Frag Box

by Richard A. Thompson

  I must have been under Kellogg Boulevard by then, deep underground, where the temperature should have been a constant fifty degrees or so. It felt colder. I remembered Charlie telling me it got too cold in his box for him to stay there all winter, and I wondered if he was confusing the chill in the tunnel with the chill in his soul. This was a place where you could have a lot of chill in your soul.

  I was starting to get short of breath from the climb and was about to stop for a bit when I came to another side-tunnel, this time with a definite white arrow pointing into it. I turned into it, sorry to leave the reassuring touch of the steel rail. I was swimming in thick blackness now. I moved forward a bit more slowly, sweeping the flashlight around a lot, pushing one hand out in front of me to grope at nothing. Somewhere up ahead, I could hear the faint gurgle of rushing water. Storm sewer, probably. Not a good thing to walk into.

  The passage ended in a great black hole, which I assumed dropped to a main storm sewer line somewhere far below. But before that, there was a slightly wider spot in the floor and a messy campsite. I was there.

  As promised so long ago, there was a cardboard box big enough for a person to sleep in, “under the wye-duct.” It had a tattered sleeping bag, some clothes, and a few rags in it. They smelled like mildew. In front of the box was a small Coleman camp stove, some assorted full and empty tin cans, a green glass wine jug, and other junk not so easy to identify. Several candles sat in various kinds of holders with wax dribbled all over them. And behind it all, in a niche in the wall, was a box, a heavy white cardboard box of the sort that offices use to archive their paper files. But this one, I positively knew, contained something else. I had found Charlie Victor’s frag box.

  I lifted the lid and found Addendum Number One to Charlie’s last will and testament, sitting on top of a big pile of cash.

  Then I heard the noise.

  Chapter 26

  Fire in the Hole

  It came from far behind me, echoing back up the unseen rock walls. It wasn’t a boom, exactly, but it wasn’t a machine noise, either. I went back to the place where my tunnel joined the bigger one, killed the flashlight and looked around the corner. The light at the end of the tunnel, the door opening, tiny as it had been, was gone. What I had heard was somebody slamming the door.

  I could hear voices now, too, but not well enough to make out what they were saying. Fairly young voices, male, wise cracking but insistent. The goon squad from the scene at the motel, and this time I had no shotgun to point at them.

  And why had they shut the door? Because they have night vision goggles, and they know you don’t, dummy. Shit.

  I ran back to Charlie’s squat and put the lid back on his box. Then, as fast as I could, I dug a hole in the soft sand floor with my hands, shoved the box in it, and pulled Charlie’s big sleeping-box over the top. Then I scuffled the area where I had dragged it and got the hell out of there. I didn’t know what my plan was, but being found at the campsite seemed like a very bad idea.

  I went back to the main tunnel, killed my flashlight again, and groped my way across to the steel conveyor frame. As quickly as I could in the dark, I worked my way down into the lower framework and against the back wall. Then I crawled uphill maybe another dozen yards or so, banging various parts of my anatomy on the steel, and finally stuffed myself into a hollow in the limestone wall. I pushed some loose sand into a heap in front of me and settled down to wait. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but it was as good as I could do. I had to count on people not looking too closely into the jumble of angle irons and chains. And if they all went into the campsite cavern, maybe I could slip past them and work my way back outside. Maybe. It would have to do.

  The voices began to get louder. I pulled my jacket up over my head, to hide my face and eyes, and worked on quieting my breathing.

  Bring back memories, does it?

  What?

  Detroit, boyo.

  Who the hell…?

  What, has it been so long that you’ve forgotten the sound of me lilting voice already?

  Jerp?

  Himself. How’ve you been, lad?

  This is crazy; you’re dead.

  Picked right up on that, did you? Of course I’m dead. I couldn’t very well be here if I wasn’t, now could I?

  You’re not. You came out of a cup of the Prophet’s doped coffee. You’re nothing but a piece of abnormal brain chemistry.

  I’ve been called worse, I suppose.

  No kidding. Since you’re here, though, I’ll tell you that I’m sorry I abandoned you in Detroit. I mean, I didn’t want to, but you said—

  Hush it now, then. I bled to death behind the wheel of the Mercury, is the thing. That’s what I did. I didn’t burn up. But if we’d ha’ gone straight to the hospital, I’d bled to death before we got there, too. The thing of it is, I forgave you before I even drew me last breath. Time you forgave yourself, you hear?

  I hear.

  It’s time and a half, and that’s the truth of it. Can you do it?

  I have to say, I needed to hear that, Jerp. But yes, I can do it. Two days ago, I’d have said no, but I had a sort of awakening, in an alley up on the Iron Range.

  An awakening?

  Call it a sea change.

  Ah, one of them.

  Now it’s not only possible, it’s easy.

  That’s the stuff, then.

  Thanks.

  Don’t give it a thought, lad. So how are you getting on here, then?

  Here? Not so well.

  Not about to join me, are you?

  No. I’ll die soon enough, like anybody else, but not today and not here. I don’t know what I’m going to do, exactly, but I know that much.

  Now you’re talking, lad.

  He sure is.

  And just who the hell is this, then?

  Jesus, I don’t believe this. It’s a regular party. That’s Charlie. You two have a lot in common; he’s dead, too.

  I may be dead, Humboldt, but I ain’t gone. You want I should take care of those goons for you?

  I don’t think you can scare them, away, Charlie.

  Oh, I can do lots better than that. Sit tight; I think you’ll like this.

  Sit tight, he says.

  You wouldn’t happen to have a drop of the pure, in a hip flask or some such, now, would you?

  You can’t drink; you’re dead.

  I meant for yourself.

  Losing my mind is bad enough, Jerp. I don’t think I’ll add getting drunk.

  Suit yourself, lad.

  Far down the tunnel, voices that were altogether too real replaced the ones in my head.

  “Hey, there’s a string going down this one.”

  “So?”

  “So, I bet it’s a trail marker.”

  “Could be. Or it could be a string. Dipshit. Are there any tracks?”

  “Hell, this whole place is nothing but tracks. And in the soft sand, you can’t tell the old ones from our own.”

  “What’s that smell? Sort of like—”

  “Hey, I saw the string jerk!”

  “Jesus, me, too! Run it down fast, before our man has a chance to pull it all in!”

  “You want me to stay and keep watch in the main tunnel?”

  “What for? We know where he is now. Let’s move it!”

  There were a lot of scuffling noises and some clatter of gear. It and the voices gradually got more muted, until I couldn’t make out the words any more, even though they were shouting now. Then for a short while, everything was silent.

  And then there was the loudest explosion I have ever heard, accompanied by a flashbulb illumination of the whole place. After half a second or so, there was another, and then a third. Charlie’s string had led straight to a whole cluster of booby traps.

  Soft dust rained down on me, and for a long time the whole tunnel seemed to ring like a piece of steel on an anvil.

  After a while, when I heard no
thing more, I went back to Charlie’s campsite and made the appropriate adjustments to the box, then put it back where I had first found it. Then I walked back out. The door at the bottom of the tunnel had blown back open, and the draft that I had felt when I first walked in was blowing smoke and dust into the side passage where the explosion had been. I stopped and watched it swirl in the beam of my flashlight for a while, thinking it was beautiful. It looked like deliverance.

  Then I was outside, squinting into the daylight. Looking at my watch, I saw that less than an hour had passed since I had first opened Charlie’s padlock. Amazing stuff, time. I still had enough of it to brush the dust off myself and maybe get my hearing back to normal. If my hands stopped shaking, that would be nice, too.

  I did not hear any more voices from the tunnel, either of soldiers or ghosts.

  Chapter 27

  Shots in the Dark

  Anne showed up an hour or so later, just as promised, with a staff photographer, a sort of angular young woman named Chris. She wore jeans and a lumberjack shirt and vest and had a brown ponytail poking out of the back of a baseball cap. She made me think of the skipper of a swordfish boat.

  “Anne tells me good things about you,” she said as she shook my hand.

  “How nice of her. Maybe some time you’ll share them with me.”

  “Maybe not,” said Anne. Then she looked at the still-open door to the cavern and gave me an arched eyebrow and a very hard look.

  “You said you were going to wait for us, Herman. If the scene isn’t original, I can’t—-”

  “I think somebody else got here ahead of us,” I said. It wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t really an answer, either.

  “You think it’s safe to go in?”

  “If we’re careful. There was an explosion about an hour ago, and nobody has come out since then. I think somebody walked into one of Charlie’s booby traps.”

  “Maybe we should wait for some police or fire people. The Bomb Squad. Chris, do you want a vote?”

  “You know me, Anne. If there’s a picture in there, I’m going. And if the authorities go in ahead of us, they’ll shut us out, for sure.” She started fooling with some of the gear that she carried in her vest, which seemed to be all pockets.

  “Then we’re off,” said Anne.

  “Just a little,” I said, “and it hardly shows.”

  “Video cam for openers, I think,” said Chris. “Mr. Jackson, it would be best if you went first, so there’s someone in the picture for scale. Here’s an extra battle lantern for you.”

  She handed me the biggest flashlight I have ever seen, and we set off to find the Wizard.

  ***

  I was just as glad the others were behind my back, since I couldn’t tell how good a job I was doing of pretending I hadn’t been there before. When we came to the branch cavern that had smoke and dust still drifting back into it, I explained to them about the string and the white powder.

  “Let the Bomb Squad go down that passage,” I said. “Later, though. Charlie wanted us to go the other way.”

  And when we finally came to Charlie’s squat, I managed to be as surprised and delighted as everybody else. Chris switched to a digital SLR with a big flash and photographed me pointing at the frag box, then checking the lid for wires or other trip devices, and finally opening it and holding up the hand-written note that was on top of the money, then some of the money itself.

  “Do we dare take it outside?” said Chris. “I mean, it could be like a crime scene or something.”

  “I’ll worry about that, if you don’t mind.” Agent Krause, right on cue.

  “Would you identify yourself, for the record?” said Chris, switching back to her video camera and swinging it around.

  “I am Special Agent Krause, of the United States Secret Service.”

  “Nice to meet you. We are—”

  “You are the person who is shutting off her camera. This site and that box are evidence in an ongoing official investigation, and they are strictly classified. Shut it off now, unless you want to lose it.”

  “Nice to see you again, too,” I said. “Where’s your partner?”

  “He’s chasing what he foolishly thinks is a hot lead, down in Swede Hollow. Seems he had an anonymous phone call.” She went over to the box and peered inside it.

  “But you came here instead?” said Anne.

  “Apparently my anonymous phone calls are better than his.”

  Good old Agnes.

  Kraus pulled out the note and read it in the light of her own flashlight. She smirked. Seeing her do so, I stifled the urge to follow suit.

  “Good stuff, Agent?”

  “None of your business, Jackson. Tell you what, though: you can carry it outside for me. We’re leaving this place, people. Now. You over there, is your camera off?”

  Chris pointed it at her and said, “The little red light is off. See?”

  I thought the little red light looked as if it had a piece of black electrical tape over it, but I saw no reason to tell Krause that.

  “Let’s go,” said Krause.

  And we did. I led the parade back to the real world, carrying the frag box, with Agent Smug close behind and Chris and Anne bringing up the rear. About halfway back, there was another problem with the light at the end of the tunnel. It didn’t get shut this time, but somebody stepped in front of it. I recognized the silhouette of the man I now knew to be Sergeant Major Robert Dunne. He had his phony cop uniform on again, and both it and he were looking burnt and bloodied.

  You think you used enough explosive, Charlie?

  There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the submachine gun Dunne was holding, though.

  There was no way I could jump out of his field of fire, so I did what I hoped was the next best thing: I shone my light in his face and tried to close the distance between us. I didn’t get very far.

  “Point that light someplace else, or I’ll blow you and it both to hell.”

  I pointed the light at the floor. Behind me, Krause did the same. But she, too, was moving up.

  “I thought I told you to shut your operation down and get out of town,” said Krause.

  “As a matter of fact, Agent, you did not. In your typical arrogant manner, you ordered us to take our operation out of the public eye, quote-unquote. And I would say this is about as far out of it as we could get. I believe you’re holding what I came here for, Jackson. Bring it here. Krause, you stay where you are.”

  “Where’s the Colonel?” I said.

  “Say again?”

  “Colonel Rappolt, your boss.”

  “You know about him, do you? Impressive, for a dipshit civilian. But you obviously don’t know much about the Army.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Colonels do not go on treasure hunting ops. And they do not do their own killing. He watched it, but he didn’t get any licks in. He just spat on the guy afterward. And once the bum was dead, the colonel was done with it all. He didn’t care about the box the guy told us about when we were beating on him. But I do. I just lost four good men looking for it. So give it up, now, and don’t get cute.”

  “Me? I wouldn’t think of it.” I took a last step toward him and pretended to trip on a conveyor frame, dropping the box and falling on top of it. I was hoping to make a play for his gun, but Krause was too fast for me. The momentary distraction was all she needed to get her skinny automatic out of its secret hiding place and put about a dozen rounds into the sergeant major. Personally, I thought she was overreacting, but I can’t honestly say I didn’t approve.

  I did wonder, though, if I would ever get my hearing back again.

  Chapter 28

  Aftershock

  When we got back out to the daylight, Anne called 911 before Krause could think to tell her not to. Soon we had a mob of police and fire people to contend with, including the Bomb Squad and a crime scene team. I even got to meet the elusive homicid
e cop, Detective Erickson, who turned out to be a fairly likeable guy. He and Krause were old buddies, it seemed, and he did nothing to stop her from leaving with Charlie’s box. She also got to keep her weapon, and she confiscated the memory card from Chris’ video cam.

  “How can they do that?” said Chris.

  “It’s evidence in a conspiracy case,” I said. “The Secret Service has had the power to seize that for as long as there has been a Secret Service.”

  “I bet we never see any of it again,” she said.

  “She promised I could have the money back, as soon as it’s done being evidence,” I said, “since I’m Charlie’s legal heir.”

  “What will that be, a year or two?” said Anne.

  “If ever,” I said, thinking about the black hole that Krause had threatened to have me thrown into. Other things could be thrown into it, too. “And even if I get the money back, I’d bet the video and the note are permanently gone.”

  “Good thing nobody thought to take the memory card out of my SLR.”

  “Don’t say that too loud,” I said, “until we get clear of this place.”

  ***

  Eventually we did get clear, finally running out of people who wanted to debrief and/or intimidate us. We all went down to Lefty’s then, to do a bit of debriefing of our own. Anne stopped by her office on the way and got a laptop, and soon we were looking at an enlargement of the paper from Charlie’s box. Chris had done a perfect job of shooting it. It was written on the back of a copy of Charlie’s will, with some kind of fairly blunt felt-tip pen, printed all in caps.

  DEAR HOBART

  I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WOULD BE THE ONE WHO WOULD FIND THIS. THERE ISNT ENOUGH HERE TO BUY THE HIT ON THE PRESIDENT, BUT TAKE IT TO THIS GUY CALLS HIMSELF HOOK AND SEE WILL HE MAYBE DO IT ANYWAY CONSIDERING HOW THINGS WORKED OUT. YOULL FIND HIM AT THE ST. PAUL HOTEL UNDER THE NAME OF EDDIE BARDOT. HE MIGHT HAVE A COUPLA OTHER NAMES TOO. I COPPED SOME OF HIS CREDIT CARDS SO YOU CAN SEE THE OTHERS. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING

  YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE VICTOR

  “Who’s Hobart?” said Chris.

  “That’s me,” I said. “Charlie always called me something that started with H and had two syllables, but that’s as close as he ever came to remembering my real name.”