Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by David Shafer

  She squinted up at him. So beautiful. So close.

  “Oh. They were amazing. Something about my dad driving his hospital bed around an apple orchard. But then I was driving it instead, and it was a boat instead of a bed, and my mother was throwing baby rabbits at me from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  Nope. Still a mystery.

  Mark caught up with them, huffing, sweating. He smelled like he’d just rolled in a bonfire. “You know where we’re going?” he asked them both.

  “No idea,” said Leo. Through the open door of the barn ahead of them, he could see Roman slipping a bridle over Little Nell’s head. Then he saw another man in the barn. But who? Trip and Constance were behind them. “Stay here a sec, you guys,” he said. He slipped up to the barn door and peeked in. He came back.

  “Who’s the other guy?” Leila asked.

  “I dunno. Some guy. Maybe our ride out. There’s also a Thing in there.”

  “What kind of a thing, Leo?” asked Mark, with strained patience.

  “A Thing. You know. Like a buggy.”

  “A Volkswagen Thing?” said Mark.

  Constance rolled up behind them, pushing a wheelbarrow full of laptops.

  “Where are we going, Constance?” asked Leila.

  “Mark’s going to the coast, quickly. The rest of us are going to Seven Ranch, in Enterprise.”

  “Is that my ride in there?” asked Mark. Constance nodded.

  The man stepped out of the barn. Leila craned her neck and squinted at him.

  “He’s one of us?” asked Leo.

  “He may be. But he’s also a government agent, and he hasn’t been tested,” said Constance.

  “That’s no good,” said Leila.

  With a nod, Constance confirmed it was sub-ideal. “But we need him right now. He backs up what Mark told us, that our SineCo asset has been playing us. But he has real assets, inside Pope’s shop. Double agents.”

  “Triple, if you think about it,” said Leo.

  “He’s got someone on that boat. Someone you’ll need, Mark, when you get there.”

  “So I’m supposed to ride down the mountain, alone, with an untested government agent?” said Mark. “I thought you people had rules.”

  Chapter 35

  Leila went intently toward the barn. There was something about that man. When she walked in, yellow light spilled from an overhead fixture. Her eyes took a moment to adjust. Roman was putting panniers on the pony. The new man was checking under the hood of a car. It was one of those faceted VW buggies from the seventies, faded orange. When he turned and nodded at her, she knew exactly who he was. It was Ned. The one who’d first turned her onto Ding-Dong.com. In Mandalay, he’d looked like a doughy, slightly-too-large-headed guy. That cologne he’d worn to their meeting. Here in the barn, he was handsome and strong-jawed.

  The others came in behind her. Mark and Leo flanked her like lieutenants. “Lola Montes, this is Inspector Ned Swain,” said Constance. “Of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service—”

  Leila cut her off. “Yeah, I know Swain,” she said. “He lied to me.”

  “You know this guy, Leila?” said Leo, stepping up beside her.

  “Sorry about that, Leila,” said Ned Swain.

  “It’s Lola,” she said evenly.

  “Swain represents the last of the uncorrupted U.S. intelligence apparatus,” said Constance. “He’s the one who says we need to evacuate.”

  “Don’t those guys guard mailboxes?” asked Mark.

  “That’s the Postal Police,” Ned answered. “I work for the Postal Inspection Service.” He closed the hood of the silly car. “America’s oldest intelligence agency. Born before the Republic. Ben Franklin’s shop, originally.”

  “Swain’s been trying to find us for a while,” said Constance. “He followed you in, Lola. You’re why we have to leave here. And this has been my home for five years.”

  Leila nodded to say sorry.

  “He was probably running that Committee team that was trying to find you, but actually he must have been trying to keep them from finding you.”

  Ned nodded proudly. “I also had to really find and follow you, using only postal resources,” he said, addressing Leila. “Tricky. We had you in Heathrow, but we lost you there, picked you up in LA, and then followed you to Portland. I had the bad guys lose you at that gas station but then I lost you on the bridge.”

  “Then how’d you find us here?” queried Leo.

  “We spotted an anomalous satellite cross-feed at nine thirteen last night. Pot farmers can’t do that.”

  “How’d you get here so fast? You drive?” asked Mark, pointing to the Thing.

  “He parachuted out of a drone half an hour ago,” said Constance. “He came to warn us. And he came alone.”

  “Yeah,” said Ned. “You guys could have made me into plant food.”

  “Make him take the eye test,” said Leila.

  “Not at this time,” said Ned.

  “It’s okay, Lola,” said Constance. “There are extenuating circumstances. Roman and I waived the eye test. We invoked the common-cause clause.”

  “You wouldn’t want to overuse that clause,” said Mark. The three of them were still standing together, a united front.

  “Look,” said Ned. “We both want to save America from a clutch of greedy dukes, right? That’s our common cause.”

  “I’m not really in this for America,” said Leila.

  “Do we still have to call it America after we save it?” asked Leo.

  Swain was caught off guard by Leo’s question. “We’ll have to table that point, Crane. There’s no time now. The Postal Inspection Service isn’t the only shop that can locate people. I managed to slow their feed, but if I’m here, the Bluebirds won’t be far behind. We have an hour, maybe.”

  “Your friends’ black helicopters?” said Leila.

  “They’re not my friends and they’re not helicopters. They’re called Kestrels and you won’t see them coming.”

  “He’s right,” said Constance. “We have to move. Right now.” She started loading laptops from her wheelbarrow into the pony panniers. She was losing her cool, moving too fast.

  Trip Hazards staggered into the barn, his eyes wide and white and bloodshot in his soot-blackened face. A corner of his heavy coat was still smoldering. He hacked and spit and hunkered down on his knees.

  Constance ran to him. “Tom, are you okay?” She held him and batted at his smoldering coat.

  “I’m high as fuck. But yeah.”

  “You destroyed everything?”

  “All but the latest cultivars,” said Trip, lifting proudly a bouquet of novophylum wrapped in a big cone of soggy paper.

  His smoky entrance had dumped a bunch of haste and urgency into the barn. Leo moved to load laptops onto the pony. Mark went to the silly car.

  Leila didn’t move. She needed a few more seconds. She thought of her little family behind her, and the maybe-one-day baby inside of her. Was this the best way to help them? Like on a Magic 8 Ball, the answer soon floated up. All signs point to yes. Then she heard Constance say to Trip, quietly, “Baby. Outside just now, Ticonderoga mis-pronouned. He said you people, not we. You have to verify him.”

  Chapter 36

  Mark was scoping the VW that was supposed to get him down a mountain thick with forest and then two hundred fifty miles up the Oregon coast. The seats looked like lawn chairs. The floor was bare metal. The windshield was folded down, its glass badly cracked.

  “This thing really gonna get us outta here?” he asked Ned.

  “Well, we can’t parachute up, you know?” said Ned. “But, yeah, don’t worry. I’ll get you to those coordinates. And this is no ordinary Thing, I gotta say. I think these came with those one-point-six, flat-four, air-cooled engines. This has a big-bore kit. Two-point-six, two-point-seven, maybe. Plus six inches more suspension. Bigger brakes.”

  It meant nothing to Mark. He was annoyed when men assumed shared mechanical know
ledge; he didn’t know how anything worked, or ran. But this was no Gulfstream V. Then Mark realized with disappointment that if all this went down the way it should, his private-aircraft days were over. That eye test had made him more open to the politics, but he knew that he still liked nice stuff, probably always would. The kind of stuff that there wasn’t enough of to go around. That six-burner French cast-iron stove. The wine fridge.

  He was getting into the passenger seat of the Thing when he saw Hazards coming at him quickly. Smudged as he was, and red-eyed, he looked like a demon. In a swift motion, he had the back of Mark’s neck held tight in one of his huge hands.

  “What the fuck!” Mark yelled, resisting as Hazards put his other hand on Mark’s sternum, and brought their faces close together. Mark was about to deploy the head-butt for the second time in two days, but then he felt the other man’s hand lying soft on his own heart; no threat, no danger. On the contrary, there was a sort of rise in Mark that he was not at all comfortable feeling so close to another man’s face and looming body. Hazards held Mark’s head and gaze for a long time—four syrupy seconds, maybe—and then released.

  “He’s good,” Hazards called back to Constance. “He still wants stuff. But he’s good.”

  “I’m glad we got that out of the way,” said Mark huffily; he sat down quickly in the Thing. Roman rolled open a door at the other end of the barn. Ned Swain got in the driver’s seat and started the engine, which did indeed sound more powerful than such a vehicle’s engine is supposed to sound. He handed Mark a World War I Flying Ace sort of goggled leather helmet and put one on himself. Mark donned the headgear and looked around to show Leo and Leila. Leo was putting a heavy-looking backpack on Leila. Mark whistled sharply, and they both turned. Though burdened beneath her pack, Leila gave him a real thumbs-up.

  “Be careful, Mark,” she said.

  “Go with God,” said Leo Crane.

  Chapter 37

  45°40'04.4"N 123°56'27.9"W

  Evening had fallen. The surf growled Pacifically at the dusk-dappled sand. Mark was standing on a wide and log-strewn beach in the lee of a house-size boulder. A chill breeze was coming off the sea and he had only his corduroy jacket for outerwear.

  He had been waiting for over an hour; had watched the sun drop below the sea, turning the sky orange, then vermilion, then bloodred. Was it Patel coming for him? Singh? Straw had said only I’ll send a Zodiac.

  Mark and Swain had been thirteen hours in that Thing. Swain really pushed it down the mountain and across the 5, and then back into a network of small roads through the Coast Range. A Cascadian Paris–Dakar.

  There was no conversation on the journey. The leather helmets and the roaring engine made it impossible. They’d stopped for gas twice, though, at unattended pumps in gated maintenance stations deep in the national forest. At the first one of these, both men took off their helmets and drank from a canteen.

  “It’s Tessa Bright, isn’t it?” asked Mark. “Your Bluebird asset.”

  “She’s our most valuable one, yes,” said Swain. He was running a handkerchief around his dirty neck.

  Mark had known a lesbian attorney for an evil cabal would never smoke Lucky Strikes.

  And at the second stop, leaning on the bumper of the car and wishing for a cigarette, Mark asked Swain, “So you postal guys are really the last uncorrupted law enforcement in the U.S. government?”

  “Last uncorrupted intelligence agency,” Swain clarified. “Pope hasn’t turned the Forest Service yet.” He clunked the nozzle back into the gas pump and replaced the little padlock that prevented its use.

  Mark thought he could see something on the horizon, a black mote against the deep blue. Was it coming closer? He stepped out from behind his boulder and walked nearer the lapping shore. He still couldn’t tell whether the speck was approaching. Why had this chance been offered him? To change course midlife, to earn back his friends, to strike a blow for someone other than himself. The speck resolved itself. It was an inflatable boat, a Zodiac, coming in at high speed. He could hear the whine of its engine now and see a little green light blinking on a tiny mast at its stern.

  Look, Ma. While you still can. The greater good of the world is partly dependent on my unhistoric act. You will be proud.

  The craft was a hundred feet out now, riding the swells. Mark tried to make out the driver or captain or whatever. It slowed and eased close to the shore, its engines bass and throaty. And then he saw that what he’d thought was the captain was actually just the little pilot station and steering-wheel platform. There was no one at the helm of the craft.

  His Node vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out and read its glowing screen: Board the Zodiac, Mark. Dinner awaits. James.

  If this goes wrong, he thought, I will deffo rest in an unvisited tomb.

  With each step Mark took nearer the water, the wet sand pulled with more force on his bloated shoes. He stepped out of them, rolled the cuffs of his pants, and walked into the lapping waves. Come in. The water’s fine, Lola had said. His legs went quickly numb as he waded out, the cold sending a plume of clarity up his body and into his head. His pants were soaked to midthigh by the time he was able to heave himself onto the black raft. For a moment he lay on its rigid floor, catching his breath and looking up at the first few stars in the east. The grandest mystery, strung over our heads every night. There was the North Star. And there, still faint, was the Big Dipper. The handle of the Big Dipper makes an arc, his dad had taught him long ago. Follow that arc to a star called Arcturus. Arc to Arcturus.

  RIP, Pops, he thought, for the first time without bitterness. You will be proud also. Mark would get to write his great work, but maybe only on his heart, and for an audience of one.

  He took stock. There was a tall ergonomic pilot’s chair behind the little helm, a sort of neoprene blanket or cape folded on its seat. He stood up, wrapped himself in the blanket. He had to brace himself against the seat behind him as the craft executed a one-eighty, throttled up, and pointed into the horizon. The little boat barreled into the sea, thwacking occasionally into opposing swells. After a minute, Mark looked back. America was a gray humped shape below the new night. He was calm, full of self and secrets, but now with something else as well.

  Acknowledgments

  Let’s see. There were those very early readers, Christine Monk and Layla O’Mara, both of whom said don’t stop keep going. Then there was Monica McInerney, who dashed up Arklow Street to say don’t stop keep going, and who put me on to the canny and forthright literary agent Gráinne Fox, who has led me through some strange woods. There was the dynamic duo of Miranda Driscoll and Feargal Ward, friends and co-battlers and twin pillars of The Joinery—that mad, true place in Arbour Hill. There were my other mates there, all of us just tipping away, forging in our smithies. And the Lilliputians downstairs, who kept me bright-eyed and pacing. There was David Mitchell, who told me about helmets. Thank you to the Paul and Amy Foundation, off the South Circular. They made room for us, big time. Also many thanks to the CroMara Institute on Swinemünderstrasse, and Tucker Malarkey at the Dant Conclave. And to Tom and Constance Corlafsky, and the pleasures of their place. Much is owed to N. Lowry, his friendship, and his network of East London safe houses. Katharine Johnson never doubted I could do it. Heather Watkins let me use her truck-rumbled studio and gave me a squeaky chair, sharp pencils, and snacks in ramekins. Nicole Morantz said, “See. It wasn’t for nothing.” Dharma Nicotera and Andrew Land never let me down. Patrick Abbey came through in the end. Lola Oyibo cheered me on. My co-stroller MacGregor Campbell acted as conspiracy consultant. Big ups to my crim def advisors Celia and Ben. And mad props to Edward McBride, who showed me Burma, Beirut, and the Beqaa Valley.

  At Fletcher & Company, Mink Choi boosted my spirits and prospects when she stood up early for this book and its author. Likewise, Rachel Crawford is a good woman to have in one’s corner. My editor at Mulholland Books, Joshua Kendall, saw within the early, teeming drafts of the novel what WTF
was to become. I had to trust him and I am so damn glad that I did. My sincere thanks also to Wes Miller and Garrett McGrath. And to Pamela Brown, Carrie Neill, Andy LeCount, Ben Allen, Nicole Dewey, Heather Fain, Judy Clain, and Reagan Arthur. They are the village that this book took. I owe a serious debt to all the designers at Little, Brown and the cover artist at Faceout Studio; I think they nailed it. And I thank my stars that WTF had to go through copyeditor Tracy Roe before it got to you, dear reader.

  Thanks also to Isaac Hall, from whom I learned about the examined life, the joys and perils of examination. And to Chris Hollern (RIP), who gave me this city. And to my sisters, ever behind me, and my mom and dad, who made me read and let me write.

  About the Author

  David Shafer is a graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School. He was born and raised in New York City. He has traveled widely, and has lived in Dublin and Buenos Aires. He has been a journalist, a carpenter, a taxi driver, and, briefly, a flack for an NGO. He now lives in Portland with his wife and daughter and son and dog.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Mandalay, Myanmar