Swiggum commenced gasping for breath.
“Now get up and get out,” the leader told Swiggum.
Begrudgingly, Swiggum rose awkwardly to his feet, gulping fresh air with his gaping mouth and rotating his reddened, throbbing neck, eyes shut. He crabbed into the aisle.
“You’re gonna regret that,” he contrived to say in a husky voice, walking past the leader.
“You’re already dead and you don’t even know it.”
Loath to incur the leader’s wrath, Nordstrom scrambled to his feet and trailed Swiggum out of the bus.
Swiggum stumbled down the bus’s metal corrugated steps to the parking lot and landed clumsily on the cement walkway. Averting a fall with the strength of his legs, he managed to regain his footing on the walkway and righted himself. He trudged over to Halverson.
“What happened to you?” said Halverson, picking up on Swiggum’s livid face and flushed throat.
Swiggum grimaced, rocking his head from side to side. “I’m gonna waste that guy. See if I don’t.”
The soldiers herded Halverson, Swiggum, Probst, Victoria, Simone, and Nordstrom into a hallway that led out of the garage.
“Where are they taking us now?” asked Probst.
“To a decontamination center probably,” answered Halverson.
A stainless steel pneumatic door whooshed open at the end of the corridor.
“I want to talk to your boss,” Halverson told the leader, who was walking six feet behind him.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What kind of digs are these?” said Swiggum. “Are you military?”
The leader said nothing.
Since this was a massive bunker, Halverson wondered if they were anywhere near Area 51, which bordered Yucca Flat, the site of over seven hundred nuclear bomb tests. Massive bunkers would be located in and around Area 51 for that very reason.
If it was anywhere near Area 51, this vicinity might be controlled by the government, which owned the area. The CIA was also active in the area. Another reason for Halverson to be cautious. After all, it was the same CIA, his employer, that was trying to kill him with drones because he knew of their involvement in the creation of the zombie virus.
Area 51. Aka Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, and, nowadays Homey Airport. Just south of the dry Groom Lake. If he was in the government-run Area 51, he was in even more danger than he had previously thought. He would have to tread warily.
He was letting his imagination run amok. He had no idea if he was anywhere near Area 51.
“Wait in that room.” The leader gestured to the open door.
“I want to know if the military’s running this place,” said Swiggum.
Did Swiggum, too, suspect this was Area 51? wondered Halverson.
“We need to get all of you out of the hallway,” said the leader. “You’re contaminated with radioactivity. Step inside.”
“Why?” said Swiggum.
“You’re contaminating the air in the hallway.”
“Fuck you.”
Holding his carbine in both hands, the leader pressed the length of the barrel crosswise against Swiggum’s back and shoved him through the doorway into the room.
Tired of getting pushed around, Swiggum cursed as he stumbled into the large white room. Not only were the barren walls painted white, the linoleum was white as well.
Simone, Victoria, Probst, Nordstrom, and Halverson followed him.
“I need to talk to your boss,” Halverson told the leader, noticing that none of the soldiers had followed him into the room.
The leader said nothing.
The steel door whooshed shut.
CHAPTER 28
“These guys are bad news,” said Nordstrom.
He set to snapping pictures of the room, but soon became bored at the monotonous whiteness surrounding him. White walls, white floor, white ceiling. No windows.
“This crib’s a drag, man,” he said, letting go of his camera and letting it hang from its sling around his neck.
“I feel like we’re in prison,” said Probst.
Simone gave him a look. “Don’t say that word.”
“They’re probably gonna decontaminate us,” said Halverson.
“How?” said Probst. “Don’t we have to take showers and stuff? Where’s the shower stall?”
Halverson realized Probst was right. There was no decontamination equipment in this room. No showers. No hoses to spray them with disinfectant.
“They’re not gonna disinfect us,” said Swiggum. “They could care less about us. They just want to isolate us from them so they don’t get contaminated.”
“I’m hungry,” said Nordstrom. “Aren’t they at least gonna feed us? They flunk as hosts.”
As if on cue Halverson heard his stomach rumbling. He hadn’t eaten since he and Victoria had left their blast shelter.
Simone stalked off into a corner, sat down, and brooded.
“What’s with her?” said Victoria.
“We told you, she hates herself because of her sister’s death,” said Nordstrom.
“They don’t even have chairs in here,” said Probst.
“Like I said, they flunk as hosts.”
A loud buzzing startled Halverson. He cut his eyes toward the direction of the sound and saw one entire wall sliding open to reveal a Plexiglas floor-to-ceiling window.
A fiftysomething crew-cut peroxide blond guy pushing six feet was standing in a black bespoke suit in the white room beyond the Plexiglas partition. He was wearing a mauve moiré silk tie. He considered Halverson’s party with pale limpid blue eyes.
“I feel like we’re caged in a zoo,” said Nordstrom.
“Who is this clown?” said Swiggum under his breath.
Halverson knew the guy on sight.
It was none other than Hector Guzman, a notorious billionaire drug dealer the CIA had been keeping in their sights for years.
Guzman’s father was Oswald Gutman, an Oberfuhrer, or senior colonel, in Hitler’s notorious Order of the Death’s Head, aka the SS. With help from the renowned SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny, who had once rescued Mussolini with a daring glider raid, Oswald had escaped from Nazi Germany via a “ratline,” to wit, an escape route, to Buenos Aires at the end of the war and taken refuge in Argentina, thanks to the Organization of Former SS Members, the ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen). He changed his name to Guzman and was never heard from again.
In Argentina, Oswald’s son Hector became a successful narcotraficante, who migrated up to Mexico, allied his organization with the ruthless Zetas gang, and took on the omnipotent Sinaloa cartel in a battle royal for control of the Mexican drug trade. Exploiting the brutal Zetas and their violent tactics for all they were worth, Guzman and the Zetas dismantled the Sinaloa cartel. Then Guzman, finished with using the Zetas, split off from them and became their most successful rival, usurping most of their territory in his bid to supplant the Sinaloa cartel as the top drug provider in the world.
Hector Guzman married the blue-eyed Brazilian beauty contest winner Heidi Heydrich, also of German stock, when she was twenty-five. When she was twenty-six she died in a hail of bullets when a Zetas hit team assassinated her in her armor-plated black Chevy Suburban. The four-by-four’s windows were bulletproof, but, as luck would have it, Heidi had her window down when the attack occurred.
Simultaneously, a coordinated assassination attempt on Guzman failed.
And here Guzman was now standing in the room next to Halverson’s.
Small world, decided Halverson. The will-o’-the-wisp Guzman was at the head of the class on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. The CIA and the FBI had no idea he was living in the US. No wonder they could never find him, though they moved heaven and earth in their attempts to do so. All this time, he was in their own backyard.
Exceeded only by his legendary avarice, his arrogance was such that he refused to go under the knife for plastic surgery because he believed the authorities would never f
ind him, let alone arrest and prosecute him. Moreover, his vanity in his looks took the option of plastic surgery off the table.
Up to this point, Guzman had remained unscathed, an untouchable fugitive. Even though everybody knew what he looked like, the authorities had not caught up with him. Out of fear of his savage reprisals, none of his associates or employees ever ratted out his hidey-holes. If innocent bystanders spotted him, they never said a word. They would rather go on living than snitch. As for his enemies, he kept them in the dark as to his whereabouts.
Up till now, decided Halverson. Now Halverson, an agent for the CIA, knew where Guzman was sheltering.
Halverson dissimulated his surprise at seeing Guzman by keeping his face expressionless. Halverson didn’t want to let on that he knew Guzman’s identity.
As for the others, they did not seem to recognize Guzman, Halverson decided. Guzman’s face was well known to the Bureau and to the Agency and to other government departments like the Drug Enforcement Administration, but, outside of such alphabet organizations, few individuals either knew or cared about Guzman or what he looked like.
Then again, Guzman probably could not care less if anybody recognized him here. After all, what were they going to do about it?
CHAPTER 29
“Who are you?” demanded Swiggum.
“I’m Hector,” answered Guzman.
The rooms must be rigged with microphones, decided Halverson. They could hear Guzman quite clearly.
“What gives you the right to lock us up like prisoners?” said Swiggum, swaggering toward the Plexiglas window that separated the two rooms.
“You’re not prisoners,” said Guzman. “You’re my guests.”
“This is how you treat your guests?” said Swiggum with jacked eyebrows.
“You’re under quarantine because you’re contaminated with radiation poisoning.”
“I’m not contaminated with anything. I feel right as rain.”
“If we’re not prisoners, why are our hands tied?” said Halverson.
“Wolfman thought you might not come back here voluntarily,” said Guzman.
“Now that I’ve seen this place, he was right,” said Swiggum.
“Who’s Wolfman?” said Halverson.
“He was the head of the scouting party that escorted you here,” said Guzman.
“With a name like Wolfman, no wonder he keeps his face covered.”
“We’re already here so why keep our hands tied?” said Victoria.
“Be patient,” said Guzman. “They’ll be untied when we serve your dinner.”
“How about a table and chairs, then?”
“We weren’t expecting visitors.”
Halverson angled toward the Plexiglas partition. “Why haven’t you started the decontamination process on us?”
“What makes you think you can be decontaminated?”
“Why not?”
“You’ve been exposed to radiation for a long time.”
“We were in blast shelters during the explosions,” cut in Swiggum.
“But you’ve been walking around in the desert in air that’s still polluted with radioactive dust.”
“We took iodide pills,” said Halverson.
Guzman strutted back and forth deliberately in his room. “That only protects you against radioactive iodine-131. It does nothing to protect you from cesium-137 or strontium-90.”
“Technobabble,” said Swiggum, shaking his head. “The point is, we feel fine. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. We don’t need to be decontaminated. Just let us out of this room and we’ll be on our way.”
“Then you won’t have to worry about us contaminating you,” chipped in Probst.
“I wouldn’t think of letting you go and exposing you to more radiation,” said Guzman. “What kind of a host do you think I am?”
“Not a very good one,” muttered Probst.
“What’s that you say?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s all settled then,” said Guzman, coming to a halt behind the Plexiglas window.
“Don’t you even want to know who we are?” said Victoria.
“I already know who you are.”
“How?” said Probst, puzzled.
“Each of you was photographed with video cameras when you entered this building. My computers have bleeding-edge facial recognition software that ID’d all of you instantly. All except one of you, that is.”
Halverson felt his heart beating a rapid tattoo. He knew it was him that Guzman was talking about. There was no trace of him to be found on the Internet or in any database available to facial recognition software. His employers at the CIA had seen to it that his picture had been scrubbed clean from any and all databases.
Guzman had not been looking at Halverson as he had spoken, Halverson noticed. Interesting, decided Halverson. For whatever reason, Guzman did not want to tip his hand that Halverson was the one he could not ID. For the moment Guzman didn’t want to say it.
“Hogwash,” said Swiggum. “Do you take us for idiots? I don’t believe any of this.”
“Just let us go and be done with it,” said Victoria. “We have places to go.”
“Really? You’re safe from further radioactive contamination here,” said Guzman. “Why would you want to leave?”
“But we’re locked up like animals,” said Swiggum.
“You’re not locked up. You’re under quarantine.”
“Semantics,” said Probst, waving off Guzman.
“Have it your way. In any case, you’re my guests and it would be remiss of me to let you leave and expose you to certain death by radiation.”
Halverson noticed a desk crammed with computers on top of it behind Guzman. Halverson could see that an entire wall in Guzman’s room was outfitted with CCTV screens, which were monitored at Guzman’s desk. Halverson took stock of the guest room he was confined to but could not spot the camera lenses. The technology nowadays was such that they could be as small as pin pricks. Drones the size of hummingbirds could spy on you through your window, he knew.
“You’re dripping,” said Victoria.
“What?” said Halverson.
She pointed at the floor where blood was splattering desultorily near his foot as it dripped from his cut wrists.
“You’re going to be decontaminated one at a time,” said Guzman.
“I thought you said you weren’t gonna decontaminate us,” said Halverson.
“I never said that.”
“Let us out of here,” said Swiggum.
He stalked up to the Plexiglas window and kicked it angrily. He winced with the pain that shot through his foot.
“You’re wasting your time, Jake,” said Guzman. “That’s four inches of bulletproof acrylic.”
Swiggum started. “How do you know my name?”
“I already told you. Listen when I talk to you. You’re Jake Swiggum, age thirty-two, bank robber. Arrested five years ago and been in stir ever since.”
Swiggum gawped at Guzman.
Guzman turned to Nordstrom. “Sven Nordstrom, thirty-one years old, pornographer. Arrested for raping a fifteen-year-old girl. One of your models, I presume.”
“It was consensual,” said Nordstrom.
“Statutory rape is statutory rape, consensual or not. You were sentenced to the joint three years ago.” Guzman turned to Probst.
“I don’t want to hear it,” said Probst, making a show of covering his ears.
Guzman went on, nevertheless, “Travis Probst, forty-nine. Check kiter. Tossed in the joint two years ago.”
“I was framed.”
Guzman faced Simone, who was still hunched in a corner brooding. She didn’t return his gaze.
“Simone Leclerc,” he said. “Twenty-three years of age. Call girl. Sentenced for prostitution a year ago to three years behind bars.”
His words elicited no reaction from Simone. Lost in a brown study, she continued staring sightlessly ahead of her.
Guzman s
ettled his gaze on Victoria. “Victoria Brady, twenty-eight. Dress designer who owns a dress shop in Santa Monica, California.”
Guzman ignored Halverson.
Halverson relaxed. He had wondered what Guzman would say when he got to Halverson. Halverson wondered if anyone had noticed that Guzman had skipped him.
“I’m impressed, swami,” jeered Swiggum. “How much money do I have in my wallet?”
With Guzman’s revelations, Halverson realized that he and Victoria had stumbled onto a gang of prison convicts who must have escaped during the atomic blasts, which caused him to doubt that the four of them had hid in bomb shelters when the bombs had exploded, like they had told him they did. Which bore out Guzman’s claim that the four of them could be impregnated with radioactivity and beyond salvation.
Halverson caught sight of the wall sliding shut in front of the Plexiglas.
CHAPTER 30
Halverson, Victoria, Swiggum, Probst, and Nordstrom stood in the now-windowless white room, looking at each other with puzzlement, trying to make sense of their predicament. Simone continued to sit in the corner in a brown study, head buried in her arms as she crossed them on top of her bent knees.
“I thought you said you were a plumber,” Victoria told Swiggum.
“I was a plumber when the Great Recession, or whatever it is, put me out of business.”
“Then you graduated to crime.”
“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a bank robber when I grew up,” said Swiggum.
“Really?”
“No. I had a wife and son to support,” said Swiggum, wincing.
“What happened to them?”
“The plague got them.”
“How do you know?”
“A neighbor called me in the joint and told me about it. Do we have to talk about this?”
Victoria changed the subject. “Were you in prison when the A-bombs went off?”
Swiggum nodded. “They blew open the cell door of one of the cons. He got out and let the rest of us out.”
“Then you weren’t in a blast shelter like you said before.”
“As good as. A prison isn’t much different than a bomb shelter. They’re both made of reinforced concrete.”
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