Twelve Days

by Steven Barnes

  Because something always went south.

  His hands were dry and cool as he took the wheel and swept his truck in. Father Geek tried to evade, but Terry gunned his behemoth, snugged up on the right rear bumper, and turned into the target’s center of gravity. The remote-controlled SUV spun as Terry expertly maintained contact, controlling it with his mass and traction. Not for the first time Terry mused that it was a kung fu “sticky hands” drill with trucks.

  Even as the two vehicles lurched to a stop Pat was out of the truck, firing round after round into the cab. The first two rounds were “breachers,” shotgun shells filled with lead dust. Normally they were used to blow locks or hinges off of doors. He was using them to take out the windshield.

  The next rounds were “beanbags,” nonlethal rounds. First the passenger seat, which is normally a security member’s but is also the “vehicle commander’s” seat. Geek and Pat were hoping O’Shay would be sitting there. The next two were for the driver, then one back into the passenger.

  Lee and Mark had skidded to a stop behind the target just two heartbeats behind Terry. Both had exited their vehicle. Mark zipped up the driver’s side and similarly shotgunned the left rear passenger side as Lee did the same to the back window. Mark reached through the blown-out safety glass, unlocked and opened the door, grabbed the weighted bag on the floorboards, and sprinted back to his vehicle as Lee covered the target with the red training pistol. As soon as Lee turned to get into Mark’s vehicle, Pat was sprinting backward the few steps he needed to Terry’s truck, the red plastic pistol staying level and controlled as he said, “bang, bang, bang, bang,” and mimed putting two rounds in each front tire. Both vehicles backed up a few feet, then bolted out. In less than twelve seconds after Terry made contact with the target’s bumper, it was over.

  Theoretically, the beanbags kept it nonlethal. The security team was not likely to know O’Shay and Huddleston were smuggling forty pounds of diamonds. It’s not their fault two scumbags had hired them. Well, probably. Just like the beanbag rounds would probably not kill them.

  Probably.

  He knew he should care, but the truth was, he didn’t. It would play the way it played.

  “Cut!” Father Geek yelled. “No, no, no! This isn’t dramatic enough. Vin didn’t sign on for this crap! We need to rework the scene, give it more style. Get up here, damn it.”

  Grinning, Terry, Mark, Pat, and Lee met Father Geek in their ersatz control room. He already had the recorded scene in playback with the terrain overlay. Terry had put O’Shay’s virtual SUV into a ditch. Unfortunately, they couldn’t rehearse all of the factors in play. They were relying on Terry to smack O’Shay at the right place to make sure the vehicle couldn’t simply recover from the PIT, the Precision Immobilization Technique spin, and blow through the ambush. Terry had memorized multiple roads, “driving” them with both POV and overhead views as well as doing his own recons. Once Terry got the stop, the rest of the team would do their thing.

  Father Geek nodded approvingly.

  “Not bad. I tried to shake you but Terry pinned me, right and proper.”

  “Hey, old timer, I’ve heard football players game on Xbox to learn all the plays. With all of our game time, we’re naturals!” Lee said.

  Terry grinned and raised his voice’s pitch, trying to sound like a teen. “Should I join the army? I am really good at ‘Call of Duty’ and can play it for hours. I think I’d make a really good soldier.”

  Lee waved his hands back and forth, laughing. “No, man. No soldiers here. ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ sucker! We’re straight-up gangstas, not some dumb-ass soldier boys!”

  Straight-up gangsta. Terry felt his lips twist bitterly. Long way from Iraq, asshole.

  Even as the words left his lips, Lee seemed to realize his humor had fallen flat. Everyone was quiet for a moment until Pat bent over to the cooler next to Father Geek, fished out an iced-down beer, and said, “Yeah, I’m good with that.” He then cracked the beer and took a long pull.

  “That’s the shit right there,” Mark said. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  Terry felt a mixture of relief, tension, and anticipation. O’Shay and his crew were in for a very bad day, and the idea of snatching away their victory, trapping and plucking them just when they thought they were home free felt like a big wet kiss. Considering the betrayals involved, what they had once been to each other in Fallujah and other points east, revenge was almost worth more than the damned diamonds.

  “New Year’s Day!” Pat Ronnell said.

  “New Year’s!” the others replied, and clinked beer bottles. On that day, they were going to risk their lives to steal what had been stolen from them almost ten years ago in Iraq. It had taken one Colonel O’Shay all that time to make the arrangements necessary to smuggle his loot into the U.S.

  And if all went right, it was going to take just four minutes to steal it back. Terry didn’t feel like a thief: the diamonds had once been Hussein’s, then were the Pirates’ and then they were O’Shay’s, and in a few days the sparkles would be right where they belonged.

  Hell, you couldn’t steal what was rightfully yours.

  Father Geek spun his wheelchair in a circle, chugged the last of his beer, and slammed the bottle down on a table. “Play with me!” he yelled at Terry, and Nicolas grinned in reply.

  Terry charged Sevugian, who made a David Copperfield gesture and produced a slender ivory-handled fighting knife in his right hand, holding it in an ice-pick grip. Terry’s left foot jabbed knife-edged at Father Geek’s face, and Geek replied with a razor-edged parry. Terry’s jab was a feint, turning into a hook kick, and then a round kick, to opposite cheeks.

  With dazzling speed, the two “played” with each other, mongoose and cobra, fists and feet against blades. Father Geek juggled the slender knife from hand to hand, so swift and precise he actually brushed Terry’s pant legs with the point without puncturing his skin, whirling to face every angle. The South African art called “Piper,” a twentieth-century concoction extracted from Capetown streetfighters and Zulu knife techniques, as lethal as human motion could be. For two minutes the old and favored game continued, a deadly ballet. Despite his skill, Terry was touched a half-dozen times.

  On the other hand, Terry managed to penetrate Geek’s defense exactly … once. Feinting a heel-hook to the temple and switching it to a side-kick to the gut, just a touch.

  Afterward, there was deep breathing, and applause all around.

  Terry grinned. That felt good. He and Ernie had a touch of magic together, always had.

  Pat took a sip, grinning over the bottle at him. “Quite a show.” He gestured at Terry more pointedly. “But back to business. Boy, you’d better not be late on the first, or my first resolution is going to involve kicking your karate ass to the moon.”

  “Talk, talk, talk.”

  Another sip. “You better remember. You are good at many, many things. Me, just one.”

  “And what would that be?” Mark asked. “We’ve never ever heard.”

  Pat smiled at the lie. “The only thing I was ever best at was ending people.”

  Their mechanical wizard/utility driver Lee Baylor was ex–Special Forces, currently unemployed. An SFC, like Terry, a tall Okie with straw hair and a perpetual smile. He’d put on thirty pounds since his best days, but still moved with explosive confidence. “Long way from Fallujah,” he said.

  Laughter. Not all of it pleasant. That had been a time of blood and fire, a mission embedded within a larger mission, on orders from the POTUS himself.

  Pat took a drink and looked at Terry. “Sort of a shame Jayce isn’t here to see this.”

  A pause. Terry wasn’t going to let himself be baited. Not now, not by Pat. Sergeant Remmy Jayce had saved Pat’s life in Fallujah.

  And then later died on Terry’s watch.

  Terry didn’t like to think about it, and forced his mind to slide past Jayce’s dying screams without letting himself be dragged down into them.

&
nbsp; The man who had saved them. Dying in the jungle, screaming Terry’s name.

  “At ease with that shit,” Mark said. “Fortunes of war. You hear me? Stow it.”

  “Sure, Mark,” Pat said. His eyes glittered at Terry.

  “Anyway,” Mark continued. “We’ll be a lot farther away by January third.” A day to ship the loot. A day to travel together to the foreign city where they would sell and divide the spoils. A possible week to do business. Then … a celebratory glass of champagne, perhaps … and then they would never see each other again.

  “Father Geek,” Mark said. “We’ll have close to eighty million dollars in Iraqi ice. Current exchange expectations?”

  “I’ve got fences bidding against each other,” Geek said. “Two Belgians, a guy in Singapore, and one in Tel Aviv. Anonymous, unknown to each other, and communicating through a little blind board I set up. We’re up to fifty-five percent, Cayman accounts. I think I can get sixty.”

  Jesus Hopping Christ on a plastic crutch. He’d heard those numbers again and again, but still couldn’t wrap his head around them. Terry had grown up on army bases, a world where most needs were supplied at a basic level. No real poverty, but no luxuries, either. The idea of such wealth … dizzied him. Who would he even be? And what did it mean to suddenly become a different, new person when you’d never figured out who you were in the first place?

  Mark nodded along to Geek’s mini-lecture, grinning like a piranha in bloody water. “We want it closed out before we act.”

  “These guys do serious business. Four deliveries in twenty-five percent increments. The money will be there, if we deliver.”

  “Fuck,” Pat said. “Almost fifty million dollars.”

  “Yeah, well—about eight million to you, mon frere.”

  Terry took a long pull. “What are you doing with yours, Mark?”

  “Who,” Father Geek said, “as XO was technically due a larger share, and chose not, so as to increase the fraternal atmosphere of this noble enterprise.”

  “Hear, hear.” Lee raised his bottle and took another pull.

  “But what are you going to do?” Geek asked.

  Mark’s eyes softened. “There’s a little place near South Padre Island I’ve had my eyes on. I’m thinking if everything goes right I can stay in-country.”

  “And if not?” Terry asked.

  “Ireland,” Mark said. “I’m thinking Ireland. Maybe Italy. Or Istanbul. Someplace that starts with an I. Or not. Hell, be best for me if you assholes don’t have the slightest idea. So that when they catch you—and knowing how sloppy you bastards are, they most certainly will—and attach the jumper cables to various protruding evidences of your alleged manhoods, you may sing soprano with zero impact upon my peace of mind.” He grinned at Terry.

  Terry thought about the collection of medicine bottles on Mark’s dresser, and managed to hold a smile in return. “You, Lee?”

  Lee seemed to be chewing on an imaginary straw. “Yeah, well, I’ll be able to shit on the job reference.”

  Terry cocked his head. “The purchasing agent thing?”

  Lee nodded. “That’s the gig. Fuck, man, everyone was taking money. Looong before I got that job.”

  “The problem wasn’t taking money,” Mark said, the very soul of reason. “The problem was asking for the damned bribe.”

  “The problem,” Terry said, “was getting caught.” No, Mark was right. The stupid thing was asking a supplier for a kickback, just because the supplier’s previous agent had been free with the gifts. That had been criminal stupidity, but Terry wasn’t in a mood to pile on.

  Lee shrugged. “Just how business was done.”

  “Well, somebody didn’t think so,” Mark said. “So here we are.”

  “Father Geek?” Mark asked.

  The man in the wheelchair needed no further prompting. “I’ve got some mates in Cape Town looking into an IP start-up. I could buy in as silent partner, geek out behind the scenes … have a good time and still be … vapor. Cyber-ghost. Pat?”

  “All I want to say is that there is a girl,” Ronnell replied.

  Terry almost spit out his beer. Ronnell had never had anything remotely like a real relationship in the time Terry had known him. Would wonders never cease? “Whoa! An actual, living female who has the bad taste to lock loins without cash changing hands?”

  “One without assembly required?” Geek asked.

  “An actual, living female who relishes Mr. Happy. Yes. She runs a secondhand store that hires the handicapped.”

  Terry laughed. “No one could make that shit up.”

  “Well,” Mark said, hoisting his bottle. “To us.”

  They lifted their beers in toast, but after the next bubbly draw, quiet reigned again.

  Terry waited, hoping someone else would say what he was thinking. No one did, so after a silent curse, he broke the silence. “Mark?”

  “What?”

  Terry took another slow pull. “What happens if O’Shay’s boys don’t give up?”

  “If the teargas and the shock aren’t enough?”

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “There we are, all auto’d up. We’ve closed the 78 and shunted them to a side road. Blown out their engine block, and flash-banged the hell out of them. They’re pinned, gassed, shit out of luck. But say we do all that … and some poor fool starts shooting anyway. What then?”

  “Worse,” Lee said. “What if the distraction doesn’t work, and we get some highway piggies on that stretch?”

  “It’ll work,” Mark said.

  “But what if it doesn’t?” Geek asked.

  “Then?”

  “Then.”

  “We’ve got you, Pat,” Mark said, and raised his glass. The others followed in silent toast. Terry’s felt as if it weighed a ton. “We’ve got you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Foothill Village condominium complex was probably the nicest place that Terry Nicolas had ever lived. Certainly since a childhood spent moving from army base to army base following his widower father, Captain James Nicolas. Foothill Village wasn’t just a place to sleep and eat. It was a neighborhood, with grass and lawns and birthday parties with bouncy houses and yapping dogs and babies and retirees and people living real lives who actually shared their greetings and concerns with one another.

  And Olympia, of course.

  And that was its own special hell, because he knew he would soon be leaving. And the chances of finding something like this again, someone like her again, eight million dollars or no, was smaller than the fine print on his last car loan.

  He had just completed his afternoon workout and was on his way back to his apartment when Olympia pulled into her driveway and little Hannibal bounced out of the car in his sparkling blue karate gi. Terry felt a twinge. He remembered something that a friend of his had said … or was it that he had seen in a movie? Don’t mess with single mothers. They don’t play.

  He had played. Certainly never planned any wrong, but that didn’t mean he had done right.

  They had “dated.” That was what people called it these days when you took someone to bed, shared that most profound, and most trivial intimacy. Dating. Shared personal pleasures and pains. His father’s battle with cancer, the massive heart attack that had claimed hers—and the life insurance policy that had lifted Olympia and her mother to a middle-class neighborhood and better schools.

  Neither of their surviving parents had lasted a decade after the death of their spouse. Both O and Terry orphaned before thirty, alone in the world.

  It had been as if the universe conspired to push them together.

  And she had lowered her guard, sharing her cinnamon grace and intimate warmth with him … and then slammed the walls back up. Or maybe she’d sensed there was something wrong with him and started clawing, seeking his soft spots, and then simply disengaged. Damn it. With no referee to stop it, once the fight started the low blows had been mutual, and then like two battered club fighters they had limped to their neutral corne
rs, each declaring victory.

  It was his own damned fault. She’d smelled “bastard” coming a long way off.

  Good for her. You go, girl. As far away as possible.

  “Hey, champ!” he said to the boy. Hannibal smiled shyly, but didn’t look at Terry, and didn’t speak. A beautiful smile.

  “Hi, Terry,” Olympia said.

  “Hi.” What a woefully inadequate greeting, considering all they had shared. “How’s the little guy?”

  Nicki glared at him. The thirteen-year-old had never warmed to him, had liked him even less after Olympia had dumped him, dealing with it with a kind of unmistakable I knew you were an asshole energy that made him want to bounce her into the swimming pool.

  Was it the dead father that made her so protective? Maybe that business with the police department—he’d seen the patrol cars cruising outside the Dorsey household. Had heard about the harassment, midnight phone calls, and being pulled over by the Smyrna PD for invisible infractions.

  Good reasons for mistrust.

  Terry made little punching movements, and was rewarded by a matching flurry from Hannibal. Such a terrific little mime. It was as if Michael Jackson was imitating Wesley Snipes: no real structure or grounding or brisant “pop” but it looked great. He fought to keep from gathering the boy into a hug that Hannibal would squirm away from, anyway. Damn it, why was it harder to break up with the kid than with the mother?

  “He’s fine. Doing well.” An awkward moment.

  Olympia paused. “His school teaches karate for physical education, and they’re having a demonstration tomorrow. Their head instructor, someone named Madame Gupta, is supposed to be there. In person.”

  “Indra Gupta?” That name made a dinging sound in the back of his mind. He couldn’t exactly remember why, but it most certainly did.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her first name. But maybe. You know her?”

  “Heard of her, I think.” Ding, ding, ding. “Really? A personal appearance?”

  “Yes. You know her?”