Courier

by Terry Irving

  Corey squatted down and moved the cowboy’s head back and forth gently, then checked the shoulder where Rick’s bullet had hit. "This asshole looks OK. He hasn’t any neck damage, and you appear to have drilled him through the meat and not the bone." He cleaned his hands on the unconscious gunman’s pants and stood up.

  "The truth was that this sensei – the teacher – was just incredibly cool and I had a mad crush on him. Sadly, he was married, and to a woman, worse luck, but the training paid off. Now I keep practicing because it calms me down and…"

  Rick finished the sentence. "Keeps you looking good."

  "Damn right." Corey looked over at the immobile cowboy. "Should we do something with this guy? Like maybe kill him?"

  Rick pulled his hands out of the bag, leaving the pistol inside. "I’ve killed enough people. That’s why I only bought a wimpy PK loaded with .22s. Let’s just wrap him in duct tape and leave him here."

  "Will he bleed to death?"

  "Not unless he’s a secret hemophiliac, and by the look of the scars on his face, I doubt that. Duct tape makes a good field dressing. It holds tight, and it’s sterile. Anyway, the people he’s working with are clearly professionals." He motioned to the stairs. "You should see the floors up there. They were covered in blood just a few hours ago, and now, I’m telling you, they haven’t looked that good since I moved in. Not only are there no bloodstains, but the walls and that window have been totally cleaned, repaired, and repainted. These guys are covering their tracks; they won’t leave him here."

  He looked at the cowboy. "Of course, they may kill him just to tidy things up, but I can’t take care of everyone."

  "I’ll gift wrap Saigon Sid, here." Rick pointed to the stairs. "You start getting all your stuff out. Let’s make it look like we never lived here."

  "Easy for you to say. You don’t own anything."

  "That’s true enough." Rick walked into the other side of the basement and returned with a roll of duct tape from the workbench. "I’m trying to live like one of your Japanese monks."

  "They don’t approve of motorcycles."

  "Damn. There goes another great idea."

  Rick helped Corey haul the last box out of the house and carry it around to the alley. Corey was going to walk over to a friend’s house and come back with a van. At first, he had started to use the house phone to call, but Rick jammed his finger on the button.

  "This phone has got to be tapped."

  "You’ve gone completely paranoid!" Corey said, and then paused. "What am I talking about? Three people are missing or dead – or missing and dead – and there’s an unconscious Vietnamese hit man in the basement. Of course, the damned phones are tapped. I’ll walk."

  Rick smiled. "I’m not that sure about the three dead."

  Corey shot him a look. "What?"

  "I’ve got the feeling that the death of the Bionic Triplets may have been exaggerated. I can’t prove it yet."

  "Let me know, OK?" Corey headed off to get the van. "They weren’t bad guys when they weren’t driving me crazy."

  Except for the weights, which were dumped on the sidewalk several houses away in the certain knowledge that someone would steal them, everything Rick owned fitted into a small duffel bag. He walked down to E Street and bungee-corded the bag onto the back of the BMW. After a moment’s thought, he kicked the bike to life, drove up D Street, and parked next to the fence surrounding the Metro dig. Today, it was swarming with workers. Rick wondered what they thought had happened down there over the weekend.

  He lit a cigarette and walked down the plywood boardwalk to Eve’s town house. She opened the door before he even got there. She must have been watching, he thought.

  Probably a good idea.

  "Hey, Trooper. You look beat-up."

  "Simple explanation for that." A smile turned into a grimace as the battered injuries in Rick’s side gave him a quick pulse of pain. "Uh, I got beat up."

  "You really have to stop doing that. It’s a bad habit." Eve pointed to the Winston in his fingers. "Even worse than smoking."

  Rick looked at the cigarette. "I might be able to stop smoking, but getting beat up seems to be out of my control."

  "Well, so long as you aren’t planning to quit either habit, how about giving me a cigarette?"

  Rick flipped his cigarette onto the walkway and stubbed it out with his boot. He took two more from his pack, did the up-down trick on his jeans with the Zippo, and lit both cigarettes at once. Then he turned around, sat at the top of the town house’s front steps, and offered one of the cigarettes over his shoulder.

  Eve took it and sat down next to him. "What happened?"

  "An idiot with a gun." He took a deep, almost bottomless drag on the cigarette. "He wanted the film."

  "Where is he now?"

  "Wrapped in duct tape in our basement. It turns out that Corey is a goddamn ninja assassin. I’ve never seen anyone move like that." He looked at her and shrugged. "Who knew?"

  "I guess he just never had a good enough reason to beat you up, as hard as that might be to imagine."

  "True, but if we’d ever argued over doing the dishes, it could have gotten real ugly."

  "Stop being heroic. How did you get hurt?"

  "The idiot with a gun used a pair of those damn pointy cowboy boots to persuade me to give him a camera." Rick thought for a second. "He knew just where to kick, too. Right where it says I got wounded in my military file."

  "So, he was working for the government?"

  "That or working for people with some pretty damn good government connections. I think the phone was tapped, too."

  Eve looked up and down the empty boardwalks. "That’s it; you’re taking me with you from now on. If these guys are as good as you say, they’ve already spotted me."

  She turned and ran a gentle finger down the marks on his face. "Plus, you need someone to take care of you. It doesn’t look like you’re all that good at it."

  "That the only reason?"

  She looked into his eyes, then looked straight ahead and concentrated on her cigarette. "No."

  There was a pause. Rick stared at the side of her face, looking at the gentle curve of her cheeks and the strong and determined set of her mouth. She looked like the kind of person you could depend on, someone you wanted next to you on the firing line when the shit got serious.

  The kiss started soft and restrained, but got more passionate as it went on.

  It went on for a long time.

  Finally, he gave a small gasp as she tightened her grip around his upper arm. She pulled back sharply and looked into his face. "Damn, I’m sorry."

  "I’m not." He rubbed the arm. "I decided in that hospital in Japan that I wasn’t going to let the crap that happened to me ruin the rest of my life. Or at least not when I was awake and in control." He rotated his shoulder. "Don’t worry about it. I’m just going to have to get some new weights – couldn’t fit them on the bike."

  "Won’t be room anymore, anyway. I’ll be on there."

  "I could try lifting you. Beats a set of weights every time."

  The sun was washing the pastel colors of the town houses with a red-gold light flashing brightly off the windows. Eve stood up and headed inside the house, brushing off the seat of her jeans. "Time to saddle up, Trooper."

  She shrugged into a denim jacket with a blanket lining, wound a scarf around her neck, and picked up a backpack from just inside the front door. "We need to find a place to stay tonight, and since it’s Christmas Eve, I’ll bet the inns are packed."

  "And I need to make a phone call."

  "A phone call?" Eve’s eyebrows came together in question. "Didn’t you just say that your phones were tapped?"

  "That is a true fact. I’ve got to find somewhere else to call from." Rick laughed. "There’s a technical problem at ABN I need to clear up."

  "Are you going to explain what you’re talking about?"

  "Not until I’m sure, but I think it’s all good."

  They headed b
ack to the BMW and slung her backpack on top of his duffel bag. He pulled a second helmet out of the courier bag and handed it to her.

  She looked at it with a slight smile and then glanced up at his face. "Already had a helmet for me? You were certainly making some pretty big assumptions."

  Rick snorted as he fastened his own helmet. "You were all packed and ready to go."

  "Good point."

  Rick pulled the bike upright and Eve slid into the rear seat. "Have you ever ridden a bike before?" he said.

  "No. I’ve always been in vehicles that keep the rain off."

  "Well, the first and only rule for the passenger is to hold tight to the driver. If you throw your weight around, we could get into serious trouble."

  Her arms slid around his waist. "No problem."

  "A little lower – right there is where the M79 grenade hit me."

  She peered around his side. "Didn’t our side use the M79?"

  "Well, it got really confused during the fight." He kicked the bike to life. "I can’t really blame the guys who hit me. At that point, the Cong were firing from behind a bulwark of dead GIs. I just happened to be a little less dead than the others."

  "Well, please keep it that way."

  The big bike pulled out and headed south down 3rd Street. "Working on it."

  CHAPTER 25

  The black Impala was driving south on Third Street just as Rick and Eve pulled away from the curb. There were two cars between them, and the driver thought that with any luck, the courier wouldn’t notice him following them.

  His face twisted slightly with irritation. The courier should have been dead – records destroyed, history altered, the past erased. It should have been easy. Just as easy as all the other lives, so many other souls erased from the world, in the years since that hot July day.

  He is sweating everywhere, his fatigues dark with moisture. His crotch is still damp and stiff from when he peed himself when they were first hit by North Korean artillery. At least he’s not the only one. Half the damn company shit their pants.

  Who could blame them? They weren’t frontline soldiers. It felt like only hours since they were pulled from occupation duty in Tokyo to police a bunch of crazy North Koreans.

  "Police", my ass.

  They were coming from all sides. There were no places to hide. Now, most of the officers are dead.

  The Seventh Cavalry was supposed to hold this bridge. How can you fight when you can’t tell who the hell is the enemy? They all look alike, and just last night a whole platoon had been wiped out by Commie soldiers dressed like damn peasants.

  At least, that’s what he’d heard.

  Thank God the sergeant just moved through with new orders – shoot em all. Don’t let anyone near – even women are fighters in this damn country.

  A new group of refugees is heading toward the bridge; he hears the firing start on his left. He raises his rifle and aims. It’s an old man with a white beard. He takes the rifle down and blinks, then aims again.

  Still an old man.

  He feels a cold, dead calm. The noise – women yelling, children screaming – all seems to fall away.

  He feels nothing as he pulls the trigger and the old man falls.

  He finds a new target – a woman – and fires.

  Finds another target – another woman – and fires.

  The cold inside him deepens as he restores the silence.

  CHAPTER 26

  Rick spotted the black Impala behind them as he made the turn onto Eighth Street and headed for the lesbian bar. He decided to keep on going. They’d just have to come back and get the film and the photoprints later. He kept an eye on the single side mirror that hadn’t gotten smashed in that desperate dash through the woods. Damn, that seemed like ages ago. Eve shifted behind him; he could feel her take a breath and prepare to speak.

  "Don’t look at the bar," he called over his shoulder. "Someone is right behind us. I’m going to lose him."

  He felt her arms tighten as she turned her head to the side and flattened herself against his back. Even in the current situation, he had to admit it felt damn good.

  He passed the high walls and iron spikes of the barracks where the White House Marine guards were stationed, watching the yellow traffic light in front of the guard shack and the high blank walls that hid the Washington Naval Base. He slowed down, timing it so that he got there just as the light turned red. Kicking down a gear, he pulled the bike into a sharp left, scraping the pegs and hearing the horns and brakes of the cars he’d cut off.

  Eve’s grip tightened as he accelerated hard up M Street.

  Behind him, he heard a steady horn blast and looked in the mirror to see that it was the Impala warning traffic as it fishtailed through the intersection. Other horns joined in a discordant chorus, but the Impala kept coming.

  "OK, that didn’t work," he said to Eve. "Now we’re going to have to get extreme."

  "You mean that wasn’t extreme?" Her answer sounded muffled by his jacket.

  He grinned and drove up through the gears.

  By the time he hit the intersection where the entrance ramp to I-395 split off from M Street, he was going so fast that he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop. The light ahead was red. He looked for cars – nothing coming from the projects to the south, but the concrete supports of the highway blocked his view on the left side.

  He hit the throttle and accelerated through the light, seeing a flash of a concrete mixer with an American flag painted on the barrel emerging from the darkness on his left. Then it was a wrenching dogleg left and right, and they were flying up the ramp onto the interstate.

  At the top, he slowed to match the speed of traffic and started cutting quickly to the left, braking and accelerating to fit into tiny spaces between cars. He knew that only the bridge across the Anacostia was ahead, with its long sight lines. To the left, he spotted the unmarked exit ramp he knew was there.

  He kept on juking through the cars – blaring horns and shouted curses marking his passage. At the last second, he slammed on the rear brake to lose momentum, but before the bike went into a skid, he came up off the brake, threw the bike to the left, and rocketed onto the ramp only inches from the orange sand barrels clumped around the concrete abutment.

  He cut the throttle and slowed down as soon as they were on the ramp, knowing there was no way the Impala could have followed him. In fact, if the driver had waited at that light, he wouldn’t even have reached the top of the entrance ramp in time to see them exit on the other side of four lanes of traffic.

  "I think that worked," he said.

  Her arms stayed locked around him. "You mean I can breathe now?"

  "Yeah, and if you loosen up a bit, so could I."

  He felt her sit back. "Who the hell taught you to drive, Trooper? Evel Knievel?"

  "Hey, fast is the only way to ride a bike." He laughed, the adrenaline rush beginning to evolve into the giddiness that often followed a close call. "It takes your mind off your troubles."

  "You must really have serious troubles."

  "I’m not going to deny that."

  "No, I guess you can’t." She put her head around his shoulder so she could see ahead. "However, let’s try and avoid any more therapy sessions for a while, OK?"

  "OK." He slowed down to walking speed, finally stopping behind a line of cars waiting between traffic cones. On both sides were stands of evergreens and small bushes, the Anacostia River just visible through the trees on the right.

  "Where are we?" Eve asked. "It looks like nowhere. I mean, we were just in the city. How did we end up in the middle of the woods?"

  Rick pulled up to a man in an orange hat, a ragged insulated coat, and a money apron. "Tell you in a minute. Do you have ten bucks?"

  "You really know how to show a girl a good time," she groused, as she dug into her jacket pocket. "Here."

  He paid the attendant and they pulled ahead. The road changed from pavement into rutted mud, and then the narrow track
between the trees opened into an enormous parking lot. Burgundy and gold colors were everywhere – on banners, on flags, on strands of bunting, and on every one of thousands of people walking, laughing, drinking, and eating.

  "What in hell is this?" she said.

  "See the stadium back there?" Rick pointed. "That’s RFK, and this is a tailgate party. The Redskins are playing for the championship tonight."

  "This is incredible. It’s like a redneck Woodstock." Eve shook her head. "And how long are they going to keep that disgusting name?"

  "You’re kidding. Rename the Redskins? Probably never." Rick kept motoring slowly, weaving up and down the lanes of what was one vast celebration. "Anyway, I thought it was meant as a compliment."

  "Redskin? That’s what they called us when they murdered women and children in the Plains Wars. It’s what the white kids called me at the boarding school where they sent me." She shook her head at the memory. "It would be just as bad to call them the Washington Niggers."

  "To be honest, I’ve never thought about it, but I suppose you’re right." Rick swept an arm at the racially mixed crowds. "But, after the riots, it’s about the only thing that everyone in this city – black or white – agrees on. I mean, you don’t see people getting together like this anywhere else."

  "I guess that’s a good thing," she agreed. "But can’t they get together without having to have that Uncle Tom cartoon of an Indian warrior painted on their beer coolers?"

  "OK, if you’re not happy, I’m not happy. We’re out of here. Hold on."

  With that, Rick gunned the bike, popped it over the parking lot curb and up the grass slope toward the street beyond. They turned right on East Capitol and disappeared over the Anacostia River.

  CHAPTER 27

  Rick was sure he’d lost the Impala long before they even reached the stadium parking lot. But just in case, they’d run up through Fort Dupont Park, down Alabama Avenue where the corner boys selling drugs were some of the few people still working tonight, and finally down past the long wall that enclosed the massive brick wards of Saint Elizabeth’s – the city’s psychiatric hospital.