Chapter 21- Confession
Mark paced the entire length of his cell, avoiding the sagging, itchy cot. His neck and back were sore, as nobody provided a pillow for him. When he did sit on the cot, he sat on the edge and leaned against the wall. The toilet he used as little as possible, as a nasty smell emanated from deep in the pipes when he flushed it.
He had searched every inch of the windowless room and found it sealed tight. No weakness he could expose, unless he tricked someone into leaving the door open. Although they never did enter. Someone brought him three meager meals of a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and water each day and slid it through a slot at the bottom of the door. Counting the numbers of meals was the only way he kept track that it was Saturday night. His only method of maintaining his sanity when the walls closed in like an iron coffin. He sometimes called to the person, begging to speak to Whyte. He was always ignored.
Mark slid down to the floor, kicking himself for not listening to Heather. He would never escape the base now. This fake oil rig would be his resting place. He supposed as soon as they had Heather and what they wanted, they would jettison his cell and leave him on the ocean floor with Frieda. He could only hope that Heather survived this whole affair and escaped. A small victory, one he would gladly take. He crawled into the cot and, like every night, lay there for a long while, fearing he might not wake the next day .
Early the next morning, at breakfast time, a loud chunk stirred his sleep. He clung to his cot, expecting the worst. A sudden jolt and sinking to the Pacific’s bottom. However, Whyte, Valerie, and Roy entered. Whyte tossed him a fresh shirt and jeans. “Get dressed and follow me.”
A helicopter waited up top for them, and they flew to a private air field in Oregon. Roy tried his best to ease Mark’s gnawing dread, offering a smile or a kind word here or there, but nothing helped.
Once they reached Oregon, they rendezvoused with the rest of Whyte’s BEPs and boarded a small plane. They seated Mark in the cabin beside everyone else, and after the plane took off, Whyte spoke to his people. “We’ll meet Emeryl north of Harrison,” he said, laying out of a map of Michigan on a table. “I bought a couple of cabins out there, far from any prying eyes.”
Mark wondered why Whyte was so open with his plans, especially after what he had done. Fear seized his heart. What if Whyte didn’t care if he, Mark, heard or not? What if he wasn’t planning on Mark staying alive long enough to tell anyone? Cabins far from prying eyes. Dump his body there, never to be found. But the vast ocean was more viable, with its depths and host of predators to devour him whole, leaving no trace of evidence. No, there was something major going on that Mark didn’t understand.
When they landed in Michigan, Emeryl plus a few cars waited for them. Nearby, a few combat-ready helicopters were stored in a hangar, all jet-black of a sleek military design. One had large gun barrels mounted to the sides, machine guns that looked like they could rip a target to pieces. The other two had larger attachments, and it took Mark a second to realize they were equipped with rockets. Several mercenaries were readying them for flight. “Everything prepped?” Whyte asked.
“Yes. My people are at the cabins and waiting for your orders,” he said.
Emeryl and everyone from the plane piled into the cars. Mark was shoved into one with Oliver and Lionel, of all people, and they drove for miles to an endless wooded area. Even though he wasn’t blindfolded, Mark couldn’t remember their way, for all the trees looked the same to him. Long after nightfall, they turned onto a hidden driveway and traveled for twenty more minutes to a couple of lit cabins.
They stepped out and fifty mercenaries greeted them. The warm, friendly glow from within the cozy wooden cabins clashed with the few APCs and dozen Humvees with turrets parked outside. Next to them were semitrailer trucks with their back doors open, waiting to be loaded.
“Okay, people,” Whyte said, calling them all together and taking the tracking device they used during the last transfer from his car. “Gather ’round. Just to remind you all that Heather will have left the Cave and is being transferred by now.” He checked his watch. “I got a call on our way here that the BEP Division decided to send her by plane. Thanks to some help from inside the BEP Division, she’ll get control of the plane by taking her guards hostage, and then she’ll force them to ground in northern Michigan. We’ll find her,” he said, holding up the tracking device, “and you’ll follow behind us. We need to get to her fast and quick once the plane lands. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” they yelled.
“Good. Load up your stuff and let’s go.”
The whole situation was a whirlwind for Mark, and the mercenaries loaded weapons and large black bags into two APCs and several Humvees, which they in turn loaded into the semitrailers. The rumbling engines of all the vehicles and shouts everywhere jolted any thoughts of sleep far away. What did they plan to do to Heather? Among Emeryl barking orders at his people and everyone running around, Mark found Oliver next to the cars they arrived in. “Oliver?”
“Yes, Mark?”
“What’s going on? Where are we going?” The ground rumbled as a vehicle larger and sturdier than any APC passed them and Mark squinted in the dark, asking “Is that a tank?!”
“Yup. And Whyte arranged for Heather to be transferred again,” he said.
Mark crossed his arms. “How do they plan for her to ground a plane?”
“Like he said, with some help from our inside person, she’ll take control of it. Whyte had two plans ready, depending on if they sent her by car again or by plane. Once we find the plane, then we take her.” Oliver grinned and shook his head. “Man, whoever’s guarding her has no idea what’s in store for them.”
“What are they going to do with her once they take her?” he asked. An APC rolled past and drove into a semitrailer. “And what’s with all this? It looks like we’re going to war.”
Oliver’s smile grew. “I don’t want to spoil it for you. Wait and see.”
Mark considered running and taking his chances in the woods. However, the surrounding trees shrouded all paths beyond the cabin lights, and he couldn’t have found his way through the shadowed forest if he tried.
They climbed into the cars again, and the semitrailer trucks drove along with them. Once the convoy returned to the main road, the trucks split off from the cars. They drove for hours north, passing towns in the distance. One of Whyte’s combat helicopters joined them during the journey, swooping past the convoy every so often.
The rising morning sun found Whyte’s part of the convoy on a quiet road, with fields on either side. Ahead, Whyte’s car turned sharply onto the grass, and Mark’s car followed. They stopped on a hill and stepped out.
Down below them rested a small, white plane, its nose buried in the dirt, and a pair of deep wheel tracks behind it. In the boarding door, Heather sat with a pistol in her lap and watched them walk down the hill and step over the torn-up earth. Mark ran a little ahead, but Whyte caught his shoulder.
“Heather,” he said. “Wonderful you could make it. Any problems?”
“No,” she said. A pair of unlocked handcuffs lay beside her with the key in the lock.
“And the others onboard?” He looked around her into the interior.
“Dead,” she said, standing up. “Had to throw them out of the plane. The pilot escaped but he won’t get far. Shot him in the stomach.” A semitrailer truck parked beside the cars on the hill and several mercenaries and an APC poured out.
“Which way?” Whyte asked.
“North,” she said.
Whyte ordered the APC in that direction to hunt down the pilot. Then he nodded to Heather. “Well done.”
“Now it’s time you hold up your end of the deal,” she said. “Let Mark go.”
Whyte clucked his tongue and wagged a finger. “Ah, ah, ah. Remember, you have to help me take down the BEP Division first.” He pushed Mark into Valerie and Lionel. “Then I might let him go.” Heather gritted her teeth and clenched
her pistol but didn’t raise it. Whyte passed her a change of clothes, and then he directed the other mercenaries to search the plane for anything valuable or useful about the BEP Division. When they found nothing, Whyte ordered them to blow it up. “I want nothing left of it,” he said. “Afterward, catch up to us. The rest of you, let’s go.”
Again, Mark was in the car, but Heather insisted on riding in the same car with him. Whyte joined them, holding up his tracker. “Right, so we know the Cave is in a mountain. That narrows it down. The pill in your system should be gone by the time we cross into the upper peninsula,” he said. “Emeryl, call our base and get us the path the plane took.”
While Emeryl made a quick phone call, Whyte called his inside person and told them, “We got her. You’ll know when we’re there.” Once he hung up, he said, “The BEP Division will never see us coming.”
Heather and Mark exchanged looks and he trembled. That was the surprise? An all-out attack on the BEP Division? He wanted to believe it wasn’t true, but Heather’s eyes told him otherwise. His stomach churned and she patted his leg. He scooted closer to her and enjoyed the short sweet peace afforded to him as the armed helicopter flew overhead.
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