Thin Gray Lines

by Mark Hazard

  “Well?” Jorge asked. “How do you feel?”

  Chito sniffed a few more times. “Better. Hit me again.”

  Jorge gave him another snort then dipped a finger into the hole he’d made and took a snort for himself. “Now I am ready to actualize.”

  They each took one of the thick handle straps and grunted as they hefted the bag off the ground. They struggled to keep it from dragging on the furrows of overturned earth.

  Randall took a look at the pilot who snorted and grunted and rolled around, but still couldn’t get off his back, and skipped toward the thieves.

  “What will you do with it?”

  They didn’t answer.

  “Will you drive to Mexico? Do they check for drugs both ways?”

  “I don’t know,” Jorge said. “Shut up.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Chito grunted. “But you have to go. You can’t be seen with us.”

  Randall watched Chito and Jorge walk away, boldly changing their lives despite the risk, despite not knowing the path ahead. He felt the proverbial fence he was sitting on splitting him deeper and deeper.

  “There’s more.” Randall barked out.

  Jorge and Chito looked back over their shoulders, now just faint outlines in the dark.

  “Que?”

  The bag hit the ground.

  “What did you say?”

  Randall wished he could take it back the instant he said it, but more words tumbled out.

  “There’s more money. Big stacks of it.”

  The two cousins exchanged a look.

  “Where?” Jorge asked.

  Randall tried not to answer. He balled his fist and hit himself in the leg. “It’s in the DC somewhere. We can find it.”

  “How much?”

  “Millions. Enough to justify the risk.”

  With Randall’s help, they got the bag to Jorge’s truck, but struggled to lift it into the tailgate.

  “You’re in this up to your tits, now,” Randall said to himself, as he put a shoulder under the bag and heaved it into the bed.

  Jorge slapped the cargo and smiled. “Where we go?”

  “You both understand Arlo will kill us?”

  “We are dead just for this.” Jorge gestured to the bag. “I can’t be more dead. Come on, African gringo. Let’s steal some real money.”

  Randall took a big breath. “Bring the crowbar.”

  They marched over to the distribution center and found the bay doors locked. The side door was locked too.

  “I can’t believe this,” Randall said, bathed in the white light above the door.

  “Use the crowbar,” Chito said excitedly, dancing from side-to-side.

  Randall took it from Jorge and stuck the straight claw into the crack near the door handle and pried but couldn’t get it in far enough to disturb the latch. “We need a hammer. Go to the tractor barn. Run!”

  Chito took off and returned with a short-handled mallet, grinning. Randall tapped at the end of the crowbar like a chisel.

  “You have to do it harder,” Jorge said.

  “I don’t want to make noise.”

  Randall had to keep hitting the bar harder, though, until he was banging full force, making a racket, but he finally punched through the latch, and the door popped open.

  Jorge gave a congratulatory laugh and clapped Randall on the back, then led the way into the dark.

  “I can’t see for shit,” Jorge whispered. “Chito, go get a light.”

  Chito took off like a shot again and returned moments later.

  With the flashlight, Jorge found his way into the DC.

  “This place is bigger than I imagined.”

  “I think it’s in one of the control rooms,” Randall said.

  They searched until they found the sleek metal panel in the floor. The first door came up with a simple pull on an inset ring.

  “That’s a real door.” Jorge knelt beside it. “Let’s do this.”

  Randall knelt and jammed the claw into the seam of the hatch with no penetration, then tried up nearer the lock. He readied the hammer. “It’s going to echo. Chito, close the door.”

  Randall banged away for over a minute. With the door, he’d felt the crowbar driving in bit-by-bit, but he wasn’t making any progress with the hatch.

  “It looks like the door falls down, not up,” Jorge said. “Give it to me.” He took the mallet and began banging near the keyhole.

  “It’s making dents,” Chito said. “That’s it.”

  But even under repeated blows, it was only giving slightly.

  “This is going to take forever,” Chito said. “Is it just me, or is time moving really slow.”

  Sweat flew from Jorge’s brow as he hammered thunderously at the door. As it slowly caved in, a hair’s breadth of space opened up in the seam by the lock. Randall pried at it, putting all his weight into it.

  Crack.

  The hatch popped open just as Jorge struck downward. The mallet flew out of his hand and disappeared into the open space, rattling off metal and concrete before thudding into the bottom.

  Jorge shook his hand out where he’d smacked it against the edge of the door. Chito shined the light inside, illuminating the ladder fixed to the shaft.

  “We did it! We did it!” Jorge said in a high pitch. He reached for the top rung of the ladder and pulled himself in feet first, hopping down on one foot. When he reached the bottom, Chito dropped the light to him. Jorge limped out of view, taking the light beam with him.

  When he hollered, even Randall smiled.

  Jorge reappeared at the bottom of the shaft, holding a blue brick of cash under one arm and swinging the light on it.

  “Look at this big thing.”

  He tried to hurl it up, but it couldn’t get all the way up to Randall’s outstretched hands.

  “My arms are dead,” Jorge said.

  Randall came down and got a look at the secret room, more of a bunker than a basement. He couldn’t help a bit of a tour, finally seeing the answers to the questions he’d never let himself ask.

  Jorge whistled to get his attention. Randall returned to the business at hand and tried to throw the same brick up, but it was devilishly heavy. It glanced off a rung of the ladder and off the bottom of the hatch. Randall had to jump out of the way to avoid getting brained.

  “Easier just to climb I think.” Randal held it under one arm, careful to advance his hand up the ladder only when he had his balance. He pushed the brick through the hatch, and Chito pulled it aside one-handed.

  After three trips up the ladder, Randall grew weary. His throat had gone bone dry, and the adrenaline was wearing thin. With every exertion, his conscious mind was telling him to stop, that there was still time to turn back. Another part of his mind told him that if he stopped he was a dead man, and that won out.

  After moving ten bricks, he estimated he had thirty left to go, and that it would take him at least twenty minutes to get them all up if his stamina held.

  Jorge climbed up the ladder, hopping with one foot and stopped, blocking the way.

  Randall was about to complain when he realized what Jorge was doing. He tossed the brick up and Jorge caught it. He couldn’t climb with his hurt knee, but from a higher perch, he still had the strength to toss it cleanly through the hatchway.

  Randall let out a half-crazed laugh.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Olive didn’t often have dreams about real estate, but when she did, they were always bad. This one was of the repetitive sort, the same scenario playing out over and over inside a single dream. She was inside a house she was showing. Someone was knocking on the door, but she couldn’t open it to let them in. She couldn’t make the sale even when it was inches away.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Olive woke with a start, leaning over the side of her childhood bed and staring at the floorboards. Again, she heard the pounding. She looked in the direction of the sound, blinking until certain she was awake.

  Olive met her mother in
the hallway as the woman was wrapping a large shawl around her nightgown.

  “Who could that be? It’s the back door?”

  Olive wasn’t accustomed to hearing her mother speak with alarm. She didn’t have an answer.

  Her mother said, “Wait here,” and disappeared back into the master bedroom. Reappearing in the hallway, she said, “Turn on the light. I can hardly see without my glasses.”

  Olive hit the switch.

  Her mother was cradling a pump-action shotgun, trying to load in a shell. “Your father taught me how to do this, but it’s been some time.” She fed three red shells into it and chambered one with a pump.

  Iris stepped through the big kitchen and parted the curtain on the back door’s window with the muzzle.

  “Please, help,” a man said. “Help!”

  Iris shied away, and the curtain fell back over his face.

  Olive yelped. “Who was that?”

  “I have no idea,” Iris said.

  The man knocked on the glass again. “Please. Thieves! They’ve stolen the cargo.”

  “Thieves?” Iris growled. She parted the curtain again. “Stand back. I’m armed. Stand back!”

  The man backed up to the porch steps, and Iris nodded for Olive to open the door.

  Iris shouldered the gun and stepped over the threshold, looking quickly to either side. “You alone?”

  “Yes,” the slender man said.

  “Who are you? What thieves?”

  “I’m the pilot.” He pointed upward. “I do the drops.”

  Iris lowered the gun and looked out into the dark farmland to the south. Olive did too, seeing nothing but a dim light where there shouldn’t have been one.

  “What do you mean, pilot?” Olive asked, but her mother ignored her.

  “What happened?” Iris demanded.

  “Please, can I have some water?” The pilot slumped down on the steps, turning his back against the post. “I’ve been concussed. I had to crawl from the plane.”

  “Did you crash?” Iris asked.

  “No. I landed. Two beacons. Both. I…” The pilot lolled his head and went out.

  Iris pivoted. “Go smack him awake.”

  “I don’t think I should smack a man with a concussion.”

  “Just do it.”

  Olive stepped out in bare feet and tapped the man’s cheek, then jostled his shoulder. He opened his eyes wide, then squinted, trying to focus. “I need water.”

  Olive ran to fetch it and held the glass to his lips. His fingers were cold around hers and very dirty.

  After he drank down the glass, he said, “Thank you. Thank you so much. Are you Princess?”

  “That’s me.” Iris glowered, still holding the shotgun at the ready.

  Olive looked from one to the other, not understanding.

  “Two men,” the pilot said. “Workers here. They set out the drop beacon. Same time, your man with the accent put out the distress beacon. When I saw both, I called in and they told me to land and get the story. After I did, the thieves accosted me.”

  “Where are they?” Iris asked.

  “Long gone, I’d guess.”

  “Randall was out there?” Olive asked. “Where is he now?”

  The pilot didn’t know.

  Iris perked up. “Do you hear that?”

  Olive listened, trying to hear over the beating of her heart.

  Tank. Tank. Tank. Echoing in the distance.

  Olive shook her head, pretending she didn’t hear anything.

  “It’s coming from the…” Iris gazed east, then her eyes went wide. “It’s coming from the DC.”

  The fifty-eight-year-old woman dove off the steps in her slippers and with short, choppy strides, ran off into the dark.

  Randall had tossed Jorge ten more bricks, when all of a sudden Chito dove through the hatch and reached for the ladder with his good hand.

  At first, Randall thought he’d fallen, then the blast of a shotgun rang out above.

  Chito held the ladder just enough to arrest his fall. He crashed off of Jorge and somehow landed on his feet.

  “You thieving sons of bitches!” a woman’s voice called.

  Randall instantly recognized the accent and the enraged tone with buttock-clenching dread.

  “Oh, God!”

  Looking up at the hatch, Jorge’s eyes filled with terror. He threw himself from the ladder toward Randall, as another shot rang out. Directed down into the concrete bunker, it sounded more like a bomb. Shot ricocheted off ladder rungs and concrete, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, pelting into metal racks and plastic bins.

  Randall dove behind the remaining pile of cash bricks.

  Boom.

  Bricks by his head lurched as they were hit with shot spraying off the concrete floor.

  Jorge yelped.

  Randall bunched up into as small a target as possible, cringing against the potential for fresh agony, but no more shots came.

  He heaved for breath as he unclenched and took a peek at the bottom of the entry shaft.

  “Randall!” Iris called. “Randall are you down there?”

  He froze.

  “Randall, if you’re down there, then you deserve what happens next.”

  A loud clang sounded at the top of the shaft. Randall ran over to see the top cover had closed over the hatch. Then he heard scraping and banging, as if something heavy were being dragged into the control room.

  “No, no, no.” Randal whipped up the ladder and punched the hatch open.

  Iris was tugging a pallet jack into the small room one-handed, but it was too wide to roll through the door. She let it go and pointed the shotgun at his face.

  “You back-stabbing rat.” She bared her teeth. “Get back down there or I’ll blast the head off your shoulders.”

  Randall bobbed, indecisive, once again with no good options. If he tried to climb out, she’d plug him, but if he went back down, he’d be locked away, possibly for good.

  Shaking from head to toe, he eased back down the hatchway and let the metal door drop down over him.

  “You’ll see what’s coming now,” Iris said. “You aren’t going to like what happens next.”

  The pallet jack rattled as Iris wrestled it into position over the hatch. Her angered muttering grew muffled, then went silent.

  Randall pressed the hatch, which didn’t budge, then climbed down the ladder, heart pounding, eyes hot. He stared at the still considerable riches piled on the floor and the impenetrable concrete walls. Like a pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, had been entombed with his wealth.

  He sat heavily on a few million dollars.

  “I think that’s done it.”

  Jorge got to his feet inspecting the angry red bites where the shotgun pellets had ricocheted into him. Many of them were just welts. Some popped out like little steel pimples.

  Randall lay back on the uneven layer of bricks and lolled his head, staring upside down at a rack of safety equipment: aprons, safety goggles, and other supplies.

  Tears flowed back over his forehead and into his hair. He wondered how many hours he had on earth, and if God had condemned him to die for his sins. Hopeless as he was, he committed the time he had remaining to beseech God in prayer, not for his life, but for his soul.

  “Onse Vader wat in die hemele is, laat u Naam geheilig word.

  Laat u koninkryk kom. Laat u wil geskied,

  Soos in die hemel net so ook op die aarde.

  Gee ons vandag ons daaglikse brood—”

  “Hey man, why you cry?”

  Randall opened his eyes to see Jorge standing over him.

  Again, Jorge said in English, “Why you cry?”

  Randall wiped his eyes. “For my sins.”

  Jorge looked to Chito for the translation, then said, “Why cry now? You can cry in hell.”

  Randall blinked away tears.

  “Come on. Let’s find a way out of here.”

  Randall sat up and looked around to make sure he and Jorge were seeing
the same situation. “Jorge, no hay puertas. No hay ventanas.”

  Jorge climbed the ladder and tried to push the hatch open but with no luck. He slid down using only his hands to arrest his fall, and took Randall’s cell phone, but it had no reception.

  “Shit. Shit!” Finally feeling as trapped as Randall did, Jorge started hitting things and pushed over the rack of supplies. Randall rolled to his feet to avoid the fallout.

  Chito hyperventilated, scratching at the walls. “I can’t breathe. The oxygen, it’s running out.”

  “We won’t die from lack of oxygen,” Randall said. “Look.” He pointed to the six small vents around the room, each one about the size of an envelope. Jorge ran to fetch the mallet he’d used to bash in the door and took it to one of the metal grates, easily mangling it and parting it from the wall.

  But the duct behind it was not even a foot wide and only five inches tall.

  Jorge cursed as he bashed at the edges of the duct in an attempt to widen it, chipping concrete away but making no real difference.

  “That hole is five meters below the surface,” Chito said.

  Jorge dropped the mallet, clutched his head and yelled, “I’m not dying in a hole in the ground in Washington.”

  Randall sat back down heavily, head in his hands.

  Jorge paced up and down the bunker, sweat running down his forehead. “This is a test. Yes. I will ask myself what Tony Robbins would do if he was stuck in a drug bunker. Think. There’s an answer to every problem.”

  “I don’t think Tony Robbins knows shit about this,” Chito said.

  “Yes, he does.” Jorge spun and leveled a finger. “He knows how to solve any problem. He would say to think bigger than the problem, bigger than this bunker.”

  “You insane asshole. You can’t think your way through concrete!” Chito stood to block Jorge’s pacing, but the bigger man brushed him aside easily.

  “You can’t whine your way through it either!” Jorge tore open a brick and pulled stacks of hundred dollar bills out.

  “What are you doing?” Chito asked. “There’s no place to spend it. We can’t take it with us to hell.”

  “No,” Jorge agreed. “You know so much? You know more than Tony Robbins? You say we’re stuck? Fine.” He brandished a wad of cash. “But I can die knowing what it’s like to wipe my ass with hundred-dollar bills.”