Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  The Caddy flipped, rolled, and spun like a top, flew off the road, over the barrow pit, slammed into a wall of trees.

  Nausea, spinning, stopped. Still.

  Sticky wet ran down Nick’s forehead. He stared out the jagged hole of the shattered windshield. His arms ached, his shoulders and neck, and his knee throbbed where it had banged the steering column. But he felt the pain and knew that was good. He could move. He climbed out of the Porsche.

  Didn’t feel the rain.

  He was half a football field down the road from where he’d rammed the other car. The Caddy was twenty yards farther, its rear end sliding down the far edge of the barrow pit from a stand of mangled trees. Steam hissed from under its crumpled hood.

  Jesus, thought Nick. He didn’t know whether to be glad or guilty.

  The gun was still in his pants. He drew it, aimed at the Caddy, crouched, and shuffled toward it through the storm.

  He heard them moan, swear. Jack Berns crying, “My leg, my leg, my leg!”

  The Caddy’s passenger door gaped open. A man tumbled out. In the rain and the dark, Nick couldn’t make out all the details, but he saw the whiteness of face bandages, a dangling left arm cradled by the right. The man’s feet slid out from under him and he slipped down the wet grass of the barrow pit slope.

  “’elp me!” moaned Jack Berns from inside the Cadillac. “Help me! My leg, broke my leg!”

  From the man collapsed at the bottom of the roadside ditch, Nick heard, “Can’. Can’t.”

  “Shit!” yelled Berns. “Shit!”

  “Wha’ happened?” cried the man in the ditch. “What happened?”

  They didn’t see me! thought Nick. They still haven’t! They don’t know!

  That secret made him feel safer than the gun in his hand. As quietly as he could, he backed across the road, lay prone in the opposite barrow pit, eyes and gun trained on the Caddy, confident that the two men there were done for the night.

  And that they couldn’t retaliate on Nick because they hadn’t seen him.

  If they crawled out of the ditch …

  Then, said Nick. Decide that then.

  But he knew he had the edge; he had the gun, he had secrecy. And even if they made it back on the road, they were now little threat to Jud and Wes.

  To Sylvia and Saul.

  There was a phone in Wes’s attaché case in the Jeep. Help could be summoned for those two men at any time, anonymously. They were only wounded. Nick promised himself that they deserved their pain, that they were guilty—more guilty than him.

  Wes and Jud: they’d finish … what they had to do in the house a mile down the road. Walk out. Nick was between the house and the men injured in the ditch. He’d link up with Wes and Jud before they reached the wrecked cars, quietly lead them out, away from the eyes of the men in the Caddy. More secrets. More safety.

  When they were done with what they had to do.

  The rain washed blood off Nick’s face as he lay sprawled on his belly. He saw the world over a gunsight. Rocks dug into him, mud sucked at his weight: he could taste the earth, smell it, more real, more solid than he’d ever known. His breath slowed, he felt the chill of the night, the reverberation of what he’d done. He’d wielded the dark magic, and now he realized what he’d wondered about for so long: he was powerful. Dangerous.

  That knowledge was hollow and bitter, unforgettable.

  Nick ached with the intensity and damnation of the moment. Of all the rivers that flowed within him, the one that sought magic and made him write had always seemed the deepest; now he knew deeper currents; he thought of Sylvia, Saul, the flow of visions of what should be. It occurred to him that this moment where he lay in a ditch, gun in hand, was too overwhelming for him ever to write about; too sacred to sculpt for public presentation. Then he knew that was a lie, and that in that lie was his redemption.

  He lay in the rain. Ready. Waiting.

  A mile down the road, in the house, Varon sat on the couch and frowned. “Did you hear something?”

  “No,” lied Jud. He gripped the arm of his chair, silently screamed, Nick!

  “Doesn’t matter what you hear,” said Varon. “I’ll tell you what you need to know. I’ll take care of you. I always have.”

  “Why?” asked Jud.

  “Because that’s what you wanted. And you were lucky enough to be born in the right place at the right time.”

  “That’s not right,” whispered Jud.

  “It’s enough.”

  All the world pressed in on Jud. He shrank into his chair, dizzy, nauseous. The pounding in his head: he couldn’t think. He couldn’t hear well, couldn’t see. He was on a raft floating in Scotch, propelled by the steady words of the old man watching him from the couch.

  “I gave myself to you,” said Jud.

  “For a good cause,” argued Varon. “For the country. For what needed to be done and could only be done by men who understood the necessities of a life worth living.”

  Jud’s hands pressed his forehead. His eyes closed.

  “Did you ever see your aptitude tests?” Varon licked his lips. Set his glass on the coffee table and kept his hands, his black-haired hands, hovering above the file folders. “We checked back to high school on you, ran you through exams shrinks designed—not that I need them to know a good man like you. They confirmed what I’d been told: brilliant, tough. Driven.”

  “I think they’re here somewhere,” said Varon. He shuffled file folders, examined one labeled SWITZERLAND.

  Watched the man slumped in the chair not move, not look.

  “That’s not it,” said Varon. He shuffled more files on the table. “Maybe it’s in here.”

  The general dropped his left hand into the open briefcase sitting on the floor.

  Pulled out an Army .45 automatic, the pistol sweeping across the table, its bore hunting for …

  The gun barrel clanged into the Scotch bottle.

  Jud, eyes open: gun. Thousands of reaction drills—Army, Special Forces, Secret Service academy, intelligence schools, martial arts—no thought, no desire: reaction. Twisting in the chair, struggling to get to this feet, move, reaching—

  The gun roared.

  Left-handed, wrong-handed, Varon scrambling away from the suddenly alert target—not drunk enough—trying to stand between the couch and the coffee table, recovering aim after hitting the Scotch bottle, fumbling wrong-handed:

  The first bullet screamed past Jud’s head.

  Gun bucking, lining up again, switching grips as Varon made it to his feet …

  As Jud kicked the coffee table into the old man’s shins.

  The gun roared, second bullet missing wider than the first as Jud dove toward the old man. Varon slammed the gun down across Jud’s neck, scrambled backward on the couch. Jud sprawled across the table reaching, grabbing …

  Catching: a vise gripped the hand holding the gun.

  Climbing backward up the couch, the general kicked the head of the man who was crushing his hand. He jabbed at Jud’s eyes with his free hand—missed. Jud pulled and pushed and crawled his way on top of Varon.

  The couch overturned and flipped the two men to the floor.

  Never let go. Jud rolled, held the wrist, trapped the gun that swept madly across the room, searching for the target. The two men tumbled to their feet. Varon kicked toward Jud’s groin—hit his thigh.

  The general was sixty-four. Two decades out of the jungle. Strong. For a man his age who never exercised. The stress of the last few months had kept him on an adrenaline edge. His body slammed into maximum overdrive. His fingers were being crushed against the gun. A tremor shook him. His heart raced as he smashed his fist into the bloodied madman reaching for him. After graduating from West Point, Varon had trained in commando skills. But he’d never gone beyond the standard program—he knew his most deadly weapon was his brain. He slammed his soft shoulder into the chest of the gorilla he’d once ruled, twisted, and tried for a shoulder throw.

  Two massive
arms locked around Varon’s chest. His wrist bent—snapped. The .45 hit the carpet. The general screamed. His arms were pinned to his side. A fist dug into his breastbone as steel bands tightened across his ribs.

  All the right tricks failed: Varon kicked Jud’s shins, stomped his feet. The madman’s embrace tightened. The general’s hands couldn’t reach a nerve. His head butted back, thrashed from side to side. He felt Jud’s rough face against his cheek, heard his words screaming in his ear:

  “You threw me away!”

  And Jud jerked the old man off his feet, whirled him around and around like a partner in a crazed dance.

  Waves, colors flashing in Varon’s eyes, his head throbbing, ribs cracking, and no air, walls sliding past as he spun round and round, reeling, stopping, in front of him, the picture windows to the night, the black night, a wall of darkness—

  Exploding.

  A thousand shrapnel diamonds shattered into the house.

  Varon flew across the room, hit a wall, the floor.

  Jud tripped, sprawled to his face, rolled, and looked to the giant jagged hole in the picture window. The last of the glass fell from the frame.

  A dripping-wet, white steel lawn chair lay by the couch.

  Outside in the storm stood a man in a black jacket, his gun aimed into the house.

  At Jud.

  Panting, catching his breath, Jud called out, “Come on, Erasureman! I’ve been waiting for you! You’re late, you’re years too fucking late!”

  “I’m Wes Chandler!” yelled the man with the gun, stepping through the hole he’d made. His gaze shifted between the two men on the floor. “I’m a friend! Nick Kelley—”

  “There’s nobody else,” said Jud. “Just me. Come on. Come on.”

  Step by step, his gun forward, Wes moved to where Varon lay: glassy eyes. Slack jaw. A line of blood in the corner of a gaping mouth. Wes touched the old man’s chest: the breastbone was squishy, splintered. The flesh over the old man’s heart felt like a water balloon.

  “He’s dead,” said Wes.

  “Another one,” muttered Jud. “Should have been the first. Should have died before I was born, before he made me.”

  “Come on,” ordered Wes.

  But Jud laughed: a deep, rumbling bass, choking up octaves to a hysterical pitch, a whine; a sob.

  “We don’t have much time. Nick is out there, alone.”

  “Let him go,” said Jud.

  “That’s not my deal,” explained Wes.

  “What is?”

  Wes stood there, gun pointed at the floor; without words.

  “They fucked you, didn’t they?” said Jud.

  “Not so much that—”

  “What are you going to do, Marine?” Jud shook his head. “I used to be a soldier.”

  He pushed himself to a sitting position, stared at the corpse nearby. “His soldier. My soldier.”

  “We’ll work something out,” said Wes. “I saw through the window. He had a gun, you … Self-defense.”

  Again Jud laughed. “What about all the others?”

  “That’s not for me to say.”

  “Sure it is. You’ve got the gun.”

  The Sig dangled at the end of Wes’s arm.

  “The CIA,” said Wes. “The Pentagon—Congress, all of them: we’ll make them work it out.”

  “Why?”

  Again Wes had no answer.

  “It’s our call, Marine. We’re on the line. Besides, they don’t want to do that.”

  “You’ve got to come in.”

  “Where? The CIA? What do you think they’ll do about this? About Varon and the shit he pulled? What do you think they’ll do to me? A drunk farm? Locked up somewhere? They trained me to get out of anywhere, and they know that. Lobotomy? What can they do with me?”

  “They need to know—”

  “You trust them to do the right thing?”

  Wes blinked.

  “You can’t let me walk,” said Jud. “They won’t stop until they know I’m accounted for. How many more people am I going to run over with their parade? The booze has got me. The ghosts have got me. You found Lorri. You saw what I did to Nora.”

  “That was a combat—”

  “So what?”

  Jud pushed himself to his feet. He reeled, staggered, but faced Wes.

  “What do you want?” whispered Wes.

  “I don’t want those fuckers to win. I want to be free. I don’t want to hurt anybody else. I want to beat them. I don’t want to hurt anymore.”

  “If—”

  “No ifs, no ands, no buts.” Jud smiled. “You know.”

  “We can buy time to—”

  “There’s no more time. There’s no other place.” He pointed his finger at Wes. Like a gun. “They’ve got you, too.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” said Jud. “You think that they’ll let you walk free and clear if they make the play?”

  The rain blew into the house. Wes retreated a step.

  “Clock’s running, Major. Nowhere to run, no time to waste.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “No. You can’t either. You leave now, you take me with you, pin me for them … they win. They own you then. I know.”

  “Do what you’re supposed to do,” said Jud.

  “That’s not my job.”

  “Sure it is. It’s what has to be done. Do it for me. Do it myself, means I lost. Don’t do it, they win. You do—”

  “Stop it!”

  “You do it,” said Jud, “I’m free. Nick’s safe—without me, he can’t make enough trouble for them to care. If you do it, don’t confess, they’ll never know what you’ve got on ’em, so they’ll leave you alone. Hell, you do it, they’re stuck with their own shit! Let the straight world have all this! Drop a dime when you go, let the local yokels find Varon, me, his files. Shit, call the Post. But don’t tell ’em who you are. Leave a house full of questions. That won’t change the world, but let this shit rise to the top, a bloody mess smeared on the spooks’ walls. Them having to scrape it off is the only way anything good’ll happen, and we can’t control that. Hell, do it for the damn country, it needs exercise.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “So what? They tapped you, sent you out, set you up: who do you owe what?”

  “I don’t owe you this.”

  “Then I’ll owe you one.” Jud laughed. “I’ll pay it off. You do this, you’ll be free. Me gone, they won’t care about you. It’s the only way to finish your job. It’s the only way you can walk. Forget about me, Nick, what could happen. Do it for yourself.

  “You know how I’m going to pay you off? I’m not going to give you an excuse. I’m not going to fight you, force you to take me out of the box. Make it easy. Make you always wonder if you couldn’t have beaten me another way. I know what that’s like. You start apologizing to your ghosts. You start to owe them. Then they own you, then you’re lost. No maybes: that’s my payoff to you. Clear choice, no question. I’m going to make you do it clean.

  “Only one thing.”

  Jud shuffled across the room.

  Wes couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t feel, yet was so completely there that he was gone into a new place, a new time.

  Arm’s length away, Jud stopped. Bent. Wrapped his fingers around the Sig’s barrel and slowly raised it to the end of Wes’s straight arm. Raised it until the bore kissed his chest.

  “One thing,” said Jud, holding the gun to his flesh, “I’m not going to die on my knees.”

  The hammering of Jud’s heart vibrated through the gun into Wes’s arm, shaking him with each beat. Each blow was a nail of truth. Wes knew that if he brought Jud in, the CIA would pull Jud into the cloak of shadows, unseen forever, never known, never judged. Wes’s hands would wrap the cloak shut; his touch would be there and theirs. Varon would become a hidden footnote, an obituary. Wes thought of Noah Hall and Director Denton, of owl-glasses Billy Cochran: one and all, somewhere down the line, they’d betrayed their du
ty, betrayed him, turned their gunsights on him. He owed them nothing. He owed Nick a bottom-line truth; he owed Beth an honest confession she could understand, a confession whose consequences he had to risk. This man standing before him, this heart beating and shaking Wes’s whole being: he owed him what Wes would want for himself. Jud’s heart beat against Wes until it felt like they’d merged into one being with two lives: they were one, and the pain and hope that Jud felt became the only hope Wes had for ending the pain, for getting free, for doing what had to be done, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1991 by James Grady, Inc.

  cover design by Georgia Morrissey

  This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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