Resurrection Express

by Stephen Romano

  “No,” she says, and it sounds like a lie. “But we were . . . close. When I was a lot younger. Before I went in the military. He taught me a few things, but not everything. I wanted to know more.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “It is a little. We have something in common. David Hartman killed our teacher.”

  “Not many people know that.”

  “I met a guy from the Army Corps of Engineers who worked for Hartman. He told me they tortured Axl to death.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what happened.”

  I shut off the memory quickly, reducing it to dissonant information molecules. It’s the only way to deal with that.

  “Axl was a good teacher,” I tell her. “When he died, I had to work for Hartman. For years. I had to shut up and do as I was told. That made me sick.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “He never said anything about you.”

  “That don’t surprise me.” She gives a halfhearted wave-it-off with one hand, almost rolling her eyes.

  “So you were gonna be a tech thief and you bailed to be a flyboy?”

  “The air force was the only place I could complete my training for free.”

  “Like I said . . . it’s none of my business.”

  “I knew we would be going after David Hartman. And I knew you would be on the job. And I knew Axl trained you. It’s my way of getting even, I guess.”

  “He was the best, no doubt about it.”

  “I think it’s such a goddamned waste that he’s dead.”

  “Most of the things they don’t teach you about in thief school were things Axl invented. Those are the things you only know if you meet a guy who was under his wing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you have to be a mechanic, for starters. A real mechanic. You know what the first thing he taught me was?”

  She shakes her dark red head, smiling.

  I solder a lead in place. Perfect connection. “He locked me in a room and told me to find my way out. Took me two days, but I finally figured how the hinges on the door were put together. He said I was a natural.”

  “He never said that to me.”

  “You didn’t know him long enough then. A woman with your skill set would have dazzled the hell out of Axl on a bad day.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “I had to bust my ass before he was happy. He took me through locks first. Old school. You have to learn your ABCs before you get high-tech. Did anyone ever teach you how to escape from police-issue handcuffs without a lockpick?”

  “No.”

  It’s impossible. You at least need a bobby pin—or a talent for dislocating your thumbs.

  “That was a trick question,” I tell her.

  She almost smiles again. “Axl was full of tricks, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes he was.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You’re going to anyway.”

  She folds her arms. “Hackers have to keep up with everything. It’s all mercurial, changes every few months. Everybody exchanges information. How did you keep up when you were in prison?”

  “I had a laptop in there.”

  “In maximum security?”

  “Like I said, you have to know the old school.”

  I don’t tell her about wiping the memory card and smashing the deck before I handed it back to the same weasel who smuggled it in for me. That was on the day Jenison showed up with Toni’s picture. I don’t tell her about keeping my data encrypted behind a wall of virus-infection security in an offsite location, or the Destroyer looking out for me, getting things set up with him in the two weeks before my release. I don’t tell her about the three hundred grand I may or may not still have in a safe deposit box at the Austin Bergstrom Airport, a few hundred miles from where we stand. Only the Fixer knew about that. He might be the last person ever to know.

  She offers her hand seriously, all business now. “It’s an honor to be working with you, sir. I won’t let you down.”

  I give her a small smile, but I don’t take her hand. “This isn’t the army and you don’t report to me. It’s Elroy.”

  “Okay. Elroy.”

  “Can I call you Alex?”

  “I don’t like my first name. Bennett is fine.”

  She looks right in my eyes now, and I can see the question lingering in her. She wants to know what I know about Axl. The details about how he died. It’s why she’s really here. Why she’s so serious about all this.

  I could give her that. I could tell her all about the blood and the mayhem and Hartman’s sick, twisted grin, beaming across a room tangled in smoke and sweat and screaming. I could explain the horror of watching your elders die slowly. The shame and the guilt, the endless spiral of rage.

  I can’t give her that.

  It would give her nightmares for the rest of her life.

  So I shake her hand instead.

  When I do it, I wonder if she’s Axl’s daughter.

  • • •

  That night, I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the photo. Toni and the girl, and Hartman with them. Jenison gave me a thumb drive with a digital file, containing all the pictures her undercover man snapped, but none of them are important to me like this one is. Because I can tell that’s her. Even though I can’t see her at all.

  What are you thinking about in this moment, Toni? Are you thinking of me?

  That poor little girl in the picture with her. I don’t even know her name. Jenison’s daughter.

  I close my eyes and imagine that I am in the room with them: the smell of cigarettes and high-dollar weed, booze and sweat, the thump-boom-crackle of the rave club beat, good guys and bad guys and people who mean nothing to no one, all dancing and yelling and scamming and loving . . . and in the center of it all . . .

  David Hartman.

  The monster who stole everything.

  Right there, barking orders to my one true love, and a little girl caught up in a karaoke disco-ball nightmare. The music is noise that distracts me. I open my eyes and I look harder. Until my eyes can’t look anymore. Until the line between the photo and my dreaming world blurs. And I am lost. Restlessly lost. Down and down . . . and . . .

  • • •

  I’m back to that night.

  The night of our last job together—me and Toni, and my father.

  This all happened so long ago.

  The good old days, about to end badly.

  That’s where you always sat, right at the edge of everything. The risk always sniping at you, the sick thrill of losing it all. The abyss, yawning deep below. We used to call it a Coffin Run—those shotgun-crazy suicide assaults that nobody goes near, not unless they’re like us. Unless they’re really good at sensing the chinks in thick armor, sniffing out weaknesses, knowing where to hit hard and how to fade away when the smoke clears. It always helps when you’re protected by the syndicate going in, but even that doesn’t mean a damn thing if you’re hitting especially dangerous people. So you work it real careful. You plot things to the letter. You take a cowboy job and you lace it with military precision. That makes you damn near invincible.

  And that always started with Toni.

  Secret Agent Toni—Bond Girl Toni.

  The guy we were going after was one of those fat old-timers with a thing for young flesh—a lot of them are. It’s kind of a cliché, really. But the old methods work best, even in the high-tech future.

  And why?

  Because those old-timers never keep their cash in banks.

  Money laundering gets you get caught—history proves it, the feds count on it. Coming back on mob assholes in court with tax-evasion charges is the one way to make damn sure every one of them do hard time in the end. As far as the IRS is concerned, you’re guilty until proven innocent when there’s a river of dirty money flowing through traceable channels. All that goes away if you dig a big hole and bury all your cash there.

  We were standing right o
ver the big hole.

  And she was casting her line and reeling the old man in like a prize fish, gaffed and helpless.

  I was sitting in the truck, twenty miles away from the nightclub, watching him on my screens. His face, a pockmarked artery of age and secrets and murder, carved in thick ugly gashes, his eyes wide and drunk and crisscrossed with jagged red lightning bolts, all brought into my tiny flip-up console with digital perfection from the six invisible eyes placed in her hair and her jewelry. My fingers racing across the keys, commanding software programs that mapped patterns in his irises, cracking the code hidden there. It took only six minutes. Then I had the key to the vault’s first lock, built easy from the high-definition scan. Those retina identification panels are easy to fool, even when you don’t have direct digital access to the guy’s bloodshot baby blues. I used to call it eyeballing your way in. Toni’s hidden cameras made it a walk in the park.

  She kept the old man on a real short leash all night long, brought him in close so his breath fogged my cameras, his hands crawling all over her. The magnetic scanner in her locket found the three Black Visas and the iPhone in his jacket within seconds but it took a little longer to break the pin numbers. Well-off people carry Platinum cards, but dirty rich depravos pack the Black, baby—and they’re always hard. The cell number was easier. Pay dirt number two. Smartphones and credit card accounts are clear windows into every mobster’s life. You ride the signal like a rainbow, straight to his pot of gold. You use forged passwords and code clones to break through back doors and private e-mail accounts, all that cyber-jazz interlaced and moving faster than the speed of light—all easy to manipulate and bring under a series of simple commands, when you know how it works. What I needed then was the charm bracelet that governed the outer-security array of his fifty-acre estate in the Bellaire Green subdivision of Dallas. Cluster upon cluster of laser beams and motion detectors, wrapped up in a state-of-the-art Gordian knot of electronic deadfalls and hardwire booby traps, not to mention about twenty guys with guns. The smartphone was my key to the kingdom. I had the knot untangled within ten minutes. Toni fixed him with her smile and worked it easy, as the music in the nightclub pounded hard in my headset.

  I hate music.

  It’s like jagged shockwaves in a sea of logic. Like the ringing in my head, since I was shot there. People in Austin talk endlessly about how Beethoven is hard and rough, how Mozart is light and frothy. They talk about jazz and trip-hop and how white people shouldn’t play the blues, unless you’re Stevie Ray. Me, I want it all to shut up so I can do my work. I hear the patterns in dead silence. And when a sound happens, I know it really means something.

  Like the signal from my father, that his men were in position. Ready for my all-clear. Twelve guys in ninja black waiting in the dark just outside the reach of motion detectors, twenty miles away from the club where Toni worked her magic, the old man inviting her for a spin in his new car. A false pulse, just for three seconds, from my console to the main security booth, telling their computer to open the gate.

  Three seconds is an eternity to a guy like me.

  In just half that time, I had the perimeter scoped and rerouted, using custom blackware rigged to an infiltrator program. Easy cheesy. Outer security stripped in two more seconds. The bad guys dead in the water, waiting for the big thrust. Toni wasn’t even out of the old man’s car by the time we moved. They were still on their way to the next club, an old man with brand-new candy on his arm tripping the light fantastic, while my father led A-Team in precise formation through the front ranks of bodyguards scattered across the main estate, taking them out quiet, no casualties. Duct tape and razor wire. A couple of tough guys in the bunch. It’s always easy to shut them up fast. Big guys go down harder. B-Team was mine, and we were already at the rear servants’ entrance, five guys waiting for the signal to move.

  That’s how it works. You advance with military precision. You need that kind of training. The timing is crucial. One team forward, then the next, each waiting for the other’s word to move again, like fists climbing a ladder.

  Twenty seconds and the whole perimeter was covered. Guns on every exit. Bodyguards and estate security brought down hard. The main windows rigged to blow. We used to call it getaway insurance. My eyes blinked sweat away as I glanced at Toni’s feed on the six tiny video windows across the top of my handheld: My wife running her nose along thick lines of cocaine in the back of a limo, not batting an eye while the old man talked his trash, pouring drinks, spouting the usual greasy gangster crap about all the things he could do for a woman like her. His voice, loud and clear over the wire, as my fingers worked the locks. No music. Just the silence of logic.

  We were inside the house within three more seconds. Moving toward the main corridor. The vault six feet below us, just off the main service elevator. My father waiting with his team to cover our escape. Toni in the old man’s lap now, seducing him with one arm behind her back, the drugs hardly even affecting her steel-trap mind. My team down the elevator, into the giant steel-walled strong room. The vault, like a silver monolith, glinting off the miners’ lights strapped to our heads. My mind and my fingers, working the numbers, forcing myself to be somewhere else, somewhere far away among walls of pure logic, so I couldn’t see his hands all over Toni. His hands, filling the tiny video windows now, touching her . . . and . . .

  . . . and . . .

  The wire exploded in my ear—glass and gunfire and screeching tires, twenty miles away, the limo punched into Swiss cheese from the outside by shooters. We were right on the vault when the shit came down. All that rapid-fire chaos, as Hartman’s guys stepped in. He’d warned us not to use Toni on this one, and my father told him to go fuck himself. He laughed and said he would get personally involved if we stuck to our guns, and my father told him to go fuck himself again. Hartman’s laughter was ringing in my memory and I was cursing our own stubbornness. I never thought he would really do it. When I look back, the whole thing seems so absurd.

  Everything went straight down the toilet at our end. The bodyguard in the limo Hartman ambushed must have signaled a backup unit near the estate grounds—one of those X-factors you always try to anticipate, but you’re never quite ready for when that ice shock of adrenaline kicks in and the panic oozes up your throat, my father’s voice screaming that the world is ending and we fall back to Plan S.

  S for shotgun.

  At the vault, I was done with the retina scanner and halfway through the time lock when I started to hear the dull thump of explosions inside the house. Three of our own men blown down quick, cluster bombs and return fire hacking the bad guys to hell. The magnificent thunder-blitz of cracking artillery, screams and crashes and hard shells clattering on marble floor. Flesh and bone pounded by solid lead slugs—the kind that tear through a car door with muscle to spare. The hard metal-on-metal pump of pistol-grip assault weapons, like deep pistons chunking in unison with the explosions. I held myself in the silent spaces between the muffled blasts and concentrated on getting the goddamn vault open.

  While the good old days ended, just out of sight.

  Across town, Toni was pulled from the back of the shredded limousine by David Hartman. Her shoulder, bleeding from a 9-millimeter slug scrape, her face betraying nothing. The old man, forced out right alongside her, shot twice in the stomach, stumbling in the cruel grip of dumb animals. Sliver views of Hartman glowering over the big guy on my six video screens, as I finally cracked open the vault door and sent in the team with their duffel bags and hand trucks.

  Rule number one when things go south on a job:

  Always go for the money first.

  If things get real bad you’ll need every penny, depending on what side of the world you’re on when the fighting starts. And if you make it out clean, you’d better damn well have something to show your employers, especially when they’re already pissed off at you.

  I leaned against the wall of the corridor just outside the thick steel door that gave so easy, listening
to my father shoot it out with guys in plain black suits on the floor above us, knocking off human lives like they didn’t matter at all. Ringo Coffin, the gunslinger, the madman. My father, the shining example and our white knight at the wrong end of a suicide tear, screaming orders to his commandos in a war zone.

  David Hartman, hovering on the high-definition video windows, towering over the old mob asshole, playing his song and dance.

  Telling him who the boss really was.

  The old man, cowering in crunches of broken glass, surrounded by dead bodyguards, his limo shot to shit in the alley just behind him. My wife, held fast, her face still cold as steel, forcing back the pain. David’s voice, street Southern and smug as all hell:

  “I guess we got us a situation, don’t we, old man? But every situation has a solution. Just gotta be a creative thinker. I’m a reasonable guy most of the time.”

  The last shots fired in the living room, just above us. My father’s voice on the wire, telling me all clear, but to watch our asses. Like I needed that.

  “But what I can’t abide is the improper use of a beautiful lady. I told my people they had to handle this situation a certain way and they fucked it up. I guess you can hear me talking, right, Elroy? I told you not to use the lady. You’re way too smart a kid to fall back on sleazy tricks. Now, you’re on my shit list. You can take that to the bank.”

  I shook my head. Too absurd for words. David screws up the whole job, then calls me out for it while he gloats in the street like a cowboy, his thick gravy boiling in my ear like everything bad you think of when the word “Texas” springs into your head:

  “I mean, hell . . . I can understand it, of course. I know it’s such a gosh darn temptation to use the charms of a lady like this. But I’m a traditional guy. Ladies should know their place, after all. You follow me, right?”

  My team, just out of the vault now, hauling almost a hundred million in parcels. That kind of money fits in a much smaller space than you might imagine, even when it’s in laundered twenties and fifties. I remember rubbing my head, listening to Hartman’s voice, waiting for the next all-clear from my father. Then, the sound of a shotgun from the floor above me, blowing a muffled spasm in my throat, just on the edge of hearing, as I looked at the screen, watching Hartman perform: