Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Rénald wasted no time. He closed fast, looking to jam me into a corner. I sidestepped once, then again, as he pursued. I shot out a jab and narrowly ducked his answering hook. Two more jabs and a lot of backpedaling. Rénald shrugged off my punches and kept his smile. Shit. Little stings weren’t going to keep him off me.

  He lunged, trying to grapple. I spun to the side and he grabbed my left arm with one hand. I put everything I had into a straight right, and it gave me an instant to tear myself from his grip. The crowd jeered. I feinted a kick and it didn’t fool him.

  Rénald didn’t seem frustrated. He just inexorably closed the distance between us, confident that I’d run out of room, or luck. I was wary of kicking, knowing he was looking to catch my leg. If he got me on the ground, his weight advantage would make the rest of my night short and extremely painful. I was so busy making sure he didn’t trap me against the barricade that he nearly took my head off with a leaping left hand.

  I kicked at his knee and threw a combination, not even trying for damage, just giving him distractions. He batted the punches away and lunged again. This time I was ready. I slipped to my right and stuck a knuckle-twisting jab into his throat, and stomped hard on his foot. His arm swatted me aside, almost lifting me off the ground, but he hissed with pain.

  No grin anymore. Rénald came after me even faster, limping but very game. The crowd howled.

  “Kill the fucker,” Bomba said. Behind him, Hinch was laughing.

  The mound of basalt was behind me. I feinted and ducked, desperate for any edge. Rénald threw two fast hooks. The second connected and numbed my forearm. Any more of those and I wouldn’t be able to make a fist. He reached again. I slipped and turned, peppering jabs, feinting the same stomp, and when he drew his foot back in haste I spun and kicked his leg. The steel toe of my workboot speared him in the thigh muscle and he yelled.

  Rénald punched me in the neck. I knew it was going to hit an instant before it did, but the knowledge did me no good. My head went as bright as the stadium lights. I was fairly sure I was moving my feet, but not certain. Where was he? The crowd howled. There. Coming straight at me, hands grasping.

  I threw. Rénald barreled into me, as one of my desperate punches took him full in the nose. His rushing weight knocked me backward, toppling the barricade, and we both fell. Not as far as we should have. Rénald landed half on top of me. Something like claws tore into my back. We were on the mound of black basalt. I thrashed, almost swimming sideways in the sharp rocks. He had a grip on my arm. I punched and missed. I couldn’t get my feet under me. Neither could Rénald. The gravel rolled and shifted beneath us. Rénald clutched at me, for balance as much as leverage, and I grabbed his small fingers and bent them back until they snapped. He roared and tried to tackle me, to crush me into the rocks, but his lunge had no force on the unstable mound. Every small movement brought more rocks tumbling from the steep hill above us, in a slow steady avalanche. Rénald was up to his knees in it. I stayed nearly flat. Choking clouds of slate-colored dust enveloped us. The crowd sounded like a high wind, coming in straight off the plains and picking up speed.

  Rénald’s meaty fist nailed my breastbone. The pain banished the last of the brain fog. I let the current of rolling basalt carry me lower, where I could roll onto solid ground. I tottered to my feet. Rénald was still struggling against the tide. I picked my way through the rocks, into his blind spot.

  He knew what was coming, but couldn’t free his great weight from the consuming rocks to turn and meet me. I made it quick. One punch to his neck, in just about the same spot where he’d nearly put my lights out, and a whipping hook to his jaw that shuddered from my fist all the way down to my toes. Rénald wasn’t fully unconscious. He wasn’t even horizontal, with the gravel up to his thighs holding him erect. But he was done.

  I staggered back over the toppled barricade and into the ring. The crowd was yelling, but I was more aware of the black sweat rolling down my face. I took in huge chest-popping gulps of air and looked for Fekkete. His baleful gaze met mine.

  I hope I cost you a fucking mint, asshole.

  Spectators were in the ring now, slapping me on the shoulder, raising my hand, helping Rénald get free. My bag. I turned to look at the hill of gravel. The bag was gone. Buried, with my keys and Corcoran’s tracker. It hadn’t been far from where Rénald and I had finished our fight. I pulled away from the fans and lurched back to the mound.

  It cost me four minutes of digging and two raw hands to find where the bag had come to rest. At some point during our frantic scrambling Rénald or I had stepped on it. My phone was cracked. The tracker was completely destroyed, the rubber case torn and the interior works clogged with smoky grit.

  Fekkete was gone. I saw Roddy in the ring, trying to make his way toward Rénald through the knots of spectators drunkenly reenacting the fight. I shoved men aside and grabbed him.

  “Where’s Fekkete?” I said, lifting Roddy up onto his toes.

  “Whoa, I got your money. Easy.” He fumbled for the bills and pressed them into my hand. “Good fight, okay?”

  “What’s he drive?”

  “Huh?”

  I slapped him. Shook him alert. “Fekkete. What’s his car?”

  “Fuck, man.” He flinched as my hand went up again. “It’s a Boxster! You know, a Porsh. A yellow one. Don’t hit me.”

  I dropped Roddy and ran toward the parking lot. Fekkete might still be around. Maybe I could get the tracker onto his car, somehow, in the traffic jam getting out of here. Already a field of taillights glowed, as cars negotiated their slow trickle onto the access road.

  Less than one day left in my deadline to deliver Fekkete. If I missed him here, the hunters might decide they had little use for me, or O’Hasson.

  There. A glimpse of yellow in the waiting line, three hundred yards farther on. Close to the road. A car near it turned, headlights sweeping across, and I caught sight of the low-slung lines of the Porsche.

  Too far to run. By the time I made it to the truck and worked my way through the traffic jam, Fekkete would be miles away.

  “You were a good bet.” The motorcycle mama, cruising up from behind me on her Harley. “Still no shirt, too. Even better.”

  “I’ll give you five hundred bucks to borrow your hog for ten minutes,” I said.

  She looked nearly as stunned as Roddy had when I’d slapped him. “You what?”

  “I have to catch that car. He owes me.” I held out the bills.

  “Shit, cowboy.” She grinned at me, half-stoned and all sultry, before swinging a leg off her bike. “I’ll trust you for it.”

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and climbed on. The softail surprised me, leaping forward at the first touch of the throttle. I was out of practice, and even when I’d drifted around the Southeast on bikes with other soldiers, I’d been used to smaller machines. I got the Harley steady and gunned it, racing down into and along the dry ditch, passing the cars in a burst of speed. Behind me, I heard the biker chick whoop encouragement.

  The Porsche was gone. He’d already made it to the access road. Which way had he turned? I pulled right and let the engine do the work as the front tire caught the earth, and the Harley carved a path up the berm that separated the quarry from the road. Dirt and rocks flew in a spray behind the rear wheel. I nearly lost control as the bike shuddered up the uneven slope. Then I was over the crest and onto the grassy earth on the other side. There. A yellow streak flashed past. Fekkete had turned right, away from the steady stream headed for the freeway. The Harley hit pavement and I flew after him.

  I caught a break. A four-way stop, half a mile farther on, where Fekkete had to wait for a sixteen-wheel tractor to lumber its slow way through the intersection. I took the bag off my shoulder as I pulled up alongside, and brought out the Smith & Wesson to aim it at his front tire.

  “Let’s have that talk,” I said.

  Fekkete tried to hit the gas, and stalled the engine. Not his night.

  “You are sure t
hat you can make O’Hasson do what you want?” Fekkete said, five minutes later. We had pulled over to the side, Fekkete still in his Boxster, me still on the Harley. “He will bring the gold? All of it?”

  “Minus whatever he may have spent to hire muscle. That’s why I need you,” I said. “You protect me. I make sure he cooperates.”

  His eyes narrowed. “But you don’t hire men yourself.”

  “I don’t have money. That cash I made off you tonight is everything I got. And who would believe a crazy story about gold, except you?” I slapped the roof of the Porsche, friendly-like. “So I tried to steal from Pacific Pearl. My mistake. Water under the damn bridge. This way, you get half of it back, and I get my hands on O’Hasson. The little shit almost burned me alive.”

  I didn’t need Fekkete’s cold stare to tell me he was already thinking about how to dispose of both me and O’Hasson once the gold was in sight.

  “How will you do it?” he said.

  In answer, I showed him a picture on the cracked screen of my phone. Cyndra O’Hasson, sitting expressionless with a copy of last Sunday’s Seattle Times in her lap. The chair she was sitting in was from Addy’s dining table.

  “His child,” said Fekkete.

  “You missed her in Reseda. I didn’t.”

  He nodded. Almost happily. Maybe I really could make O’Hasson jump on command.

  “I know a place to bring him,” he said.

  “So do I. I’ll tell you where when it’s time for you to move. Not before.” I put the phone away. “No tricks.”

  He nodded and gave me a chilly smile. Of course I would say that. Neither of us believed it for a moment, but it was nice to observe the formalities.

  Twenty-Four

  My conversation with Fekkete had taken longer than ten minutes, so the biker chick and I had renegotiated. With my cut lip and sore jaw, kissing and other activities proved a little challenging, but we made do.

  When I woke up in the master bedroom of her surprisingly suburban house in Bothell, the rising sun had already brightened the triangular windows at the peak of the bedroom’s vaulted ceiling. The woman lay on her side next to me, brunette hair touching my shoulder. Sky. That was the name she had said. I didn’t know if that was her real name or a road name. Everybody I met lately was hiding an extra identity in their back pocket.

  This would be a tough day. I knew these hours, the countdown before a mission. When we would plan and review and check our gear a dozen times. Some of the tasks were essential. Some of them just served to keep us calm. A lot of the time, we couldn’t tell the difference.

  I’d been present at a few hostage exchanges in the Rangers. Negotiating swaps between tribal leaders, mostly. They weren’t the sort of assignments that earned anybody a medal. We were lucky if we went home thinking we got the slightly better part of a bad deal. The key was keeping everyone focused on what they had to lose if things went sour.

  Once or twice, though, we got to bring our own people home. Captured soldiers, or men cut off from their unit and stuck hip-deep in hostile country. Those days made sense. Those days were on the side of righteousness. O’Hasson needed a day like that.

  I rose and left Sky a gentlemanly note before leaving silently. Less bruised than I would have expected after my fight with Rénald. Maybe sex had beneficial properties beyond the obvious ones.

  I called Hollis and Corcoran on my way into the city and arranged to meet them at Corcoran’s apartment in the evening. We would all crash there tonight, to get an early start. Then I went shopping. I visited a luggage store, a costume store, a hardware store, and bought half a dozen handheld multichannel radios, spending most of the cash I’d earned the night before.

  Many hours later, when I was certain I had done all that I could for now, I called Tamas Fekkete and said I would be in touch tomorrow morning at ten to tell him where to go. I told him that he could bring two men, no more. That the place I’d chosen would be very public, near downtown, and he’d have half an hour to get there before the deal was off. I hung up just as he started to ask questions.

  I could count on Fekkete. He’d keep himself far removed from any danger until he thought he had the upper hand. Then he’d try to screw us over. Reliable in his unreliability.

  My next conversation, with Ingrid Ekby’s man Boule, was more combative. Maybe he was still pissed about my shoving a dart gun into his neck.

  “You get nothing until I know Fekkete is there,” Boule said.

  “No bait, no trap. Fekkete won’t show until he sees the gold. It’s one hundred kilos of metal; no one’s going to grab it and run.”

  “What about O’Hasson?”

  “He has to be right out in front,” I said. “Remember, Fekkete believes I’m forcing O’Hasson to give up the gold. He’s already twitchy. Spook him, and he’ll probably be gone and out of the country again before you even spit in his direction.”

  Boule grunted. “He’ll bring soldiers.”

  “So maybe a frontal assault shouldn’t be your first choice, for once.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I don’t trust your boys not to rush in with your asses on fire, shooting trank darts or worse at anybody who crosses your path. I’ll keep Fekkete under wraps until I’m sure you’re behaving.”

  “Go to hell,” Boule said. “If you want guarantees, then tell me where the exchange will be now. Let me get my men into position ahead of time.”

  I ignored that. “Have O’Hasson tell you what he called his daughter when she was a baby.”

  “What?”

  “Proof of life, Boule. Text it to this number. Do that, and I’ll call you in the morning. Be ready to move.”

  If Boule could have sent a fist over the cellular connection, he would have done it.

  “Shaw.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You fuck with us on this, and you’re done. She’ll never quit coming after you.”

  “A woman after my own heart. Guess you feel the same, huh?”

  He hung up. Sensitive lad.

  If our situations were reversed, I would be just as furious as Boule. Walking into an unknown environment was tantamount to putting your head in the tiger’s jaws and hoping you didn’t taste good. It was a sign of his—or Ingrid’s—desperation to get their hands on Fekkete that he was even willing to consider it.

  But choosing the site of our exchange was my single tactical advantage. My only way to win.

  Hollis met me as I hauled my shopping bags down the block to Corcoran’s building. The neighborhood was mostly Cambodian. Along with a backpack, Hollis carried a paper grocery sack that smelled of vinegar sauce and ground pork and mint. Heat was already curling and darkening the brown paper in oily patches.

  “Jimmy’s family out?” I said.

  “He’s carting them off to visit an aunt. I thought I’d bring provisions. So that we don’t leave them with an empty larder.”

  We rode up in the pink elevator—buttons labeled in English and Khmer—and Hollis unlocked the door with a key from a jangling ring the size and weight of a medieval weapon. Hollis was the sort that everyone would trust with a spare key. He set the food on the kitchen counter and motioned for me to join him at the table.

  “Before Jimmy arrives,” he said, unzipping the backpack. “You haven’t broached the subject, but I thought I’d ask.” He removed five lumps wrapped in individual chamois cloths and laid them out on the table. A mixed bag of small-caliber pistols, including an expensive-looking Walther.

  “These are all clean,” he said.

  I considered it. Not for the first time that day.

  Hollis tapped a Colt with a fingernail. “I know what Jimmy would say. He always likes a little comfort.”

  “No,” I said finally. “If the exchange goes even halfway wrong, and the cops get involved, we might bluff our way out. That only has a chance if we’re traveling light.”

  “I prefer the gentler path myself.”

  He swept the guns bac
k into his pack just as my phone buzzed. Boule. He had sent one word: Ounce.

  O’Hasson’s nickname for Cyndra as a baby. Because she had been born premature and underweight, three pounds one ounce. She’d spent a month in the incubator, Cyndra had told me yesterday.

  Her dad was still alive. Fighters, both of them.

  Corcoran opened the front door and sniffed the air, his nose leading him to the kitchen.

  “The fuck?” he said. “You couldn’t bring something I don’t eat every day?”

  From the eighth floor, Corcoran’s view was good enough to make out a fraction of the ghostly shape of Mount Rainier to the south. We sat on the balcony and ate while I caught them up on my conversations with Fekkete and Boule, and what I’d learned of Ingrid Ekby.

  “Speaking of good-lookin’ people,” Corcoran said, “I don’t like the idea of these assholes seeing my face. Or Hollis’s,” he amended. “But mine, mostly.”

  “We’ll have masks,” I said. “In fact, nearly everybody around us will have masks.”

  I told Hollis and Corcoran what I had in mind, and where I had gone that day to reconnoiter, and showed them what I had in the shopping bags. Their expressions were worth a tall stack of gold bars.

  Twenty-Five

  Hollis leaned close to the windshield to peer up at the gigantic green sign as we passed underneath it.

  “I said it last night, and it bears repeating,” he said, his breath fogging the glass. “You’re mad, boyyo.”

  SEATTLE EVERCON

  FANTASY / COMICS / ANIME

  “Thirty thousand people expected today,” I said. “Nearly all of them in some kind of costume.”

  It was old news to Hollis. We’d waited for a dozen convention attendees in Transformer costumes to stomp robotically through the last crosswalk. Drifting through the parking garage, we followed a river of demons and heroes and sprites making their eager way toward the security line at the entrance gates.

  “Cops?” said Corcoran from the backseat of the Navigator. I could almost feel him ducking his head low.