by Sean Black
FORTY-TWO
Las Vegas
Eldon
They’d booked Eldon into the MGM Grand on the Strip. He checked in and went up to his room. When he got inside, the pre-programmed greeting screen was on the TV. He switched it off. He took some clothes from his bag and hung them in the closet. He took out one of three toothbrushes he carried on recon trips, brushed his teeth, making sure to leave a smear of toothpaste on the sink, and left the water running. Nothing, it seemed, said that a room was being used like a wet toothbrush. He walked back out, switching the sign to Do Not Disturb. He walked out of the main entrance, past the Golden Lion in the foyer, and hung a left.
He collected the beaten-up car he’d rented earlier that morning from a lot about a half-mile away and drove toward downtown. On Fremont, he parked a few blocks away from the motel he planned on using, and walked the rest of the way. After all that time in administrative segregation, cooped up twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, the sun and what passed for fresh air in Vegas felt good.
At times like this Eldon often thought of the story he’d heard as a kid about a guy who couldn’t sleep because of the noise from a neighbor’s cockerel. The wise man of the village tells him to get a dog that barks. Next time he goes back, the wise man tells him to get a donkey that brays all the time. Finally, when the guy has a goddamn orchestra of animals making a racket, the wise man tells him to get rid of them. All of a sudden, the cockerel cock-a-doodle-dooing seems like jack shit, and he can sleep. That was what life was like for Eldon. A fleabag motel seemed like a palace when you’d spent the last six months in solitary, the same way that a twelve-by-twelve cell was heaven when you’d spent days living in holes in the ground waiting for some asshole to pop his head out so you could blow it off.
Next to his room, an old lady with varicose veins was sitting outside reading a second-hand drugstore romance. She looked away as Eldon opened his door. He glanced at her as he turned the key in the lock. ‘Ma’am?’ he said.
She looked up from her book, the pages yellow. He could see that he scared her. For a small guy, he scared a lot of people. The only ones he didn’t scare were the truly dumb ones. He reached into his wallet, pulled out five bucks and held it out to her.
When she spoke, her voice took him back. It was about an octave higher than he’d expected and she had a Southern accent. ‘I’m retired, sugar,’ she said. ‘My daughter stays with me, though.’
Classy, thought Eldon, a little old lady who pimps her daughter. ‘It’s nothing like that. I just want you to make sure the residents know that if anyone so much as thinks of going into my room they’re going to have a problem. Can you get the word out for me?’
She plucked the five spot from his hand, and stuffed it into her bra without a word.
‘Thank you,’ said Eldon, as he pushed the door open. He dumped what little gear he had, and headed straight back out. His neighbor didn’t look up from her book as he walked past her and toward his beat-up car.
He drove back toward the Strip, dropped his ride and headed into New York, New York. He saw his contact sitting alone at the bar. Eldon sat next to him and ordered a beer. When it came, they took a table in the corner. The contact was a retired Metro detective called Chenko with a bad haircut and a beer gut. The company had men and women like him all over, usually former law-enforcement or retired agents, folks who were plugged in. Every city, every town, every organization with a few hundred employees had at least one. It saved a lot of time, especially in situations like this.
‘You’ve been read in?’ Eldon asked him.
Chenko answered, with a smirk, ‘Everyone’s real twitchy over this. What is he? One of ours who spent too much time with the rag heads and loves Allah?’
Eldon sipped his beer. It was ice cold and flavorless but it went down easy. ‘What you have?’
‘He had a run-in with two LVPD cops,’ said Chenko, getting out his smartphone. He swiped the screen, pulling up a picture of a cop with a face like an inverted Panda, two purple-black eyes and a nose that had been taped back into place.
Eldon studied the damage. Whatever was going on in Tibor’s head, he was getting soft. The Tibor he’d known would have killed both cops, ripped out the dash cam, and taken out any witnesses, civilian or not.
Chenko continued with the slide show: ‘These are the two guys who helped him. Street names are Repo and Chauncey. They live down in the tunnels. Repo has a jacket, mostly drug-related. Burglary, theft, couple of assaults, soliciting. At weekends, he calls himself Sheryl.’ Chenko swiped to a mugshot of Repo in a blond wig, lips pursed like Marilyn Monroe.
He moved onto the other man, Chauncey. Eldon studied the man’s face. He looked like a truck driver from Indiana who’d just discovered the joys of meth.
‘Chauncey’s more your regular loser type. From what one of the patrol guys in that division told me, him and Sheryl have a thing. Different strokes, right?’
Eldon shrugged. He wasn’t about to share that he also followed Repo’s lifestyle in his down time.‘You know where I can find them?’
Chenko dug out a hotel tourist map. There were three locations circled. He flattened it out on the table. ‘Here, here and here.’ He jabbed a meaty finger at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign across from McCarran airport. ‘This was where the two cops got jumped and where those two losers had set camp. They’re lying low but I’d say they’ll be back there before someone else stakes it out. Our boy will be long gone but guys like these are creatures of habit. They only move if the tunnels flood or they go to jail.’
FORTY-THREE
The first tunnel Eldon checked was empty. In the second he came across a couple of tweakers hunched over a pipe. They’d seen Chauncey, Repo and Tibor together but they were hazy on the when part. Heavy-duty narcotics did that to people. A year ago, last week, five minutes before? They were all much of a muchness. Eldon left them to it and moved back to his ride.
Twenty minutes later he parked up next to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. A couple of Elvis impersonators were having their picture taken with tourists. Across the street a Wynn Casino plane was rolling up, ready to go get the next whale with a couple of million and bring him back to Vegas.
Eldon waited for a break in the traffic and strolled across the street in the direction of the golf course. Ahead of him was a concrete ramp with high walls that shielded it from view. At the bottom it split into two tunnels. Chenko had already told him that Repo and Chauncey were usually camped out on the one closest to the road. Eldon hugged the opposite wall. He could already hear the echo of someone moving around in the right-hand tunnel. He drew his weapon.
He ran straight into the mouth of the tunnel, coming on Chauncey within seconds. He faced him and barked orders: ‘Police. Hands behind your head, asshole.’
Chauncey looked at him with tired, yellow eyes. ‘You got ID?’
Eldon advanced on him, grabbed his shoulder and spun him round so that he was facing the tunnel wall. He brought a knee up hard between Chauncey’s legs. Chauncey groaned, slumping forward. Eldon grabbed his hands and used Plasticuffs to tie them behind his back, cinching them tight enough to cut off the flow of blood.
There was a banshee scream from further down the tunnel. Eldon pivoted round in time to see Sheryl/Repo rushing toward him with a curved samurai sword. Eldon shot him in the face, figuring that Chauncey would have the same information as his boyfriend. Red-tipped fingers flew to what was left of Repo’s face as blood spattered the blond fringe of the wig he was wearing. Eldon finished him with a shot to the chest. That was a shame: Repo’s outfit, an off-the-shoulder cocktail dress with diamanté edging around the neckline, was pretty damn cute.
Chauncey was crying now. Eldon crossed to the body, and checked for a pulse. He didn’t have much time. Even with a suppressor, the tunnel was like a concrete amplifier complete with reverb pedal. He would take Chauncey with him, and find somewhere quiet they could talk.
Squatting down, he didn’t see who rushe
d at him from the darkness. One second he was hunched over a dead transvestite, the next he was kissing the blood-spattered concrete, his weapon prised from his fingers.
Eldon was wiry, and a hell of a lot stronger than people assumed. He was good at wriggling out of situations. Not this time. He was pinned good. A thumb jammed into his vagus nerve, which lay next to the hyoid bone at the triangle of his jaw and neck, the jolt of pain making sure he couldn’t struggle. A hand fished in his pocket. One of his own Plasticuff bands was used to secure his hands.
He could taste blood on his lips from the man he’d just executed. Straining his neck muscles, he twisted his head round, scraping the skin away from the point of his chin as he stared into the eyes of the man he’d come to find.
FORTY-FOUR
Byron
I pressed the Springfield into the back of Eldon’s neck. ‘How you been, Eldon?’
‘Y’know, living the dream, same as you. Thought you’d have left already.’
‘Change of plan,’ I told him. ‘I saw you checking in at the Grand. Decided I’d stick around. Graves send you?’
‘Name, rank and serial number. That’s all you’re getting. Anyway, you don’t want to hang around here for too long, and I’m going to be too much trouble to take with you. Just do this and be done.’
Something approaching grudging admiration welled in me. A man like Eldon didn’t need an implant or any help in doing what he did. He was a stone-cold psychopath. The guy didn’t have nightmares about the people he’d killed: he had wet dreams. In fact, I’d heard he kept a tally of his kills. The last two before prison had been a couple of car-jackers in Texas who’d rolled up on him while he was taking a nap in his car.
‘What was your final number, Eldon?’
‘One ninety-seven. Want the breakdown?’
‘Not really,’ I said.
‘I’m gonna give it to you anyway, case you live long enough to write your memoirs. One hundred seventy men. Twenty-one women. And seven kids. Best one was a baby out in ’Stan. Boom! What a shot. Momma was holding him, thinking that I wouldn’t shoot a newborn, then pop! Right through the little fucker’s head and straight into her heart. Hearts and minds, Byron, that’s what it’s all about over there. Am I correct?’
I said nothing. I wasn’t going to get drawn in.
‘What you waiting for, Robo Cop?’ Eldon taunted.
I pressed a knee into the base of Eldon’s spine. I could see straight into the back of his head as the flow of blood pulsed and flashed a magic lantern of color. The only thing missing was yellow. Eldon wasn’t scared of death, not even deep in the center of his mind at his amygdala, the emotional nerve control that filtered our deepest fears.
A police siren whooped close by. I listened hard. I heard a car stop and two doors open, closely followed by the crackle of radios and a request for more units.
Eldon looked at me. ‘What now?’
I drove the butt of the Springfield into Eldon’s skull, catching him on the temple. I would have shot him but that would have meant losing the few seconds I had to get out of there before the cops arrived. I turned and headed back into the darkness of the tunnel.
FORTY-FIVE
Julia
Julia started as she walked into the apartment and flicked on the lights. Graves was sitting in the leather club chair next to the fireplace. It was where Byron used to sit in the evening and read.
‘We need to talk, Mrs Tibor,’ he said. ‘And this time you need to tell me the truth.’
‘What is this? You break into my home and now you want to interrogate me. Who the hell do you think you are?’
Graves’s fingers tapped the arm of the chair. ‘I’m the government, Mrs Tibor, and this is a matter of national security, which means that I can go where I want, and do what I like when I get there.’
Julia couldn’t believe the nerve of the guy. ‘The hell with you.’ She about-faced and headed for the door, half expecting it to open and reveal another heavy standing there. When she opened it there was only the empty corridor and the stairs she had just climbed.
Graves called after her: ‘You want to know the truth about your husband?’
Stepping back into the apartment, she pulled the door closed behind her. She stood with her back to it. ‘You told me Byron was MIA. Have you found him? Is he alive?’
‘Tell you what, why don’t we both try something new with each other? I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to do the same for me.’ He waited for her response.
‘Where’s my husband?’
‘You have any coffee?’ Graves asked her.
‘I can make some.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
‘Is he alive?’
Graves nodded. ‘As far as we know, yes.’
Julia went into the small galley kitchen and made coffee, her hands trembling as she measured the coffee beans into the grinder and poured in the water. She was scared. Scared because of who Graves was, and what he represented, and the fact that he knew she’d lied. How he knew bothered her too. She knew that the National Security Agency monitored everything that went on, every phone call, every email, but, like most people, she didn’t dwell on it any more than she was conscious of being captured on security cameras whenever she took the subway or walked into a store. Part of that came from the feeling that you need worry only if you were doing something wrong. But what was wrong and who decided? Someone could tell you something, and the act of knowing, of listening to them, as much as the act of them telling you, somehow made you complicit in the eyes of the government.
She called through to Graves, ‘How do you take it?’
‘Black, sugar, if you have it.’
She dug around in the cupboards and managed to find some vanilla-scented sugar. She carried two mugs into the living room and handed one to Graves.
‘Thank you. Perhaps I should begin and that will make your part easier.’
She nodded for him to go ahead, blowing over the lip of the mug to cool her coffee. Her eyes flitted to a framed picture of her with Byron that stood on the mantel over the fireplace. It had been taken on their wedding day. Her brother had been Byron’s best man. Apart from a few of Byron’s work colleagues and their wives, the guests had been her family, her friends, or people they knew as a couple.
‘When Byron left you ten days ago,’ Graves started, ‘he traveled to Nevada to the research facility that had helped him previously. He told you about that?’
It felt so strange to be discussing this. Even when Byron had told her about the program, it had seemed surreal. It still did. Apart from anything else, he appeared completely normal. The only way anyone could guess was from the heart monitor he sometimes wore. Even then most people would have put down the reading to his special-forces training or his sheer athleticism.
‘Yes, he did,’ Julia said.
‘Mrs Tibor, I have to be careful what I say. I can’t afford to let something slip that you don’t already know about. It wouldn’t be good for either of us. You understand?’
She did, only too well. ‘The facility was where they gave him the neural implants, which allow him to perform at levels that normal people can’t. And they stopped the PTSD – or, at least, they stopped the symptoms.’
‘What did he tell you about that, Mrs Tibor? You’ll understand why it’s important in a second.’
‘He told me he saw a young girl being killed when he was on a mission in Afghanistan. He had some kind of a breakdown, nightmares, flashbacks. Someone told him about the program. He still wanted to serve his country. The program would allow him to do that. There was a risk but he couldn’t go on the way he was.’
‘That’s correct,’ said Graves. ‘He say anything else about the program? About other technology?’
She gave a nervous laugh. It would sound crazy. The technology and what it allowed Byron to do seemed far-fetched yet frighteningly real.
‘The implants also gave him … I don’t know the word. It sounds st
upid.’
‘Go on,’ Graves prompted.
‘It was like superpowers.’ She scrambled to correct herself. ‘Not like flying or climbing walls, but his senses were heightened. He had night vision, he could separate out sounds, pick out two people whispering to each other in a crowded room.’
‘Anything else?’
She took a sip of coffee. ‘He could read minds. Not literally. But he could look at someone and tell if they were happy, or nervous, or scared. He said it was called sensory substitution. He showed me the tiny magnets in his fingertips. He could stick his hand around a corner and read the temperature of a room. I sound like a crazy person …’
‘The subcutaneous armor? He mention that?’
‘Yes.’ She shook her head at the thought of it. Now she had started talking she wasn’t sure she could stop. It was such a relief to share this with someone, even if that someone was a person she didn’t trust. ‘It wasn’t something I thought much about. He told me he didn’t use it unless he was on active duty. He was just my husband. I mean, is … unless you have something to tell me.’
‘No, and he is missing. That part was true. But not overseas.’
She wasn’t sure what to make of this. He must have read her puzzlement because he went on, ‘There was a problem with one of the implants. Another operative who had undergone the same procedure started to act in a volatile manner. The medical team and the neuroscientists were about to run an update on Byron, take it out, repair it and put it back in, but Byron went haywire. Mrs Tibor, I’m not sure how to tell you say this exactly, but Byron killed four of the team and fled the facility.’