of wine and the acolytes fortunate enough to be granted an audience with wine made from some of the world's most expensive grapes by one of the world's most exclusive celebrity winemakers under contract to one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.
Dan Gabriel sat in one of the high-backed chairs and sneezed at the cold dankness. He was naked from the waist up, having given the rest of his clothes to Frank Harper, who lay semi-fetally on the table.
"Bless you," said Harper.
"Thanks." Gabriel got up and rubbed his shoulders as he walked around the room again. The thick, solid-oak cave door was the only exit and had a simple but hefty iron bolt that slid from the outside only.
"It's no use," Gabriel mumbled as he made his circuit of the room, looking for a weapon, a path out, a tool, or any sort of inspiration for escape. "I've been around this room a hundred times and there's nothing that can help us."
"Let's pull the bung on one of them and drink it," Harper said.
Gabriel finished his circuit of the room and sat heavily back in the chair next to Harper.
"Might as well," Gabriel said. "At least we'd go out happy"
"That your choice?
"Not much of a choice."
"I suppose," Harper said. "But then, not making a choice is a choice itself, now isn't it?"
"Excuse me?"
"The decision not to make a choice is a decision to put yourself at the mercy of events and other people and allow them to make those choices for you."
"What about now when we don't have a choice?"
We always have a choice," Harper said, "but sometimes we have to search very hard for it."
"Doctor, I've been scouring this damn place for hours now and all I get from you is philosophy." Gabriel's voice was sharp and raw.
"I am sorry I don't have an answer," Harper said softly. "But if you are going to give up, then make it a conscious decision. That way you, and not someone else, will have made the choice, visualized the consequences, and come to terms with yourself. There is dignity in being responsible for one's own choices even if they turn out wrong."
Gabriel listened to the quavering voice and couldn't tell if the old man was talking about the current situation or the past fifty years. Probably both.
"Look, I'm sorry for being so tense," Gabriel said. "But this conversation is not helping us get out of here."
"Is getting out of here your decision?"
"Jeez, Doc!" Gabriel threw up his hands and stood up. "Of course it is, but making a decision is like Braxton deciding he's acting out of his own free will when he's a puppet of the short circuits in his head."
"We've all got short circuits. Which doesn't mean we can't exercise free will."
"Can Braxton?"
Harper was silent for a thoughtful moment. "Not entirely."
"Does that make him insane?"
Again Harper let the silence grow around them. "I suppose we are all a bit insane in our own ways, but the General? No. Not in the legal sense, anyway."
"Oh, boy," Gabriel mumbled as he made another circuit of the room. "Oh, boy; oh, boy: that was a lot of help."
"All I can say is you need to be open for nonobvious choices," Harper said. "Free will depends on choices. I have faith there are always choices if we can but see them."
"Sure, Doc. Sure."
We landed at the Napa airport as the sun slouched toward the jagged western ridgetops and smoldered through the blood orange smoke and haze. A dark green Chrysler minivan with what looked like quarter- and half-sheets of thin plywood strapped to roof racks followed us as we taxied toward a row of hangars.
As the jet slowed to a stop, Kilgore motioned us to pull down the window shades and stay on board. He then opened the door and stepped out.
I reached for Jasmine's hand then, and she met me halfway. I gazed at her and marveled at the astounding energy of a simple touch. I thought about the deep, hidden power of this physical connection and visualized the contact where our skins met, taking it to smaller and smaller scales in my mind, skin to skin, molecules, atoms, all the way back to an ethereal quantum foundation where consciousness meets the essence of existence. In that moment of clarity, the twin blades of love and the fear of loss twisted again in my heart.
A moment later, Kilgore stuck his head into the cabin. "Okay let's roll."
We filed out with Rex carrying Talmadge by himself and climbed into a gearjammed minivan with Bill Lewis behind the wheel. Kilgore shoehorned himself inside and slid the door shut.
"We don't have a lot of time," Lewis said. "My Intel guys say the delivery truck with the wine is supposed to be at the General's palace in something over an hour. It needs to arrive within a specific time window, partly because of security and partly because there are a lot of vehicles for the big shindig tonight and they all have to be inspected before getting inside."
Outside the airport, we passed a boring row of forgettable buildings and shortly reached a traffic light at Highway 29, then turned north toward Napa. Minutes later Lewis turned into a big shopping-center parking lot and steered us past the Home Depot, toward a large RV, a dark blue Chevy pickup with a matching camper shell, and a white Toyota. Lewis parked next to the RV.
"Okay, let's look as normal as possible," Kilgore said. "There's a lot of traffic and other RVs so nobody's likely to notice us. Everybody stay in the van but Anita and me. Well get Talmadge in and settled."
As Lewis got Talmadge out of the van, Anita and Rex embraced and exchanged a kiss and a whisper. Then Anita was gone.
Kilgore filled the silence. "Jasmine, you and Tyrone take the pickup." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "This is to the truck. The backseat and the camper shell are full of the stuff Bill got for you." Kilgore looked at Tyrone. "The laptop, WiFi cards, are still in their box."
"So I have a little configuration to handle."
"Yeah," Kilgore said. "But I have faith in you. Anyway, you two follow the map and the directions. There's a powerful walkie-talkie in the glove compartment with extra batteries and a connection to the cigarette lighter. It's all digital; encrypted and set to the same frequency as the rest of us. Turn it on as soon as you get in the truck and listen very carefully."
Jasmine and Tyrone nodded.
"Any questions?"
They shook their heads.
"Okay, get moving."
Jasmine gave me a hug and a kiss.
"I love you," she told me.
Her words made me inarticulate. "Me you too," I stuttered. When she gave me one of her deep, inscrutable smiles, I tried to etch it in my memory in case I never saw her again. A memory worth making.
Then she and Tyrone drove away.
"Hey, these things are just stacked up here," Dan Gabriel called down to Harper from his perch atop a stack of barrels. "They're not fastened down or anything. All the barrels sit one on top of the other with a dinky little removable metal rack between each layer."
"Yes," Harper said. "They come down all the time in earthquakes. But wine people are pretty clueless. They seem to have a fairly loose grip on reality"
"If we can make enough noise to get the guards to open the door, I can drop one of these on him."
Rex and I sandwiched ourselves behind the concrete support pillars of the Highway 29 underpass at Green Island Road and listened intently to the earbud connected to the walkie-talkies, which had set Bill Lewis's American Express card back more than $600 each.
We wore navy-blue Dickies coveralls, Red Wing boots, and khaki baseball caps with the Napa Valley Vintners Association on them. We had big cans of bear repellent, duct tape, cable ties, nylon cord, box cutters, and a handy piece of three-quarter-inch rebar about eighteen inches long. I had handcuffs; Rex had a funky red ball with holes in it and a strap Lewis had bought at a porno store.
The HK41 I had taken from the blond in Mississippi rested in a ballistic shoulder holster inside the coveralls. Rex wore his own 9mm the same way.
A constant vehicular surf rolled off the four-lane highway and washed around us, punctuated by the deep notes of tractor-trailers and pickups with glass packs. Every two or three minutes, a vehicle passed by our position, coming from or heading to the Green Island Road warehouse complex west of us. Kilgore preferred this spot, but had two other contingency locations.
"On his way." My radio earpiece filled with Kilgore's voice. I pressed the tiny button on the foblike microphone.
"Ready"
Rex looked at me. "This is freaking nuts."
"That's why you and I are here."
Rex smiled as we moved down the concrete slope. He squatted behind the steel guardrails; I sprinted to the other side of the road and took cover. Moments later, Kilgore's green minivan came around the sharp corner. Kilgore passed us, then hit the brakes and turned the minivan sideways, blocking the underpass road. Not two seconds later, a big delivery van came around the corner. The driver locked up the double rear tires when he saw the minivan.
Rex and I launched ourselves at the truck from both sides. The doors were unlocked so we discarded the rebar and jerked the doors open. I wrestled the startled driver to the middle of the cab as Rex slid behind the wheel. The driver's foot left the clutch, bringing the truck to a lurching halt. Rex had the truck restarted and moving in seconds.
The driver was a slight Hispanic man who kept shouting, "No hurt me!
Por favor!
No hurt! I have childrens!" He prayed in Spanish. Terrifying this innocent man made me more ashamed than I had ever been.
"I won't hurt you," I told him as we followed Kilgore north onto Highway 29 and back toward Napa. I believe he recognized truth in my eyes and calmed down. He let me put the handcuffs on him and place the gag in his mouth. He was momentarily frightened when I brought out the hypodermic Anita had prepared, but quickly settled down as the sedative took hold.
We followed Kilgore through Napa, across Big Ranch Road, and north on the Silverado Trail. We pulled off the road south of Rutherford and stopped alongside three cars with empty bike racks, their owners obviously some of the brilliantly colored riders packing this beautiful and popular wine-country route. The heat and lingering smoke from the distant brush fire had thinned the packs of Lance Armstrong wannabes, but had not chased them away all together.
"Any problems?" Kilgore asked when I opened my door. I shook my head. "How long's he out for?"
"Three, maybe four hours," I said.
"Good," Kilgore said. "By the time he wakes up, we'll be dead, in jail, or big heroes."
"Just so long as it's not all of the above, kemo sabe," Rex said.
Kilgore opened his mouth to say something, but Rex beat him to the punch. "Rex. That's
Rex
with an
x."
"You're okay." Kilgore smiled and punched Rex on the shoulder. "So let's get moving. Mr. X."
With the truck as cover from passing motorists, we transferred our gear and the minivan's plywood to the back of the truck and gently laid the sedated driver in the back of the minivan. Kilgore parked the minivan at the far end of the parking area in a shaded, narrow area parallel to the road to keep people from parking alongside.
We laid the driver on his side so he wouldn't choke. Then, with a web of nylon rope and cable ties, we made sure that if he recovered prematurely, he couldn't move or hit the sides or roof of the van with his arms, legs, or head. We left the engine idling and the air-conditioning on low.
Finally, Kilgore attached a dark smoky-gray plastic pod smaller than a computer mouse to the back door of the van.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Auxiliary handset," Kilgore said. "Connects to my cell. This one has a motion sensor and camera built in. If the van or our man starts to move, it takes a picture like a camera phone, then e-mails it to me."
"Cool," I said.
"It's a cheap, stripped-down handset. No keypad or display. You program it with the main cell phone. They come with accessories to detect sound, moisture, heat … a bunch of other stuff."
I opened my mouth to ask him more.
"No time to jawbone about toys. We gotta show up on time for check-in."
We all climbed inside the truck and used the wine cases and the plywood to create hollowed-out hiding spaces in the back of the truck for Kilgore, me, and our gear. I hunched down and focused on remaining calm in the stifling, confined space as Rex stacked the boxes over me. Then the cargo door rattled down and the truck engine rumbled.
As the truck lurched its way back onto the road and Rex ran through the gears, I prayed: for the Hispanic man with children; for Jasmine and for myself; for Rex and Anita and Tyrone; for Kilgore; for Camilla, Vanessa, and my mother; and for the wisdom and protection to accomplish this mission.
Lying there in almost perfect darkness, I experienced the most perfect vision of Camilla, Nate, and Lindsey since the night they'd all died. The memory appeared in nearholographic faithfulness. The vision was important so I let it play.
At Jasmine's direction, Tyrone turned the blue pickup left off the Silverado Trail south of Rutherford.
"Big-shot General ain' gonna like this. No-suh!" Tyrone joked.
"Big-shot General can just stuff all those stars," Jasmine said. "I need a couple of minutes practice before the main event."
"You and me both." Tyrone nodded toward the brand-new laptop.
They drove past a flat, dirt-covered field, bare except for a gigantic pile of grapevines that had been cleared to make way for new ones.
"Turn here"—she pointed—"to the right."
Tyrone steered them along a hard-packed dirt lane like others crisscrossing the vineyards, providing access for trucks and other machinery involved primarily in the annual harvest.
"Okay, stop," Jasmine said.
She got out, opened the camper shell, and pulled out a radio-controlled airplane. The wings, nearly four feet from tip to tip, needed to be attached to the fuselage.
"Piece of mass-manufactured crap," she said. "Give me a couple of hours and I'd do something with this junk."
"Ain't got two hours," Tyrone said. "You or me."
Jasmine did not reply as she filled the small plane with fuel from one of the metal cans in the bag, then inserted batteries in the airplane and the control console.
"Can you get me the plastic bag from behind my seat, please?" she asked. When Tyrone returned, he handed her the Albertson's bag and watched as she took out a half stick of dynamite with an electric detonator inserted and taped into the end. She strapped this to the fuselage of the R/C aircraft but did not connect the detonator wires to the plane's remote accessory circuit.
Jasmine placed the airplane on the hard-packed road, ran up the engine, and guided it skyward.
"Awright," Tyrone said. "I got to get me to work on that crappy old Windows laptop."