I looked inside the envelope for a letter of explanation, something that might express sincere regret for shortchanging the city’s hardest workers. At the very least, they should have promised to pay back wages in the near future. That would have been a decent way to do it. Naturally, the envelope was devoid of any explanation.
One of my young code monkeys kicked over a filing cabinet to get everyone’s attention. He jumped up on a chair and exploded with primordial screams. “We’re not fucking slaves! We have rights! We won’t work for free! We won’t let this injustice stand!” A sea of agitated workers surrounded the fervent ringleader and hailed him as a savior. Immediately, the mob thrust their clenched fists in the air to the rhythm of hostile voices and angry rhetoric. They lashed out at Jack Fish Eyes and city hall politicians. Their chant was concise and succinct: “Kill Jack! Kill Jack!” Demands to do just that roared down the line. Several lines of rowdies rushed downstairs to accomplish their war-mongering task.
I hated Jack, too, but I wasn’t going to stay here and try to fix things. Let Jack sack the city; I was now an unemployed observer.
As I readied myself to depart, I witnessed gangs of men lifting up heavy desks and running towards the big office windows, using cheap furniture as battering rams to break thick-paned windows. Crashing through the glass, the falling desks became makeshift weapons intended to crush advancing soldiers on the ground. One participant became so carried away that he hopped on top of one desk and rode it down to his untimely demise. Now that was dedication to a falling cause.
I backed up against a wall, trying to avoid being caught up in the frenzied commotion. All I could think was that the madness was spreading with the super-speed of a flaming virus.
Meanwhile, others had somehow found sledgehammers and pounded sheetrock walls as if such wounds would collapse the building. Next to the hammerheads stood a firebug who set a stack of cardboard boxes on fire. She magically transformed a hairspray can into a flamethrower. She began to chase after the staff woman who had distributed the bad checks. In a puff of smoke, the targeted woman burst into flames, stumbled, and writhed in pain. I grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall, pulled the pin, pointed the nozzle, and sprayed her with cooling foam. I dropped the canister and directed Brian to help the woman. Brian and another man dutifully followed my instructions. At this point, I decided it was the right time to retreat to a safer loony bin. I was out of here.
As I quickly reached the stairwell’s handrail, several explosions violently rocked the building. It felt like a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. I bolted back to the open window frame. Peering down three stories, I could see thongs of National Guardsmen troops attacking yellow-garbed firefighters, hazmat-clad first responders, and our building. Backed by a column of tanks and artillery, the guardsmen fired several cannon rounds at us. Next, they turned their firepower on the firefighters, who quickly retaliated with high-powered water hoses. Dozens of local police officers arrived and took up positions behind red fire trucks and squad cars, firing shotguns and pistols at the advancing military. They were attacking each other like fanatical lunatics who must have been drenched with barrels of testosterone and LSD. I surmised that the firefighters and police had also discovered a few missing zeros in their paychecks.
“We can escape out the back door!” I shouted to my remaining people. They stared back at me with a vacant expression. I suddenly realized they were wondering if I was behind their salary cuts.
“Forget him,” somebody shouted. “Old Fish Eyes signed these puny checks. Let’s get him!”
“He’s a dead man!” Brian growled.
Again, like a caring Moses, I gestured with my waving hand to go down the back stairwell. “Everybody, this way out to safety! We must leave now!”
Naturally, everybody ignored me. I felt like an impotent bystander without any skills to command respect in the workplace.
“Let’s join the firemen and fight for our rights!” one disheveled woman hollered as the others cheered her on.
I confronted the woman. “Fight with what?”
The lady pulled out a pair of rusty scissors from the front of her dress. “I’m going to carve up those sons of bitches! I will gouge their eyes out! Every single one.”
And I would have thought that my people were mild-manner professionals with bright futures. Now they had converted into ragtag anarchists willing to become cannon fodder for a dead-end mission.
“I’m going to get Old Fish-Eyes,” a muscular Samoan woman shrieked with delight. She whipped out a long letter opener and shoved it in front of my face. “When I’m done with him, they’ll call him One-Eye Jack.”
I watched in disbelief as everyone searched for the best and most deadly weapons among office supplies and equipment. It was nuts. Were they going to combat tanks with rulers, telephone books, mousepads, and floppy disks?
In the search for heavier weapons, several men grabbed computers, ripped the wires out of the wall, and heaved them through the breezy window frames at the invading troops below. One suddenly leaped out, holding a large computer monitor as if he was going to do a cannonball belly flop in a pool. He was aiming for a group of soldiers below and dropped like a human bomb. I had to congratulate him. He actually hit the target. Wow.
Understandably, the troops and tanks below were unamused by my people’s antics. They turned their turret sights and gun barrels at our building and prepared another round of gunfire.
“Get out!” I shouted. “They’re going to shoot!” Again, nobody listened. They acted like mindless zombies. If they did not evacuate the premises soon, they would be zombies. Of course, I suppose that was redundant since zombies were already dead. Anyway, I was not going to wait around to see it. I fled down the back stairwell.
Chapter 20
We arrived at the airport just before midnight and parked a short distance from the main entrance. We sat in our vehicle and waited for the right moment. Tommy discovered that the graveyard shift would kick in at midnight, and from then until dawn, only one guard would be on duty. Meanwhile, Sarah prepared for an acting job that could easily terminate her brief thespian career. Although the only patron to see her dramatic talent would be a young National Guard grunt.
“Don’t be overly melodramatic,” I instructed her. “Just be natural.” I thought Rant would have done a better job, but she said it was demeaning.
“Relax. I once acted in a high school play.”
“A play?” I was flabbergasted. “You were in a play?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” Sarah gloated as she applied a generous glob of ruby lipstick over her lips. “I was one of the leading characters in It’s a Bird... It’s a Plane... It’s Superman.
“Do you mean you played Lois Lane?” I almost choked on the thought.
Sarah nodded. “Good guess. I enjoyed the part, but it was too much work. I hated remembering all of the lines. But some people gave me kudos for my singing.”
“I always wanted to be on stage,” I confessed. “Except I was simply too shy. I once attended an audition for Lion of the West. I had practiced the part of Davy Crockett hundreds of times. Just before they called me up, I sneaked out of the dressing room. Not real smart.”
“No.” Sarah took hold of my hand. “Nothing worse than sabotaging one›s own dreams.”
“I just wanted to play Davy.”
“You still might have a chance,” Sarah grinned.
I moved closer to her passenger seat. “You know, if we get out of this quagmire, we should…”
“Let’s not start making promises,” Sarah stopped me in mid-sentence. “Because if we don’t get out, we’ll be pretty disappointed. Right?”
I moved back and nodded. “Sure.”
“Listen,” Sarah said softly, noticing my disappointment. “When this nightmare is over, we should do something more with our lives.”
“I know. Breathing and eating don’t constitute real living.”
“Yeah. Zombies don’t have much of a life either, do they?
” Sarah pulled a bottle of whiskey from a bag on the floor and twisted it open.
“True,” I agreed and glanced at my wristwatch. It was almost midnight. I looked her in the eyes and felt an intimacy that I had not felt in a long time. It was like being part of a secret shared only with one’s closest friend.
Sarah dropped her lipstick back into her small purse, reached over, and held my hand. She fluttered her long eyelashes and flung her arm around my neck. She spoke in a steady voice, “We do this together. You and me until the end.”
I swallowed, trying to keep my head clear. I knew what could happen. I was taking this danger more lightly than she was. I was the schmuck who was letting her risk her life. I kept seeing a haunting image of Sarah’s lifeless body staring up at me, eyed wide open and half her brain gone. It should be me. I finally turned away and glanced down at my watch. “I believe it’s showtime.”
Sarah nodded with a slight frown. “I’m ready.”
I opened my Chevy truck door, slid out of the driver’s seat, and landed on the dark pavement. Sarah moved over and took control of the steering wheel.
I gave her the thumbs-up signal. “Break a leg.”
She radiated a confident smile. “Hey, I’ll knock his socks off.”
As I softly closed the vehicle’s door, Sarah took a deep swig of whiskey, tore strips down the front of her sexy outfit, and ruffed up her hair. Next, she splashed whiskey generously across the front of my cab, drenching my nice upholstery. Normally, I would have gone ballistic, except I knew my precious truck had to be sacrificed to our urgent needs. Naturally, I was going to abandon my work vehicle just after I mailed in my last payment. Nothing was ever fair in this world.
I faced Lenny. He wore a generic military camouflage outfit that probably came from West Germany. In quick fashion, he slathered his face with black greasepaint. He resembled a US combat soldier except that he had a red star pinned on his black beret, something probably leftover from the old Soviet days. I pointed to a bus bench and kiosk on the sidewalk. “That’s your spot over there.”
Lenny nodded and quickly jumped out of the truck. He scurried across the road, landed in some dead landscaping, and crawled toward the entrance. He made a mad dash for the bus bench and scuttled under it. I could see that he definitely had extensive military training.
I ordered everyone else out of the truck. We hit the ground and crawled alongside the road. Tommy pulled a pair of black binoculars from his knapsack, but the right lens was cracked. Another piece of junk from the dumpster.
We watched closely as one replacement arrived at the gatehouse, and two guards departed. That improved our odds. There was now only one inexperienced sentry with an M16 guarding the entrance. He was no match for my Sarah.
I tapped Tommy’s shoulder and pointed to a spot close to the front gate. He gestured with approval, dashed across the road, and blended in with surroundings. Rant stared at me while keeping her hand on her hidden Glock. She was backup, just in case things went wrong. As for Big Al, he spent his time moaning about crawling in the gravel and dirt. Apparently, our nocturnal activities were ruining his Neiman Marcus designer pants. What a total schmuck.
I lifted my head up a little and waved to Sarah. She started the engine, turned on the headlights, and roared off in my truck. She drove erratically, swerving back and forth across the double yellow line, almost striking a fire hydrant. Near the entrance, she stopped, revved up the engine, and with screeching wheels took off at the guard booth as if that were her intended target. Almost sideswiping the booth, she jammed on the brakes and honked the horn wildly.
“Service!” She slurred. “I want shervish!”
The guard responded slowly. He looked over his wire-frame glasses with a sour expression. He opened his glass door and peered at the shouting woman.
“I’ll take two cheesy burgers and some French. Fries I mean.” She giggled.
“The airport is closed, madam,” the young guard shouted, cautiously approaching the vehicle, gripping the handle of his sidearm.
“Aren’t you going to take my order?” She took a hearty gulp from her whiskey bottle.
“No, madam.”
“Boy, this is lousy service! I’m going to report you to the manager.”
The guard gave a wry smile and shook his head. He shined his flashlight inside the vehicle and searched for anyone in the back. “You need to turn around, lady. The airport is closed to the public.”
“Good! Add a coke to it. But hold the ice. You always put too much ice in and cheat me on the drink.”
“You know that I could arrest you for drinking and driving.”
“I bet you won’t, honey. You know why?”
The guard grinned.
“Because I’m so damn good-looking. Right?” With a seductive glint in her eyes, Sarah flaunted her body in slutty position, as if she was going to lift her skirt.
The guard started to open the driver’s door. “I think you need to come with me. You’ll thank me in the morning.”
“Yeah, I bet I will, Cutie!” Sarah leaned toward the guard; her breast barely contained by her torn blouse. “How about right now?” She grabbed his hand and did something very ingenious with her fingers. She placed the guard’s hand on her naked breast. His face exploded in a sea of immense pleasure, eager to try out the other one. Sarah was going to get the top grade for seducing a stranger in less than a minute.
Actually, as I watched her kinky foreplay turn hotter and wetter, a sense of envy surged through my veins. She was definitely overacting her part. She was only supposed to distract him for a few moments, not indulge in gutter sex. I felt more than a trace of jealousy. None of this was in her script. She was improvising, coming up with her own material. If only she had been this spontaneous when it came to sexual adventures in my bed.
“She’s really enjoying the part,” Rant chuckled.
I turned to Rant. “She’s just doing her job.”
Rant grinned, “Yeah, more like a blow job.”
“It’s just a little impromptu skit,” I said, trying to ignore Rant’s innuendo and hold my emotions in check.
“If you say so,” Rant teased.
I turned my attention back to Sarah. As the guard prepared to lower his pants zipper, Lenny rushed in for the kill. He looped a rope around the sentry’s neck and stuffed a rag into the man’s face. Within a few seconds, the struggling sentry collapsed to the ground.
“Let’s go!” I yelled at everyone. We ran across the street to Lenny and his prized captive. Tommy was already standing next to Lenny ready to assist him.
“Tape him,” I ordered. Actually, I wanted first to kick him in the nuts and rip out his eyeballs, but Tommy prevented me from doing that. He immediately knelt next to the fallen guard and pulled out an old roll of psychedelic colored tape from his pocket. He slapped a strip across the guard’s mouth. Next, he taped his hands together and dragged him behind the booth. Rant followed along and checked to see if he was still breathing. She looked up and gave the thumbs-up.
Within seconds, everybody leaped into my truck and raced to Hangar 12. It was on the far side of the main runway, separated by several dilapidated warehouses. We found the hangar locked, as expected. I turned to Tommy. He was our tool man and boasted that he had every manufactured implement known to mankind. The only problem was he could never find an unbroken tool at the appropriate time.
“I hope this works,” Tommy said as he whipped out a large rusty bolt cutter. “Like, man I have a stack of these. Most of them work. Found this one in a dumpster.”
“In the dumpster?” I glared at Tommy.
“Yeah, all the good stuff comes from my dumpster diving.”
“Don’t tell me about this crap, just cut it,” I almost shouted.
Tommy clamped the jaws of the cutters around lock’s shackle and squeezed as hard as he could. Nothing happened. He repeated it and bore down on the steel lock with my assistance.
“What’s taking so long?” Rant
butted in. “My grandmother could have done it by now.”
“Just wait,” I said. “Everything takes time.”
“We don’t have much of that,” Lenny said, trying to get some attention from our little band of stymied burglars.
Tommy squeezed and squeezed the red handles and finally snapped off the lock. “See, it was the right one.”
I shook my head in disgust. There were just too many variables to go wrong. We had no idea if we had the right hangar. Nick had a habit of forgetting numbers, turning them around or reversing them.
We swung the door wide open, hoping that our luck would hold. Shining our flashlights into the gloomy darkness, we saw our prize. There, in the middle of our hazy beams of light, among tightly packed crates and boxes, stood an older twin-engine Piper PA-31 Navajo in almost-mint condition. It was beautiful, painted in bright blue and red, just waiting to be taken for a short jaunt to another land far, far away. I almost wanted to kiss the oil-stained cement and sing Hallelujah.
“I hope it has fuel.” I glanced at Lenny. He had been unable to locate any extra aviation fuel.
“Can’t we find a better way?” Lenny asked, looking apprehensive.
It was rumored that Lenny had a fear of flying. Well, it was too late to back out now.
“Our Russian planes not too…” Lenny’s lip trembled slightly. Not good. Often suka. How you say? ‘bitch?’”
“This is good quality—American-made.” I tried to comfort him. “It will work fine unless someone shoots us down,” I joked.
“That could happen, no?”
“Not likely,” I tried to assure Lenny. “Now help Rant load the parachutes and suitcases.” It was an empty order. Rant had almost completed her task to load up the plane. I could always count on her.
As for Tommy, he was not only unreliable, but also almost paralyzed with sorrow. He had to leave behind many of his dearest friends. There was only room for three banana boxes, and he was forced to leave many behind. His pain was excruciating. In a mad rush, he started to sort through the boxes. With loving care, he cradled an oily VW piston like a newborn baby while throwing away a handful of nuts and bolts with his other hand. Tears flowed from his red, swollen eyes.
We Are Them Page 22