We are all crawling in our own blood.
We are focused only on our own dead game.
I remember that part really clearly, even though my mind was half gone when she said the words. I also remember her telling me it’s not about nukes. Nukes are impractical. What was she saying? What the hell was she really trying to tell me?
Don’t look, son.
It’s the face of God.
I don’t say any of this to Franklin. This is strictly need-to-know. A serious table with serious stakes. But I have an advantage: one of the players is David Hartman. He knows what’s really going down. Why they want to break the mainframe that controls Cheyenne Mountain—and why it’s not about nukes.
And David Hartman might still have my wife.
That makes this a no-brainer.
• • •
Franklin brings me some fresh clothes that look like they’ll fit pretty well. Jeans and a black beefy tee, striped flannel workshirt. Typical twentysomething slacker uniform. What to wear when you wanna blend right in on the corner.
He shows me to a bathroom, just around a sharp corner on the second floor of the house—which is huge, built in the fifties, with creaky stairs and floorboards and dirty rugs that smell like marijuana. The wallpaper is peeling off, revealing a skeleton of rotten stucco and wood struts. This place is nestled in a pretty remote location just on the outside of the Bellaire subdivision, past the Galleria. A place for people with sad pasts to hide out from whatever. The bathroom is a tiny thing, but it has a shower. Franklin leaves me to it.
He keeps the stack of nineteen large in his hand the whole time.
When I am alone, I peel off a second skin soaked with blood and sweat and I wash three days’ worth of running scum down a tiny drain in a narrow stall with a glass door. The steam smothers me, makes me feel like a ghost. My feet seem like mirages, way down beyond a woozy shimmer. The water is hot. My head begins to pound. I feel Toni, closer than ever in this fog. Screaming my name now. Almost there. Almost . . .
I grit my teeth and the rage sparkles somewhere.
Sparkles like the hot water.
It wants to show me her face.
It almost comes . . . almost . . . but the wave crashes back.
Not ready yet. My mind is too fried. The buzzing becomes an afterburn as the rush leaves me. I almost sink to my knees. But I hold myself up.
Have to hold myself up, man.
Don’t lose it now.
The face of Alex Bennett—Alex Gange—fades into view, shimmering in the fog.
I can’t look at her, either.
She only smiles at me, but I can’t look at her.
I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t. I want to tell her this is all my fault, but it isn’t. I want to apologize because I failed her . . . because I failed her father . . .
But what could I have done?
Alex . . . Axl . . . I’m sorry.
She doesn’t hear me because she’s dead.
• • •
The basement staircase is just past a locked steel door hidden in a hall closet. Down the stairs, in the center of the subterranean chamber, Franklin snaps on a hanging bulb over racks of ordnance. They have everything down here from slingshots to grenade launchers, all in neat rows, the rifles and pistols shiny and polished, the slick surfaces swimming in beads of dull light. A couple of concrete safes, too. That’s probably where they keep the C-4. You could start a miniature revolution with this gear. Their intel center is fairly respectable, too. Maps on the walls, a couple of dry erase boards with names and dates on them. A watercooler and a full-sized refrigerator. Modded laptops with satellite interface, a couple of big machines with king-hell memory and maxedout dual processors. He tells me someone named the Weasel put the rig together and to play nice with it or I’ll get my ass kicked. When he says that, my head goes light for a moment, and I picture a couple more cells in my brain flaming out. I sit down in the chair in front of the computer system and rub my temple.
“You better take it easy for a few days,” he says. “They had you on some heavy drugs. You almost died.”
“I don’t have a few days.”
“Four grand rents this basement for a while. You should take it easy.”
“I have to work. There’s not much time.”
“Suit yourself. There’s a cot in the corner. Marcie will be down to make sure you’re treating the place nice. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. There’s a shitter over there.”
He aims a finger toward the far end of the chamber, where I see a dirty toilet under a stem lamp. Old issues of Hustler and Playboy scattered around like tattered snapshots of dead bodies. Reminds me of T-Jay’s old prison cell.
“One of your guys used to live down here?”
He almost nods.
“I’m . . . sorry about that.”
“We’re all sorry for something.”
Profound, man. I think the last time I heard someone say that, it was in an Indiana Jones film. Almost makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing here with these losers.
I should run away from this place. I shouldn’t trust anyone. I’m taking my life in my hands by even sitting still for more than a few hours.
So what do I do?
I look right at him and say I’m sorry again.
This time he doesn’t reply at all.
• • •
I lie down on the cot for a moment, as Franklin gets a snubnosed revolver from the rack. Smith and Wesson. Checks the spin chamber, full load. Clicks the safety and stuffs it into a shoulder holster.
“Gotta go see a man about a horse,” he says. “When I get back, the rest of the guys will be here and we’ll see about helping with your problem.”
“You can’t go back to work at the club. Jenison’s people will be looking for you.”
“I’m not going back there. I’ve gotta pick up your package.”
“That’s risky. We should stay low.”
“I don’t wanna be involved with this any longer than I have to.”
“Maybe we should just leave it hidden for now. These people are like cockroaches. They’re everywhere. I’m starting to think they have government guys involved with them. If that’s true, they’ve got eyes in outer space that can watch us wherever we run.”
“You know how much money it takes to adjust the lens on one of those satellites?”
“No.”
“I’ll be okay.”
He doesn’t tell me the passwords to get into the computer system. I almost wonder why. He turns on one heel and leaves me lying there in the half dark. His boots do a creaky clop-clop-clop up the rickety stairs. The steel door slams.
I get up and sit on the concrete floor, trying to focus.
Trying to put it together.
There are so many things that don’t make sense, and my mind is still too fuzzy. I concentrate hard and try to see past the white noise, to see Toni’s face, to find the calm she taught me, to remember what her voice sounded like. All I get back is the old sharp pain and the weird flower smell, made even worse by the hangover. But the drug warp is receding. The shower helped. The new clothes are like a fresh skin. I can feel strong potions guest-starring in my bloodstream, backing the sickness off.
I try to bring the rage again, but it hurts too much.
No hurry. Just think. Think hard.
Focus.
Toni . . . was that really you on the phone in that bar?
Did you leave your number with that bartender, knowing those goons would be there to kill me? And why did Jenison leave herself wide open for an ambush like that? Why didn’t they just grab me and start cutting my fingers off in a dark room?
Answer: Jenison knew I wouldn’t crack under that kind of questioning. She knew about my training. My ability to guide myself out of anything, just by putting my mind there. They had to trick me into giving it up. They had to destroy what makes me tick.
But there are so many other questions.
&
nbsp; Kim Hammer was the first one they hit. She would have told them everything she knew about me. They could have killed her and everyone else working for her easy. That’s how they found me—at least that’s what Jenison said. I have to look into that. Gotta know for sure if Kim’s off the street.
I know I must have talked about Franklin. They would have known how to contact him. They’ll be looking for him now, for all of his buddies.
I have to assume this location is secure for just another twenty-four hours, tops. If these guys don’t decide to help me fast enough, I’m stealing a car and going it alone. The big question that hangs over everything is this:
Did I tell them about my backup plan while I was under the serum—about hiding the last piece of the puzzle in that parking garage, along with the rest of my money from Kim Hammer’s deal?
Did I really give them what they asked me for?
The system they’re hunting won’t work unless they have all seventeen discs, like the one I stashed in the Gold’s Gym bag. The one currently sitting in the trunk of the car Kim sold me. Maybe it’s still there. They might have found the car by now. Jenison’s people are smart.
Did I tell her everything?
I concentrate hard to remember if I did. It doesn’t seem that way. I guide every last ounce of brainpower I possess into that memory:
Sitting in front of her.
Talking about action movies.
Thinking I was dead game.
I sure as hell told her something.
She asked me whom I’d spoken to, and I may well have given her Franklin’s name. But I don’t think I said a word about my insurance policy. If Franklin was telling the truth, only he knows where the rest of the discs are. I wouldn’t have been able to give them the location. I can only hope I’m still operating from strength.
It’s all one big mess and I have to move really fast now.
• • •
The Weasel’s computer isn’t encrypted at all. It doesn’t even have a password. My new playmates must figure on nobody being able to get past the steel door up the stairwell. Anyone could spy on them through a wire. This is a sloppy system. I check for blackware and virus infection programs. I’ll need them if I want to go deep into the underground without leaving a slime trail. They have some stuff, but it’s dated. I’m taking a risk. Everything’s a risk now.
Screw it all.
The first thing I do is sneak into some houses—a few shooters, well-known guns. Street mechanics who would know about Kim Hammer. Those guys all communicate silently, through private IMs and secure chat rooms. The odd e-mail here and there. Three of them have antiquated computers running software six or seven years old, and they haven’t updated their firewalls. Amazing how people give themselves up like that, just like they used to blow their cover on the phone doing drug deals. All their secrets are easy to pry. You just sneak in and grab them.
It doesn’t take long to find out Kim is long gone.
I check the cop records from the last few days and it’s confirmed. A heavy hit on her own house in the downtown Montrose area. That’s the shady side of the inner city, where a lot of petty crime goes down, and a lot of big crime, too. I used to do major deals with heavy players there. This is major, too. Ten shooters found dead at the scene and five of Kim’s boy toys. There are even a few pictures. Awful stuff. Heads blown to pieces by hollow-point rounds. Buckshot retirement packages, signed in deep red. It all went down the same night I was holed up with her Zebra Squad at the Sheraton. They made a positive ID on most of the bodies. One of them turns out to be the Puerto Rican boy she had on her arm when we did the deal. They were all being slaughtered while I was counting her money. Goddamn, man.
I remember texting her. Asking her if the area was secure. Whoever texted me back wasn’t Kim Hammer. It was Jenison’s people, keeping me in their crosshairs for the kill. I was dead game and I didn’t even know it.
The funny thing is that there’s no body on record with the cops or the Houston coroners—no positive ID that matches up with Kim. She’s MIA. Maybe made it out alive, maybe not. If she did survive, she’s not surfacing anytime soon. Probably halfway to Havana now on a private jet or a charter flight. All smart gangsters have a getaway plan and backup cash stashed somewhere. I hope she made it.
I dial some numbers through Skype scramblers, talk to a few people directly, using fake names I dig up. None of them tell me anything—not even the things I already know. Ghosts are roaming the streets, and everyone’s scared.
It’s the city of the living dead, man.
I check in with my hackers, the guys I hired last night from the hotel. There are six e-mails with detailed information, links to high-security databases, passwords and encryption code. And the numbers of bank accounts I’m supposed to wire their money to. Most of what I dig up is background on Jayne Jenison, nothing that helps me now.
I need to know about Cheyenne Mountain. Need to know what could possibly be more final than death-from-above by dirty bombs. Something way off the grid. Yet still controlled by Strategic Air Command, Region Eleven.
Maybe Jenison was lying. Maybe it really is about nukes.
But she had no reason to lie.
I was dead game.
Don’t look in the face of God, kid.
You don’t have what it takes.
. . . Wait a minute, what’s this?
A message just popped up from a guy who says he has something he won’t share in an e-mail. Has to be more private. I don’t know his name, not his real name, but he’s heavy in government contracting. His street cred is solid and he has really good references from a man I used to rob banks with. He’s attached an article to his message about something called Angel Point—a government project I read about while I was in prison. The Point wasn’t a mountain, but really an underground city they were building in Nevada. It made the news in ’08. Some sort of government-sponsored land development scheme, a little like the exurb projects, way out in the desert.
Exurbs. Ready-made cities, created by rich people, for rich people, built outside society. Maybe a model for a new world order.
Angel Point was sort of the same thing, only underground.
Subterranean neighborhoods that look like shopping malls.
I get in the secure chat room and type in my guy’s code, ask him what’s up? He’s not there. Damn. I keep the room open while I start making moves on the number I memorized in the bar. It was still in my phone when I woke up almost dead this morning.
I hack my own encrypted database offsite—the cloud where I keep all my special rainy-day blackjack programs—and I pull out some tricky software that allows me to trace the number from the same global positioning satellite this computer is wired up to. It’s traced back to an iPhone that’s been used a few times in the past twenty-four hours. I get GPS information on every position a call was made from or received at. My two calls to the iPhone were taken in a location just outside the hotel I was in. Then the trail arcs across Houston, ends in the center of a neighborhood with a lot of sleazy business going on. Places I used to know about but never went anywhere near.
There’s one address in particular—the iPhone hasn’t moved from that spot in eight hours. She ran there and stopped.
I don’t recognize the address, but I get a nice picture from orbit.
A big industrial building with razor-wire fences—looks like a manufacturing plant from the outside. I know better. My best guess is they mass-produce drugs there, among other things. Could be Hartman’s place. It could be his revolving inventory. His human-trafficking hub. Whoever I was talking to last night, she left her number at the bar, waited outside for the call—then ran like hell, maybe got herself snatched.
Baby, get the hell out of there. They’re going to kill you.
That’s all she said to me.
Was that all she had time to say?
Was it you, Toni?
Maybe she’d escaped from Hartman and tried to warn me. Or staked out th
at hotel lobby for days on a hot tip I would be in the building, then got in too deep when the goons descended on the place.
Yeah. It’s starting to make sense.
I print a hard copy of the satellite picture. That’s the objective now. Get in that building. Offer Franklin’s men whatever it takes.
Get in there and find her.
• • •
I’m about to call it a day when my secure IM pings.
It’s my ghost in the chat room, the guy who sent me the information on Angel Point.
He pops in under the screen name SAVIOR-1. Subtle.
We talk in really elaborate code. He’s that afraid of what he has to tell me. I have to use a decrypt program to understand anything he types to me, and even then it’s all in broken English, like some foreign guy using one of those over-the-counter Babylon translation programs to talk to you from a coffee shop in Rome.
He tells me the article on Angel Point was just background. Asks me if I’ve ever heard of the exurbs.
Yes, of course I have.
He says this is bigger than all of that. A massive project with a base of operations built on American soil.
I ask him how he knows about it.
He says there’s no way in hell he’s telling me who he is or anything else he knows in a chat room. He wants to meet me in person. He names a nice public place in the center of Houston. He’ll have to fly in from somewhere to meet me.
I tell him he can drop dead. No way am I exposing myself like that.
He says it’s really important. He’s afraid for his life. Two of his friends are missing—guys who went looking for answers. He says there’s a clock ticking. Says there’s not much time. The sky is falling.
David Hartman said that to me.
Said those exact words:
We’ve covered all the bases and the sky is falling.
I ask him what any of this has to do with Cheyenne Mountain or the code I hacked. I ask him what could be worse than nukes.
He doesn’t tell me.
I tell him to drop dead again.
No, he says. Wait.
Money time. He names a figure I can’t afford, and I tell him so. I tell him he can take or leave my original offer. I have other things to do and I have to use my cash to do them. None of this matters.
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