by Dan Darling
Tanis gave the lackey a dose of her perfect white teeth and took his elbow. “I like strawberry.”
Arm in arm with Tanis, he wobbled out on weak knees.
The Captain’s eyes remained fixed on the door after she’d gone. “That woman is either the emptiest skirt I’ve ever met, or she’s Machiavelli reborn. Either way, it would be in everybody’s best interest to expel her from the state of New Mexico.”
“I used to think that expelling people was your answer to everything. Now it seems you have other uses for people you don’t like.”
“Let’s talk in Delphi,” the Captain said. “That should be far enough away.”
“You love your Greek mythology around here.”
“Everything in this place gets named by one man.”
“This Zeus,” I said. “Am I about to meet him?”
“Neither you nor I, will ever meet him. He doesn’t see people. He communicates by directive. I’ve seen his signature. That’s as close as I’ve ever come.”
“Sounds like a guy with issues,” I said.
“No mortal climbs to the top of Mount Olympus. That place is reserved for the gods.”
“I see the blood suckers aren’t the only ones drinking crazy juice.”
The Captain glared at me. “You don’t know anything.”
We drove to Delphi in a black security Humvee topped with spotlights and a 50-caliber machine gun turret. I told the driver that black wasn’t a camouflage color in the desert. He waved a hand at his ear as if a gnat were troubling him.
Delphi’s interior was black marble and velvet couches. Picture windows lined the walls all the way around the circumference of the circular building. It had an open floor plan, partitioned into wedge-shaped conference areas and lounges by ten-foot tall screens decorated with frescos of Greek monsters. The Captain and I ended up between the Hydra with its dozen necks and Scylla the sea monster. Delphi was named for the city at the center of the ancient Greek world. A few thousand years ago, the real Delphi had housed an oracle that revealed truths. Now it was a pile of dust and old rocks, like every truth. This Delphi looked more like one of those exclusive clubs where rich people sat around drinking martinis and lying to each other.
The Captain and I sunk our bodies into overstuffed leather seats and faced each other across a low marble table paved in panes of polished steel and glass. It probably weighed as much as a small car. A man in a tuxedo served us coffee. It tasted like pure exploitation. Finger sandwiches with cucumber and raw salmon sat nearby, looking like the trappings of a different reality than I’d ever been let in on.
“Let me begin with this.” The Captain handed me a white envelope printed with my name and bearing a double helix on its upper left hand corner. It gave the unmistakable impression of housing a check.
I opened it. There was a number with some zeroes after it. It made my zoo checks look like suckers. It also made them look honest.
“A reward for a job well done and in anticipation of many more,” he said.
I slid the check back into the envelope and tossed them both on the table. “I’m not here for the finger sandwiches.”
“The value of a man is dollars and cents. That check expresses your value.”
“I feel special. Now, where’s my father? And how many pints of blood is he missing?”
The Captain snorted some air through his nostrils like a frustrated warthog. “You weren’t ready to see Sisyphus yet.”
“On the contrary, it reminded me of my favorite historical period. The Dark Ages, when torture and humiliation were embraced as good clean fun.”
“It looks barbaric to the casual observer. I admit that. But it’s all part of a regimen for the animals. It has nothing to do with the inmates―who are lawbreakers, after all.”
“Is there an article in the Constitution about bloodletting as part of a reasonable penal code? I must have missed it.”
“Illegals aren’t subject to the protections of the Constitution.”
“Oh well, if a piece of paper doesn’t say you have to treat people like human beings, then why do it? So much easier to put them in the equivalent of hamster wheels and use them to generate power. Or are you running a grist mill as a side enterprise?”
“That is all for the chupacabras. It’s part of their training.”
“I would ask what you’re training them to do,” I said, “but I’ve already been briefed.”
The Captain popped a lox sandwich into his mouth and licked every finger of his right hand as he chewed. When he’d swallowed most of it, he spoke, still inspecting his fingers. “They’re hunters. We’re training them to focus their predator instincts.”
“At last, a little honesty. It’s like honey in my ears.”
He shrugged. “Might as well be honest at this point in the game. Homeland Security hired Typhon Industries to breed animals that can sniff down an illegal immigrant. We tried dogs and rats. Even worked with pigeons. A dog will track down any human in the desert. No problem. But, they won’t chase after a person say with a specific ethnicity or who speaks a particular language. The illegals we’re after are mostly from the parts of Mexico where farming has gone bankrupt since NAFTA allowed big US agribusiness to move in. So, we needed animals that would single out Mexicans of a few distinct ethnic groups. Not New Mexican Hispanics, who’ve been living in the state for three hundred years and trace their ancestry to Spain. So, we can’t just breed and train an animal that’ll discriminate based on skin color. They need to pinpoint a specific culture of Hispanic person. That’s tough to do. Animals aren’t naturally like that.”
“So you feed them the blood of the migrants you pick up in the desert.” I said it like it was the most natural and logical thing in the world. I’d put together that Sandpaper Voice had made Rex and I scram so that Cerberus could sip blood from the prisoners. “Wouldn’t work. Blood all tastes the same, regardless of ethnicity. You can’t condition an animal to like a certain type of person’s blood if there’s no way to distinguish the taste.”
“You haven’t let me finish,” he said. “We pick them up and put the poorest ones―the ones who the Mexican government could care less about, the ones with no significant family―in a place the boss dubbed Tartarus. We feed them their traditional foods. We let them use all of the cosmetics they would use back home. We transfer them to Sisyphus, where we make them move the capstans, and we funnel the scents of them working up into the enclosures. We do this for an hour before we feed the chupacabras.”
“And then you feed them blood.”
“Fresh blood,” he said. “Straight from the spigot.”
“I’m trying not pick up my chair and use it to crush you into the carpet right now. I want you to know that it takes a lot of effort.”
“Relax. Your father’s in Elysium. It’s nice. He has sheets and eats shrimp cocktail. Somebody does his laundry for him.”
“If there’s any justice, your vampire finch snakes will escape one day and tear your liver out, night after night, for eternity.”
“They don’t go after white people unless they’re starving.”
“That’s where that bite on your arm came from,” I said. “Escaped hydras, starving in the wild.”
“Hydras have proven very adept at escape. They do not like being cooped up together.”
“They’re solitary animals. Putting them in the same cage is a form of abuse.”
“They’re not purely solitary.” The Captain wore a smug smile on his ham of a face.
“Horseflies are indifferent to each other,” I said.
“I’m not talking about horseflies.”
“You’re talking about the human part. I’ve heard that tripe. It’s impossible. You can’t take a handful of genes and toss them into an organism and expect your zebra to grow wings. It doesn’t work like that.”
“We have top secret methods, known only to the Man himself. You can’t deny that Cerberus led us straight to that pack of migrants we picked up last week.”
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br /> “I can’t deny it,” I said. “But you give any bloodhound a woman’s shirt and he’ll chase her down. That’s how the breed works.”
The Captain smiled even more smugly. “It wasn’t her shirt. We took it from one of the wetbacks after a good day’s work in Sisyphus. Cerberus wasn’t looking for a specific wetback; he was looking for any wetback.”
I picked up the check that lay on the table in front of me. I held it between my fingers, poised to rip it up and stuff the shreds into the Captain’s eye sockets.
“Of course, in doing so, we also bred them with the instincts to notice that they’re different. That they don’t fit in. That they’re freaks. And we failed to calculate that they’d fall for other, unique individuals that don’t fit. Other freaks.” He grinned at me. “You can rip up that check. Go ahead. We’ll print you a new one. You’re part of our family now. You’ve got a few thousand little brothers and sisters in Hades just dying to see you again.”
I almost did it. I almost turned it into a pile of confetti. But I got a grip on myself. I folded the envelope and slid it into my back pocket.
“That’s more like it.”
“I’m in a transition period,” I made myself say. “You’ll have to pardon my humanity getting the better of me. I’ve signed on. I’m a Minuteman.”
He shook his head. “You’re more than that. You’re key to our next operation. If you can get a hold of yourself.”
“What do I care about humans anyway?” I said. “What have they ever done for me?” I was playing a part, but the words came out pretty honestly.
“John White’s the only human you need. He values you above anyone else.”
“That’s sweet,” I said. “He sounds like a real swell guy.”
“That mission with Cerberus.” The Captain brushed it off his sleeve. “It was minuscule. It was a trial run. And unfortunately, circumstances have forced us to push forward the big show. I hope you’re ready.”
“Operation Velvet Ant.”
The Captain grunted. “I don’t think you’re ready for it, but the boss has issued instructions. So, I’m gonna talk.”
“No one’s holding your lips shut.”
“You’ve seen too much, too fast,” he said. “You’re not in a position to understand all the angles. You’ve got too much of the wrong meat in the fire. Our people―I’ll tell you straight―are Anglos. You let Hispanics see Sisyphus, and they take it wrong. You have to be eased into it. First, you see Elysium, where we keep good folks―working guys like your father. It’s nice. Two men to a cell. Decent food. Rec rooms. Exercise in a yard. TVs and whatnot. We don’t have to treat anyone nice, not if they’re illegal. They don’t have rights. But we treat ’em nice anyway. We give ’em the red carpet.”
The Captain had a restless way of talking. His eyes roved away from my eyes as he spoke. His meaty, callused hands would lift from his thighs and flex during key points he made. It was as if he searched for something to strangle and was frustrated that all he had to express himself with were words.
“You happened to see Sisyphus, a lower level. That’s for the bad guys: drug mules, petty criminals, fraudsters. They’re here costing us dollars to find, catch, and detain. We’re talking billions. Our logic is: you’re costing the American taxpayer. You should give a little something back. Typhon Industries, with our genius leader at the helm, is developing technology to track down illegals on the cheap. We’re at a crossroads: we can either invest in drones that cost a hundred million apiece, run on jet fuel, and take a network of operators, satellites, and mechanical crews to run. Or we can train a dog to sniff them down. The dog eats for next to nothing. He lives in a pen. He mates with other dogs and they have puppies that can carry on in their father’s footsteps. All for cheap. But we need a little sacrifice from these lawbreakers. Hell, you can’t even call it a sacrifice. They owe us.”
“So, you let your devils suck juice out of them.”
“It doesn’t damage them,” he said. “Not permanently.”
“Fine. You’ve been straight with me. Let me be straight with you.”
He nodded. His big bald head crinkled at the brow where his eyebrows met. His meaty palms lay half-clenched on his big thighs.
“First,” I said, ticking off a finger, “I’m not interested in any of your angles. That’s fancy talk for lying to yourself. Anyone who has to go through a lot of contortions to rationalize what they’re doing is fooling themselves. You don’t do good by doing evil. You do good by doing good.”
His face went a shade darker. I could tell he wanted to interrupt me so he could play some more ethical Twister with himself. I held up a palm.
“Second. I don’t care. I don’t have any meat in any fire but my own. I’m not part of a race, class, or gender. I’m John Stick. I care about my father. I care about my spider. I care about myself.”
That should have made him smile―all these border patrol fanatics were libertarians at heart, where self-interest was king―but he held the same stern expression as if he were posing for an old-timey photograph where everyone tries to look as miserable as possible.
“Third and lastly,” I said, “don’t ever imprison me again. If you do, I’ll pick you up by your head and shake until your neck has an identity crisis. I’ve signed up to do a job. When I say I’ll do something, I do it.”
“Fair enough. You’re a free man. You’ll keep your lips together. You’ll come when we call.”
“I don’t talk to people unless they force me to.” I gave him an angry-giant glare.
He glared right back. I had a height advantage, but he had the arrogance of white privilege behind his. In the end, it was a standoff.
“Deal,” he said.
We shook hands. I planned on dipping mine in acid later to get it clean.
The Captain filled me in on the twisted details of Operation Velvet Ant. Apparently, White Industries was part of a network of government surveillance operatives, transnational spies, coyote informants, and immigrant turncoats, all who indicated that a big influx of immigrants was nigh. It was the beginning of spring, when planting would begin, to be followed by months of picking and harvesting on farms and orchards across the country. Construction boomed in the spring after a lagging demand over the grim winter months. Tourist season was starting, which meant hotel rooms to clean and dishes to wash. According to the various chatter networks the Captain had access to, the coyotes had a plan to blitz the border with thousands of migrants on the same day. The logic was that border patrol might catch a few, but couldn’t possibly intercept them all.
John White had deemed it the best opportunity to roll out his new tracking equipment at full force for a field test.
“And you’re the key to it all,” the Captain said.
“If migrants are really pouring across the border, how will I do any good?” It was stupid. Even if I were a magnet for the animals, they’d have to stay within a mile of me.
“They’re all outfitted with tracking devices. Even the wasps. Microchips. State of the art. We drive a route along the border, releasing them―harpies and hydras over the desert, gremlins in the forest―at regular intervals. They fly all over the place looking for food. They hunt down illegals. Wherever they cluster on the map, we send an intercept team.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it figured out,” I said. “I don’t fit into the equation at all. I could just stay home. I have a few weeks of sleep to catch up on.”
“The problem isn’t getting them to the aliens. The problem is picking them back up. The wasps are impossible to catch. They can fly for prolonged periods of time, covering miles. And you can’t shoot them with a tranquilizer rifle. You can bring them down with poison or maybe even birdshot, but otherwise, they’re just gone. Dracula―he escaped weeks ago. It took you to get him back.
“You’re our magnet. We let these things loose all across the desert. We drag you back across the route and all the little monsters flock to you. We net ’em. We bring them back
here. A week-long operation at most, depending on how far they disperse.”
“Doesn’t that seem risky?” I asked. “Dribbling out your mutants across a couple hundred square miles of land? They’re going to spread all over the place. They’ll cross into Mexico. They’ll get eaten by predators. They’ll wander into caves. They’ll fall into the river and get washed into the Gulf of Mexico. You’re going to have ranchers posting YouTube videos of dead chupacabras by the dozen. It’ll be a disaster.”
“The boss believes in you,” the Captain said.
I opened my mouth to tell him how idiotic that sounded.
The Captain held up both hands. “He believes in you. This whole operation is in your hands. I hope you’re ready.”
“I don’t have to be ready,” I said. “All I have to do is be myself. Right?
The Captain leaned back in his chair. He stretched his heavy ex-weightlifter arms. “I bet that’s a good feeling.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but it was.
ess than ten minutes into the drive home, I pulled over to a gas station in a little mountain town called Cedar Crest. It smelled like pine trees and spilled motor oil. I went inside, bought the biggest cup of gas station coffee they had, and loaded it with French vanilla creamer packets. The huge cup fit my hand perfectly. I set it on the counter in front of the clerk, who’d been giving me the eye, but who when we were face to face, managed to act pretty casual.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Just the coffee,” I said.
“Any gas?” Her voice held a hint of a Native accent. The slightly clipped words stepped out of her mouth at a cadence more compact than your average Anglo or Chicano speaker. I liked it, but I didn’t tell her because humans aren’t supposed to be nice to each other.
“No gas.”
She punched a couple buttons in the register.
“You know what? Give me some cigarettes.”
“Sure,” she said. “What kind?”
I hadn’t smoked in a decade. I’d never been a regular smoker, but during my lost twenty-somethings, I’d swallow one or two on a particularly raucous or desperate night. I’d smoked a few packs over a span of seven or eight years and quit before I was thirty. “Camels.” I couldn’t think of any other brands.