Point and Shoot

by Duane Swierczynski

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” the Other Him said, his voice trying to approximate a soothing tone. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Don’t—” Hardie floundered for the right sequence of words. He settled for: “Don’t you move!”

  “I work for the U.S. government. Intelligence. I’m here to save you from the Cabal.”

  “The who?”

  There, for a second, the spell was shattered. Hardie never used words like “cabal.” No, he’d use something like “creepy pricks who meddle in people’s lives and force them to have accidents and shove them down into secret prisons and shoot them into outer freakin’ space.” Never cabal. Sissies used words like cabal. Abrams, the bitch who’d sent him up into space, had used the word “cabal.”

  Still, the Other Him pressed his case. “You know exactly who I mean. The people who sent you up here.”

  “They seem to have many names.”

  “Well, they’ve evolved.”

  Hardie mulled this for a second. Then he said, “I thought I told you to explain quickly.”

  The Other Charlie Hardie explained quickly.

  Six years ago, the lawyers who ran the Accident People were a group of problem solvers, working in secret for the most exclusive and powerful clients in the world. (Usually, huge corporations.) Over the past few years, however, they’d evolved to become the powerful, with their claws sunk deep into the U.S. government at the highest levels.

  “But you started to change all of that when you escaped from Site Number 7734,” the Other Charlie Hardie said. “All of those people popped out of that secret prison just jonesin’ for some payback, and they’ve been attacking their interests all over the world. Your buddy Eve Bell especially.”

  “You say you know her, huh?”

  “She sent me to find you.”

  “You’re telling me she’s behind all of this?”

  “She’s working with some others, but yes. We want what’s in this satellite so we can deliver the killing blow. Dismantle their operations permanently.”

  “What’s in this satellite?”

  “They never told you this … hell, why would they? But you’re up here guarding information hidden in this satellite. The most dangerous information in the world, as a matter of fact. It’s too dangerous to keep on earth, where it could potentially be stolen or hacked. But it’s also too important to destroy.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  The Other Him sighed. Swear to Christ—he sighed. Like he was troubled by all of this pesky explaining. Hardie decided right then and there: The Other Him was an asshole.

  “Let me give you a quick example,” the Other Him said. “You ever hear of the Borgias?”

  Hardie paused for a moment, then replied: “You talking about the casino?”

  “No, the cutthroat Italian family. They … wait, you’re totally messing with me, aren’t you?”

  “Go on.”

  “The Borgias apparently came up with the most lethal poison on earth. A poison they only dared to use once, and vowed to never use again—the potential to wipe out the entire population of the earth was too great. Even back then, there was the fear that someone who possessed the poison would lose his or her mind long enough to try to kill thousands. The poison was that powerful.”

  “Uh-huh. So you’re saying there’s a deadly poison on this satellite.”

  “No,” the Other Him said. “I’m saying whatever you’ve got locked up in there has the potential to make the Borgia super-poison seem like salmonella. You’re guarding the one thing powerful enough to destroy them. Let’s find it … then destroy them.”

  Hardie turned his gaze away from the Other Him. Shit, he needed to stop referring to the Other Him as … well, the Other Him. He needed to give him a nickname, because it was truly freaky to see yourself on a small monitor. A slightly younger, slightly more handsome version of you. One who hasn’t had his ass kicked to hell and gone.

  But what should he call the Other Him?

  Chuck?

  Phil?

  Jimbo?

  Asshole?

  For now, “you” would just have to do.

  “Anything else I can explain?” the Other Him asked. “Like I said, time is fairly critical here.”

  “Oh, just one small thing. Why the fuck do you look like me?”

  See, that was the weirdest thing to Hardie.

  It wasn’t that somebody had somehow, against all odds, managed to dock with this allegedly top-secret satellite. And it wasn’t that he was stuck inside a top-secret satellite to begin with. It was the fact that Eve Bell (allegedly) had sent someone who looked exactly like him. Why? Hardie had watched dozens of movies where long-lost twin brothers or sisters or even clones were the catalyst for implausible, harebrained plots. And, except for The Parent Trap, stories with twins or doubles or clones often didn’t turn out too well for at least one of the twins. So what was this? Was this guy up here to save him, or kill him and replace him?

  “I can explain.”

  “Dazzle me.”

  “It’s the satellite itself. They made me look like this to fool the biometric sensors. Everything in this craft is tuned to your biometrics. If somebody else tried to open the wrong compartment, it would result in complete shutdown. They left absolutely nothing to chance. Only you can be in this capsule. So I went through a series of procedures to look exactly like you.”

  Hardie stared at him—himself?—for a good long while before finally saying, “Bio-what?”

  But Hardie remembered the weeks of prep leading up to his “mission.” They did take thousands of measurements, snap what seemed like a million digital photographs of his entire body, from the top of his head to the skin between his toes. Which freaked him out to no end, and more than once Hardie was prepared to say, “You know what? I changed my mind. Why don’t you skip the eighty-seventh photograph of my right nipple and just shoot me in the head.” But he thought of Kendra and the boy, and he endured it. At least they didn’t catalog his junk. Whoever this Other Him was, he probably got to keep his own twig and berries. Hooray for individuality.

  “How long did that take?” Hardie asked, gesturing with his chin. “Being made to look like me.”

  “I had the final surgical procedure a few days ago. My ears are still a little tender.”

  “They saved the ears for last, huh?”

  “They heal the easiest, apparently. And I needed to get up here as soon as possible.”

  “So before you were me … who the hell were you? Why did they think you’d make a good me?”

  The Other Him paused. “Nobody special. I was chosen because of our similar body types, ages. Though I’m a little younger.”

  “Naturally. So what now?”

  “Now comes the part you’re not going to like.”

  5

  If they told you wolverines would make good house pets, would you believe them?

  —Del Griffith, Planes, Trains and Automobiles

  YOU DIDN’T LIKE it, either, but what choice did you have? This was part of the mission.

  You’re a spy, doubling as a man named Charlie Hardie.

  A few hours ago you had been stuffed into a small metal box—not unlike what that crazy Yogi Coudoux used to do on that early 1980s show That’s Incredible!—and launched into space, hoping that the rocket carrying the box would be able to guide itself to the Cabal’s mystery satellite and dock with it. When you first heard the mission directive a few months ago, you asked a tech guy if this cockamamie scheme could possibly work, and the tech guy said—yes, he actually said this—“You know, I like your chances.” Which wasn’t exactly the most reassuring thing you could hear from an astrophysicist, but, hey, death and danger was all part of the job. The life of a spy.

  However, the trickiest, most precarious part of the operation was next.

  If you’re perfectly honest with yourself, you don’t like your chances very much at all.

  There is little chance
Charlie Hardie is going to go for it.

  But you have to try anyway.

  “Go ahead,” Hardie said. “Lay it on me.”

  “Okay,” the Other Him said. “For this whole rescue operation to work, I need to search the entire craft.”

  “To find that Borgia super-poison or whatever. Yeah. So you said.”

  “Thing is, there can’t be two people in the main module at the same time. Otherwise, the automatic controls kick in, resulting in total shutdown. So … uh, you’re going to have to wait down here in this tube while I do my search.”

  Hardie looked at his double, smirked for a moment, letting nonsense words like automatic and controls and total and shutdown dance around his head. And then all at once the words really sank in, Hardie realized what this guy was asking, and …

  Well, the guy had been right. Hardie didn’t like it at all.

  “No,” Hardie said. “No fucking way.”

  “I know how it sounds. You have very little reason to trust me. But I’m telling you, the sooner I search the module, the sooner we can both get out of this thing. The sooner you’re back with your family.”

  “They’ll kill us all anyway,” Hardie said. “You think they won’t find out?”

  “Not if I find what I’m looking for. The moment I deliver it to my handler, it’ll cripple them. Instantly.”

  “What is it? What could possibly shut them down instantly? Now you’re just bullshitting me. Do you know how long I’ve been tangling with these assholes? Your precious Cabal?”

  “Yeah, I know exactly how long.”

  Hardie looked around the module, as if he’d see something he hadn’t already spotted in his nine months trapped on this spinning tin can. Maybe a little hatch with stenciled letters that read TOP SECRET STUFF INSIDE!!! WHAT TO DO IF SOMEONE SHOWS UP ASKING TO SEARCH THE CRAFT.

  “And I,” the Other Him said, “am not bullshitting you.”

  The tone of the guy’s voice kind of said, Yeah, I’m not bullshitting you. Hardie could tell. It was the tone he used when he was trying to convince someone that he was not bullshitting them. Whether or not he in fact was trying to bullshit them or not. The truth would be impossible to untangle.

  “Tell me where to look,” Hardie said. “I’m sure I’ll be able to find it for you. This place isn’t that big.”

  “This whole thing will go much faster if I do the search. And like I said, we’re up against a ticking clock here.”

  “And like I said: no fucking way.”

  But Hardie’s mind was already considering the possibilities. Let’s just say this weirdo lookalike was telling the truth, and his best weapon against these “Cabal” assholes has been at his fingertips the entire time he’s been stuck in low earth orbit. In a sick way, it all made sense. They didn’t stick him in this tin can just to keep it running; there were thousands of other resilient monkeys who could do the same time. No, they wanted him to guard something. Because that’s what Hardie was good at: guarding shit. Mansions in the Hollywood Hills. (Well, aside from the Lowenbruck place, but you could hardly blame him for that one.) Secret prisons buried beneath old military forts. And now, precious secrets inside this satellite.

  And holy Christ on a crushed pepper cracker—that’s why communication was one-way. Just on the off-off chance that Hardie did find these little secrets.

  Okay, Hardie, he told himself.

  Keep your head together.

  You don’t know this dude. He might be here to save you. He might be here to mess with you. There might be an Option C you’re not even considering. Doesn’t matter. He’s down in that tube and you’re not. You’ve got the upper hand. This is rare, so enjoy it.

  Hardie repeated himself, just to drive the point all the way home:

  “No fucking way.”

  “Okay, Charlie. I understand where you’re coming from. None of this makes sense to you, I get it. But let me at least tell you what you’re looking for. Can I come up a little further? I need to show you something.”

  Hardie was struck by the surreal sensation of hearing his own voice blasted back at him. His whole swagger, his attitude, the way he used to talk a perp down from a ledge. Of course, Hardie was usually just lulling the perp into a false sense of ease so he could either grab him or cold-cock him.

  “Why don’t you just show me from there.”

  “It’s on a handheld device. You won’t be able to see it from there.”

  “Throw it up to me, then.”

  “And then it slips out of your sausage-link fingers and shatters on the side of the tube here and we’re both completely screwed.”

  “Hey,” Hardie said. “My fingers are not sausage links. Come to think of it, blow me. You’ve got the same fingers!”

  “Will you stop being a baby and let me help you out of this mess?”

  Just what Hardie would have said.

  Finally Hardie decided that this guy was going to keep hounding him until he showed him whatever was on his little device thingy. What was the worst that could happen? What, was his double going to throw a punch at him?

  “C’mon up.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hand over hand, spaceboot over spaceboot, and the Other Hardie was just inches away now. Close enough to touch.

  Which he did, of course. First he snapped a punch right into the center of Hardie’s face so quick and powerfully that Hardie’s eyes instantly teared up. Then his double grabbed a fistful of Hardie’s uniform and pulled him down into the gateway tube.

  6

  Big kiss? I’ll give him a big kick in the ass, that’s what I’ll give him.

  —Jean-Claude Van Damme, Double Impact

  A CYLINDRICAL METAL tube, lined with high-powered machine guns, hanging 166 miles above the surface of the earth.

  Charlie Hardie could now add this exciting new entry to the long list of crazy places he’d ever had a fistfight.

  The Other Hardie had grabbed the real Hardie by his uniform, seizing the material just above each of Hardie’s nipples, and pulled. Hard. Now he was kicking his way back down to the hatch area, banging Hardie’s head and shoulder blades against the sides of the narrow tube on the way down. Each blow made Hardie’s teeth rattle. Hardie used his bare fingers to wrench the man’s hands free, but they wouldn’t budge. Not even a pinky. The man’s space gloves felt like they were covering titanium hands.

  Despite his military and police background, Hardie knew he wasn’t an especially skilled fighter. Nor had his technique changed all that much since grade school. The thing to do in any fight, he thought, was to get in close and do as much damage as quickly as possible. None of this dancing around, butterfly-floating, bee-stinging bullshit for him. No, it was much better to pull your enemy close and just maul him. Which was a good thing, because there wasn’t much room in this space tube for anything else.

  Thing was … his opponent seemed to have pretty much the same thing in mind. And he’d struck first. Hard, relentless, fast, and brutal.

  Once they reached the bottom of the tube and bounced up off its surface, the Other Him snap-punched him in the face again. The universe exploded. It was possible there was a follow-up punch, but if there was, Hardie didn’t feel it. He started to sink into a numb, murmuring blackness until some words roused him back to attention.

  “I don’t want to do this,” he heard the Other Him say.

  Hardie grunted. That was all he could do. His mouth tasted like it had been stuffed with pennies.

  “I mean that. We’re wasting time.”

  Hardie spit blood in his (own) face.

  The Other Him slammed Hardie’s head against the tube again. And again. And then slammed a fist into Hardie’s nose for good measure. It was amazing how much power he’d managed to pack into the blow, considering there was no room to wind up. Hardie knew he hadn’t been getting into the best shape of his life up here in the vacuum of low earth orbit. But he also didn’t realize how weak he’d become until this moment, grappling with a man
who was essentially a younger, stronger, and way more fit version of himself. This was like wrestling with himself back when he was in the military, straight out of boot camp, as cut and lean and tough as he’d ever be in his life. Their weight was the same; Hardie supposed they had to be because of all that biometric nonsense. But while Hardie’s muscles had atrophied to the point where he wanted to kick sand in his own face, his double’s body mass was seemingly made up of nothing but bone and muscle.

  Unconsciousness was becoming a serious and real option in the near future. Hardie tried to use his forearms to return some blows to his opponent, but such efforts were easily deflected. And he kept banging his own damn elbows against the sides of the tube. So Hardie flipped. Heaved his shoulders until he was facing the cold metal of the tube.

  This seemed to confuse the Other Him, who started a flurry of punches up and down his back, as if trying to snap his spine in at least six different places. Hardie appeared to be immobile. What, was he playing dead?

  Not exactly, fuckhead.

  Instead, Hardie was prying open one of the machine-gun ports.

  They gave Hardie a tour of his new shiny microhome before they shot it (and him) up into low earth orbit.

  Okay, not really a tour, more like a fitting—a groomsman trying on his miserable tux. You have no choice in the matter; you have to wear the damned thing no matter what.

  During one excruciating session he watched as burly technicians installed rows of guns into a tube, running wires from the guns to a control panel. (It wasn’t until much later that Hardie realized that tube was part of the craft he’d be trapped in for the next year.) They were machine guns specially outfitted to be fired by remote control from outside of the tube. Hardie had seen these kinds of setups before, at places that specialized in forensic ballistics. Techs would call it a “gun machine” or the “hall of bullets.”