"Have you seen a young boy?" said Rynard. "He's my son, and he's... well, he's been a very naughty boy."
The driver, whose name was Irving, eyed Rynard suspiciously. Irving, the garbageman, had been named for Washington Irving by his mother who'd felt he had poet's eyes. As a young man, Irving had tried to live up to his mama's aspirations, but soon found it hard to make poetry pay the bills. He learned that few believed that a six-foot-four black man from the projects could be interested in anything poetic that wasn't rap. So, Irving had found work instead as a security guard, a mover, and now a 'waste removal engineer'. Still, his notebook full of poems sat below the dash, ready for use in case inspiration struck. During lunch breaks Irving would recite the poems to his coworkers. On more than one occasion, he had brought them to tears. After Irving's death the poems would be found and published in The New York Times under the title Too Beautiful for Words. As a result, Irving would eventually go on to posthumous fame. Eventually being sometime next week. Now, as he sat peering over the wide truck steering wheel, Irving's poet eyes told him not to trust the man standing before him. There was nothing he could put his finger on, but his sensitive soul told him that something was off. Despite Rynard Gruber's relaxed stance, the Colonel could not hide his powerful, spring-loaded physique or multitude of scars on his shoulders, neck and chin. He looks like the god of war carved from a block of ice, thought the garbageman poet, and where Ares went, Phobos, Deimos and Enyo were sure to follow. "Nope," said Irving, "and I wouldn't tell you if I did, cuz it looks like you're fixin' to do him harm."
"What?" said Rynard, who appeared hurt by the accusation. "Not at all!"
"Uh huh," said Irving. He exchanged glances with his fellow garbage men who grimaced at Rynard accordingly. Even at six-foot-two, Rynard Gruber was dwarfed by the men. He was also twenty years older, as evidenced by his almost entirely grey buzz cut hair. It never occurred to the three garbagemen to be afraid of him.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Rynard with a sigh of resignation, "and I'm sorry to make such a terrible mess."
Irving glanced about. "What mess?"
"This one." In a single swift motion, Rynard drew his pistol, fired three shots and returned the weapon to his shoulder holster. The Mauser, fitted with a custom-built silencer, ensured the executions were soundless. The speed meant that, even were witnesses present, they would not be sure of what they'd seen. Irving was thrown back in his seat, left to ponder the sky with dead poet eyes. His two coworkers stood a moment, mouths agape, brains obliterated, before collapsing to the ground one at a time. Rynard waved his hand and Jan jogged forward. On the other side of the truck Johann, Elias, and another mercenary, named Rupert, approached. As they walked, they scanned nearby windows for anyone unlucky enough to have seen what had happened. They had all been ready to help had the Colonel needed it. They knew he would not. One of the garbagemen moaned. Rynard stared, dumbfounded. How could he still be alive? After a moment, the man's eyes blinked.
"God damn it!" swore Rynard.
"He'll die in a moment," said Jan.
"It doesn't matter. It needs to be instant. If we don't stick to the rules then they're all just meaningless deaths. Now, I'm back at zero." Frustrated, Rynard emptied his pistol magazine into the garbageman's body, causing it to convulse before lying still.
"Still, twenty-three is a new record..." said Elias.
"Don't try to make me feel better," snapped Rynard. "It should be twenty-four. Scheiße!"
Rynard approached a cluster of steel garbage cans stacked against the wall. It was the only possible place for the boy to hide in the entire alley. The Colonel gave them a hard kick and sent them clattering over. Nothing. Rynard glanced up and down the narrow lane. For a moment, he was puzzled. No, he realized, it was not the only place. Rynard calmly pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket and extracted a Villiger cigarillo. He then struck a match against the iron frame of the garbage truck and neatly lit the tiny cigar. Across Rynard's neck ran a long purple scar from an old machete wound that had never fully healed. As he inhaled, smoke seeped disturbingly from the seam. In spite of his mantra of clean living, the Colonel allowed himself this. "Some men smoke after sex, I smoke after homicide," he'd say, "It's really my only vice." Rynard leaned casually against the garbage truck's rear loader. "Not a very good hiding place, Alex. You know this, ja? It puts you in a... what's the word? A compromised position."
Alex's blood froze. Still, he did not move. He had completely covered himself with trash in the hope that somehow they would not think to look inside the truck itself.
"Do you know what this does?" asked Rynard. Alex opened a single exposed eye. The Colonel was waving his cigarillo at a bright red button on the tailgate frame. "You see this button?" Rynard paused to take a drag. "Well, it triggers the trash compactor. The one inside the truck, I mean. Do you know what happens to little boys who are hiding inside when this happens? Hmm? They turn into even littler boys. The kind I can take back home to Germany as carry-on luggage."
Alex's heart sank. "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to come out."
"What if I refuse?"
"Haven't I made that clear? Either you come out voluntarily now, or I scrape you out later—with a spoon."
Alex started to stand up.
"Wait," said the Colonel. "First, I want you to tell me something. I want you to tell me where you put the item you listed on eBay."
Despite his terror, Alex realized this was the only bargaining chip he had left. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No? Okay, my mistake. Jan, I guess we got the wrong boy."
"How sad," said Jan with a grin.
"Terribly sorry for the mix up, Alex. But not as sorry as you, ja? I mean, you must be crushed." With that the Colonel slapped the red button. The hydraulic pistons jolted to life and slowly the massive steel packer panel began to rise. Alex rolled backwards into the hopper with a shriek.
"Are you crazy?" Alex screamed as he tried to scramble up through the shifting trash. He found himself grabbing fistfuls of wet coffee grounds and cardboard.
"Maybe a little."
Alex reached up to grip the lip of the closing compactor's jaw. "Help me!"
The Colonel took a casual drag on his cigarillo, then said calmly, "No Alex, you help me."
Unstoppable pressure crushed Alex from below. Through the closing metal maw, he saw the Colonel's ice water eyes studying the sky impassively, as if hoping to spot a passing bird. Alex felt himself being swallowed alive. He watched as the metal teeth slowly moved to close. In seconds, his fingers would be severed, but he could not bring himself to let go. He screamed, "Okay! Okay!"
"Where is it?"
"I mailed it!"
"Where?"
"Somewhere in Washington!"
"When?"
"Today!" Alex screamed. He felt steel clamp down on his skull.
Then, it stopped.
The hydraulic press reversed and slowly, mercifully, the compactor opened once more. Squashed pieces of debris dropped from the ceiling of the unit. Alex lay flat, panting, heart pounding. Powerful hands gripped his shirt and dragged him out of the garbage. He landed hard on the asphalt, covered in wet orange peels and eggs. The mercenaries stood over him. One of them chuckled. Rynard wiped his hands with a white handkerchief.
"You're going to let him live?" asked Rupert in German.
"For now."
"What's next?" asked Elias.
"Load in the others and crush them. It will slow the police."
"And then?"
"Then?" Rynard took a final drag on his cigarillo before tossing it into the back of the truck. "Then, we go pick up the mail."
Chapter 7
"No one takes the time to write letters anymore."
– T. Kaczynski
The woods seemed less dangerous by day, but no less impenetrable. Charlie Draper sat in the back of the black SUV as it rolled along the forest road. He studied photographs of
the crime scene on his iPad. A pile of papers and packages of physical evidence sat on the seat beside him. He had to work quickly as it was only a matter of time before the inevitable carsickness set in. Charlie had never been able to read in a moving vehicle, and it was long enough drive to the airport even without feeling queasy. The images on the screen could create a sickness all their own. The body of Claire Graham, splayed on the carpet, brown hair matted with blood. The body of the unidentified boy, head turned, mouth open, gawking at eternity. Charlie felt that edge of panic he always felt when there was no obvious next step in an investigation and the clock was ticking. He had never felt good at his job. He'd done well, and been promoted up to the level of director. Still, Charlie felt as if at, some point, he'd be found out as the fraud he was, a boy pretending to be a man. "Promoted beyond his level of competence," he could hear his father say. His father had made Charlie feel as if he'd been promoted past his level of competence since graduating kindergarten. Charlie had promised himself that he would be a better father than that. Of course, his father's child hadn't died, so there was that.
Charlie felt the pang of sickness at the back of his throat. He'd learned not to fight it. Back when he had a sense of humour, he used to say, pain I can handle, but nausea makes me sick. He put the iPad down and turned his attention to the collection of ziplock bags containing evidence he'd felt worth a second look. He opened the first bag. It contained a pen and a religious pamphlet from the Pō Lights. That was probably nothing. The Pō Lights were worse than Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons combined when it came to knocking on doors. He'd found a copy of Are you the Messiah? under his own front door more than once. He looked at the next sealed bag. It contained an empty book of stamps. It was an odd thing to have taken, but he'd learned to listen when his right-brain said, "do it." Now, Charlie's left-brain tried to see if its sister hemisphere knew what it was talking about. Left-brains could be incredibly impatient with right-brains, which often seemed happy to loll about and daydream. While the left-brain worked dutifully away at a problem, doing math and checking off lists, the right-brain often seemed to respond with, "I'm sorry, what was the question again?" Worst of all, once in a while the right-brain would pop out some absurd suggestion that would turn out to be right. It was infuriating. The left-brain even tried to argue that the whole left-brain right-brain paradigm was an over simplification that was no longer seen as true in modern neuroscience, but the right-brain didn't care. It simply went on existing, in a paradoxically conceptual kind of way. Every right-brain was a left-brain's idiot savant conjoined twin. It was a discipline that not everyone could master—to relax, and let one's idiot half loose. Now, Charlie's right-brain was saying something. It didn't come up with an answer. It came up with a question. "How long do you keep a book of stamps after you've torn all the stamps out?"
"I'm sorry, sir?" asked Bill, the agent driving the car.
"Never mind. Just turn around."
"Yes, sir."
* * *
"Thank-you, Mrs. Simmons, you drive safe now."
The elderly widow smiled and waved goodbye as she turned away from the post office service counter. The Carlstown United States Post Office had served Carlstown and much of the surrounding county for over fifty years. Due to recent government cutbacks, it also now served the village of Eastbrook and what used to be Wilborough. The postal worker, Ed, nodded to the next customer in line. At the next window over, his coworker, Sheila, was weighing one of a dozen packages for Wilborough resident, Douglas Hicks. Doug, an aspiring author, was shipping out dozens of copies of his latest manuscript to prospective publishers. This was his reference book of 'asymmetrical palindromes'. He hoped it would go on to become the definitive collection of what he called 'linear linguistics'. It was certainly the only such work.
"Doug, you know you can't ship overseas without a customs form," said Sheila.
"They're just documents," he said. Doug was careful, as always, to construct his sentence as an asymmetrical palindrome.
"You still need the forms." Sheila looked at a message on her computer screen. "Network's down, Ed," she said. "Any idea why the network's down?"
"Nope." Ed smacked the side of his console with the toy gavel he kept for when he wanted to lay down the law with quarrelsome customers.
"Still down?"
"Yup."
"Better call IT, now we've tried everything."
The double front doors flew open with a powerful boot kick, shattering the inset windows and knocking a picture of the President of the United States off the adjacent wall. Colonel Rynard Gruber entered, brandishing his MP7. Fourteen heavily armed commandos rushed through the doors behind him. The men fanned out to tactical positions around the room. One of the soldiers stepped on the President's face in passing, crunching the glass under his heel. Moments prior, the soldiers had cut the phone line to the building and jammed nearby cell towers. "Everybody get down!" Gruber shouted in accented English.
Immediately, the post office customers fell to their knees, with the sole exception of Mr. Helms who was hard of hearing. "Get brown?" he asked.
Rynard grabbed the old man by his collar, threw him to the floor, and snarled, "Get down."
"Oh!" said Mr. Helms, nodding, "That does make more sense."
"Spread out, and search for the device," ordered the Colonel in staccato German.
"What?" asked Mr. Helms.
The soldiers moved towards the service counter. By this point, the postal workers had recovered from their initial shock. Sheila and Ed reached for the AK-47s each kept under the counter in a box of unsold Y2K Crisis Commemorative Stamps. While technically against Post Office policy, every working member of the Carlstown post office was heavily armed at all times. Long before the open carry practices became popular in Texas, Carlstown postal employees embraced the belief that guns, in general, were a good idea. It is a little known fact that most postal workers across the country pack heat, and many post offices are better armed than most police stations. The official motto of the Postal Gun Association, was "a disarmed postal worker, is a disgruntled postal worker." Of course, this is was all kept quiet because "a few bad apples" on "a few multiple occasions" had decided to shoot up their colleagues. To some, this made the very notion of having a militarized postal service seem like a bad idea. A new proposed motto paraphrased the words of NRA President Wayne LaPierre, saying, "the only way to stop a bad postal worker with a gun, was a good postal worker with a gun." As the PGA handbook put it, "It isn't a question of if a contingent of armed soldiers attack a USPS office, it's a question of when." Now that a troop of armed European mercenaries had actually stormed the Carlstown post office, that particular scenario-based training seemed like a very good idea indeed. Feeling at once both elated and vindicated, Ed and Sheila simultaneously swung up their weapons and unleashed a barrage of bullets at the startled soldiers. Despite their kevlar vests, two mercenaries crashed to the floor amid the terrified customers; one dead, the other with multiple fractured ribs. Rynard and the remaining soldiers reflexively kicked over tables, took cover and returned fire. Armour piercing ammunition tore up the post office service desks in a storm of wood dust and shredded envelopes. Even Mr. Helms covered his ears.
"From our cold dead hands, ya damn Ruskies!" shouted Ed.
"We're German!" shouted one of the soldiers indignantly.
"Oh. Well then, from our cold dead hands, ya damn Krauts!"
In the back office, three more postal workers leapt into action, grabbing an assortment of armaments from their storage lockers and break room. Mail sorter Andy Burkowitz gleefully shoved shells into his double-barrel shotgun. "This..." he chuckled, "is why I joined the United States Postal Service!"
Andy and his colleagues kicked open the double doors connecting the sorting room to the front desk. Shielded by a pair of metal carts, they opened fire on the enemy. One of the mercenaries panicked and unloaded his clip into a cleaning closet behind the counter, exploding a case of Fabreeze a
ir freshener. The seductive scent of moonlit lavender descended over the battlefield. The air reeked of death and spring flowers. Andy laughed at the feeble attempt by the soldiers to use wooden tables as cover. Having emptied his shotgun, he turned to what he called his 'big surprise'. Andy raised a SMAW, more commonly known as a 'rocket launcher', to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, in his excitement, he failed to actually aim. As a result, the rocket flew over the soldiers' heads, shattered the front window and hit his own 2012 Chevy Cavalier in the parking lot. "God damn it!" he swore as the resulting fireball sent his front hood flying fifty-feet into the air. The shockwave a moment later blew in all the post office windows, showering everyone in the room with glass. Hmm, thought Andy, might be a good thing I missed.
* * *
Charlie heard the explosion from behind the trees, a half-a-mile away. The black SUV swerved into the post office parking lot, just as Andy Burkowitz's hood crashed down through the windshield of Mrs. Simmon's car. Mrs. Simmons was already dead. Mrs. Simmons had been shot in the back of the head by Rynard after confirming for him that this was the only post office for miles. Consequently, she was unconcerned as a sheet of automotive steel, built right there in Michigan, severed her and her seat in half. "Jesus Christ," said Charlie.
Charlie was not alone. He arrived with the two other SUVs full of armed agents he'd ordered to rendezvous with him en route. Since domestic law enforcement was beyond the CIA's mandate, Charlie had also contacted the local police. Consequently, there were two police cruisers already in the parking lot waiting for them. The officers had arrived only moments before and had not even time to take stock of the situation before the errant RPG had obliterated all common sense from their brains. Officially, the police were there to make any arrests. Charlie, however, had decided he was damned if he was going to have his men unarmed given what he'd seen at the Graham house. The four policemen stared blankly at Charlie as if awaiting an explanation. "Get down!" he ordered.
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