Black Swan

by Chris Knopf

  "Take us down the road to the Swan, but don't stop till you get a hundred yards past the gas station. I'll slap the fender when we're clear. I'm in your debt."

  "Yeah, yeah, climb in the back."

  True to his word, there was some stuff in the way, but we managed to cram ourselves in under the hard cover, and with a great deal of effort, pull the hatch closed behind us.

  "We're going to suffocate in here," said Axel. "There's not enough oxygen. I can already feel it."

  "No, we're in luck. These old trucks were built to haul hunting dogs. So they had a special ventilation system back here. Lots of air."

  What those old trucks also had was a type of suspension designed to maximize concussive forces when traveling over rough terrain. So the next few minutes were devoted to finding handholds, bracing ourselves and avoiding crushing each other as the bed of the truck lurched like an amusement park ride gone haywire.

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  When we hit hard asphalt and things settled down, Axel said, "That thing about the dogs? Pure bullshit."

  "You're not suffocating, are you?"

  Even on smooth road, it wasn't the most comfortable ride. The vibrations were nearly as bad as the noise, which was barely endurable. I tried at first to divine the route Two Trees was traveling by general movement, but the roll, pitch and yaw made that impossible. Miraculously, I could hear snippets of music coming from the cab. Mothers of Invention.

  This wasn't the ideal moment to reflect on the spasmodic turns my life seemed to take, despite my best efforts to maintain an even keel, to simulate the order of a well- configured flow scheme, but that's the way my mind worked. There wasn't time to trace and make sense of the path that had led me from agreeing to pick up Burton Lewis's new custom sloop from the builder in Maine, to being tossed about the bed of a superannuated pickup truck with a terrified, autistic Swiss, barely a step ahead of pursuing mercenaries in the employ of one of the country's leading software developers. But that was the long and short of it.

  It made me angry, but at whom it was hard to tell. I'm not so simple as to think the universe cares enough about one mangled, benighted engineer to orchestrate such an elaborate muddle, but it makes you think.

  The exact direction of our flight was hard to make out, though the velocity was clear. I could hear it in the roar of the engine and the metallic whir of the old gear box. I'd worked on 50's and 60's Chevies at a repair shop when I was in high school, when those cars weren't that old and I was too young to think the mechanic's vocation was anything less than noble and essential. So, as I lay there beside the whimpering Axel Fey, all I could think about were carburetors and linkages, tappets, spark plugs and distributor caps, pressure plates and sloppy universal joints. I could hear

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  them all, and feel their plaintive irregularities in the primitive reaches of my consciousness.

  And then it all shuddered to a stop. It was too soon to be at the drop-off point, so I stayed still, encouraging Axel to do the same by a firm grip on his forearm.

  "Howdy, Two Trees. Wazup?" I heard someone say from somewhere outside the truck.

  "I'm driving home," said Two Trees. "Wazup with you?"

  "Driving home from what? I didn't see any plane come in."

  "It was a stealth bomber. They're invisible. Don't you read the papers?"

  "Some people think you're a witty guy. Not me."

  "There's help for that," said Two Trees. "Get a sense of humor surgically implanted. Think how much more fun you'll have."

  "What's in the bed?" asked the voice.

  "Tools. What's in yours? The next-door neighbor?"

  "That's not funny."

  "Yes it is. If you had a sense of humor you'd know that. Now if you don't mind, I got a wife waiting impatiently. Oh, I guess that's redundant."

  I heard the engine rev and the shift lever drop into first gear.

  "Open the lid," said another voice from further away.

  "Who the hell is that?" said Two Trees. "A new boss?"

  "Do what he said. Open the lid."

  "With all due respect to Sound Security, fuck you. I'm paid by the same people you are, so if you want to look in my trunk, talk to them."

  I felt the truck move forward, then lurch to a stop.

  "You're blocking my way," said Two Trees.

  "We can't let you out of here without checking under the lid," said the original voice from outside, now slightly out of breath.

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  "What's this 'we' shit? Who're those guys?"

  "Just open the lid."

  I heard the familiar chunk of the transmission sliding into reverse, the whine of the gears as the truck flung backwards, then another bang followed by forward momentum. Outside, yells sprang from all directions, but the truck continued on, rpms at the limit through all three gears.

  What had been an uncomfortable ride became lunatic. I wrapped an arm around Axel and tried to keep him from getting pulverized by the hard metal surrounding us. A few moments into this leg of the ride, I heard the sound of branches scraping the side and underbody of the truck. We were in the woods. I clutched Axel even tighter and tried not to yelp from each passing impact with flying objects sprung from the detritus scattered about the truck bed.

  As I began to wonder how much more of this we could take, the truck abruptly stopped. The front door slammed and the tailgate flew open.

  "Come on, come on," said Two Trees, pulling at our pant legs, dragging us out of the truck. "Stay flat and pretend you're invisible."

  We did as he said and watched the bulky little truck pull away. Nearby, headlights were dancing through the trees, heading in the opposite direction. I pulled my backpack in front of me, opened the zipper and felt around for the hard muzzle of Poole's Glock. It came out inside its holster. I strung my belt through the holster and took out the gun. Axel watched the whole maneuver with an expression it was too dark to decipher.

  "I'm not seeing this," he said.

  "Good. Don't look. Just do exactly what I tell you to do when I tell you."

  "You're bossier than Anika, which is hard to do."

  When the headlights had nearly disappeared, I dragged Axel to his feet and pulled him with me deeper into the

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  woods. I wasn't ready to risk the flashlight, so collisions with saplings and entanglements with underbrush were ongoing impediments, but we kept a hard pace. Axel complied as well as he could with my demands, but no one, including Axel himself, considered him much of a physical specimen. After manhandling his frail physique, I knew this performance far exceeded his capabilities. So when he pitched forward to the ground with a little cry of desperate exhaustion, I let him lie.

  I sat down next to him and felt his forehead, then his pulse, which beat like a trip hammer. I lit the flashlight, stuck it in my mouth, then pulled out the map and compass and tried to get my bearings. The airport was more or less equidistant between the north and south coasts. I guessed, based on the angle of the airport entrance, and the predominance of tree cover, that we were closer to the north coast, but there was no way to be certain. Using the compass, I could at least move in that direction and try to find a landmark that would reestablish our position. Though not until Axel took a breath without it sounding like it was his last.

  "Good work, kid," I told him. "You showed a lot of heart."

  "Run, run, run," he gasped out.

  "We're going to have to move again in a little while, so don't get too comfortable."

  "I can't move again."

  "You can. You just don't know it yet. Take deeper, slower breaths and try to compose yourself. Tell your heart to slow down."

  "How do you do that?"

  "Calm your mind," I said. "Your body will follow."

  "Oh, great. A fucking guru."

  "No. A fucking boxer. Different religion, same advice."

  "I know why Anika likes you. You're even weirder than she is."

&n
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  We lay there staring up at the sky for a lot longer than I wanted to, but I really didn't know how much the kid could take.

  Then I thought about the boys in the Ford Excursion. I told Axel that we would have to go soon, but we'd be walking instead of running, and I'd carry his backpack for him. I told him we were heading for the north coast, but I had to find a landmark to get oriented.

  "You can't take me back to the Swan," he said.

  "I'm not."

  "Then where?"

  "You'll know when we get there."

  "In other words, you don't know where the hell we're going," he said.

  I took his backpack and rigged it to hang from mine. Then I stood up, squirmed into the load and reached my hand down to Axel. He let me drag him to his feet and followed me as I picked my way through the woods. He was quiet and his breathing less labored. I looked back occasionally and saw him studying his feet as he moved over the darkly treacherous ground. I wanted to say to him, "Balance, one of the benefits of a calm mind," but it would've probably made him trip.

  After about twenty minutes of this we fell out onto another road. It ran east-west, so according to the map it was one of three possibilities, though a left hand turn was called for in all cases. Axel followed silently.

  I was happy for the smoother terrain, but concerned about the exposure. The darkness made it difficult to spot places to hide, but also made it easier to detect oncoming vehicles. I debated the trade-offs in my mind as a way to pass the anxious time.

  The debate was somewhat decided when I heard an approaching vehicle before I saw the headlights. I yanked Axel with me directly into the woods, where he dropped

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  before I had a chance to force him. It was a black SUV, though not conclusively the one in pursuit. I gave it plenty of time to disappear down the road before heading back to the street. We walked on, further slowed by unease. Axel was at my side, looking behind us every few feet. I was afraid he'd fall, but glad for the vigilance. We passed a mailbox on which was painted a street number and the name of the street. I looked at the map and pinpointed our position.

  Several minutes later the tree cover lifted and we walked out into an open area, with fields on either side. The crescent moon was up by now, and even its faint light was enough to allow us to see a crossroads up ahead. I knew where I was, less than ten minutes from either the Swan or Gwyneth's shop. Neither were good options, but I decided to head for the intersection and make up my mind when I got there.

  We were nearly there when a dark shape rose up out of the field. Axel made an animal sound as the shape came toward us with long, resolute strides. I shoved Axel behind me.

  "Well, well," said Derrick Hammon. "I suppose you didn't need our help after all."

  chapter

  19

  At the vaporous emergence of Derrick Hammon, Axel started hopping and making groaning, mewling sounds. I reached behind me and grabbed him at the belt line, calming him. With the same hand, I pulled the Glock out of its holster and aimed it at Hammon's chest.

  "Cell phone," I said, using my other hand to beckon him closer.

  "You're not going to shoot me," he said, though he did as I asked.

  "Pull your pants down to your ankles," I said. "Leave the underwear on. The kid's had enough terror for one night."

  "Pretty kinky," said Hammon.

  He undid his belt and let his loose khakis fall to the ground.

  "Axel, do you want to go with this man?" I asked.

  "Shit, no way," he said. "What are you crazy?"

  "So there's my legal justification for shooting you if you try to stop us."

  "You can't escape Jock and Pierre," said Hammon. "But you'll wish you had."

  "Good. Then I can shoot them, too."

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  "What did the boy tell you?"

  "Everything," I said.

  "No I didn't," Axel yelled. "I didn't tell him a fucking thing!"

  In the dim, moonlit night, I saw Hammon smile, or maybe it was a sneer. Either way, it was a good target. I put the gun back in its holster, took a step forward and smashed him in the face with my good left hand.

  Knocking someone out with a single punch is a lot harder than people think. Hammon was small, but fit, and with my right fist out of commission, I had to rely on my weaker left. I gave it everything I had, throwing all my weight behind a power jab, snapping my fist the way I was taught by my addled old trainers. It took. Hammon's head whipped back and he crumpled to the ground like an imploding building.

  It's not the blow to the face that does the work, it's the brain smacking into the inside of the skull. So I hoped I'd only given him a concussion and not an early death.

  Axel squealed and started hopping again. I grabbed him by the shoulder and once again pulled him along, this time across the field to the north and into another formless mass of murky undergrowth.

  Ten minutes into another thrashing dash through illcared for woods, Axel gave out. I kept him from falling by holding him around the waist. He didn't weigh much for an eighteen-year-old, but was plenty heavy enough under the circumstances. I tried to take my own advice and calm the mind, but it was having none of it as I felt the creeping approach of exhaustion. So instead of calm, I switched to rage, growling profanities with my rapidly weakening breath.

  Branches raked my face and vines yanked at my feet. The ground began to pitch downward, which improved our velocity, but made it harder to stay upright. Axel's staggering attempts to help the effort tipped the balance, and we both fell headlong, with my face and chest taking most

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  of the blow. My right cheek caught something sharp, and I felt a rivulet of blood run down the top of my shirt. I wiped it off with my sleeve as I got us back on our feet, and more carefully this time, continued down the steep incline.

  Then suddenly we were out of the woods again, now in the backyard of a small house. There were lights on inside and a dog started to bark. I made for the driveway at the end of which was parked a panel truck. Along with another car parked farther down, it provided brief cover on the way out to the street.

  Security lights lit the ensuing scene. We were across the street from Buchanan's Marina, one of several small outfitting and repair operations at the rear of a channel that began at the Swan. We crossed the street and I stowed Axel and the backpacks under some foliage and told him to be quiet and stay put. He was breathing too heavily to answer, but he gave his head a feeble nod.

  I dug a set of Vise-Grips and a pair of wire cutters out of my pack, part of the collection of tools I'd brought on the expedition. I felt around my cheek before moving off. It was slick with blood, but the cut was more long than deep. It could wait.

  The marina had two docks running perpendicular to the shore. I walked down the first, assessing what was available. A small, white, hard-shell tender, the type of auxiliary boat preferred by traditional sailors, popped out of the low light. I rejected it for that reason, but pulled out the oars and laid them on the dock. Farther down were two matching aluminum-hulled open boats with squared-off corners, raised helm and big four-cycle motors. Cushioning around the gunwales confirmed that they were the marina's working boats, used to both push and tow customers' boats in and out of the slips.

  Even better, they had oarlocks.

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  I retrieved the oars off the dock and brought them with me onto the aluminum boat, where I first sat at the helm and checked out the controls. Then I moved to the rear and examined the motor, with poor results in the limited light. I set the oars in the oarlocks, which were a little oversized, preferable to the other way around, then went forward and untied the line. I used one of the oars to paddle backwards into the channel, then both to push the boat forward over to the waterline.

  I had to step up to my knees in the water to make a quiet landing, pulling the bow of the boat up on a tuft of grass. I ret
rieved Axel, who was lying on his back with his knees drawn up, staring up into the leafy bush.

  "It's Sam," I whispered, hoping to avoid startling him. "Stand up and hand me the backpacks. You only have to walk a few feet."

  "I can't."

  "Come on."