by Michael Priv
“You whooped my ass?” Stan sneered. “If it wasn’t for your crazy girlfriend who shot me in the butt…” “ Exactly! You see now? We are a team. That’s what I kept telling you, Stan. We work together. She always comes through, you saw that with your own eyes. It may get rough out there. I’ll need a good partner.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.” Stan nodded, picking me off the floor like a child and placing me on the gurney, rolled in by one of the younger meatheads. “We have to get you into the tube, fast.” Then to one of his guys, “Notify Bogdana. Get the tube and the infirmary ready, two complete setups. I’ll also be taking the ride.”
33
Once again, I woke up on the cot feeling downright terrible, but my faculties quickly returning. “I need a safe passage to DC and some credentials to get a personal audience with a couple of high White House and Pentagon officials,” I told Stan, sitting in his cluttered office an hour later. The Guards finally found more suitable, “kids’” clothing for me. I felt much better in jeans, a plain green t-shirt and a pair of human-sized sneakers. “Could you guys do that?”
My attention was currently stuck on the Better Business Bureau Honor certificates for several years that lined the cheap woodpaneled wall, next to the Switkowski Trucking business license and the Department of Transportation commendation for 2008. The knowledge that back in 2008, customers never filed a complaint against Switkowski Trucking was comforting. I would probably also refrain from complaining. One look at those biceps was enough.
The entire wall below the framed awards and license certificate was lined with beat-up, black filing cabinets. Dozens of framed photos adorned the other wall. Linda occupied the chair next to me and was also gazing at the documents and pictures with a great deal of interest.
Stan peered at the computer screen on his desk, cluttered with papers and sundries. “Wanna meet Kevin O’Hara?” he asked in a distracted manner, intent on his computer. “We can arrange that.”
“Why do you think I would want to meet him?” I wondered. “ Rumors have it he’s Brell. He isn’t. O’Hara is probably spreading the rumors himself to confuse somebody,” Stan explained. “His residual PPS doesn’t match.”
That’s right. They could identify us by the PPS, if they had it on file.
“Residual PPS?” Linda asked. “Protoplasmic signature—a unique energy signature that all spiritual entities have,” Stan explained. “O’Hara’s true identity is the Logistics Chief under Brell, Colonel Srok, one of the Priests.”
“Then why would you want to arrange for me to meet with him?” Something wasn’t adding up in this whole affair with Brell’s identity, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And I really didn’t feel like being the Guards’ errand boy, either.
“ He keeps saying he’s Brell,” Stan shrugged. “That in itself is interesting, especially in light of his repeated, even if somewhat hapless, attempts to kill you and some others, which some of your former friends might find reprehensible for the Commanding Officer. He might know where Brell is. I doubt he’d tell you, though. But you can meet with him, if you want. It’s your mission.”
“If you are so precise in spotting identities by the signature, why don’t you keep screening people until you find Brell?” I stared at a framed, signed photo of Stan shaking hands with President George W. Bush. Having been a citizen of the People’s Republic of San Francisco all my adult life, I had never personally met anybody who didn’t consider George W. Bush Chaney’s puppet and a war criminal. Now I simply couldn’t get over the fact that the first person I ever met who appeared to like Bush was an extraterrestrial prison guard, posing as a Polish immigrant.
“We’ re talking about scanning billions of people, potentially,” Stan replied. “I don’t have the equipment, manpower or resources for such an operation. Especially since he is hiding.”
I considered what I ’d heard for a minute, staring at Stan’s large, impassive face as he searched for something on his computer. Linda’s tap on my shoulder was an invitation to look at some picture on the wall. I recognized the young blond Guard who shot down the helicopter and saved my life. Standing next to a SWIT truck, grinning, he proudly held a DRIVER OF THE MONTH certificate for the camera. The guy must have been a good driver and wasn’t all that bad a machine gunner, either.
“I’ll need my money,” I said.
“You’ll have your moneybags, sure. I even added a little bit,” Stan answered.
“How much did you add, just curious?” “Oh, about this much,” Stan replied, holding out his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. Must be about twenty-thousand dollars, I figured. Better than a solid kick in the balls any day.
“Thanks. So how am I going to find Brell?” “ No idea. But I suggest you give it a very good try. You got Linda to help you. And you’ll have Alesh, the guy who brought you here. You remember Alesh?” Stan glanced at me.
“ The guy who shot down the helicopter?”
“Yes, him. Good man. Competent.”
“Is he gonna kill us both when we’re done?” I asked casually, looking Stan straight in the eye.
“You’re going home. I told you already. Everything’s on the up and up.” So, was I finally leaving this hellhole for real? I didn’t even know how to feel about that now. “And Linda?” I felt the warm softness of Linda’s hand in mine.
“ You got to understand that she’s a con. You got to grasp the concept. You really do. It is highly irregular and even criminal to even…”
“Linda is a work party on a special assignment, that’s all,” I interrupted with as much authority as I could muster. “You assigned her to this mission yourself. She’s with me all the way. We leave this dustball together. Get used to it.”
“Right . But helping out on a special assignment as a work party within the facility is one thing… You know what?” He suddenly changed his mind. “Let’s see how it goes. Let’s give it time and see, okay?”
I felt I could trust him, as stupid as that seemed. His absolute power over both of us was undisputable. Yet, he seemed to treat us as equals, and he looked completely comfortable doing so. In my estimation, that made Stan a good guy. A sense of hope and tremendous relief made me giddy. I squeezed Linda’s hand and she returned the gesture.
34 No idea how the Guards did it, but within a couple of hours our mission was fully set up and ready, including our cover identities. With our new passports and journalistic credentials in hand, we boarded a small underground monorail train that ran through the Guards’ system of tunnels. The train wobbled a bit like a boat when I stepped on it. Observing the chassis closer, I realized that the vehicle was hanging over the rail in midair. No friction—must be magnetic. Nice.
Alesh, the beefy machine gun driver of the month, dressed in a spiffy dark suit and red tie, accompanied us together with another, uniformed meathead, who turned out to be our airplane pilot.
Linda and I sat close together, holding hands, our bodies touching. Not sure about Linda, but I needed reassurance. First, the uncouth collaborating with the enemy didn’t sit well with me—said collaboration being based solely on the enemy’s assurances that we were no longer enemies. Second, trapping my Commanding Officer to turn him over possibly to his enemies stunk to high heaven. Oh yes, pungent. If I trapped Brell and turned him over, it would be. Not if I just had a talk with the man, solved a few important mysteries, and then either escaped from the Guards or killed them—another nearly impossible and foul-tasting development, as I’d taken to liking some of those meatheads. Third, the walk into the lions’ den to meet high-level officials who had killed a bunch of people, while hunting me, and tried to kill Linda did not sit all that well with me, either.
I was being propelled and bounced around by the circumstances and the powers involved. Not very much was happening on my terms so far, but I was about to change that. Linda and I were alive and still together. That was the bright side.
Further on the bright side, we both looked, well, ample
was probably the word. For starters, I was cleanly shaven, totally unlike myself. My expensive gray suit, blue shirt and striped tie complemented Linda’s navy-blue skirt suit and cream-colored blouse. Long coats, gray for me and cream-colored for Linda, completed the ensemble. No, actually, high-heel shoes completed Linda’s ensemble. A nice pair of legs never hurt anybody, I reasoned, happy that Linda chose to wear a skirt, offering a delightful sight to my weary eyes. With her hair smartly done and all made-up, Linda could easily pass for a high-powered reporter or an executive from any media venue.
Our Tiny, Alesh, obviously wasn’t given to any quibbles, as he was snoozing peacefully through the entire half-hour trip. The train stopped automatically. A system of empty, bare concrete, sparsely lit hallways and elevators finally brought us to a large hangar. Two Lear jets lined up against one of the walls and one more was parked in the middle of the great cavern. Half a dozen meatheads fussed on and around the plane in the middle, getting it ready for the flight. They greeted Alesh and the pilot cheerfully and completely ignored us, or tried to—the completeness of their disdain toward us, the two convicts, thrown off somewhat by their startled double takes at Linda. I puffed my chest out. Alesh chuckled derisively, shaking his head.
Inside the plane, high up at cruise altitude, Alesh gave us a onesentence pep talk, staring us down from a large leather seat. “Do the job, you two cons, and do nothing else or I’ll kill you both.”
“ I’ll eat you alive, so watch your back, meathead,” I threw at him, hatefully. “You’ll be alone against two of us cons, remember that.”
“Calm down, both of you.” Linda raised her voice. “Nobody eats anybody or kills anybody. We want to do the job, sir,” she addressed Alesh respectfully, “and we may need your help, and you may need our help at some point, so let’s work together.”
“Unlikely.” The scorn in meathead’s voice had no bounds. The Tiny was practically oozing self-righteousness from every orifice. I decided to take Linda ’s advice and leave the fool alone. How many times had I flown in a Lear jet before? Including this one, it was the first that I could remember. Why spoil the moment?
Huge armchairs, nine of them, fully reclining as I quickly determined, were sparsely located in the spacious and sophisticated leather interior, offering plenty of elbowroom, headroom, knee room, butt room, ear room and all kinds of other room. Eight of the armchairs faced forward and one, currently occupied by Alesh, faced the other eight. The galley, the ultimate in ergonomics, was disproportionately large and well-stocked, fully sufficient to cook a gourmet meal for eight from scratch, by the looks of it. I loved the lavatory, beautifully appointed, combining functionality with flawlessly pleasing aesthetics. The hot water in the faucet, the slick cabinetry and lighting system all duly impressed me. This plane, functional as it was, was created to pamper the filthy rich—present company accidentally included for the moment.
In my mind I circled back to our current situation. On the plus side of the equation was the fact that we were alive and together working toward getting the hell off P-3. The only downside was the mission itself. How do I find Brell and how do I not lead the Guards to him? Kill Alesh when time comes, the guy who saved my life earlier?
My gawking experience-slush-contemplation was rudely interrupted by Linda’s, “Picky, you know what you’re doing in the Pentagon? Come, study with me.”
I sat in my chair, facing Alesh, who was listening to some tunes on his iPhone.
“Hey, Tiny, what’re you listening to?” I was curious what music this asshole liked. With a sneer, Alesh handed me his earphones. “Hey, I just met you! This is cra-a-azy…” I heard Carly Rae Jepsen’s reverberating voice. “Call Me Maybe.” Amazing. Meathead and I were about the same age. I nodded my approval of his taste in music, handing back the earphones. A slight grin momentarily illuminated his rugged
features. I liked that.
“Come, read the briefing,” Linda called out to me. “You need to get briefed. Did you know we’re with Anchorage Press?” “ Who me? No way! No-no, screw Anchorage Press, Linda. What’re you talking about? Clearly, a case of mistaken identity, that’s what it is. I’m big time. I’m happening. I’m with The Chicago
Tribune .” Tiny smirked at me and that small connection hit the spot again. “Anchorage Press is only for the young and hopeful. You know? The springboard to syndication.”
Linda rolled her eyes —what a fine adolescent she’d make—and handed me the briefing that Stan prepared. I plopped into the seat next to hers. She smelled positively delectable and looked even better. Why don’t they have private cabins on these planes?I wondered briefly.
I still couldn’t believe she’d shot Stan. Ma’ girl! We were both with the Anchorage Press, as Linda said, cleared among eighty-seven other media organizations for the press conference with the DOD. The subject of the press conference was the war in Afghanistan and the latest personnel shuffle up on top. We were booked at the Ritz-Carlton right across the highway from the Pentagon. Alesh was to arrive at the same hotel independently and take a room across the hall from ours. He was not supposed to attend the conference. We arrived at Dulles International some twenty miles away only about an hour and a half before the press conference, so we had to boogie.
Stan ’s briefing contained detailed directions to the conference room: Approach from Corridor2: Take the stairs to the 3rdfloor A- ring andwalk counterclockwisethrough thetunnelwalkway.Proceed until you reachthe escalators at the Apex betweencorridors 7 and 8.Take the escalators tothe first floor; follow signs to the conference center.
The packet also contained the main players’ photographs: the DOD’s Kevin O’Hara, whose lackluster appearance and receding chin- line only deepened my suspicions about his true identity, and Ken Roberts, a one-star general, the DOD Chief of Special Operations. Unlike O’Hara, Roberts struck me as a formidable adversary. Handsome, strong face, resolute, decisive with a commanding presence. I fidgeted in my chair under his heavy, alert gaze. Were we planning to pull some wool over this guy’s eyes?
Stan ’s briefing also contained special instructions for us to call Alesh the minute we were out of the meeting with O’Hara and Roberts. None too subtle, Stan didn’t beat around the bush. Apparently, to get us out of any trouble, the Guards were setting up two explosions an hour apart somewhere nearby to discourage the DOD from slapping us around too much. The first explosion, the lesser one, was scheduled exactly thirty minutes after the official end of the press conference, unless we called it off. The second explosion, an hour later, was supposed to further convince the DOD to not mess around with us in case the first warning failed to get through to them. There were no other contingencies if those two warnings didn’t work. For our own safety, we were also ordered to disclose the fact of our cooperation with the Guards to DOD.
35 Dark, oppressive clouds and penetrating cold wind greeted us at Dulles International Airport. It was about as cold in San Francisco but not as windy.
The five hundred-dollar deluxe room at the Ritz-Carlton, although a much better accommodation than the room I briefly occupied at the Burton in San Francisco for a hundred dollars, was nowhere near five times better. To me, five hundred a night was a rip off, a con—pure and simple. I later revised my attitude slightly that rip off or not, I’d rather stay at the Ritz-Carlton for five hundred dollars than at the Burton for a hundred.
“Honey, you wanna quickie?” I suggested when we were done exploring our elegant accommodations. Sex had been on my mind for a long while now. Linda’s sophisticated yet strangely revealing outfit utterly failed to extinguish the flame. In fact, I wanted to tear it off her the first moment I saw her in it.
“Are you crazy ? We’ve only got about forty-five minutes before the press conference…” Linda’s voice trailed off, as I kissed her neck, caressing her breasts with one hand and savoring the moist suppleness under the ephemeral fabric of her panties with the other.
“ Okay, just a quickie.” Linda breathed in sharply, guiding
my fingers, as I massaged her clit. I nodded eagerly. I felt her caress on the front of my pants. We didn’t even undress. We loosened our clothing enough to expose the relevant body parts and went at it with a great deal of enthusiasm. I set a neck-breaking tempo, ejaculating copiously inside her in a long minute, accompanied by Linda’s climactic moaning—always the best music to my ears. Her moaning turned to throaty, happy laughter, as she cradled my face in her hands. She followed that with the little kisses that I loved so much, turning all my insides into syrup.
I thought we were going to be late, but we weren’t, due to the extreme brevity of the Pentagon security procedure. We went through the metal detector, presented our press IDs, got checked off their roster and were issued passes—that’s it, end of scrutiny. My
mom could run atighter ship than thisI thought. Following Stan ’s directions, we quickly found the conference center with its high ceilings, huge windows, and elegant, modern design. Kevin O’Hara, resplendent in his five-star uniform and full regalia, surrounded by half a dozen staff, Ken Roberts among them, took the podium promptly. He started with a ten-minute briefing on the Afghanistan War, which could be summarized in one compound English sentence, “We keep throwing huge amounts of money and resources at them, but the bastards keep on creaming us.” Then the DOD opened the floor to the press. I raised my hand and waited for my turn.
“Next! Yes, umm… Norman.” O’Hara nodded to me, straining to read my name tag. “Anchorage Press. Thank you, sir. Would you personally prefer to see the future US strategy in Afghanistan akin to a praying mantis approach of waiting and pouncing? Or would you rather see a more proactive solution?”
O’Hara’s eyes lit up with recognition. Ken Roberts stiffened behind him, staring at me and then at Linda intently. I glanced down at Linda. She was smiling at Roberts—if baring one’s teeth at somebody could truly be called a smile.