by L. A. Cruz
“Hell yeah,” she said.
CHAPTER 11
The voice on the phone told her to go to the airport in Tampa.
The next morning, at 0700, Helia stood in the drop off zone at terminal G and waited in her new combat greens at parade rest.
She watched the cabs come and go and the lovers get out and go on their honeymoons. She watched the BMWs pull up and the weekend floozies give their long goodbyes to their rich boyfriends. She watched the black vans pull up and deploy the high school students who were on their way to educational tours in France or Italy or Germany or California or New York or any of those other fancy places she could never afford to visit.
Eventually, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled up. She didn't know if this was the guy she was supposed to meet or not as the voice on the phone hadn’t given her any instructions beyond waiting at the specific terminal at a specific time.
The driver opened his door and rounded the hood and opened the back door.
“Miss Crane?”
“It’s Corporal Crane.”
“Please get in.”
She glanced in the back seat. It was empty. She went to throw her duffel bag into the vehicle, but the chauffeur grabbed it and tossed it on the concrete platform behind her.
“Hey, what’s the-“
“You'll be provided for.”
“You can’t just leave a bag at an airport like that.”
“Every now and then we like to keep TSA on their feet,” the driver said. He pulled out his phone and pressed a button. “There’s an unidentified duffel bag at Terminal G.”
Down the walk, she saw two TSA agents running toward them.
“Please. Get in.”
“Can I sit up front?”
“No.”
Helia climbed into the back seat. The driver pulled away from the airport and through the tinted window, she watched the TSA agents swarm her duffel bag. Embarrassing is what it was. They’d find a change of underwear, a tank top, a Swiss Army knife, and tampons.
HELIA SAT with her hands folded in her lap. The Lincoln’s interior was like any other: well-used, but clean. The leather on the back seat was worn, but not ragged, and a small television screen was mounted in the back of the seat in front of her.
“I don’t like driving in the dark. Care to shed any light on our destination?”
The driver didn't say anything. He drove the speed limit. He was in no rush, and she couldn't tell if he was just a chauffeur, or an agent playing the role.
“At least tell me where the first meeting point is.”
He glanced in his mirror, but said nothing.
“Soldier to soldier,” she said. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Again, nothing.
She permitted her hands to unfold from her lap and she rested them on her thighs and put her head back on the head rest. If this driver wasn't going to let her know whether he was an agent or not, there was no way she was going to maintain a rigid posture for the entirety of the trip.
Besides, he had called her Miss Crane, not Corporal, which meant he probably wasn’t military. She looked at the ceiling. There were three scratch marks in the trim above the door. She stared at them and wondered what could have done such a thing.
That morning, she had left when her mother was still sleep. Tita Annabelle had been making egg rolls in the kitchen, the frying pan spitting grease. Tita hadn’t used a cookie tray, just plopped spoonfuls of meat slurry and the paper thin, translucent squares of dough straight on the counter. Helia had stood in the hallway for a long moment, watching her fake aunt dip her finger into the meat, spread it across the dough, roll it, dip her finger into a little bit of oil, and run it along the edge of the dough so it stayed shut. It was the same technique Helia had caught her brother using to roll joints in his bedroom.
Last, her aunt dropped each egg roll into the spitting oil. Helia could still smell the smoking oil. Her mother was in good hands, she told herself. Although Tita Annabelle was not her aunt by blood, she and her mother were as tight as sisters. The Filipino community in Pasco County was not a large one, but a tightly-knit one. Having come over as a nurse in an exchange program with a hospital in Manila, her mother had tapped her Filipino network in Jersey, quickly found that there were a number of other Filipino families in Zephyrhills and within days, Tita Annabelle had become a fixture in their household.
Helia leaned forward. “Seriously, where are we going?”
“Relax, Miss Crane. Enjoy the ride. You’re in good hands.”
The shocks were good and the ride was smooth. Helia leaned back, rested her head, and closed her eyes. Good hands. The last time she had heard that phrase, she had to deliver a hard slap with her good hand.
MAJOR MAKAB’S body started to swell. His belly engorged and grew larger and larger, so large that the button on his trousers popped off and pinged against the cage. His arms were swelling fatter and fatter, as if somebody had stuck the hose from an air compressor into his mouth and just let it rip.
Helia ducked and covered her head as his other buttons fired at her like a machine gun.
SHE JOLTED AWAKE. She had drifted off to sleep. The Lincoln had come to a hard stop on the side of the road. She cursed herself for falling sleep. It was not like her to fall asleep under such circumstances, or under ANY circumstances for that matter. Her mother had warned her long ago that she couldn’t leave her body unattended.
She prided herself at having never fallen asleep during a movie, TV show, or while reading, not once in her life, not ever, and that same ability held true throughout basic training where many of her fellow privates would let their eyes slowly close, even in random places like the mess hall, sometimes even dozing off with a mouthful of food.
As an attractive woman in a man’s world, she didn’t dare fall asleep unless she knew the door was closed and locked.
Falling asleep in the back seat of the Lincoln was her first inkling that something might actually be wrong in her head. The kidnapping had jostled something loose. The prison psychologist had warned that the adrenaline from the kidnapping would keep her body on high alert for an untold number of days after the incident, but once the trauma settled in, sleep might take over. Not deep, restful sleep, but sleepiness. Constant. Like lethargy.
“PTSD is like a ticking time bomb,” the psychologist had said. “You might think you're fine, but then you wake up in the middle of the night, cold from your own sweat and you’re pressing the muzzle of a gun to your own temple.”
Helia had managed to keep a straight face when he had said it. Afterward, she laughed her ass off. She felt fine. No trauma whatsoever. If need be, she could force her neurons to fire and set whatever offending memories ablaze.
Now, she was embarrassed she had let her guard down. As she did every time she woke, ever since she was little, she checked her body for bruises. None. No one had touched her. The driver hadn’t pulled over and taken advantage of her.
She suspected she had only been asleep for a minute or two, but it was long enough to lose track of where they were. The gravel crunched and she twisted in her seat. Behind the Lincoln, a black van was pulling onto the shoulder.
The passenger door opened and a familiar figure got out and straightened his suit.
Connor.
He motioned for her to get out of the Lincoln and come join him. She slid across the seat and opened the door.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,” the driver said.
She stepped into the ditch. The ground was soft beneath her boots.
Connor opened the back door for her. “I see you dressed up for the occasion.”
Helia looked at his pressed suit. “I see you didn’t.”
Connor smiled. “C’mon, get in. I could use a little company on my trip back to Washington.”
CHAPTER 12
Helia sat rigid on the middle seat. Riding bitch, her brother called it. Connor sat on her right, next to the window. Another agent sat
to her left. She was sandwiched. Behind them, were two more agents. They were all dressed in sunglasses and suits, the stereotypical curly white wire snaking from their ears and disappearing somewhere inside their collar. In fact, they looked so stereotypical, she wondered if they all shopped at the same Halloween store.
She sure as hell wasn't going to fall asleep this time.
Connor watched the trees go from the stooped over and sagging mangroves to the better posture of oaks and conifers, almost a reverse evolution. The vines and tangles that hung from them like messy hair, turned into the white sacks of tent caterpillars, the sacks thinning into cobwebs and then growing upward like smoke escaping the tip of a fired gun, all sparkling with dew in the morning light.
Soon, the vegetation was completely gone and the highway hummed beneath their wheels. They were on 95 and heading north. If they wanted to keep it a secret, they should have blindfolded her. Maybe that was coming later.
Connor cleared his throat. “So how are you feeling?”
“About what?"
“About anything,” Connor said. “I’m trying to get a sense of your mental state. No, scratch that. I’m just trying to be friendly. How’s that? Friendly.”
“You’re grasping here, Connor. You sound like a psychopath trying to show humanity how normal you are.”
He turned away from the window. He went to pat her on the knee, but stopped himself and wedged his hands between his thighs.
“You’re very straight-forward, aren’t you? You don’t hold back.”
“I learned not to care what other people think a long time ago,” she said. “It’s not my problem.”
“What’s not your problem?”
“Dealing with me.”
He almost smiled. “Listen Corporal, this job isn't for everyone. You should know that before we get there. If you change your mind, there’s no shame in it. I want you to know that.”
“So I can leave at any time?”
"No. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that I don't blame you if you change your mind. Once you’re there, there’s no going back.”
He was a horrible conversationalist. Every moment was pregnant with awkward. She had a feeling that, like a good spy, he spent most of his career listening—listening to foreign dignitaries, terrorists, whatever the government made him do. Initiating conversation was not his strong suit.
“Thank you for the concern,” she said.
“When you get there, you're going to see some things."
“Care to elaborate?”
“No. Not now.”
“I figured.”
“How is your Tito?”
“It's Tita. With an A. Don’t make her more masculine than she already is.”
“Right,” Connor said. “If I were to assume that you didn't discuss our meeting with anyone, not your Tita, not your mother, not anyone, I would be safe in that assumption, correct?”
“Correct.”
“So what did you tell them when you left?”
“That I got called back up and was headed back to Leavenworth.”
“You lied?”
“With my mother, you have to lie. When boys would call my house, she made them recite Corinthians before patching them through.”
“Rough.”
“And those were just study buddies.”
Connor turned back to the window. She could see his reflection in the tint. His eyes moved back and forth as if he were reading a book superimposed on the passing fields, but she could read no emotion.
THEY WERE silent for most of the trip. The three other agents sat and stared straight-forward. They might have been sleeping under the sunglasses, but it was impossible to tell.
At one point, as they crossed into North Carolina, and the sun was high in the sky—yet the driver kept the air-conditioning blasting whole time—Connor turned away from the window again.
“You don’t have to sit up straight like that. Relax. Give your spine a break. Pretend we’re not here. Go ahead and take a nap if you'd like.”
“No thanks.”
The whole time, she sat at parade sit—if there were such a thing. The agents never made a sound, not so much a fart from a twist in the seat, nor an adjustment to get more comfortable.
Like them, she ignored what her body was telling her. The numbness in her buttocks traveled down her hamstrings and her toes tingled. Yet she was a Zen master and she sat there with the same poise and rigidity as if she were riding in a van full of prisoners.
A FEW HOURS LATER, they crossed into Virginia. A few hours after that, her legs now completely numb, and her neck stiff, they passed Quantico. Traffic slowed and they averaged about 30 mph as they neared Washington DC.
Soon, they pulled into a Metro station in Vienna and dropped Connor off at the kiss and ride. The three agents climbed out as well, leaving Helia alone in the back.
Before heading for the train, Connor leaned into the back door and extended a hand.
Helia shook it. His palm was dry.
“Good luck to you, Corporal Crane,” Connor said. He nodded to the driver. “Your driver’s name is Gus. He will take you the rest of the way. Gus, feel free to stop for a bite to eat at some point. Use my charge card.”
“Yes, sir,” Gus said.
“Gus will take you to your rendezvous point. There, you’ll meet Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Gates. He’ll fill you in on the operation. He's a good guy, he runs a tight ship.”
“Should I thank you?” Helia said.
A smile escaped Connor's lips. “No. We thank you. For your service and your bravery. You make the uniform proud.”
Then he closed the door, gave the window a knock, and Gus pulled away from the kiss and ride.
GUS WAS A TROOPER, a real trooper of the sedentary kind. As they crossed into Pennsylvania and drove north to Philadelphia, he had been driving for ten hours straight and counting.
Helia watched out the window as they passed the giant stone walls of the Eastern State Penitentiary, now a museum. It was a new concept in its time and she imagined its founders would roll over in their graves if they knew about the current backlash against solitary confinement.
Near the New Jersey border, Gus pulled into a tiny storefront past the Schulkyll River. The neon sign over the front entrance read Fatty's. She’d had eaten in a place like this in ages.
“You ever had an honest to God Philly cheesesteak?” Gus said. “And I’m not talkin about that Florida crap that uses Steak-ums and American cheese and pretends to be authentic.”
Helia shook her head. “I grew up around here. But I don’t want to get my uniform greasy.”
“C’mon, I’ll get you a bib.”
Reluctantly, she got out and followed him inside. They sat at the counter and she watched as the cook chopped onions and strips of meat on the sizzling grill. The place was a hole in the wall, liquid dripping from the air conditioner running overhead and eating away at the table the beside them. The place was too obscure to think that Gus didn't have some personal connection to the place. He seemed friendly enough, as if he had relaxed a bit once the other agents were gone. He was a little overweight and there was a general softness in his eyes that she hadn't seen in Connor.
Maybe, she thought, he’d be willing to answer a few questions.
“You make this trip often?”
The cook put their cheesesteaks down in front of them. They were in a little red plastic basket lined with wax paper. There was a little pool of grease at the bottom and onions and mushrooms were spilling out. Gus ate the spillage with a plastic fork.
“I’ve made it a few times,” he said.
“All the way from Florida?”
Gus took a giant bite from his cheesesteak and his eyes rolled back in ecstasy. “Oh this is fantastic. Go ahead and try the Cherry Coke. Best Coke on the East Coast. And that's no hyperbole.”
She sipped at her soda. “You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”
“I’d tell you if I knew,” Gus sa
id. “I’m just the driver. They keep me in the dark, same as you.”
FOR THE REST of the trip, she was more comfortable sitting up front. Dusk was falling by the time they passed New York City. Darkness landed along the road and coupled with the tinted windows, dark on dark, it was near impossible to see past the guard rail.
Every now and then she caught a glimpse of the passing signs as their headlights flashed over them, but the van never slowed and Gus never let up the pace.
The glowing digits in the dashboard soon read midnight. They crossed into Massachusetts and drove through a small town with Gothic churches, small shops, and large cemeteries.
Outside the window, under lampposts that looked like they burned gas and belonged in Victorian London instead of Salem, they saw a Gothic iron gate with a sign that read Salem Cemetery.
Gus drove straight through town, down a hill, and stopped the vehicle for only the third time since she had boarded—once at Fatty’s and the two other times to fill the gas tank—and she wondered if they weren't hauling a larger gas tank then the normal civilian version of the vehicle.
Past the windshield, the moon lit a series of undulating peaks. They flattened and rose and fell with sparkles. They were at the water’s edge. A wharf.
Gus opened his door, slid out, groaned as he stretched, and then rounded the front of the van and opened the door for her. A cool, salty breeze came off the water, a nice break from the air conditioner.
“I want your honest opinion," Gus said.
Helia braced herself. “Of what?”
“The cheesesteak. Was it not the best you’ve ever had?”
God, he was still hung up on that. She faked a smile. She couldn't imagine going to school, working her tail off, finally passing security clearances and getting an exciting government job, only to find yourself spending all day driving, your eyes stale from the air conditioning. It was the very definition of cushy.