White Tide Rising: Project 2000

The Beginning

San Francisco, California, 1995

Two figures in military fatigues slipped into the alleyway, the San Francisco fog obscuring their movement as they made their way through the night. The taller of the two men leapt atop a dumpster and hoisted himself onto the fire escape with the ease of a schoolboy. Within minutes, his silhouette disappeared through a window on the second floor, his partner’s cue to follow.

The short man pulled a balaclava over his face before ascending, cursing under his breath until he reached the second-floor platform and made his way inside the apartment. In the darkness, he could just make out the tall man’s silhouette at the end of the hall, motioning him forward. They stood together, motionless, as they listened for breathing sounds from the bedrooms.

The two men crept forward into the master bedroom like jackals stalking their prey. The tall man slipped a roll of duct tape from the pocket of his fatigues and moved around to the far side of the bed, pausing briefly to study the sleeping woman and synchronize activity with his partner. They exchanged looks, and then the tall man slapped his hand over the woman’s mouth while the short man sprang onto the bed and squeezed the quilt around her body, restricting her movement within a tight cocoon. A muffled scream and a moment of violent thrashing ensued before the tall man could wrangle the duct tape over her mouth, free her from the quilt, and tape her wrists and ankles.

The tall man hoisted the woman into a standing position, his breath pounding on her face. He hesitated to use brute strength as he grabbed her slender frame, but when she wrenched sideways to escape his grip, his arms tightened around her torso and her ribs cracked. He winced as she recoiled in pain, but this was no time to indulge in sympathy. A flush of rage washed over him at having been dragged into this job, one that was ill-suited to his nature. He was a technical guy, used to mental wrangling—not some low-level street thug.

His mouth was so dry he could barely speak. He threw a nod at the short man, who stepped over to the walk-in closet and opened the door. Unexpectedly, a flood of light poured over the three of them, and the tall man found himself staring directly into his victim’s eyes. For a timeless instant, they stared at each other until he recovered his wits; then he spun her around and shoved her into the closet. She hit the wall with a thud before slumping backward into a helpless wad on the floor. The reality of what just happened shot through his mind; she’d gotten a good, long look at his face.

“I told you to wear the goddamned hood, Jack!” the short man hissed. “This is why I fucking work alone!” He caught the stunned look on Jack Barnett’s face and added, “Go on, I’ll take care of this—get over to the other room!”

Jack Barnett cussed under his breath as he stepped out of the bedroom. In the shadows of the hallway, he leaned back against the wall, a bitter combination of guilt and relief furrowing his brow. He took several deep breaths as he waited for his body to stop trembling and then wiped the sweat out of his eyes with a gloved hand. Being recognized was an unacceptable fail even minutes before a kill; if something went wrong at the last moment, it risked exposure. He scowled with the bitter knowledge that his partner would never let him forget it.

A wail pierced the darkness like the howl of a wounded animal, shocking Jack into action. He headed toward the second bedroom and quietly opened the door. He had a job to do, and he wanted no part of what he feared his partner might do back in the other room, before or after the kill.

Colin Peterson looked down at the woman in the closet, her auburn hair tangled and wet from a flood of tears, terrified green eyes staring up at him, pleading with him, asking him why. He took a moment to calm his adrenaline-fueled thoughts and focus. He was already hard from the rush of the struggle. The primal smell of fear rose like perfume from every pore in her body, mingling with the musk of his sweat.

He remained motionless above her, his icy blue eyes burning into hers through the eyeholes in his balaclava. He was centered now, in total control, watching and waiting like a Zen master. A long moment stretched between them as she stared up at him, and then he saw it—the understanding. She had stopped struggling and knew she was going to die; she had surrendered to her fate as if death had already come and only her corpse remained.

Colin closed his eyes and imagined the moment after death bleeding backwards through time and pouring over the living, an ethereal backwash from the afterlife offered as foreplay to their single, ultimate climax together. They would traverse the cusp of life and death together, and after he drove her soul from her flesh, it would live on inside of him forever.

Just as he prepared himself for attack, he heard a rushing sound in his ears. He shook his head and caught his breath—what was it? He stared down at her pale face as a wave of déjà vu passed over him. There was something about that face, those eyes. Slowly, the memory rose from the deepest recesses of his mind. Eliza—the woman looked so much like his own Eliza!

He flashed back to the moment of Eliza’s death, those last seconds after the bullet ripped through her neck. Her piercing green eyes looked up at him, asking him why, before shifting up into the Montana Big Sky as if to ask God instead. His mind reeled as the images flooded his brain, dredged up from a past that surfaced in sweat-drenched dreams he tried to keep at bay with frequent shots of Jack Daniel’s. His mind’s eye flashed to the crimson stream of blood pouring from Eliza’s body. He saw a split-second silhouette of a tall man standing in the barn doorway holding a shotgun, where the nightmare always ended.

Colin reached up angrily and smashed the overhead light so he couldn’t see that face in the dark—Eliza’s face! He leaned back against the wall as a strange sensation washed over him. A wave of heat flowed through his body like an erotic tsunami, and unexpectedly, he came in his jeans. The ripples of pleasure lasted only moments before being replaced by an aftershock of disappointment at his loss of control. His face flushed as his fantasy of a perfect kill faded into the shame of a schoolboy’s nocturnal emission. With his kill ritual thrown out of sequence, he fought to regain his focus and take control.

He looked back down at the motionless woman sitting in the dark on the closet floor and pulled out his gun. As he lifted it to take aim, he realized he hadn’t attached the silencer. He spewed a string of profanities, and his confidence faltered with this second, inexcusable failure. But at least Jack Barnett didn’t witness it.

He pressed the cold barrel against the woman’s temple and stood there, hands shaking, ready for the kill, but even as he held his breath with finger on trigger, he couldn’t pull it. A gunshot was not part of the plan, and he had no intention of letting Jack find out about such a major error.

What to do with this woman now that his virility had left him—a powerless Samson fallen to this unexpected Delilah?

The raspy whisper of Jack Barnett calling from the other room startled him. He reacted instinctively, turning the gun around in his hand and bringing the butt down hard against her skull. He heard the crack of bone as she slumped, and he inhaled the rusty stench of blood. His heart pounding madly, he took a moment to justify the fact that he’d completed his contract despite whatever else had just happened in that room. He backed out of the closet and closed the door behind him.

In the other bedroom, Jack Barnett was collecting what they came for. Colin entered the hallway just as Jack emerged with a loaded quilt over his shoulders. Confused cries emerged from within a pink cocoon, hanks of blonde hair glowed from tangled bedding, and four little feet dangled from Jack’s arms in the sepia darkness. Silently, the two men hoisted their cargo out the window and vanished into the night.

 San Francisco, California, 1999

Azure McCall sipped her morning coffee on the balcony, an uneasy feeling descending around her like fog on the bay. Since receiving Virginia’s present of champagne, she hadn’t heard another word. First the twins, and now Virginia.

Her best friend’s disappearance brought up disturbing memories from Azure’s childhood back in Jamaica, when her father walked to the village one day to buy meat and never returned. They waited for him all night and all the next day, until the sun set.

When darkness fell, her Grandma Rose went to the altar and lit the candles and then picked up a bundle of herbs and lit them, too. She prayed to her own grandmother in the dialect of the old ones, asking for her help to find her missing son and bring him home. Afterward, Grandma Rose blew out the candles and returned to her rocking chair by the window that faced the sea.

That night, Azure was awakened from her sleep by an eerie sound. Out in the darkness, dozens of lights appeared on the hillside, floating in the distance like fireflies; a slow humming sound carried on the sea wind along with them. As the lights made their way toward the house, they turned into torches with dark faces bobbing between them, their lips moving together in a low-toned song.

Her mother ran out the front door and opened the picket fence gate, hands raised to her face, waiting, while Grandma Rose remained seated in her rocking chair, staring out into the night.

Azure watched as the body of her father was carried into the yard by a group of somber men, who then laid him out. Her mother let out a guttural wail and dropped to her knees in front of his body, and a circle of women formed around her, their hands placed lovingly upon her as they prayed in fervent whispers.

The wind whipped against Azure’s face, blowing the haunting images from her past out of her mind. She walked inside and dumped out the dregs of her morning coffee, then grabbed an old canvas bag from the closet and crossed the hall to Virginia’s apartment. She entered and emptied the contents on the couch. It contained a beeswax candle, a silver rosary, matches, and a bundle of herbs.

Azure put the candle on Virginia’s mantel and lit it, then held the herbs over a flame until a stream of smoke curled upward. She strolled through the house, waving the burning bundle over her head and fanning smoke into the corners of each room, humming an indiscernible chant under her breath.

As she entered Virginia's bedroom, she stopped at the foot of her bed and closed her eyes. She called out to the spirit of her grandmother, slipping back into the heavy Jamaican dialect from her childhood. “I sorry to call you back now, Grandma Rose, but Ginny need your help, and you always been a good obeah ooman. I can’t see sistah noplace, so I need you see her for me and tell me where she be, so I can find her and bring her home.”

Satisfied that Grandma Rose heard her request, she began praying in a rapid whisper as she passed each rosary bead through her fingers, then she kissed the tiny Jesus on the silver cross, crossed herself, and left the room.

 Aryan Brotherhood Compound, Montana, 1999

When she believed the twins were finally asleep, Vera crept out of their room. After her footsteps disappeared down the hall, Amy sat up in bed. “She’s gone.”

Angela put her glasses on, then walked over to Amy’s bed. “Can we say the real prayer now?”

They kneeled by the bed, and Amy said the prayer aloud.

“Baby Jesus, please bless my sister Angela and me, and Becca, and Granny Liz, and especially Mommy. And please help Mommy find us so we can go back to our real home in San Francisco. Amen.”

Angela was terrified of the dark since the abduction, and so both girls crawled into Amy’s bed and snuggled up together. Virginia used to count sheep with them at bedtime, especially when the girls couldn’t sleep, and Angela had since taken that skill to a high art. Whenever she felt nervous, she counted—shadows, birds, clouds, fence posts. But on ordinary nights when she felt relaxed and the bad memories didn’t come, she simply climbed into bed with Amy, and they talked themselves to sleep.

“Tell me the swan story,” Angela asked.

“Okay,” Amy replied, “but it just makes you sad.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Angela disagreed. “It used to, but not anymore. It’s more like a fairy tale now.”

Amy confessed, “Sometimes I can’t remember Mommy’s face. I want to remember it, but I can’t. Except for her eyes, I always remember her pretty green eyes.”

They sat there in the dark together for several minutes, lost in their imagination, before Amy began the story. “It was Saturday, and Mommy took us to the Palace of Five Arts so we could have a picnic and feed the swans. Mommy braided our hair and put ribbons in it, and then she put the yellow dress on me and the pink one on you.”

“With little white flowers on it,” Angela added.

“That’s right,” Amy sighed. “And she drove us in the van, and we ate animal crackers on the way there.”

Angela smiled in the dark. “Mommy had on the white baseball cap, and her hair was sticking out in a ponytail, and she had on the silver heart earrings.”

Amy nodded in the dark, a smile spreading across her face. “And when we got there, Mommy put a blanket out on the lawn. And we brought the Barbies with us and played with them on the grass.”

“And the Kens,” Angela added.

“And then you took a loaf of bread to the water to feed the swans, and when it was gone, I went back to get the other loaf. Mommy came back with me, but we couldn’t find you.”

“Because I was hiding.” Angela whispered somberly.

“Mommy called your name over and over, but you didn’t answer, and then she got really scared until you came out from behind the bushes.”

Angela whispered, “I told her I was sorry.”

Amy’s voice softened. “You asked her not to cry, and Mommy said it was okay, but you could never, ever hide from her like that again.”

Angela sat up on one elbow. “Like we’re hiding now?”

“We’re not hiding,” Amy corrected sharply. “We’re lost—that’s different. Anyway, that’s when Mommy taught us the pattycake song with Granny’s phone number.”

Angela nodded. “So if I ever really got lost, I could call Granny.” She thought for a moment and whispered, “Let’s sing it now.”

Amy argued, “It’s a baby song.” She turned on her side with her back to Angela and added, “We’re too old to sing it now. And I’m tired.”

Angela stared up at the shadows from the oak tree as they danced across the ceiling. “I know it’s a baby song,” she admitted, “but it reminds me of Mommy and Granny, when we all sang it together at Granny’s house.” She waited for Amy’s response, and when she got none, she added, “We don’t have to do the hand part.”

Amy turned over and stared at her sister’s face, the light through the window revealing the distant longing she recognized in her own heart. Amy started singing the song quietly, and Angela joined in.

Patty cake, patty cake, what to do

If we get lost, and we can’t find you?

Just call Granny on the tel-e-phone,

And you’ll come get us, dusk or dawn.

Patty cake, patty cake, four one five,

seven two seven, one nine one nine.

Patty cake, patty cake, four one five,

seven two seven, one nine one nine.

When they grew tired of the song, they lay together quietly until Angela asked, “How come nobody here has a phone?”

“There’s no service, I guess. Becca said you need a special phone because we’re in the forest. Aunt Vera has one of those old ones that plug into the wall, though. I saw it in the trophy room under Otis’ desk when we were watching TV.”

“Can’t we call Granny and ask Mommy to come get us?”

Amy didn’t answer her.

“Can’t we, Amy?”

Amy replied, “Maybe, if Vera ever lets us watch the TV again. She said Otis wouldn’t like it if we were s’posed to the literal media. And besides, the last time, you ruined Otis’s chess game, so I don’t think she’s going to let us watch TV again.”

“He was losing anyway,” Angela defended. “There were only four plays he could make, and all of them would have lost.”

“Whatever,” Amy replied.

“What’s the literal media?” Angela asked.

Amy frowned. “I don’t know… go to sleep now, okay? I’m tired.”

After a minute in the darkness, Angela asked, “Is Mommy dead?”

Amy turned over and scolded, “No, she’s not! I told you before—that’s just a stupid story they told us. I heard them tell lots of lies, so I know they lied about Mommy, too. She's not dead, and someday she's going to find us.”

Angela shut her eyes tightly as she imagined her mother suddenly opening the bedroom door and calling their names. She pulled the covers up around her neck and curled her knees up to her chest. “Goodnight,” she mumbled, as streams of numbers filled her head like brightly colored marbles spinning on a golden abacus. Seven times two times five times one hundred times one thousand, each answer being replaced with the next until her mind was crowded with luminous numbers strung together like colored lights on a Christmas tree, always leading further into darkness until finally, at the edge of sleep, they faded into the purple night like stars.