Nina and Melanie exchanged glances. If nothing else, it told Amanda that she was back in the fold. They trusted her. She felt the constant allure of their twisted affection. Much like battered women return to an abusive husband, Amanda could sense the ease with which she might come back to the only thing she knew, submissive capitulation to the whims of her matriarch. She struggled with these feelings as she objectively tried to set the conditions for her plan.
“I think we can work something out,” Melanie said, triumphantly.
“Okay, well, let’s sign the paperwork and get an earnest check. They need one hundred thousand dollars by tomorrow,” Tad thumped cheerfully.
Melanie pondered the thought, looked at her mother and then turned to Amanda.
“How soon did those Army guys say you can get that money?”
“It won’t be tomorrow,” Amanda responded. “You probably want to close on the house first.”
“This is all happening so fast.” Melanie leaned back in her chair again.
Tad, ever the salesman and smelling 3 percent of $1.4 million, quickly summarized. “The nature of this market, Melanie, is that you either act immediately or not at all. I had two houses sell yesterday in the same neighborhood. One went for 1.7 million and the other for 2.5 million. This market is sizzling. In a year you can probably turn around and sell this house for anywhere from a five hundred thousand to one million dollar gain. It’s a no-brainer. We’re doing these quick closings all the time. Banks prefer them, actually. Saves all the hassle. I can have an inspector at the house tomorrow. He’ll give you a punch list that we attach to the contract, and you’ve got a fail safe.
“I do have to advise you that this sale is final. There is a clause on the contract, as all of them are stating nowadays, that affirms the contract. It is not revocable once you sign. Both homes I sold yesterday were the same way. So there’s no way that your buyers can back out and leave you hanging. We can get all the paperwork done in less than three days, and then it’s up to you to get the movers rolling you into your dream home. That house is a gold mine.” Perry Mason had never made a better closing argument.
“Please, Mom? Can we just do this before any of us changes our minds?” Amanda’s emerald eyes were pleading as she leaned forward and placed her hand on her mother’s arm.
Tad leaned back in his chair, letting Amanda do the work. A good salesman, as Tad was, knew that when a family member began to do his job, rule number one was to not get in the way.
“It’s a lot of money for a house,” Nina chirped. “But if we can make some money on it, I’m in. Amanda will probably have to work, though. Are you sure you want that?” She was talking to both Melanie and Amanda, eyeing each of them with her blackened marbles.
“It’s just a year, Mom. It would be so cool for all of us to live up there.” Again with the pleading emeralds. She had known coming into this discussion that she would need to be the counterpoint to every obstacle Nina established.
“Okay,” she sighed, leaning forward. “I must be crazy, but where do I sign?”
Tad produced the paperwork quicker than David Copperfield could pull a rabbit from his hat. As Melanie was reading, he went back into his closer role.
“Now, Melanie, if you or Nina have a checkbook handy, I can take the down payment check tonight. We can get a day’s head start on this.”
After an uncomfortable pause, Nina uncharacteristically came forward and remarked, “I’ve got a checkbook. Let me write it, and we can just get this over with. If it keeps Amanda here another year, well, then it’s worth a hundred thousand.”
“A hundred and forty thousand,” Melanie corrected.
“Whatever, once you get over five thousand I lose track. Why don’t you go get us some water, Melanie?”
Needing a quick break, Melanie walked into the kitchen. As she returned, her mother was handing Tad the check. He folded the parchment and placed it in his shirt pocket.
“Again, this document,” Tad joined in as he watched Melanie sit and lift the pen, “is irrevocable once you sign it. The house becomes yours.”
Amanda watched with satisfaction as her mother closed her eyes and signed, the sharp edge of the Mont Blanc cartridge pen sounding like a scratching claw.
CHAPTER 56
Matt felt the MH-47 helicopter settle onto the rocky landing zone along the Kunar River in the province that bore the same name. Asadabad was a way-point along this ancient trading route at the mouth of the Hindu Kush Mountains. To the west and north, spires of granite angled upward, touching altitudes of fifteen thousand feet like randomly constructed temples of nature. Here, shepherds and traders could lay tithe or prayer. Certainly such raw beauty and perfection must have been personally carved by God. As if to counter the point, jagged edges jutted upward and outward from sheer cliffs. Boulders and slabs of rock crouched menacingly in the crevices, ready to avalanche on call as if evil was prepared to offset the cleansing power so clearly resident in these mountains.
Exiting through a sandy dust field created by the whirring dual blades of the MH-47, behind Matt were Major General Jack Rampert, Van Dreeves, Hobart, and Sergeant Eversoll. They all ducked and then took a knee, waiting for the whirling dervish to lift away and in its wake leave behind an alternate form of solitude. The utterly chaotic, but controlled noise of the hulking machine was dominant. Its giant rotors spun against one another, creating the lift necessary to carry forty-thousand pounds of machine, people, and cargo. Instantly this chaos was replaced by the sounds of the wind through the temple spires above. On the valley floor, the insertion team was only at five thousand feet above sea level; the abrupt rise of the mountains seemed all the more stark and aggressive.
Rampert looked at Matt and pulled out his map. “We’re right here, about two miles from the village. I think our preplanned route is a good one. There’s enemy in between us and Zach, but we’ve got a Predator flying overhead and an AC-130 as long as we’ve got the cover of darkness.”
A thin gray film of light was evident from the west, but fading rapidly. End of evening nautical twilight, which occurred well after sunset, was nearly complete and here in the shadows of the Hindu Kush, it was all but gone. Slices of gray hovered around the mountaintops like windward clouds on an ocean island, held in place as if snagged, and providing no light on the landing zone.
“Moon will be up in a couple of hours, so I suggest we get moving. You know we’re being watched.” Matt talked in a low whisper as he tugged at a knee-pad, repositioning the device to place the hard-shell surface between his kneecap and the rocky ground.
They stood in unison, Sergeant Eversoll taking point. Through his night-vision goggles, Matt saw Eversoll’s hand rotate a few times and then point to the north, toward Asadabad.
They followed in single file down a steep draw and then found a decent trail that paralleled the river. Matt could hear the rumble of the water as it shot through rapids and rushed over steep drop-offs. They were maybe fifty meters from the river on its west side. He thought of Bernouli’s equation, the old math formula that described volume as it moved through a constricted space and how its acceleration increased the smaller the space became. Force equals mass times acceleration, he thought to himself. The impulse momentum that resulted from applied force and constrained space was captured in the velocity of the current as the river narrowed against rocky intrusions. Why these thoughts on the properties of physics were coming forward now, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps he needed grounding in reality, in facts and equations, prior to rescuing his brother. Such thoughts may keep in check the blossoming hope that always accompanied, and clouded, such missions. Momentum, he thought to himself. We have the momentum.