PRECIPICE Read Online Free Page A

way. He didn’t dislike being in the Senate and was actually quite good at politics—if there was one thing he had learned growing up in a military family, it was how to work a system without seeming to buck it. What troubled him was the daily grind of being a poor farmer living amongst the wealthy aristocracy, a reality which had worn all of the glow off the power and prestige of his position. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in his nature to actively seek more than his lot in life. However, now faced with the choice between money and power, he’d decided to take the money. Every year at tax time he was embarrassed when the reports were released listing him among the congressmen with the lowest annual incomes. Enough was enough.
    A vote for allowing Mexican tractor-trailers and their drivers to cross freely into the US didn’t seem like a big deal if it meant he could comfortably retire. He would lose a lot of campaign money from the party over it, and probably a lot of votes—which would make it a natural choice to not seek re-election next year. He would simply claim that his Mexican-American chief of staff had talked him into a foolish vote. It was better to look weak than duplicitous when breaking the law to this degree. Plus, guys who got caught were using the money to maintain power, not to leave office—and there wasn’t much political hay to be made from investigating a guy who was on the way out. He wouldn’t miss the Senate, and he’d finally have the time and the funds for another hunting trip to Alaska—maybe he’d shoot a moose or at least a big elk.
    Moore dropped the phone back into the chest pocket of his vest, lifted the shotgun from his lap and stood, taking care not to topple the stool. He bent and collected the three doves in one large hand, slipping them into the oversize pouch in his hunting vest at the small of his back. He tugged the stool free of the mud and folded it, slinging the strap over his left shoulder, and leaned the top of his shotgun back against his right. He trudged across the muddy field toward the trail to his house, his feet feeling like oversize clown shoes with the huge gobs of red mud clinging to their soles.
     
    *
     
    Exhausted and with his spent arms feeling like jell-o, Chip paddled up to a beach on the right at the end of the river. Harris looked over and grinned from where he and the men were already rolling up the raft near the SUV. It had been a harrowing twenty-six miles. Called the “Marathon” by Gauley River regulars, combining the Upper, Middle, and Lower sections into one grueling day was not for the faint of heart or weak of body. The SEALs had flipped the raft three more times but had required no rescue assistance from Chip. They were almost inhuman in their swimming ability, and they absolutely never lost their cool in water that would have scared many hardened river guides.
    Chip stood slowly and stiffly from the tight confines of his kayak, and Harris tossed him a cold beer from a cooler in the back of the SUV. These guys were all business during the day, but they cut loose nicely when the work was over. It turned out that the same lust for adventure that attracted many guides to the river also attracted people to the SEAL teams, and Chip found himself surprisingly similar to these guys in some ways. Unlike most military types, their hair was grown long enough to part. A couple also wore beards, lessening the stark physical contrast between themselves and average Americans, or average dirty river guides. Like many adventurers, they unwound with intensity directly proportional to the intensity with which they focused when the action was on. In fact, they had unwound pretty hard last night on the guides Chip worked with, leaving a rubble of spent beer cans and passed out rafters around the campfire when they finally turned in during the wee hours of the morning. High water meant the river was too dangerous for commercial rafting, so the guides weren’t