Death Glitch

by Ken Douglas

  “ Damn.” Izzy felt cornered and she didn’t like it. “Why can’t you call me Izzy?” she snapped.

  “ Testy.” Lila slowed as they approached Highway 44. She stopped, made the left, turning toward Susanville.

  “ Well?”

  “ I don’t know. I think it’s because I respect you.”

  “ Really?” Izzy knew she shouldn’t have snapped at her. But just the thought of seeing Johnny and Roxanne made her feel ill.

  “ Yeah,” Lila said, “and that makes you the first person I’ve ever respected.” She laughed. “But I’ll try, Dr. Eisenhower, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “ I don’t know what I’m going to say.”

  “ You’re not going to say anything.”

  “ What?”

  “ You look like your granddaughter, remember? And she’s just been kidnapped from them. So you can’t go showing up out of nowhere looking like her, with those big brown eyes. You’re going to stay in the car, out of sight.”

  “ What are you going to say to them?”

  “ I’ll keep it simple. I’m a friend of Amy’s. I have a message for her from you. I’ll be in and out in nothing flat.”

  Fifteen minutes later Izzy slouched in the passenger seat, while Lila talked to Johnny and Roxanne, who were lit up under a porch light. It was dark and cold, but they hadn’t invited her in.

  Johnny had gained weight. So had Roxanne. Izzy smiled, despite the situation. Johnny had always had a thing for thin girls, had always told her he’d never wind up with an overweight, fatty, fatty two by four and that’s exactly what he’d wound up with. Maybe there is a god, after all.

  Or maybe Johnny had changed. Maybe he wasn’t as shallow as she’d remembered. Maybe he’d learned there was more to people than what was on the outside.

  On the porch, Roxanne was gesturing, talking with her hands as well as her mouth. Johnny was silent. That was typical. In every relationship he’d been in that Izzy could remember, he’d been sort of a whipping boy. Pussy whipped, that was the term. He lacked self-confidence. She didn’t know why, but it was true and it made her feel guilty, like she’d failed.

  Izzy couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was her son and she’d failed him. How come she hadn’t realized that years ago? She wished she could get out of the car, talk to him, make it right.

  They went in the house, Lila came back to the car.

  “ Good news, I think,” Lila said as she was buckling up.

  “ How so?”

  “ There were four of them.” Lila started the car, backed out of the driveway, headed back the way they’d come toward the center of town and the road to Reno. “One of them flashed a badge. He was a Reno cop and from his description it could only have been Peeps Friday. He’s one of Manny’s cop friends. Actually, the man fawns over Manny and Manny likes fawners. The others were part Manny’s private security force, Gerald, his number one and Weedy and Lugar. Weedy’s a schemer. Lugar’s a giant. All three are dangerous men, who Manny hired away from Blackwater, one of those security firms the government uses in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  “ You got them to tell you a lot,” Izzy said.

  “ There’s more,” Lila said. “After they put the girls in their car, Weedy came back to the house, tied up your daughter-in-law and left that note for your son. You know the rest. But what’s interesting is that up until that point, they were acting like they were taking the girls in for questioning because they were looking for information about you. I guess they were acting that way because they wanted the girls to cooperate.”

  “ And why is this good news?”

  “ Because, and I’m guessing here, but I think I’m right, if Manny sent his own people here, that means he hasn’t called in any more of his black op friends. He’s figured out his mistake, has made some excuse to whoever he called up to send that helicopter after me and he’s called off the dogs.”

  “ Why would he do that?”

  “ Because, Izzy, see, I can call you that,” Lila made a left and was back on the highway, headed toward Reno, “because he doesn’t want anyone else to know about you. He wants to be young again and he’s figured out if your secret gets out, it might not happen because the government would take an active interest and once they got their hands on you, they’d be the ones eliminating anyone who knew what your blood can do, instead of Manny Wayne. Heck, he’d probably be the first person they eliminated.”

  “ They’re never going to leave me alone, are they?”

  “ No, Izzy, they’re not.” Lila stopped at the light by the McDonald’s on the east side of town. “Are you tired? Can you drive a bit?”

  “ I’m wide awake. I don’t seem to get very tired, so yeah, I can drive.”

  “ Good, because I’m bushed.” Lila turned into the Micky D’s parking lot and they traded places. Back on the road again, she said, “Wake me when we get to Reno.”

  “ You can sleep?”

  “ When you do what I do, you have to have a hunter’s nerves. You have to be able to grab sleep whenever you can. I’ve trained myself to be able to turn off in an instant and I’m doing that right now. See you in Reno.” She closed her eyes and true to her word, she’d turned off.

  Izzy didn’t feel she could zip through the night at the breakneck speed Lila had been doing, because in her experience deer were often out on this road after dark, deer and the police. The stretch between Susanville and Reno was a favorite prowling ground for the California Highway Patrol and the last thing she needed was to be stopped and asked for her license, because she sure as heck looked nothing like the picture on it.

  An hour and half later, where the two lane highway turned into four at Hallelujah Junction, just before the state line, Lila woke up.

  “ How we doing?”

  “ Fine. We’re low on gas. I thought I’d stop at Bordertown.”

  “ Good. I’ll take over there.” And at the Bordertown casino, which bordered on the state line, they filled up at the casino’s pumps and Lila took the wheel.

  “ You have a plan?” Izzy said, once they were back on the road.

  “ Short of killing the dogs, killing Manny and Tucker, killing their bodyguards and killing anybody else who might be up there, besides your granddaughter and her friend, no.”

  “ So you were serious?”

  “ What, when I said we were going to have to kill them all? ’Fraid so.”

  “ Can we do that? And even if we can, should we?”

  “ Now’s not the time to ask those kind of questions.”

  “ Then when is?”

  “ I guess there isn’t a good time.” Lila sighed, as if she were bearing a heavy burden. “Look, Izzy, I know this isn’t easy for you. I don’t mean the getting young again business, that’s gotta be scary. I mean the killing business, especially since you’re a doctor. But these are bad men. Manny and Tucker are as evil as they come, I know and I know you know it, too. The bodyguards were all Blackwater killers. Wayne only hires the best, the most ruthless. Peeps Friday, well maybe you could shed a tear for him. He’s a greedy, weaselly kind of man who hasn’t a clue as to the Wayne’s real nature, but he’s sold his soul, so he has to be prepared to pay the price. Believe it or not, the hardest thing for me will be killing the dogs.”

  Izzy smiled, despite the situation. Lila was more human than she cared to admit. She’d been a stone killer, had decided to quit, but was turning herself into a killer again because of the trouble Izzy was in. She was doing it for her. And despite it all, despite what she was going to do, she felt tenderness toward the dogs, mean Rottweilers that would probably tear a baby’s head off just for sport.

  In the city, Lila drove to an average looking house in a neighborhood not too far from where Izzy lived. She pulled into the drive, parked.

  “ Come on, we’ve got to get some things.” Lila opened her door, paused, “And bring your stuff.”

  Izzy grabbed her bag from the back, got out of the car, followed Lila into the h
ouse, up a staircase and into a bedroom that had been converted into a home office. Lila slid open the closet door, revealing a large safe. She opened it and Izzy gasped.

  “ Yeah, a lotta guns.” She turned toward Izzy, “Give me that cannon.”

  Izzy opened her bag, took out the forty-five. Handed it to Lila.

  “ You have extra ammo?”

  “ Yeah.”

  “ I’ll be needing that, too,” Lila said. “I’ve only got three Glocks, you’ll be using two, I’ll use the third and your ancient forty-five. That way all your ammo will work in both your guns and you won’t screw up, trying to shove a clip in the wrong gun.”

  “ You, of course, would never make that kind of mistake.”

  “ No, I never would, but don’t take offense, this is my business, it’s all new to you.”

  “ None taken.”

  “ Here.” She handed Izzy a Glock. “Can you shoot one of these?”

  “ Yeah.”

  “ Take it.” She handed over the Glock. “I have something else for you.” She reached back into the safe, pulled out a shoulder holster. “I designed it myself. It’s for a lefty. It straps on with Velcro. You can pull it off in an instant. Handy if you want to lose your weapon and holster in a hurry.”

  “ Makes me feel kind of dark,” Izzy said as she was putting on the holster, “evil like, sinister.” She forced a half smile as she holstered the Glock, “Pair of lefties, us.”

  “ Word sinister comes from the Latin, means left handed.” Lila pulled a couple more Glocks from the safe.

  “ I knew that.”

  “ Really?”

  “ Latin in college,” Izzy said. She’d never thought of left handed people as being sinister or evil, never thought of herself that way either, but if it wasn’t evil they were about tonight, it was pretty darned close. No matter how Lila tried to sugarcoat it by saying how evil the men were they were going to kill, it was evil they were about. Because murder was evil, pure and simple. But was it murder if you were going to rescue someone you loved? Weren’t you supposed to protect them? Still, that’s what the police were for. But they couldn’t call the police, Lila had made that clear. So what else could they do? They had no choice.

  “ You look like you’re having doubts.”

  “ What do you mean?” Izzy said.

  “ Just what I said. You’re frowning, like you don’t approve.”

  “ I don’t think I approve and I do have doubts. I’ve lived my whole life healing people and in the last few days I’ve turned into a killer. True, I had no choice, because it was self defense, me or them. But this, we’re planning murder and though I know there is no other way, it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “ So, you’re good with this, you’re not going to wimp out once we get started?”

  “ They have Amy,” Izzy said. “I’m not going to wimp out.”

  “ Alright.” Lila handed Izzy a second Glock. “Can you shoot with your right hand?”

  “ Sure, I’m primarily a lefty, but in college I was a switch hitter on the girl’s softball team. Except for writing, I’m pretty much ambidextrous.”

  “ Good.” She said, handing Izzy another holster. “I designed this one as well. You wear it around your waist. The second Glock sits over your right leg, like a cowboy’s gun.”

  “ Velcro too.” Izzy said. “In case you want to lose it in a hurry.”

  “ You’re catching on.”

  “ So now I know why you wear the long coat.”

  “ I have one of those for you as well.”

  “ You think I need it.”

  “ The coat not only hides your weapons. It’ll hide your vest as well. They’re professionals, if they get a chance, they’ll be going for body shots, so it’s best they don’t know you’re wearing one.”

  “ You have vests?”

  “ Got a riot gun and a grenade launcher, too.” Lila held up what looked like a high tech sawed off shotgun to Izzy. “This is an M79, single shot, break-action grenade launcher. It’s loud and deadly. I’ve never used it before, so I’m kind of looking forward to it.” She smiled. “Sadly, I’ve only got two grenades, so we’ll just have to make the best of them.”

  “ You’re a bundle of surprises,” Izzy said.

  “ That’s not all.” She turned back to the safe, took out a large knife in its scabbard. She withdrew the knife. “Sharp,” she said, “I used to shave my legs with it.”

  “ A Bowie knife. Think you’ll need it?”

  “ I’ve never needed it yet, but I like to be prepared.”

  “ Looks like you have enough stuff here to start a small war.”

  “ I don’t know about that, but I’ve certainly got enough to get your girls back.”

  “ You think we’ll come out of this okay? The girls, too?”

  “ There’s not a doubt in my mind. Maybe we started out as Thelma and Louise, but we’re not them anymore. They were victims who wound up dead at the end of that movie. We’re not gonna wind up dead.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tucker Wayne didn’t seem as happy to have Mouledoux on board as his father had been. In fact, Mouledoux got the distinct impression the man would rather he hadn’t shown up at all. But maybe he was wrong, perhaps Tucker talked down to everybody.

  “ We’ll have our men stationed at the front,” Tucker said through a sneer that seemed a permanent part of his face. “Four will be out walking the perimeter at all times, two will be in concrete foxholes with automatic rifles.”

  “ What foxholes?” Mouledoux squinted out into the dark. “I don’t see any foxholes.”

  “ Exactly,” Tucker said. “Look, there and there,” he pointed, moving his finger back and fourth.

  “ Where those bushes are on each side of the property?”

  “ Yes. They aren’t real. They cover the foxholes, more like concrete bunkers, really. The men can stand in them and shoot from ground level. My idea, but Dad went for it in a heartbeat.” He was puffing up, proud of his idea, proud he’d pleased his father.

  “ Impressive,” Mouledoux said.

  “ There’s a tunnel underground from the bunkers to the guard’s quarters over there.” He pointed to single story house off to the left, inside the wired compound and Mouledoux mentally slapped himself, because he hadn’t noticed it when he’d come in. Of course, he’d been preoccupied.

  “ That is impressive. Nobody’s getting past them, but four men walking the fence doesn’t seem like the best use of your resources.”

  “ It’s not,” Tucker said. “Usually they have radios, so we only have one man out, but communications are out, so we need the men within shouting distance of each other. Besides, we have both shifts on duty, so it’s not like we’re short of talent.”

  “ You have any idea why the radios are out?” Mouledoux said.

  “ Not a clue.”

  “ Could Booth or Eisenhower be responsible?”

  “ Don’t see how,” Tucker said.

  “ Odd though, the thing with the radios. Kind of an inconvenient coincidence.”

  “ But that’s all it is.” Tucker sounded sure of himself, but Mouledoux wasn’t convinced. He didn’t like coincidences, especially the inconvenient kind.

  “ I’d like to see the bunkers.”

  “ That’s a good idea.” Tucker’s sneer turned almost to a smile, but not quite. “You should meet the men anyway.” Tucker took him around the estate and introduced him to the four other guards, who looked like capable men. However, Mouledoux thought that like Weed and Lugar, they all suffered from the disease of overconfidence.

  He’d said as much to Tucker when they were back in the house.

  “ Lila’s good,” Tucker said, “but she’s a shoot from the shadows kind of killer. These men have been to war, they know what killing’s really about. Lila shows up here and they’ll take her out, easier than swatting a bug with a rolled up newspaper.”

  Mouledoux had wanted to tell him that Lila Booth wasn
’t shooting from the shadows when she’d killed those feds back in Medford. She’d met them head on, standing erect as she’d shot them down. But instead he said, “You’ve got the front covered pretty much, but what about the back? You and your Dad gonna take care of that?”

  “ No, we’re going to be in the guard house. It’s built like a brick shit house and has a view of the whole estate, from the front porch to the front gate. In the unlikely event anyone gets past the guards, we can mow them down.”

  “ But not Isadora Eisenhower.”

  “ Yeah, that goes without saying.” Then, “So what do you think of our setup?”

  “ As I said, you got the front covered, but what about the back?”

  “ Nobody’s getting in that way. Coming up the back of the mountain is a nonstarter. We’ve got razor wire and an electronic fence down below on an almost vertical section of cliff wall. It was a real bitch to build. As for coming around the side, well there’s the fence, twelve feet tall and full of enough juice to ruin your night, and there’s razor wire on top. And then there’s the dogs. The backyard is their territory. And if all that fails, there’s you and Peeps. You’ll be on station in the kitchen, with lights out inside and on outside, you’ll see anything that moves back there.”

  “ It looks to me like you’ve got it covered, but they’re not going to come in shooting.” Mouledoux said. “You’ve got Eisenhower’s granddaughter, after all.”

  “ Yes, there is that,” Tucker said as they entered the kitchen. “But better ready than sorry.”

  “ So where are you holding the girls?” Mouledoux said as he took in the spacious kitchen with its wide window, overlooking the city lights far away and far below.

  “ And why would you want to know that?” Tucker slanted his eyes, pinned Mouledoux with a stare.

  “ So I don’t get anywhere near them, just in case this whole thing all goes south. I don’t want to wind up in court someday with them pointing their fingers at me.”

  “ Not gonna happen,” Tucker said.

  “ Covering your ass?” Mansfield said as he came into the kitchen.

  “ Didn’t see you there,” Mouledoux said.