The Stickmen

by Edward Lee

  “I know it sounds incredible, sir, but it’s true. A former Army field operative named John Sanders is under orders to kill Danny—and me too—and he’s out there, somewhere, right now. Sir, you’ve got to let me in, let me explain. If you call your security people on me, then they’ll toss me in the base jail, and then it’ll be too late. Sanders is coming for Danny tonight, and he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way, including you and your wife.”

  Vander’s eyes leveled on Garrett. “Come inside.”

  I’m in, Garrett realized, not quite believing it. But that was the easy part, now that he thought about it. Everything had happened so fast, every consequence compounding. Now Garrett was standing right in the middle of his “plan,” and he didn’t have a clue as to what to do next.

  It’s sink or swim time, he reminded himself. You better be right.

  “I don’t know what any of this is about,” Vander said sternly, closing the front. “I’ll give you five minutes to explain, and if you can’t do that to my satisfaction, then your ass is in my stockade door—”

  But Vander’s words stopped as if guillotined, because after he’d closed the door and turned back around—

  Garrett was pointing his gun in Vander’s face.

  “I should’ve known this was bullshit,” the general said.

  “Yeah?” Garrett countered. “You? The king of bullshit?” Now it was time to play his card. “I know damn well you’re not General Anthony Vander. You’re John Sanders, a government murderer. Oh, and nice shooting in the woods today. You killed the wrong guy, didn’t you, Mr. Big Bad Sniper?”

  “You’re absolutely out of your mind! I’m the commanding officer of this post!”

  “Oh, really? Then who’s the S-2 of the intelligence battalion?”

  “Which one? The 2/37th or the 1/81st, you asshole!”

  Garrett paused, chewed his lip in a sinking dread. “The psychiatrist that Danny’s been seeing—what’s his name?”

  “Captain William Harolds,” the man snapped, then added, “you asshole! I’m General Anthony Vander, not this-this Sanders! Now put that gun down before you get yourself into even more trouble!”

  Hmm, Garrett thought. This could be looking better. “But, of course, you would’ve seen the same files I have, including the initial abduction report that was processed by NSA after Danny began undergoing therapy. So you would already know Harolds’ name.”

  “Drop that gun right now! You don’t know what you’re doing! You’re making an idiot of yourself!”

  You know…maybe he’s right. But, still, Garrett remained convinced. “Sanders doesn’t know where the depot is—if he did, he would’ve killed me from a remote location when I was walking up to the front door. When that didn’t happen—that’s when I knew he’d—or I should say you—would have no other option but to masquerade as General Vander. Your personnel photo has long been officially deleted, so you knew there was no way I could know what you look like.”

  “You’re a nut. You’re some halfwit pinko terrorist or one of those militia morons, thinks kidnaping a general is an act of protest.” Vander stared back with a look of granite. “Well then I guess you’re just going to have to shoot me, because right now I’m calling the base MPs.”

  This, Garrett knew, was the last straw. If he calls them, he wondered, what should I do? Shit in my pants and run away, or just turn myself in?

  Garrett looked straight back at the man. “Go ahead, General. Give ’em a buzz. Shit, I’ll bet they’d be out here in less than a minute.” Garrett noticed a phone on a stand by the stairs. He depressed the intercom button and stepped back, keeping the gun trained. “Call the MPs. Right now. Tell them you’ve got a halfwit pinko terrorist in your house pointing a gun in your face.”

  Silence. Then—

  “Goddamn you, Garret,” Sander muttered.

  Garrett felt instantly showered by relief. Looks like God’s still on my side. He nudged the gun forward. “Hands in the air. I mean it.”

  “Listen, you don’t realize the—”

  BAM!

  Garrett squeezed off one round over Sander’s head. A hole socked into the ceiling, and a puff of white dust descended.

  “Hands in the air,” Garrett repeated. “I’m not fucking round here. I’ll kill you. And if you even take one step toward me and try to pull some fancy Army disarm—I’ll kill you.”

  “I don’t think you have the guts to kill, Garrett. You’re just a no-account writer with a bunch of ideals…but when it comes times to actually fight for what you believe…you go yellow. You don’t have the belly to kill anyone.”

  Garrett was no crack shot; he knew that. So he lowered his bead from Sanders’ face to his heart, the wider vital target area.

  “But,” Sanders interrupted, “I’ll accommodate you. After all, you were smart enough to pick my next move.”

  “You’re fucking-A right.”

  Sanders raised his hands.

  “Good boy, good killer,” Garrett said. “Now turn around, grab the wall, and spread ’em. If you even blink, you get a nine-millimeter enema.”

  Again, Sanders, obliged. Garrett jammed the gun to the small of Sanders’ back and immediately noticed the small weapon printing in the back pocket. He snatched it out, put it in his own pocket, then quickly patted the man down and found no other weapons.

  “All right, turn back around. And start talking. Was I right about Ubel?”

  “Yeah,” Sanders admitted through his decidedly normal looking face. If anything, he didn’t look like an assassin. “Earlier, in the woods, you were my intended target.”

  “Your contract has me on it, right?”

  “Oh, yes. I needed you dead and out of the way so I could take that punk Ubel alive. I needed him alive.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Garrett chided. “You’re the one who’s the lousy shot. Christ, I thought you were good.”

  Sanders, in spite of his predicament, seemed almost offended. “I’m probably one of top five covert snipers in the world.”

  Garrett laughed. “Yeah? Well today you couldn’t hit an elephant’s ass with

  with a bass fiddle, could you?”

  “You moved, for your goddamn cigarettes.”

  “Even bad guys have bad days, huh?” Speaking of cigarettes, I could sure as hell use one right now. “Whoever your bosses are, I hope they’re not paying you than minimum wage because, buddy, you suck. Talk about fucking up a wet job. Not only do you miss your target, you kill the only guy on the post who knows where the depot is. Get a job Jack In The Box, man. It’s hard to fuck up flipping a burger. Hey, how about a large order of those curly fries?”

  Sanders glared at him.

  “Oh, sure, you could’ve taken the chance that Danny would have some previous knowledge of the depot’s whereabouts, but that would’ve been a big chance, wouldn’t it? The aliens have been trance-channeling into his mind at will. But they’d be stupid to give him that information until the very last minute. So I was your only hope, right?”

  “Right,” Sanders admitted.

  “You knew I’d go back to Ubel’s apartment for any sensitive information he might have had there, so instead of waiting for me there and killing me, you burn the place down, essentially flushing me out to the last place I had to go. Here.”

  “Right again…”

  “And you were betting that Ubel had told me where Area November was before your lousy marksmanship blew his heart out,” Garrett rambled on. He’d come this far, against considerable odds. He at least deserved to know that he was right. “But you wanna know something, chief? He didn’t. I don’t know where the fuckin’ place is, either. The only one who’ll know is Danny—” Garrett took a half second peek at his watch—”in a couple of hours. And you know what else I’m betting on? I’m betting that you haven’t killed him yet. If you killed him, sure, you’d screw up everything that’ supposed to happen tonight. But you want more than that, don’t you?”

  Sanders sighed, uncomfor
table now from holding his hands up for so long. “I have to recover the Area November material too.”

  “Then you’d kill the kid, after he took you there.”

  “Come on, I’d never kill a kid, for God’s sake.”

  “Yeah, and John Holmes never got laid. Gimme a break. You’re caught, you’re caput. Why bother lying now?”

  “The kid’s upstairs,” Sanders informed. “He’s all right. I didn’t hurt him, I just gagged him and cuffed his hand to his bed-frame.”

  “But what about General Vander and his wife? You shoot them in the head like you did Swenson and the others?”

  Sanders smirked. “There was no reason to kill them, and they weren’t on the list. They’re upstairs too, alive. I knocked them out with amobarbital and tied them up. Don’t believe me, go check.”

  “Oh, I’m going to check, all right,” Garrett said, “and don’t worry. I know you’re planning to make a move on me. So don’t try any of that hand-to-hand hitman Chuck Norris jujitsu crap. You’re keeping your fucking hands up, and you’re walk ten feet ahead of me. Any funny business—shit, if I even think you’re going to pull a move on me—I’ll put half this clip into your spine.”

  Sanders’ glare didn’t waver.

  Garrett waved the gun. “Up the stairs, killer. Nice and slow.”

  Sanders moved out, hands still up. Garrett gave him a good lead as he followed him up the stairs.

  “Hey, tell me something. How did Danny manage to infiltrate a high-security redeposition perimeter and walk out with a bomb that weighs more than Hulk Hogan.”

  “I don’t know,” Sanders said, just ahead of him on the stairs. “Some kind of alien influence, I guess. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Danny didn’t tell you himself? You didn’t try to force it out of him?”

  “The truth? Yeah, I tried to force it out of him. I told him I’d drive a stake in his father’s chest and cut his mother’s head off if he didn’t tell me. Like I told you, I didn’t hurt the parents but I threatened to, and that’s the fastest way in the world to get a kid talking. But…it was just like you said. He didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know.”

  This didn’t surprise Garrett. Swenson had been abducted too, yet didn’t remember how. A retrograde amnesic effect—common amongst abductees. And selectively maintained communication—the headaches Swenson had told Ubel about—were brought on during some kind of trance-channel or telelalia. Maybe the aliens were even inducing telethesia—out-of-body experiences.

  Time would tell, and there wasn’t much of that left.

  “Next question,” Garrett asked. “Who do you work for?”

  Sanders actually laughed. “Don’t let that gun make you too cocky, Garrett. Guys like me, we die before we give up our contractors.”

  “It’s a rogue cell in NSA, isn’t it? Or maybe the Joint Chiefs or the DoD?”

  Sanders chuckled. “You’re floggin’ a dead horse, pal.”

  “MJ-12?”

  “Forget it. I ain’t talkin’. In The Nam, I was tortured by the NVA; these guys were hardcore interrogators, trained by the Soviets; I fully expected to die and didn’t care, ’cos it was my damn job. The thin red line, you know, like in the French Foreign Legion? If those sick communist bastards couldn’t make me talk—believe me. Neither can a non-hacking liberal skinny milquetoast computer-geek tabloid writer like you.”

  Garrett frowned long and hard, but he supposed the man had a legitimate point, and he even supposed he was asking too many questions, providing a distraction that Sanders could use to his advantage.

  But Garrett couldn’t help it.

  “Well, consider this non-hacking liberal skinny milquetoast computer-geek tabloid writer an inquiring mind who wants to know. Why’d you sell out?”

  Sanders didn’t pause one iota in his reply. “For twenty-five years I served my country like a waiter, and I never even got a nickel tip,” Sanders answered via the oldest motive in the world for treachery. “I took my skills to the highest bidder. When I was in The Nam, when I was in the French Congo and Algeria and Iran, I thought I was doing the right thing. I was wrong. I’d watch guys like Swenson get pig-shit rich and walk around with more medals on their chest than Marshall Fuckin’ Zhukof, and all I got was tortured with glass needles and restricted hazard pay, which back then was about $300 per month. If you’re gonna get fucked for that many years, kid, sooner or later you want a kiss to go along with it. And then the press schmucks like you come around and make us all look like baby-killers, and then one day it smacks home. What the fuck am I doing this for? So I turned. Yeah, I sold out. Services rendered to the highest bidder. You know what that is? It’s the American way.”

  “Sounds more like treason to me,” Garrett remarked.

  “What the hell do you know? You don’t know shit till you’re in the bush for sixty days, and shit’s growing on you, and you gotta take out a long-range target with one shot ’cos if you don’t, the Army’s gonna lose a thousand grunts in a counter-offensive. And if you miss, if you have to take two shots, you get scoped in two seconds and in less time than it takes you to scratch your crotch-rot, you’ve got 80mm mortar shells coming down on your head, and if you’re lucky—and if you’re good—you get out of there, but you’re wearing your spotter’s guts for a shirt. Then you gotta wait another week or two in the bush to get picked up. You eat snakes and millipedes and drink creek water that smells like old piss in the meantime.”

  Garrett didn’t pretend to make judgments. He hadn’t been there, hadn’t witnessed the horrors. On the other hand, though, he would not permit himself to sympathize with a remorseless murderer.

  They were on the second-floor landing now, and Garrett could see a door open just around the top of the banister. A light was on. Sander walked slowly ahead of him, then stopped. Suddenly his shoulders slumped.

  “GodDAMN!”

  Garrett carefully approached from behind. Careful, he warned himself. Perhaps this was the distraction, Sanders getting ready to make a move by surprise.

  “What is it?” Garrett asked, keeping his distance.

  “The fuckin’ kid is gone!” Sanders yelled.

  Garrett’s eyes widened. He looked into the room, around Sanders’ stance.

  Danny’s bedroom.

  A kid’s small desk, small chair, Luke Skywalker and Iron Giant posters on the wall. But Garrett didn’t really need to inspect the room to get what Sanders was saying.

  Along the bottom of the bed, he noticed one ring of a pair of handcuffs clasped to the bedframe. Half of the second ring dangled from the short links of chain.

  You gotta be shitting me…

  The hinged hasp of the second ring lay on the floor. Broken off.

  “That’s impossible!” Sanders asserted. “Those are Peerless detention-grade handcuffs! They can’t be broken!”

  “Yeah, well it looks to me like Danny broke ’em like they were plastic,” Garrett observed, and somehow—even though it confused him—it didn’t surprise him. “We’re talking about an eight-year-old kid who infiltrated an electrified security fence and broke open three of the Army’s best padlocks.”

  Sanders, for the first time, actually seemed upset, clenching his fists against the sides of his legs. “What? The fuckin’ aliens helped him? The fuckin’ aliens snuck into the house and broke him out?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but it kind of looks that way,” Garrett replied, and, indeed, it did. By now, nothing could really shock him, nothing was “impossible.” And that’s when he realized the best part of all—

  “You lose,” Garrett said. “Danny’s out of here, and I’ll bet he’s already got the ADM to the depot. He’s gonna set it off, just the aliens told him, and just like they told Swenson. The thing you’re trying to prevent is going to happen…and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Bullshit. He’s just a little kid. There’re several steps in setting off an ADM. You gotta put the whole thing together, you gotta wire it rig
ht, you gotta prime a blasting cap. A little kid can’t do that!”

  “A little kid can’t bust padlocks and break out of handcuffs, either. But he did it. There’s no other explanation. Danny’s been getting help all along. You and me? We’re both outclassed.” Garrett grinned. “But at least my name isn’t mud when all this shit is over with. You? You failed. Utterly and totally. Swenson’s vindicated, and you’re just a busted over-the-hill hitman who couldn’t successfully complete his mission.”

  Sanders nodded slowly. “Yeah, but the kid still dies, doesn’t he? When he sets off that bomb, he’ll be sitting in the middle of a five-million-degree fireball. I’ll bet that bugs the shit out of you. ’cos there’s nothing you can do about that.” .

  At once, Garrett felt trampled; Sanders was right. Whatever was supposed to happen tonight would happen. And however important that event might be, an innocent little kid was going to die.

  “Let’s make a deal,” Sanders offered. “You hit it on the head. I botched this mission big time. I’ll never work again. There’ll be a contract out on me in less than twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Garrett said. “You’ll be perfectly safe—in prison. Which is where you’re going after I turn you in. I’ve got the gun, remember? You’re a murdered. Murderers belong in the slam.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Sanders came back. “Like you just said, I failed. I’m a marked man but I still have the contacts to get out of the country. Let me go, and I give you a million bucks in about twelve hours.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s probably about how long it’ll take us to drive to the airport and fly to the Cayman Islands. I’ve got a numbered account there under an encrypted name. Let’s go. Don’t be stupid. Be rich.”

  Garrett guttered laughter. “I can’t take a gun on a plane. The second I lose this gun, you’ll kill me with your bare hands.”

  “Trust me,” Sanders said through the thinnest smile. “I’m not quite the bad guy you think I am. I’ll cut you in if you let me go.”

  “I’d rather suck the Devil’s dick than make a deal with you,” Garrett eloquently replied.