by James Grady
“Don’t worry,” I said, cruising past homes where lights snapped off for the night. “We’ll think of something.”
Thirty minutes later, in the parking lot of a strip mall where the nail salon, bicycle shop and health club were closed, our Caddy sat parked beside a four-door maroon Volvo with Maryland plates and a bumper sticker for kids’ soccer. The parking lot glowed with lights from the quick stop market where Hailey bought the last four plastic wrapped things posing as sandwiches and convinced the bored cashier who never took his earphones off to let her make fresh coffee in their machine, fill white Styrofoam cups while we took turns using the dimly lit rest rooms. Our group huddled for a picnic on the hood of the stolen Volvo.
“I can’t believe this,” said Lang. “I mean, OK, the over-ride wipe outs in my computer happened. I know they did. I saw them with my own eyes. But… still…”
“You should have seen Dr. F,” said Russell, chewing his sandwich, that like mine, tasted somewhere between cardboard and catsup.
“I did,” said Lang. “I got pulled into the loop for the hunt of you guys. Saw all the… crime scene photos. Him on that fence.”
He shook his silver-haired head. His exhale was visible in the cool night air.
“CIA boss Helms, Kissinger on the NSC, and Nixon, they hid that the Agency was propelling the Chile coup from all the Deputy Directors, Congress, the press. But that was back then!”
“So were we,” said Zane.
“But nowadays, me, in the huge spy wars we got slammed with after 9/11, my job is to know what all the clowns in our circus are up to! You think that’s easy? Hell, long before it came out in the press, I had to do my own ‘spying’ to find out that the National Security Agency was breaking all sorts of post-Watergate, Big Brother privacy laws to snoop on anybody and everybody. Petty bureaucrats and blind believers on the White House National Security Council accuse me of being a spider walking on all their webs. If I hadn’t figured out how to get the Vice President and Secretary of Defense to like me, I’d be in bureaucratic solitary confinement, stuck in an isolated executive suite over in Langley. Instead, I set up the Ops compartmentalization program so it all links to me! And now… Who could hijack my system? Terrorists from al Qaeda or ghosts from Saddam’s Iraq or the Taliban? Cartels of some kind? The Russians—one of their mafiyas or whatever faction runs Moscow these days. Iran, noway, North Korea, maybe, but China doesn’t want a flap with us, so… who?”
“What if it’s an inside job?” said Cari.
“Inside us is us!” insisted Lang. “This isn’t the movies. There’s no grand secret internal conspiracy of evil. Hell, I’m a boss inside the mother organization legally designed to be a grand secret conspiracy targeting evil, and even with the best hearts and minds in America, we can barely keep track of ourselves!”
“Exactly,” said Zane, “so a renegade Op—”
“What ‘renegade’?” said Lang. “In the real world, in the rational world, there’s always some agenda. What agenda requires a renegade group when the gigantic octopus spy beast of our country already has fear and ambition on its side?”
Hailey said: “Why kill Dr. Friedman?”
Lang shook his head. “Why any of this? It doesn’t make rational sense.”
“Don’t ask us about rational sense,” said Russell. “We’re mad dogs.”
“Taking me where?” Lang waved off his own question. “I know. The bank.”
“Even stopping for gas,” said Cari, “I figure it’s only about four hours.”
“I’m tired of road tripping,” said Russell. “Let’s get to a stone certain gig.”
“Almost there,” I said, hoping that wasn’t a lie.
“Sure,” said Russell, knowing that lie or not, what I said didn’t mean good news.
“We got the cell phones to keep in touch,” said Zane. “Getting separated shouldn’t be a problem.”
“So no tight caravan?” asked Lang.
“Probably best to be spread out,” I answered. “Trying to stay tight will attract attention. If one group hits trouble, the other will get the call and be able to catch up or double back, surprise the opposition.”
“Who goes with who?” said Russell.
“I’ll take Cari in the Caddy,” I answered instantaneously. Thought, then: “We should split the sane fugitives up, a witness with credibility in each car.”
“Eric and I need to stay together,” said Hailey. “We’ll ride with you.”
“Director Lang,” said Zane. “You get to ride with the boys. And you get shotgun. Russell, you popped it, you drive it.”
“Wild!”
“What about you?” Lang asked the white-haired whacko.
“I’ll be behind you all the way.”
“I bet you will,” said Lang. “It’s cold and I’m old: can I get my coat?”
He nodded toward the Caddy’s trunk.
“Sure,” I said. Tossed him the keys. Watched him walk away from us.
Russell casually stepped to the far side of the stolen Volvo. His eyes rode Lang, and no matter what direction we faced, the silver-haired man held all of our attention. He disappeared behind the huge, rising white trunk lid of the Caddy.
“Now is when,” whispered Zane. “This is his first chance to counter-attack.”
Lang was 21 counting-down beats away from taking too long when the Caddy trunk boomed closed. He wore his Navy Pea coat, unbuttoned and hanging open to show his empty belt as he walked towards us with the Colt .45 in his hand—held by its barrel. He walked straight to Zane.
“Hold onto this,” Lang told Zane as that white-haired warrior took the pistol from a silver-haired spy. “We’ll all feel better, and if I need it, I know where you are.”
The spymaster walked through our huddle, circled the Volvo past Russell, opened the front passenger door and climbed in. Shut the door.
I said: “Let’s roll.”
53
Night riding toward the dawn of Day Nine.
“Whatever happens now,” said Hailey in the white Caddy’s back seat with Eric as we hummed over a dark highway, “all this will be over. When we show up at that bank, we walk onto Lang’s runway. We’re out of control tomorrow.”
“If we get tomorrow,” I told her.
“Tired,” whispered Eric. “Heartache.”
“I know, Baby,” said Hailey. “I know.”
She’d never called him baby or any endearment before. We’d reached some end.
Or some beginning.
My hands trembled on the steering wheel. The gauge needle reading 3⁄4 full felt like a lie. Our rush felt like we were running on fumes. The car smelled like sweat, cold coffee, old Styrofoam, gun steel, mud clumps fallen off filthy shoes. Cari rode shotgun. I narrowed my eyes at the yellow dotted blackness beyond our windshield, told myself I could smell her lilac shampoo. But it was just my imagination.
“We’ll be OK,” I said, my glance at Cari telling everyone I was talking to her. “And a lot of that is because of you, all you’ve done, how great you are to—”
“Victor, don’t.” Cari’s eyes rode the road. “I tried to bag you. Barely missed.”
Tires hummed, but I wouldn’t give up. All she had to do was see what was meant to be. Eventually. Inevitably. But I backed off, made a cliché joke that wasn’t: “Well, there’s always a chance you could get it right now.”
“Always. Never.” Cari shook her head. “Those are two of your favorite words. But they mean the same thing. You need a bigger vocabulary about certainty and time.”
“Now is won spelled backwards,” I said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I’m crazy.”
“Cari,” said Hailey, “what happens if we get something from the bank?”
“I figured that out when we we
re driving across the city,” answered the sane person in our car. “By now, there’s a burn on Lang. But also now, there’s two of us besides—with—you maniacs. Seven voices are a lot to not listen to. And Lang…
“What I saw driving through town was the Capitol dome. Glowing in the dark. My guess is that’s where we’ll push this to the next level and get out of the gunsights. Lang spent time there as a liaison between the Hill and the Agency, knows people.”
“Oh great,” I said. “Congress is crawling with people I trust.”
“Turn on TV camera lights and they’ll crawl over broken glass to get there,” said Cari. “Lot of them are fickle butterflies chasing bright lights. But there are worker bees inside that white dome. Soldier ants who get things done. More heart and guts than you think. If nothing else, on Capitol Hill we can pull people with clout onto the bull’s eye that made your doctor dead. The more people Kyle Russo needs to control and the more powerful they are, the harder it is for him to operate—and make us pay for it.”
Memory whispered through Eric: “You can’t kill everybody.”
The road rumbled. Perhaps 10 minutes in front of us rolled another stolen car with two madmen and one silver-haired spymaster.
“We’ve got time to kill,” Zane told Cari when he cell phoned her from somewhere ahead on the dark highway. Red taillights of cars not containing him and the others made occasional dots in our windshield. “We’re taking exit 32 towards Parkton. Follow, but hang back, let us find a place to coop until dawn and the bank opens.”
We were on the exit ramp when he called again.
“Go through town,” Zane said. “Take a road on the right marked with a ‘wildlife sanctuary’ sign. Follow it to ‘waterfront access parking.’ You should be here in fifteen.”
“Imagine living in a place like this,” said Cari as we cruised down a Main Street three blocks long with stores that had clung to that pavement since the Beatles. No more than a hundred homes stood behind those fronts. “You’re not at the beach. You’re not on a farm. You’re not in the city. Your town doesn’t have a real center, a heartbeat to keep it going, make it different. Everything you see around you fades every day. Strangers drive past you on Main Street on their way to the rest of the world. What do you do?”
“You turn on the TV and live in the same nowhere that a billion other people do,” I said. “Or make your own reality. Or get out. But I’m more worried about dying here than living here.”
“There’s the bank,” said Hailey.
We cruised past a tan brick box with glass windows, a trimmed lawn, a parking lot where an electronic lettered sign flashed the time: “2:37”.
“Dillinger would love that bank,” I said. “Smoked windows, easy getaway.”
We followed the road through trees until it dead-ended in a paved parking lot where, at the far end, sat the stolen Volvo. Beyond that parked car, the darkness shrouded horizon rolled with blue-black water. The front passenger door of the Volvo opened and John Lang stepped out, wrapping himself in his Navy pea coat as he replied to our guys inside the Volvo, closed the door and jogged over to direct me to park the Caddy on the other side of a lamp pole’s cone of white light.
Cari lowered her window as I killed the engine.
Lang leaned in: “Feels good to stretch.”
And he opened the door for Cari.
As she climbed out, so did I.
Hailey led Eric out of the backseat to stand by Lang. I walked towards the white beast’s swooping tail fin so I could join them on the other side of our car. Smelled the cold water, spring trees at night, garbage from a dumpster, firecracker smoke.
Cari asked Lang: “How’s Zane?”
“Hold up a sec, then you tell me.” Standing beside Cari, Lang called out: “Vic: Zane thinks that since here we’ll need an official presence, I should take charge.”
“Go ahead,” I said. Cari stared at the Volvo and the way she did that made me want to look away, look out at the dark rolling water. “You be the boss.”
As I circled around the white Caddy, Lang said: “Eric, Vic says I’m in charge, so you follow all my orders. Hold on to Hailey so she can’t run or shoot or take command.”
What? Whirl look—see:
Hailey wrapped in a bear hug by Eric.
ZAP-CRACKLE! Cari spasms crashing to the broken asphalt as—
Zing! Oww burning fire sting my left cheek, reach up pull out… a dart.
Lang stood pointing a monstrous long black finger at me.
Gun! Charge him draw—The Glock cleared my holster and my right arm swung up and the Glock flew from my suddenly limp fingers as my legs turned to rubber and my charge wobbled side to side and time/space stretched like silly putty and Lang is six feet away as my left hand swings up to grab/strike/deflect—
I flopped over my own momentum, flipped through the night—black clouds stars swirling spinning dizzy—slammed on my back, head bouncing on stones to white light.
Back, ’m back. Eyes can see. Roll in my sockets. Jaw slack, mouth open. Drool on check. Wipe… My hands, arms, legs, me: glued to parking lot asphalt.
ZAP-CRACKLE! Noise nearby.
Lang’s voice says: “Two zaps ought to do Cari, don’t you think Eric? Don’t answer. The pleas in your voice annoy me. Keep tight hold on Hailey, even now that I’ve got her gun. Like Vic said, she is not the boss. I am.”
My legs are not connected to life. My arms belong to someone else.
Shoes walked away on asphalt pavement. My eyes rolled.
Cari lay stretched out near me. She trembled like a soundless epileptic.
Volvo door opens. ZAP-CRACKLE!
Something dragged across pavement. The shape of hunched-over Lang. Gravity thumped a weight near me on the broken surface of the night. Shoes walk away.
Volvo door opens. ZAP-CRACKLE!
Something else dragging across pavement. “Shit!” says Lang. My head moved. Lang dumped Russell a yard from my open palm. Russell smelled smoky from the flash/bang grenade Lang popped in the parked Volvo. Lang used getting his coat from the Caddy to loot the weapons’ vest, grab one of the grenades, the tranquilizer gun, a stun gun with which he ‘zap-crackled’ the flash/banged Russell and Zane, and then Cari. Now Lang had given them all a second zap.
Suddenly he looms over me. Silver hair glistening in the cone of light.
Kneeling—sitting, he’s sitting on my loins—breathe, hard to breathe, can’t—
John Lang’s face. Handsome, lean, late 50’s face. Framed by the dark cloak collar of a Navy pea coat. He’s staring down at my slack jaw look. His weight flows off me. On to his knees and hands. Peering down at me. Face to face.
Closer. His face coming closer—can’t move, can’t—Is he going to kiss me?
Vampire. Closer, like he’s—
But he turned his face to the side. His eyes swept with his skull off to my left as the side of his face lowered closer, closer...
His ear suctioned to my forehead.
54
And I knew.
The press of Lang’s ear suctioned to my forehead crushed my skull on stones.
“I can’t hear the voices in your head,” Lang told me as he rose to his hands and knees and peered down at paralyzed me like a jaguar over his prey. “Are yours a chorus or a lecturer? Do they speak in sentences and paragraphs? Shout out words? Or are they more like… a vast knowing that shimmers in you?”
“Laglle-lyvpht!” Drool trickled down my cheek.
By the white Caddy, trapped in Eric’s grip, Hailey yelled: “What do you want?”
Lang stood, turned towards her. “What do any of us want?”
Eric sobbed. Held her tighter. Obeyed the command of our boss.
Finger, my left little finger twitched.
Lang told Hailey: “You want to kill me. Now shh, or Eric will feel fire
.”
“Afftha-afco.”
“Something to add, Vic?” Lang checked his watch. “About 25 more minutes before you’re functional, but that doesn’t mean you just have to lay there and be useless. Hey, make a contribut-ion.”
“Eez…’e.”
“‘Crazy?’ Is that what you’re trying to say?” He shrugged. “That’s as good a word as any. Though once you name a thing, you limit your understanding of it. Of course, understanding is over-rated. Let go of ‘why.’ Embrace… wow.”
Call Dr. F’s murder and all it triggered a mad dogs’ mess.
Not an internal, off the shelf, renegade conspiracy subverting America.
Not an external, evil doers’ attack on America.
All this was mad dogs being manipulated and mauled by one of their own.
Lang stepped over me.
Foot, my right foot twitched.
He left my field of vision. My skull rolled on the asphalt. Zane lay crumpled near the heap of Russell. Electricity expert Eric once told Group Therapy that a stun gun could neutralize a normal person for 20 minutes. Zane and Russell had been flash/banged, then zapped with a stun gun. Twice. They were down for a long count.
The tranquilizer gun’s neurotoxin glued me to the pavement. I could move my eyes, turn my head, feel twitches in one finger and one foot.
A Caddy door opened. Closed. I rolled my head that direction.
Found Lang smiling as he used the ignition key to open the Caddy’s trunk.
“Victor,” he told me as he rummaged in the trunk, “this is your fault.”
No! Not true!
Jaw, my jaw moved like I wanted but I couldn’t control my tongue.
“You were my find.” Lang tossed his Navy pea coat onto the parking lot asphalt. “I’d been a Trouble Boy in Asia, too. So I kept an eye on you as I moved up in the Agency, at the Counter-Terrorism Center, to that jumble called Homeland Security.”
He lifted the weapons vest out of the trunk: “In 1917, German submarines terrorized the East Coast. The scandal of our unpreparedness prompted the federal government to reorganize what the politicians and press called ‘a clumsy mess of secret service agencies.’ One thing we’ve always known how to do is draw absurd charts.