Four Blind Mice

Chapter Forty-Two

On Saturday night the three killers made their way north to a small town in Virginia called Harpers Ferry. During the road trip, Brownley Harris's job was to study maps of the AT, as the Appalachian Trail was called by many of the people who hiked it regularly. The spot where they were headed was a particularly popular place for hikers to stop.

Harpers Ferry was tiny, actually. You could walk from one end of town to the other in less than fifteen minutes. There was a point of tourist interest nearby called Jefferson Rock, where you could see Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Kind of neat.

Starkey drove for the entire trip, no need for any relief. He liked to be at the wheel and in control anyway. He was also in charge of entertainment, which consisted of his Best of Springsteen tape, a Janis Joplin, a Doors, a Jimi Hendrix anthology, and a Dale Brown audio book

Warren Griffin spent almost the entire trip checking the team's supplies and readying the rucksacks in back. When he was finished, the packs weighed around forty pounds, a little more than half of what they used to carry on their re-con missions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

He had prepared the packs for a 'hunt and kill', the kind of ambush Colonel Starkey had planned for the Appalachian Trail. Griffin had packed standard-issue canteens; LRPs meals which were pronounced 'lurps'; hot sauce to kill the taste of the LRPs; a tin can for coffee. Each of them would have a K-Bar, the standard military combat knife; cammo sticks, with two colors of greasepaint; boo ny hats; poncho liners that could do double duty as ground cover; night-vision goggles; Clocks as well as an M-16 rifle fitted with a sniper scope. When he was finished with the work, Griffin uttered one of his favorite lines, “If you want to get a good belly laugh out of God, just tell Him about your plans.”

Starkey was the TL, or Team Leader. He was in control of every aspect of the job.

Harris was the Point Man.

Griffin was Rear Security, still the junior guy after all these years.

They didn't have to do the 'hunt and kill' exactly like this. They could have made it a whole lot easier on themselves. But this was the way Starkey liked it, the way they had always committed their murders. It was 'the Army way7.