Note: "Taste of Bridge Day" is a real festival, and the bridge really does have a catwalk beneath it. Honestly, I only needed to make up a few things for this fic. Y'know, like geography and amazing coincidences and stuff. Also, I'd like to send a shout-out to my cousin Steve, who's actually a lawyer. (Not all'a us mountaineers are rednecks, y'know.)
The official Bridge Day website, which coincidentally includes the phrases "www," "officialbridgeday," and "dot-com," has photos galore and more details than you'll ever need.
There's just one chapter left after this, but before we get there, we have a lot of excitement to wade through. And here we go -!
It was too dark to see the river except as a faint moonlight twinkle, or a pale ridge of white water where it curled up around rocks. That was because the river was eight hundred and seventy-six feet down, and Berto was not inclined to spend more than a cursory moment looking at it through the girders of the bridge.
"C'mon, little buddy," Lance said, sharply prodding his back just above his bound hands. "Time's wastin', and we've got places to go, things to do, etcetera. The boys are gonna need my help here in a minute."
"The boys," aka six desperately radical militiamen, had been unloading the boxes of plastic explosives from the truck the last Berto saw of them. Unskilled labor, no doubt, with Lance as the brains. "Need your help with what?" Berto asked anyway.
"Science project. Applied physics," Lance said blithely. It earned a guffaw from the militia thug escorting Carlie; he had more tattoos than teeth and probably didn't know what applied physics was in the first place.
Berto knew. He also knew that being dragged out onto the catwalk beneath the bridge had pretty effectively blocked the signal from his tracking device, if it was still broadcasting.
If it was broadcasting in the first place.
It probably was; he'd built it, and he built things to last. Still - he had no idea what Lance had done to it while he was unconscious.
"This is far enough," Lance announced, bringing Berto to an ungentle halt and setting down their only source of illumination, a hooded camping lantern. They weren't anywhere near the middle of the bridge, which was something over three thousand feet long, but they were more than far enough out for a fatal plunge. "Nice view, huh?"
Carlie said, "Some sunlight would help."
Lance made a regretful clucking noise. "That's not gonna happen. See, Berto, I gotta tie up all the loose ends. My cousin Steve in particular gets nervous about loose ends, don't you, Cousin Steve?"
"Loose ends is how the gov'ment steals a man's freedom," Cousin Steve said. He punctuated the statement by spitting off the bridge and giving Carlie, also bound, a rough shove forward. Irony, it seemed, was an art lost on Lance's extended family.
"We're real serious about keeping our freedom," Lance agreed.
"You don't have to do this," Berto said, slightly desperate.
Lance looked at him for a moment, face cast in shadows that sprang from other sources than the darkness of the night. "Yeah, I really do."
Then he put a hand on Berto's chest and shoved.
Berto had no time to react, and fell with a metal-jarring thump that echoed across the girders. He landed on his side - still on the catwalk, thank God - and had enough freedom of movement to glance up and back, just in time to see Lance stride forward with a knife in hand. Carlie made a muffled, strangled shriek, but Berto found he couldn't say anything at all.
Lance knelt beside him, raised the blade - and sliced through the duct tape around his wrists with one quick motion.
Blood instantly rushed into his hands, along with a thousand sharp pains as the nerves came back to life. He was too grateful for sensation to care.
Cousin Steve cut Carlie's hands loose too, but kept a firm grip on the junction of her neck and shoulder.
Lance hauled him to his feet, pushing him into the railing, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was just a shade too rough to be friendly. "Tell me, Berto, do you know why they started having Bridge Day in the first place?"
He glanced down again at the dark, dark void and the impossibly tiny river at its bottom and tried not to notice the ominous way the wind whistled through the maze of girders, or the slight, constant shaking from passing traffic. People jumped off of this? He didn't even want to be on it. Of course, most of his aversion came from the fact that a sociopath was standing next to him. "I forget."
"Look at it," Lance said, gesturing with his free hand at the steel beams all around them. "The second-highest bridge in America. Second-longest steel arch bridge in the world. Over forty million pounds of steel. Never rusts, never needs painting, built in under five years. A marvel of engineering and construction. What BASE nut could resist?"
It was a rhetorical question, so Berto didn't answer. Kat's phrase - "Because it's there" - came back, but sarcasm seemed to be too risky an option at this juncture.
"Back in the day, you see, they had a lot of bandit jumpers," Lance went on. "Folks came out here in the dead of night, sneaking around to avoid the police and the park rangers. Not all of them made it back to Fayetteville, if you get my drift."
Berto knew that. He'd done his research, after all, and the numbers of fatalities had stuck with him, small though it was. Lance was exaggerating slightly; only three people total had died, and only one of them was bandit jumping. At the time of his research, he'd been mostly concerned with the actual Bridge Day deaths, and the resulting probability that anything would happen to his team. "Let me guess. My name is about to be added to the list."
Lance laughed again, this time in genuine appreciation. "I know, I know - not very intellectual of me, just to chuck you off a bridge. But I'm not a man to argue with results."
"The ends justify the means," Berto said, somewhat flatly, and Lance slapped his back. The impact made Berto sway forward, bending slightly over the rail, and he had to take a quick and nauseating step backward to avoid being thrown off-balance altogether.
"Exactly! It's a shame you keep ticking me off, Martinez, 'cause the two of us - whew! We could rule the world."
Steady again, Berto got a good hold on the rail and checked the thin black watch strapped to his wrist. A light pulsed slow green next to the digital numbers; it was still transmitting, but, as he'd feared, hopelessly blocked.
He hoped Josh and Kat didn't confuse a blocked signal with no signal. His hermano, while being a technology marvel himself, wasn't exactly tech-savvy. Kat was a little better, but not enough to make Berto feel supremely confident. It didn't take very long to plunge to your death.
At any rate, Josh and Kat weren't there. Time to try to save himself - for a change.
Berto found Carlie's eyes - or at least the glint of her glasses lenses - and nodded marginally, with the unspoken message, Get ready. He couldn't tell if she could see him in the darkness.
He turned back to their villainous host and asked with false confidence, "Since when is blowing up the New River Gorge Bridge going to help you rule the world?"
That startled Lance, and his stocky face went from good-natured to suspicious in a second. "Who said I'm gonna blow up the bridge?"
"I saw the plastic explosives in the truck. And it's the only reason you'd be out here," Berto said, now feigning calm too. "So many people and cameras - not anywhere a wanted fugitive would hang out by choice. You're going to blow up the bridge during the jumping, aren't you? Get even?"
Lance didn't do anything for a moment, then shook his head slowly. "Berto, Berto, Berto. You're smart and dumb at the same time. Yeah, we're gonna blow up the bridge. The boys broke me out of jail for this gig, and I intend to accomplish my goal. Should be one mother of an explosion, too."
"Heck yeah," Cousin Steve interrupted, displaying his lack of teeth and overall dental care. Carlie flinched away from the general vicinity of the man's face.
Lance flashed a return grin, then finished, "But I'm not doin' it for revenge."
He'd suspected as much. Lance was petty and vindictive, but above all, he loved power, and he loved planes. "You're doing it for money."
"Do you have any idea how much it cost to build Javelin?" was the only answer, and delivered more forlornly than might've been expected. "I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life being a miserable, stupid terrorist just so I can get my baby bird in the sky again."
He'd used Javelin to skyjack cutting-edge planes, including military aircraft, N-Tek's Behemoth, and a space shuttle. Berto didn't see how that was better than being a "stupid terrorist," but he guessed it made sense to Lance. "Maybe if you hadn't used it as a weapon, you'd still have it."
"Yeah. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, as my mama used to say." Lance put a hand on his shoulder again, this time clamping down hard enough to make Berto wince slightly. "But I bet you can appreciate that right about now, can't you, Dr. Martinez?"
"Lance," Cousin Steve said suddenly, getting everyone's attention. He had a miniature walkie-talkie pressed to one ear with the hand that wasn't grinding Carlie's clavicle into her scapula. "There's some kinda trouble at the trucks. Some girl's showed up, says she's lost."
"She British?" Lance asked, shooting a suspicious glance at Berto and obviously thinking of Rachel.
Cousin Steve mumbled something into the communication device and came back with a puzzled, "Naw, but she's wearin' a wetsuit or somethin' crazy."
Berto's heart skipped a beat. Wetsuit? Fortuitous arrival? Crazy? Kat.
And wherever Kat was, Josh couldn't be too far behind... and Josh brought Max with him. His optimism came surging back.
Oblivious, Cousin Steve went on: "Boys are gonna bring her out here and -"
"No! Go take care of it now!" Lance cut in, fury rising up from nowhere. Cousin Steve wisely opted to do as told and took off down the catwalk, boots clanging and rattling the metal. Lance fixed Carlie in place with a threatening glare, then turned to Berto and snarled, "Thought your friends weren't here."
"Well, my mother used to say, 'Keep your friends close,' " Berto told him, not quite able to hide his triumph, " 'and your enemies closer.' "
Shouting and gunfire back at the trucks announced that Kat had been joined by someone else. A ringing declaration of "going turbo!" gave Berto a really good hint as to who.
"Too clever by half, Berto. Now I'm gonna have to kill you faster. 'Fore your buddies get here and all. You understand."
Berto swallowed. "I don't suppose I could talk you out of it."
"Nope. I wish I could say I'm sorry for this, darlin'," Lance said, striding down the catwalk towards Carlie, "but the truth is you two asked for it. I don't care much for Berto, but you're cute enough, I guess, so I hope they manage to fish your body out of the river before the critters get to it."
"Thanks but no thanks, jerk," she said, pulling a slim, black rectangle from an inner pocket of her jacket. Another overlooked item, like the tracer watch, only even more obvious; Lance really was getting sloppy. And Carlie was getting to the end of her false bravado, as evidenced by the rather weak, "Stop right there!" she issued instead of bolting for it.
Lance didn't stop. He closed the distance, reached out and snatched the object out of her hand. She jumped backwards and turned to run, but Lance stepped in front of her and blocked her easily. "A stun gun? Please. What is this, amateur night?"
Not even a stun gun, Berto saw. A tazer, the kind women kept in purses - or, in Carlie's case, jackets. Lance tossed it away. It hit the catwalk floor near Berto, skidded a bit, and went over the edge. Berto heard a clank, but figured it was just the tazer hitting one of the girders on its way down. He looked over the catwalk anyway.
The tazer was resting on a girder not two feet from the catwalk's edge.
"Y'all need to leave this nonsense to the professionals," Lance said, loud enough for both of them to hear.
Berto was inclined to agree, but Carlie's spine stiffened and she said just as loudly, "I am a professional. I'm Ethan Raptor's manager!"
And then she moved, too fast for Berto to see any details in the darkness, and somehow Lance, who outweighed her by a hundred pounds of villainy, was bent over wheezing and Carlie was sprinting down the catwalk, God bless her.
But Lance recovered just as quickly and took off after her. Berto weighed his chances of actually catching them and went instead for the tazer. His numb fingertips brushed the black plastic edge, but then he heard Kat yell something like, "Steel! Catch!" and Max yell, "Fire in the hole!"
An explosion, out over the river where nothing could be damaged, lit up the night and the entire bridge shook. And the tazer jittered its way another foot away from the catwalk.
"Thanks a bunch, hermano," Berto muttered. Of course his teammates would set off the bajillion tons of plastic explosives. He edged out onto the girder, praying Max didn't blow anything else up while he was out there.
Lance, meanwhile, had grabbed Carlie, and was now hauling her back to Berto's position. "That's about enough! I don't have time for this if I'm gonna make my big escape, and you two are not gonna be the reason I wind up back in Leavenworth!"
Carlie looked around, desperate, and met Berto's eyes through the steel bars of the catwalk. It was a bad vantage point, but he could see everything quite clearly indeed: If he didn't get that tazer, they were done for, and he couldn't get the tazer if Lance was back on the job.
Do something, he pleaded silently. Read my mind and do something to stall him
Understanding miraculously flashed across her face, and then, just as quickly, vanish into a truly Oscar-worthy performance. For the Academy's consideration - Carlie Hoffman as Hysterical Victim.
"Oh my God, no," she cried, bursting into tears, and collapsed onto the catwalk, forcing Lance to stoop - and turn his back to what Berto was doing - in order to keep his grip on her. "No no no! Don't kill me, please, oh God -"
"Stop whinin' and get up," Lance barked.
Berto took a deep breath and stretched further, fingers closing haphazardly around the tazer even as Carlie shrieked in apparent panic.
"I don't want to die, please, no, you can't do this!"
Lance slapped her across the face, knocking her glasses askew. "Shut up! Now get on your feet."
Still sobbing hysterically, Carlie got to her knees, but didn't go any further. Lance heaved an exasperated, frustrated sigh and started to turn around. "Berto, you better not be running away or-"
He cut himself off when Berto, now standing right behind him, pressed the twin metal prongs of the tazer into his beefy neck.
"Good night, Lance," he said, and depressed the button. Fifty thousand volts of electricity hit Lance's nervous system; his eyes rolled back in his head and, as soon as Berto took the tazer away, he dropped to the catwalk like his strings had been cut.
There was a moment of silence broken only by the roar of traffic and wind, and then Berto looked up at Carlie. "Are you okay?"
He got his answer when she practically knocked him down, flinging her arms around him and kissing him full on the mouth. "Berto! That was brilliant!"
Berto blinked at her, absolutely floored - but in a very nice way. Very, very nice. "I - uh - I... I tried my best?"
"Well, it was perfect," she said, drawing back and giving Lance a disdainful glance.
"Not quite. I couldn't have done it without your help," he said, and he sincerely meant it.
She smiled back, but further conversation was forestalled when Max's voice came echoing down the catwalk: "Berto! Everything all right?"
"Just fine," Berto said as he approached.
Better than Max, in fact, who was breathing hard and looked slightly fatigued. He raised his arm so Berto could see the biolink display, which was flashing red warnings about lack of transphasic energy. "Good, 'cause I kinda need -" Max broke himself off with a slightly belated, "Uh, Carlie. Hi. Having fun?"
"A blast," she said, then started to laugh at her own bad pun. Berto followed her lead and Max just looked at them like they were crazy, then shook his head and knelt to check out Lance's still very unconscious form - and to slap a pair of N-Tek's finest handcuffs around his wrists.
"Lance Breamer? Since when is he out of prison?" Max finished his examination and stood, giving Berto a freshly appreciative glance. "Nice work, bro. Kat is here too, but I... I mean, we left Josh back at the van."
"Is she okay?" Berto asked, more for Carlie's sake than Kat's. Max would have told him immediately if anything was amiss.
Max nodded. "She's okay. Well, not her ear, but that's a long story."
"Ours is too. And you still owe me food. I want dinner, Martinez." Carlie slid an arm around his waist and poked him rather sharply in the ribs for emphasis, but he made no move to get away, rib-poking and all.
Now that the "staring death in the face" part was over, he was actually feeling quite cheerful about the world and his place in it. Nothing like a little adventure to set a person straight. "That reminds me - the 'Taste of Bridge Day' festival starts tomorrow. I bet they'll have something without gravy."
Max rolled his eyes, then bent down and slung Lance over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Oof. Yeah, way too much gravy for him." He checked his biolink again and winced, but sucked it up and started trudging towards the exit. "Let's get out of here and get some rest, huh?"
"Now there," Berto said, "is a plan that makes sense."