The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  The alley was narrow and cambered to move rainwater, but still big enough to admit a trash truck, based on the big plastic containers lining the wooden privacy fences along its length. Each duplex had a detached double garage at the back. There was one light on a telephone pole midway down the alley, which illuminated almost the entire alley. Halfway down, there was a short T-connection alley leading out to the front street.

  Swamp turned into the alley and walked slowly down toward the other end, counting houses until he saw that the trash containers had the house street numbers on them. When he got to the one he wanted, he stepped to the other side of the alley so he could see over the fence. The back of the house was dark except for one small light on one side, in what was probably the kitchen. A covered back porch was divided by a privacy partition, and the yard was similarly divided by a privacy fence. The garage looked too small to house a Suburban, but he walked up to it and tried to look through the row of dusty windows across the garage door. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think there was a vehicle in there.

  He stepped back from the windows and scanned the windows of the surrounding houses. If anyone saw him back here peering into windows, there’d be cop cars turning into the alley very soon. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t do any B and E work, not that he’d really know how. He thought about throwing a rock through a window to see if the lights came on, but then he thought better of it. How could he be sure there was someone there? He lifted the trash receptacle’s lid, but the bin was empty. Go knock on the door? Flash his retired ID card, tell some fairy tale, and then beat feet? Hardly. And anyway, if his man was what he thought he was, he might rabbit. The cold night air was beginning to penetrate his coat as he stood there, and then he saw that the door on the other half of the garage was cracked open at the bottom. Suppose he lifted it enough to get in there, and then—what? Wrong yard, wrong house. But still, if he could get to a window at the back of the house…

  He put both hands under the crack and lifted, and sure enough, the door came up. He raised it three feet, far enough for the top section to roll into the horizontal track, and then stopped. He had no warrant and zero authority to be doing this. But he had to know if there was someone in that house. At that moment, a police car went by on the cross street, cruising slowly. Swamp saw it out of the corner of his eye and then saw a flare of brake lights reflected in the windows of the cars parked next to the alley entrance. Oops, he thought. He got down, slipped under the door, and then lowered it back to the ground. Sure enough, headlights illuminated the alley outside and he heard the cruiser’s tires crunching down the alley. He stood up and plastered himself against the wall.

  The cop car stopped outside the garage, and he heard a door open. Footsteps approached the garage door on the other side and then he heard the rattle of the door handle. He quickly put a foot on the inside handle and shifted his entire weight to it just as the cop outside bent down and tried the door. Swamp hunched himself over as the cop shined a flashlight through the windows. The garage was empty except for a pile of cardboard boxes in one corner. He heard the cop say something to his partner, then more footsteps. And after that, the car door closed again and the cruiser continued on down the alley. He exhaled, turned around, and saw a figure silhouetted in the dim light coming through the windows. A man was standing in front of him with what looked like a toy gun in his hand. Before he had a chance to say anything or even focus on the man’s face, an electric hammer jolted his whole body and he went down into a huge dark hole. As he struggled to climb back out, a second hammer descended, and this time he lost consciousness.

  It took Heismann twenty minutes to drag the intruder from the neighbor’s garage out into the alley, lock everything up again, and then drag him through his own back gate, across the yard, and up the steps into the kitchen. He almost didn’t make it up the steps, because the man was big—220 pounds or more of dead weight. Once in the kitchen, he rested for a few minutes, puffing. He studied his captive’s face. An older man—late fifties, perhaps—with coarse features. And big, which is why he had fired twice. Then he remembered Mutaib telling him about the Secret Service and the Washington police coming to see him at the bank. His description of the big homely man who seemed to be in charge of the questions. He closed his eyes and concentrated—he was forgetting something. Then he had it: He’d seen this man before. That day when he was watching the nurse’s house to see if she’d survived the poison. The two federal policemen. This man had been one of them.

  He bound the man’s hands together with tape. Then he lifted the man’s joined arms over his head and taped them behind his head with a swath of tape that went over his forehead, under his chin, and also over his eyes. Then he laid him back down on the kitchen floor, where he looked like someone who had decided to take a nap on his back, with his hands behind his head. He went through the intruder’s coat pockets and found the flashlight, the cell phone, and a gun. He then dug deeper and extracted the man’s wallet and keys. Driver’s license: T. Lee Morgan, West Virginia. The same state where he had knifed that bothersome nurse. Then he found the ID card. U.S. Secret Service—retired.

  What was this “retired”? He searched his English vocabulary. Retired? Ah, yes, a pensioner.

  He sat back on his heels. The identification card with its notation “retired” puzzled him. He knew what the Secret Service was—they protected the president. He had read in the Washington Post about how they were in charge of the security cordon for the inauguration tomorrow. Well and good. But a pensioner? With a gun? Were they so desperate that they had recalled their pensioners to walk the streets the night before the big event? No. No. No. Pensioner or not, this man was connected to the nurse and to Mutaib. An investigator. And now he was here?

  The big man stirred and then groaned. He didn’t look all that old, although there was plenty of gray in his hair. Heismann stood up and backed away from him. He pulled a kitchen chair over and sat down. Why was this man, especially this man, sneaking around his back gate, and why was this happening right after he had received a warning from Mutaib about intruders? He couldn’t be positive about the face, but it certainly resembled the man he’d seen from the park. The same thick brows, bent nose, coarse features.

  He rested his face in his hands and watched the man work his way painfully back toward consciousness. Then he reread the man’s driver’s license and ID card. Both showed an address in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He had seen that place on his map when he went to that Garrison Gap resort in pursuit of the nurse. Perhaps this was not about the big event tomorrow. It might be about what he had done in West Virginia. Perhaps the state police there had connected him somehow to that killing, alerted Interpol, and then Mutaib’s spies in Europe had warned him. But why tonight, of all nights? And on a phone that wasn’t even supposed to be turned on.

  The big man opened his mouth, licked his lips, grunted, and then tried to get up. He tried to roll, but his own elbows prevented it. Then he raised his knees, which is when Heismann knelt down beside him and put Herr Pensioner Morgan’s own gun against his left ear, racked the slide, ejecting one round onto the floor, and said, “Stay.” The man stopped moving at once. Heismann got back up and returned to his chair. He waited for the man to say something, but he did not. He was breathing deeply, as if gathering his strength to do something. Heismann kicked the bullet on the floor into a corner and considered his options.

  One of them was to run. Right now. Abort the entire mission. He had half his money, and he could disappear a lot more quickly than Mutaib might imagine because of his new physical appearance. He could become a woman, take his pick of the woman’s clothes next door, walk, not run, to the minivan, and simply drive away. Leave Herr Pensioner Morgan right here on the floor, perhaps with one more tap from the Taser. Let him get loose finally. Let him find the weapon upstairs, sound the alarm. Let the Ammies see how close they had come. And then leave some more evidence implicating Mutaib and his Saudi clan, something besi
des the shipping documents.

  He examined the man’s cell phone. He could use that, call Mutaib directly, tell him he had this man tied up in his kitchen and ask what he should do. He smiled. The Arab would positively panic if he received a direct call, especially from here. Especially on a cell phone. This was Washington. They could probably triangulate any cell phone in the city, especially one of their own. And they were undoubtedly listening, on this night of all nights.

  He looked at his watch. Almost ten o’clock. Fourteen hours.

  He was probably making too much of this thing. Perhaps what Mutaib had meant was simply that there would be all sorts of police saturating the neighborhood around the Capitol Hill area. The message had said “intruders,” plural, not a specific intruder. And here was the proof: They’d enlisted the help of pensioners to increase their presence on the street. This one had seen the cracked garage door and come to check. The man’s backup had been outside in the alley in that car, but he’d sent them away. And down behind the boxes, it had been impossible to see what happened when the policeman outside tried the door. So, the pensioner wanted to show them he could still do the job. And when he didn’t report in? Would they even notice? The old fellow probably just went home and didn’t even check out.

  He snorted in contempt. They were using pensioners? Even if this was the same man who’d been at the nurse’s house, or even at the bank, asking all those questions, his being a pensioner clearly meant that they didn’t believe there was any kind of real threat.

  To hell with it, he decided. I am going to do this thing. Show these arrogant bastards what a real threat looks like. And right under their noses, too.

  He stood up and gathered up the pensioner’s stuff. He’d take it along when he made his run. The driver’s license and ID card might be useful later.

  Pensioners! Truly incredible.

  Swamp heard the man get up and start moving some furniture around. It felt like he was lying on linoleum, so he was probably in the kitchen. On his back, with his hands taped together and some kind of tape lash-up holding his arms behind his head. His one attempt to move had confirmed that every joint in his body now felt like it was harboring full-blown arthritis. Even his fillings hurt. Had to have been a Taser. His eyes were taped over, but not his nose and mouth, for which he was grateful—he had a fear of suffocation. Then he felt the legs of a chair dropping over his body, followed by the sounds of kitchen utensils being piled on the chair. He kept still, and was rewarded with the feel of that gun pressing against his ear again. No, not the gun—something else. Something plastic, blocky. Then he heard the hum, felt the hair rising along the side of his head. The Taser.

  “Stay,” the man whispered again, as if he were addressing a dog.

  Swamp said nothing. The message was clear enough. And the chair on top of him piled with kitchen utensils meant that if he moved, there’d be a clatter, and then he’d get to find out how serious this guy was about him remaining still. One thing he knew with perfect clarity: He did not want to be hit with that Taser again. Some of his larger muscles were still cramping, and his heartbeat hadn’t stabilized.

  He stayed quiet, desperately trying to think of a way out of this mess. He could almost hear Bertie’s voice: Smooth move, Ex-Lax. At least you were right about his being a bad guy. And tell me again why you didn’t call for backup? On the cell phone right there in your pocket?

  That said, there was a man here with a Taser. The cops outside Connie Wall’s house had been hit with a Taser. The big question was, Did he have weeks or hours until whatever this guy was planning went down? Or maybe up was a better word.

  Hell with it, he thought. It’s him. It’s the inauguration, not the speech to the joint session. And right now, I need to figure out how to get loose.

  Heismann went upstairs and checked the cell phone. It did not appear to have melted down on its marble bed. He checked for any further messages, but the phone was dark. But it was early—midnight was the commit point. He looked at his watch. Another ninety minutes. He had some more pretions to make, beginning with final verification that the mortar rounds would clear the hole in the roof. He took a flashlight and taped it down inside the mortar tube, attaching it to the side of the tube nearest the extended hole in the roof. Then he switched it on and looked for a spot of light anywhere on the ceiling. There wasn’t one. He could almost see the beam of light shining up into the blowing mist outside. Definitely clear. Good. He removed the flashlight and went back downstairs to begin hauling up the ten mortar rounds. He checked on his prisoner, whom he found still lying beneath the chair, looking for all the world as if he were taking an extended nap. And soon he might, Heismann thought. Very soon.

  Each mortar round came with six yellow packets of propellant explosive in clear plastic pouches the size of fast-food condiment packages. These were taped to the projectile’s cylindrical tail fin assembly. Once he had the rounds all upstairs, he consulted the handheld calculator again, this time entering the range to the target, the elevation angle of the weapon’s monopod leg, the air temperature, and the barometric pressure. The answer came out two, which meant that only two, not six, packets of additional explosive propellant were needed for the range and conditions of the firing. He went to each round and pulled off all but two of the yellow packets, making sure they were distributed on opposite sides of the tail fin tube. He put all the rest of them into a plastic bag and put the bag in his backpack. Never know when something like that might come in handy. Then he recomputed the firing azimuth and range problem and checked the physical lineup of the tube with his true-north reference lines. Everything matched his original computations, but he still had this niggling worry that he’d forgotten something elementary.

  He stood back and examined the setup. Then he had it: level. He hadn’t checked the level of the floor. And even if he had, all that extra weight had probably disturbed the level of the base. He swore.

  He retrieved the bubble level from the pile of carpentry tools and checked the base. Level on a line running from the alley to the street. Not level on the line running across the duplex from side to side. Off a half a bubble. He swore again. Now he would have to move the mortar, and do the entire damn thing again.

  Idiot! You know better. A half-bubble error could throw the aim point off a hundred meters at this range. That was the length of one of the Ammies’ football fields. He felt like hitting something, then thought immediately of the pensioner trussed up on his kitchen floor. It would be satisfying to go down there and stomp his face in.

  His face.

  He sat there, suddenly mesmerized by an exciting idea. Here was the perfect way to take care of Mutaib once and for all. If this was the same man who had questioned Mutaib, and also the nurse, then he could be used to ensure that Mutaib was taken for this huge crime. Even if he was a pensioner, he had to have been investigating the clinic fire and the killing of the nurse. Yes, yes, yes! This was much better than what he had originally planned. Yes, perfect. Absolutely perfect!

  Then he set about correcting the level problem while he waited for midnight and the Arabs’ final decision.

  As soon as Swamp heard the man working on something upstairs, he went to work on getting out from under the booby-trapped chair. He couldn’t see anything and could barely blink to wet his eyes under the tape. His arms were useless and beginning to cramp, and he could not move his head without pulling on his eyelids. He could feel the four legs of the chair wedged firmly alongside his body. But he was on his back. If he could turn on his side, he would probably be narrow enough to be able to slide free of the chair. After that, he’d find a way to get up. And then work on all this damned tape.

  It took him fifteen minutes to get all the way over on his side without moving the chair, mostly because the way his arms were pinned behind his head made rotation almost impossible. Holding his body in a full twist, he began to inch his way past the chair legs until he couldn’t feel them anymore. Then he ran into what felt like the r
efrigerator, and he couldn’t go any farther. But were his feet clear? He tried to visualize it, but he hadn’t had a decent look at the kitchen before being taped up. He stopped to listen, but the man was still doing something on the floor above him. Moving something heavy, from the sound of it. He decided to arch his back and try to turn to the left to get that extra two or three feet of clearance for his feet. When he felt he’d moved far enough, he relaxed his arched back and then the twist above his hips and took a breather. So far so good. No clatter of kitchen spoons to alert his captor.

  He began to draw up his knees preparatory to getting himself upright. He thought he felt one of his boots touch something, so he stopped, squirming to reposition his foot to make damned sure he wasn’t going to hit that chair. Then he pulled his knees up into his stomach and once again twisted his body to get his knees underneath. But now his arms got in the way. This wouldn’t work.

  He stopped to listen again, still heard the noises upstairs. No, he would have to do a sit-up while lying on his side, then roll onto his knees and—what, forehead? He knew he was running out of time. He had to get his arms and his eyes free or all this was for nothing. He decided to just go for it, and he pulled himself up with great effort into a position where his posterior was in the air and his torso looked like he was praying to some awful god. And then he felt himself rolling on over, losing his balance entirely and thumping down onto the floor again while falling directly into the second chair, which he didn’t know about, the one filled with pots and pans, all of which came crashing down onto the floor with him.