The Program tr-2

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Tim stood slightly stooped, panting, as they unhurriedly fanned out around him. Randall's shirt bulged at the belt buckle. Stanley John and Henderson wore Sig Sauers in right-side hip holsters, Winona a. 32 cal and a salacious grin.

  "Funny," Stanley John said without a smile, "we were just leaving the ranch, too."

  "And we happened upon you," Randall said.

  Slowly, deliberately, they drew near, a lasso contracting – they wanted to take him alive.

  Randall all but blotted out the gaping door of the van. He tugged a Dirty Harry. 44 Magnum from his belt – the same gun Doug had pulled on Tim the day before yesterday. They were almost within reach. Tim put his back to Winona, the weakest threat and least likely first assailant, keeping Randall directly in front of him.

  Chad's lack of weapon betrayed him as the takedown lead; he shifted his weight from leg to leg, then dropped one foot back in a boxer's stance. Tim's head swiveled to keep the four men in view. Randall clutched his gun at waist level, pointed at Tim's feet. His compact frame rippling with energy, Stanley John held his hands loose in a chopping style that announced martial-arts training.

  Tim willed time to slow, and it obeyed him. In his peripheral, he picked up the flutter of Stanley John's nostrils, the silver button of the holster snap just under the hammer. He sensed Winona step back, Henderson sidle to the rear position. Chad tensed through the shoulders and bladed left to protect his vitals, the final move before a charge. Randall's neck flexed, his mouth creaked open to issue the go command.

  Tim snapped his head back, cracking Henderson's cheek, his arms already moving to snatch the Sig from Stanley John's hip. His left hand popped the holster snap as the right found the grip. He fired the instant the gun cleared leather, the shot blowing through Stanley John's right hip, the recoil momentum propelling Tim's cocked elbow back into Chad's throat as Stanley John's disbelieving howl wavered high and thin. Since Chad had lost the drop, Randall wisely skipped back out of reach, gun rising to level as Tim swung the barrel, seeking the expansive target of his chest. A kick to Tim's knee from behind wobbled him – the reverse head-butt had not connected with Henderson as brutally as Tim had hoped – and the Sig drifted wide, the sights floating across a drift of asphalt and rocky roadside banks. Randall's fingers tightened on the Magnum, his face a malicious smear that Tim barely had time to register before his vision detonated into a white blaze that diminished swiftly to black.

  Halfway up the hill, Leah sensed the throb of the kettledrum, badly played by someone other than Stanley John. It found resonance in the pit of her stomach, the soles of her feet, the pulse at her nape. Janie and a huddle of Pros attended her like handmaidens, crowding her line of sight, stealing her oxygen, seeming to note her every expression.

  A seam of yellow showed between two clouds, a wink of the just-risen sun. Leah's mouth remained cottoned, though her splitting headache had subsided; her concern for Tim had allowed her only fitful sleep. From the buzz around the ranch, she'd gleaned that TD had let Tim walk away, but she knew better than to trust anything.

  When she entered the Growth Hall, she returned TD's cryptic grin from the stage, then broke free from the others, standing to the side, steeled with some inner conviction.

  Her teeth stayed clenched, her neck firm.

  The drum continued with cardiac regularity. The lights dimmed. TD began his Orae.

  Her arms crossed, Leah watched him pace as one hour dragged into the next. A band of sweat glittered across her brow. She swayed once, twice, then sank down to the floor.

  Her shoulders slumped.

  Her eyes glazed.

  Chapter forty-five

  Sunday passed in slow motion. Since Dray didn't have a shift to take her mind off the clock, she tried to keep busy, plodding out a five-mile run in the morning, painting the garage door, logging some trigger time at the range, even going to McLane's with Mac and Fowler and pretending not to be bored as they ranked the asses of the Dixie Chicks between gulps of Rolling Rock. When pressed, she cast the tiebreaker for Martie.

  At night she couldn't even manage to recline; she sat in bed cross-legged, paperback bent open on her knee, watching the stubborn goddamn clock make like a snail on bennies. By dawn she could have powered the house's major appliances with the hum running through her body.

  She called Bear for the umpteenth time. He picked up on a half ring.

  "Anything new on the pickup?"

  "Denley and Palton just did another drive-by. It's still bedded down." His voice sounded troubled. "The key was sticking out of the lock, like someone beat a hasty retreat. And Palton, uh…"

  Her hand tightened around the phone. "What?"

  "Palton spotted some blood on the ground. Near the car. Look, I shouldn't have even told you -"

  Heat rushed into her face. "The fuck you shouldn't have."

  "Could be raccoon meets fender, all we know."

  "The raccoon put the key in the lock, too?"

  "They called in CSI. It's still showering up there. The blood washed away before the van got up the hill. The criminalists lifted a thumb spread off the key, though – the oils on the underside held through the moisture. They'll scan it as soon as they get back to the lab."

  Dray reached for the Beretta, her hand closing on the comforting grip. "Let's go in."

  "We've been here before, Dray. And you're always the one to say the procedures don't apply selectively. Even if we could prove it was his blood, it was on public property. And if it wasn't his, it doesn't establish probable cause with respect to the ranch -"

  "God damn it." She took a few deep breaths.

  "We're covering every angle. Tannino's working the DA and the bench, Denley and Palton are sweeping the area, Thomas and Freed are here with me combing the files. Guerrera was ready to go Rambo -Tannino threw him up in an observation post just to get him to shut up. He's got eyes on the ranch's front gate – business as usual. It goes without saying, everyone's taking it personally." Bear kept his voice light, but his shaky sigh betrayed his apprehension. "I'm sure Tim's gonna pop up somewhere safe and sound and laugh at this circus."

  She didn't want to ask, but the words came out anyway. "How much blood was there?"

  The painful pause reminded her of the condolence calls they'd received in the wake of Ginny's death.

  "A lot," Bear said.

  They beat him to awaken him. They beat him to move him. They beat him with fists and rubber hoses. When they briefly left him, they propped a speaker against the wall to blare discordant sounds at irregular intervals – deafening hisses like static, screeches like rakes on chalk-boards. They kept on in shifts at first. Randall asked the questions, maintaining a low, calm voice even as he mopped crimson from his knuckles with a crusty throw rag. At this point they were careful not to break anything – this would be a marathon, not a sprint.

  They needed to leave plenty of room for escalation.

  The butt of Randall's gun had left Tim's right eye swollen shut. His clothes were torn, Will's watch smashed but still clinging to his wrist. Tim withdrew into himself as he'd been taught during SERE training – three summer months slapping mosquitoes in North Carolina heat, his instructor's West Point-ring-fortified knuckles pounding into him the four dire arts: Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape.

  He started by reconstructing his and Dray's house, room by room, drawer by drawer. Itemizing the detachable heads to the spiral screwdriver in the second tray of his toolbox, he heard himself grunt and moan and yell, but he was pleased to note that he did not unmask Leah.

  Randall was by far the most skilled, though Henderson surprised Tim, applying pressure to the tracheal cartilage, the brachial plexus, the hypoglossal nerve, all the while preserving a detached, scientific focus that Tim was impressed a failed podiatrist could muster. Chad had little stomach for violence; he rarely put his weight behind his punches and winced at impact. The only true break Tim got was when Winona took point on the action; he'd laughed the first time she hit him. Rand
all had stepped in to provide tutelage, demonstrating for her on Tim's ribs, and that had stopped his laughter pretty quickly.

  When Tim's visitors drifted through the thick metal door, he caught a glimpse of the hall outside, Stanley John lying against a stack of empty wooden pallets, hands pressed to his shattered pelvis. The door's sucking back to the jamb severed Stanley John's howls abruptly. Someone, presumably the good doctor, had dressed his wounds, but he was sure to bleed out soon enough. At one point, when Tim feigned passing out, he was party to a hushed conversation between Randall and Henderson weighing the risks of a hospital trip. Whatever they decided, Stanley John's bandages grew soggy and his screams continued, growing ragged until Randall began urging him to be a man.

  From what Tim could glean, he was in a janitor's room in the back of a commercial building. Like the walls, the floor was concrete, so cold he thought his bare skin would stick to it when he moved.

  When they left him long enough for the blood streaming from his forehead to clot, he began groping on the floor, pressing his fingers along the dark seams of the room. He found a broken segment of the Cartier's case and began scratching at the wall with the protruding lug. His fingers ached. An inch-high pyramid of concrete dust formed on the ground near his elbow, though he barely made an indentation.

  Randall entered, crossed his arms, and laughed darkly. "That wall's a foot thick and reinforced with steel. Keep scraping."

  Tim felt Randall's hands close around his ankles. He was dragged away from the wall, laid out for Henderson, who watched from behind round spectacles, rubbing his soft hands.

  When Chad pushed in through the door, Stanley John's hysteria rose to crescendo. He was pleading to be taken to an emergency room.

  Exasperation showed in Randall's scowl. "Can't you get him to shut up?"

  "He's in a lot of pain," Chad said.

  Winona ruffled Tim's hair, her long nails scratching scalp. "Our boy Tommy here's in a lot of pain, you don't hear him impersonating a howler monkey."

  Randall wrapped a rag around his bruised knuckles and stepped forward. "Give it time."

  As Henderson calmly worked Tim's vital points, Randall interspersed questions with the pain.

  "You came for Shanna, didn't you? You knew each other before? Is Leah involved with you? You were looking for financial records?"

  When Tim emerged from the unlit tunnel of his thoughts, his eyes found Randall's, and he slurred through a swollen lip, "I'm going to kill you."

  Something in Tim's voice made Randall blanch. He wiped the sweat from his forehead – it hadn't been there a moment ago – and continued.

  At first Tim's captors had snickered and joked, but as the hours passed, they grew exhausted. The break times between sessions grew longer, leaving Tim more time to work at the wall with the ground-down watch lug, wincing through the sporadic blasts of noise.

  Randall returned and appraised Tim's meager headway, amused. "How's the progress?"

  When Tim didn't respond, he bound Tim's ankles and propped him in a chair. Chad bent back Tim's arms, pressing his wrists together so Winona could straddle his lap as she worked. She spent some time on his face, a stone-heavy costume ring augmenting her punches. Her eyes gleamed; her red mouth glittered. She was enjoying herself.

  Randall began a soft repetition of the same questions. "Who are you?" His teeth clicked as they waited through the silence. "LAPD? FBI? What were you after?" A flash of anger stiffened his body, and he shouldered Winona aside, wanting at Tim – "Open your fucking hole and speak."

  Tim barely had time to dip his head so Randall's fist would connect with his hard crown. Randall stormed out, Chad and Henderson trailing, Winona wearing a healthy flush and panting from the exertion. As he shoved out through the door, Randall grimaced at Stanley John's shrieking. Tim saw him reach for the. 44 on the table. The door swung shut, and a crack echoed off the concrete walls, cutting short Stanley John's last whimper.

  Some raised voices – Randall and Henderson having it out.

  Tim strained, making out little more than mumbles.

  Randall's voice briefly rose into audibility. "…getting out of hand. I say we cut our losses. You two get the body in the van…"

  Tim tilted forward, falling from the chair. He pressed his ear to the floor. Henderson's and Winona's voices faded into the distance. A few seconds later, Tim thought he sensed the rumble of the van's engine turning over. He fought the rope from around his ankles, dragged himself to the wall, and continued his tedious etching with the watch lug, freeing a scattering of dust and a few thumbnail-size chips.

  Finally he rested, the floor a slab of ice beneath his cheek. He worked off his shoe, rolled off his sock. He prepared, and he waited. When the speaker screeched again, Tim yanked the wire from the back panel, cutting the sound short.

  A few seconds later, Randall's enormous frame blotted out the rectangular throw of light from the doorway.

  The door creaked shut. Randall took a few steps and squatted, spinning the frayed end of the stereo wire between a blunt finger and thumb. His eyes shifted to Tim. He rose.

  Tim shrank from his advance. As Randall drew near, a slash of a grin bulging his underbite, Tim sprang up, grip tightening around the end of his blood-soaked sock, the fist of powdered concrete pulling hard and dense in the toe. He twisted hard like a fastballer, pain screaming through his hips, his torso, his arm, aiming for the fragile part of the skull at the temple. Randall jerked a half step back, a surge of fright seizing his features like a hiccup.

  The makeshift sap missed Randall's blind-flailing arm and struck the side of his head with a dull pop, caving it in.

  Randall's bowels released with a gurgle. His knees gave, and he toppled over, the sock wedged inside the neat oval of missing skull.

  Tim frisked him but found no weapon. He staggered to the door and peered through the tiny square of glass at the top. His face a fishy gray, Chad mopped Stanley John's juices around on the slick floor, making little headway.

  Tim gently tried the knob. Locked.

  To buy some time, he let out a few groans, as if he were still being tortured.

  A scouring of Randall's pockets turned up a driver's license. Light-headed, Tim made his way back to the door and started working the lock, but the license was too wide for Tim to get a good angle.

  Chad looked up and let out a garbled cry.

  Tim began bending Randall's license back and forth lengthwise. "Let me out."

  Chad was quivering. "Where's Randall?"

  His tongue felt like an anvil. "Turn on the light and see."

  Resting the heel of his hand on his pistol, Chad inched forward. His fingers found the switch and flicked it on. Tim stepped aside to provide a good view, and Chad let out a gasp.

  His voice rose to a desperate whine. "You're gonna be in deep shit when Dr. Henderson gets back."

  Tim managed to rip the license in half along the seam. "I won't lay a finger on you. I'll just walk out of here. You can say it was Randall's fault. That he came in and left the door unlocked. He certainly won't mind."

  "You're out of your mind. Like I'd let you out now."

  "If I stay here, you'll regret it."

  "Yeah, right. Sure." Chad's chest shook with a few sobs that he hid under a nervous stutter of a laugh. "What are you gonna do?"

  Tim turned his head slowly, eyebrows raised, indicating Randall's body.

  Chad's face convulsed as if he'd bitten into something sour.

  Tim slid the halved license beneath the latch bolt and shoved the door open.

  Chad yelped and drew back against the wall, the Sig pointing at Tim's head though Tim was a good ten feet away and could barely stay on his feet.

  No exterior doors in view. The only window had been blacked out.

  Tim heard Winona's voice before he saw her. "Chad, Dr. Henderson says if there's gonna be two bodies, we should prepare them inside before -"

  She rounded the corner, nearly colliding with Tim. Her eyes bare
ly had time to flutter wide with alarm when Tim struck her above the ear with the side of his closed fist.

  She glided weightlessly a few feet before collapsing to the floor.

  Tim faced Chad across her body. The gun shook in Chad's hand.

  Winona stirred and coughed up a mouthful of vomit on Chad's shoes. Broken blood vessels squirmed through her right cheek like crimson maggots.

  "If you call out," Tim said, "I'll come back and kill you."

  He left Chad frozen and hobbled down the hall, his bare foot slapping linoleum. A window looked out on Randall's van, still parked tight to the building beside a sporty Lexus – Tim's ears had betrayed him. Displeased and slightly panicked, Henderson was aborting Plan A, tugging Stanley John's stiff body back out of the van. It landed on the asphalt with a thump.

  Searching for an exit, Tim slid past the window and banged through two swinging doors, leaving bloody handprints on the metal plates. The sound boomed back from the distant reaches of a massive warehouse.

  He wiped the run of blood from his eyes and halted, shocked. Rising vertiginously from a bedrock of pallets were colossal pillars of videotapes, DVDs, and CD-ROMs, all sporting TD's close-up and a jagged advertisement bubble proclaiming, Your Free Program Software!

  A virtual army of tape sessions awaiting deployment.

  Tim took a few shaky steps into the product labyrinth, disoriented by the surrounding sameness. He registered a flutter of footsteps at the doors, then a shout. More voices answered; all three were on the prowl now.

  Tim dashed between two forklifts and down a lane of DVDs, trying to source the voices. He followed a forced turn and came up against a wall of videotapes, TD's portrait leering at him in mosaic from beneath endless cellophane wrappers.

  An engine revved sharply, then tires chirped against concrete. Truck forks punched through the rise of VHS cassettes, bringing them raining down on Tim.

  He was buried instantly.