"So how's the work coming?" Casaday asked. He strode across the huge camp as if he had a destination in mind. Mark, seeing no alternative to following, saw likewise no point in asking what that destination was. He didn't really care. It wasn't going to be anyplace he wanted to be.
"Slow, man," he answered. "I'm not real up to speed on all this stuff. Scanning - tunneling microscopes, that kinda thing. All new to me."
But the techs were ready, willing, and able to operate the arcane gimcracks for him. All he had to grasp was what uses they could be put to, and the courteous and efficient staff would do the actual dirty work. Damn them anyway.
"Yeah," Casaday said skeptically. They were walking toward a largish hootch, out kind of by itself near the rolled German razor tape that formed the perimeter. "I still can't believe you don't know how to use a personal computer. I mean, you're supposed to be a trained scientist."
"I got trained a long time ago," Mark said defensively. "I ran a head shop. I never had anything to do with computers."
"How did you keep your accounts, that kind of crap?"
"Somebody did the books for me." That somebody was Susan, one of the pair of surly, brushcut CUNY students he had hired in to help him back in the vanished Cosmic Pumpkin days. He found himself missing his clerks, even though they had despised him, rather as one might miss a pit bull who had wandered into the yard and whom one had adopted out of a combined sense of Good Samaritanism and intimidation.
Casaday snorted "Yeah. I guess." He looked at Mark sidelong. "You're a smart guy, Meadows. That's why I brought you here. That's why I figure you wouldn't try to bullsnit me about kitty-cat crap like that."
From the hut ahead came a scream. Sprout's scream, shrill and desperate.
Mark burst into a run, loose-legged and gangly, scattering the inevitable crows. He went booming in the door of the hootch. Dimness, a flash of movement in his peripheral vision, and then impact. He went sailing back out to land on his butt on the hard, red earth.
Casaday sauntered up, looking cool in his linen suit and white straw fedora. "Looks like Layton got a bit overenthusiastic again," he said. "I'm going to have to have words with that boy."
He reached a helping hand down, which Mark was not too proud to accept in his frenzy to help his daughter. Ribs aching, he lunged back into the hut.
To one side a grinning Layton held Sprout by the arm. She wore a T-shirt tied up to bare her midriff and cutoff blue jeans. She struggled Helplessly.
On the other side of the single room Lou Inmon sat, bound to a chair.
Gunther Ditmar stood beside him with a butcher's apron on over his mildewed suit. He held some kind of shiny metal implement. Several men in black pajamas stood watchfully by the wall.
The bound joker raised his head and looked at Mark. His great golden eyes were swollen almost shut.
"Sorry, boss," he said. "I thought I could help you, but things don't always work out like we plan, do they?"
"How'd you like my side kick, Doc?" Layton asked.
Mark bared teeth at him and lunged for his daughter. Layton did a fancy little sidestep between Mark and the girl, grinning. A pair of Black Karens grabbed Mark's arms and hauled him back.
"What's the hell's going on?" Mark demanded, struggling futilely. "Sprout, honey, what's the matter?"
"Oh, Daddy, they were gonna hurt Unca Louie!" she wailed.
"And we still are," said Casaday, strolling in the door. He stopped and looked down at the captive joker. "Some people don't know when they're well off, Doctor, can you imagine that? This poor sucker was set up as President pro tem and in prime position to make it a permanent deal. But he just couldn't let things go."
"What are you doing? Why do you have Sprout here?"
"Object lesson," Casaday said.
"Are you out of your mind? She - she's a child, Casaday. What do you expect her to get from an 'object lesson'?"
"Not her," Casaday said. "You."
Mark deflated. It was humiliating to be held immobile by two guys who didn't come up to his shoulder, but he could not break free. They were strong.
He wasn't.
"Okay. Then let her go. Him, too. You've made your point, believe me."
Casaday shook his great round head. "No way, Jose. This - thing - caused us trouble, Doctor. We want you to see what happens to those who make trouble for us. Herr Ditmar, you may proceed."
Ditmar clicked his heels, nodded. He brandished the implement, which proved to be a pair of wire cutters with yellow plastic handles.
"Many times you encounter someone who has an unusually high pain threshold, or an unusually strong will," the German said didactically, as if Mark had wandered into the middle of his lecture. "It is common to believe that such people are immune to physical persuasion." A smile. "In fact, such is seldom the case."
He reached down and took the pinkie of Osprey's right claw, raised it. The skin was yellow and lightly scaled, like a bird's. The talon was black. The joker glared at him.
"Casaday," Mark said between teeth clenched so hard he could feel them creak, "get her out of here."
Casaday smiled. With the air of a gardener pruning his champion roses Ditmar reached down and snipped the tip of the finger off at the first joint.
Osprey vented a great eagle-scream of fury and pain. Sprouts terrified shrieks mingled with his as his blood sprayed the yellow teddy bear embroidered on her shirt.
Mark fought like a mad thing. He could not get free of the two compact men hanging onto his arms.
"Don't bother fighting them, Dr. Meadows," Casaday said. "They practice the local martial art, bando. Boarmen, they call themselves, because it's boar-style bando that they do. No, not as in Martin Bormann, Ditmar; don't get a hard-on, here."
Ditmar giggled. He was wiping blood from his glasses with his handkerchief.
"I could take 'em, though," Layton said. "They're not really that tough."
"Layton, shut the fuck up," Casaday said conversationally. Mark vomited on the floor, and had the almost-subconscious gratification of seeing the two boar boys hop back.
Casaday covered his nose with his own handkerchief. "Christ," he said in annoyance. "Get him out of here."
The boarmen stepped forward and pitched Mark into the yard. He finished returning his breakfast to Mother Earth. A hand caught him by the hair at the front of his head and hauled him up onto his knees.
Casaday hid hold of him. He and Ditmar stood over Mark. Layton held Sprout in the hootch's doorway. She seemed to have passed out, and hung limp in his grasp.
"And that is the way to break even the toughest-willed subject," Ditmar continued as if there'd never been a pause in his narration. "You start with the smallest of joints - first fingers, then toes - and work your way upward. The body has a surprising number of joints, Dr. Meadows. Sooner or later, one proves to be the straw that breaks the camel's back."
Mark decided to have the dry heaves for a while. Casaday made a disgusted sound and let him go.
"Finished?" the spook asked when the spasms subsided. Mark nodded miserably. "Get him some water and a fucking towel."
Mark climbed to his feet, reeled. Ditmar was nowhere to be seen. The sun was poking through his eyelids like steel needles, jabbing through his eyes and out the back of his skull. "You sadistic son of a bitch," he choked.
"No, that's Ditmar," Casaday said. "I am a son of a bitch, but a practical one."
As if on cue, another scream shook the walls of the hut behind Casaday.
"What are you talking about?" Mark asked through a sudden torrent of tears.
"You're a smart boy, Meadows, like I said before. Obviously you got it doped out that young Carter isn't in your league, as far as this recombinant-DNA bulljive goes. So it might've occurred to you that you could string us along forever, saying you just couldn't figure out a way to make any progress, and we'd never be the wiser. Right?"
Mark glared at him. Layton grabbed Sprout by the left buttock, pinched. She came awake and
screamed.
Mark hurled himself at the kickboxer. Casaday stiffarmed him onto his butt. He hit his tailbone on hard ground making sparks explode behind his eyes, and then the ever-helpful boarmen had his arms again.
"Layton," he said, "you're a dead man."
"Who's gonna kill me, Meadows? Your ace friends? You're jack shit without your drugs, asshole, and we all know it." He put back his ponytailed head and laughed. His teeth were perfect.
"Don't jack me around Meadows," Casaday said. "You've thought of trying us on for size. Admit it, or I'll see what else Layton can pinch."
Sullenly, Mark nodded.
"Okay. So here's the deal. We're working to a deadline. That means you're on a deadline too - or, more correctly, your baby girl is. You have three weeks to show us some results in the lab. Results Carter-baby can verify. Otherwise - "
He laughed. "Well, your girl's quite a hot little honey, but I have to admit she isn't my type; not enough vitamins. She is Layton's type. He likes his women white and not-so-bright; hell, your foxy little 'tard's his dream girl. You blow your deadline, I give her to him. But don't worry - you get to watch."
By this point Mark was back in control of himself enough that he didn't give Casaday the satisfaction of watching him struggle in vain. He just stared. His eyes were a blue much paler than the furnace sky, and infinitely colder.
"We are operating at zero tolerance, here, just like your buddies in the DEA. You try to run, I give her to Layton. You try something smart, like sabotaging our main culture of the Trump - same thing. And if you really, truly fuck up, and don't deliver the goods at all - " A big old used-car salesman's smile. "I give her to Ditmar. You read me, Doctor?"
A Karen had arrived with a gourd full of water and a coarse towel with VALE OF KASHMIR HOTEL, TEHRAN embroidered on it in green. Mark rinsed his mouth, spat, mopped his face. "I can't promise results, Casaday. You have to know that. I'm not up-to-date on the science. I don't really understand half the equipment you have. What you want may not even be possible, man!"
Casaday snorted. "Tough. It's the reality fucking sandwich, Doctor: bon appetit."
Yet another scream from the hut. Casaday smirked. "Sounds like the Colonel's worked his way up to the knuckle," he said. "Your joker pal still has five fingers and two thumbs left. That's what? Twenty-one joints on just the hands? Fuck. I was never any good at math."
"But it's not fair!" Mark cried.
The CIA man sneered at him. "Fair's where they give colored ribbons to hogs and pumpkin pies," he said.
A commotion inside the hut, an outburst of trumping, a squeal of surprise and outrage. A moment more and Lou Inmon lunged through the doorway, knocking Layton and Sprout sprawling to the hard-packed earth. The joker had managed to break the straps which fastened his legs to the legs of the chair.
"Listen, boss," the joker gasped. The feathers of his head were matted scarlet with blood "I fucked up. Sorry."
Layton jumped up, started for Osprey. Sprout lunged away, scrambling on all fours. Cursing, the kickboxer turned to pursue her.
"Just remember," the joker said. "You ain't been forgot!"
"Fuck," Casaday said. "I'm in a Three fucking Stooges movie." He reached inside his jacket, drew his .45, snapped it out to the full extension of his arm and fired. The bullet hit Inmon on the right brow ridge. He dropped like a bundle of rags in the doorway.
Casaday turned back to Mark, tucking his pistol into his shoulder holster. "Now get your ass back in the lab, Meadows, or I'll tell Layton to get out his Kama Sutra Love Oil ahead of fucking schedule."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Croyd woke them before dawn. They traveled the valleys downward and east, past Diyarbakir and east again, heading for the border at Al Qamishli. Looking like Kurds, or so Croyd said. If there was fighting in the hills, they didn't see it. Villages changed from Turkish to Kurdish control sometimes at gunpoint, but the Turkish government tried to keep news of the rebellions hushed. Turkey is one country, they insisted. Come visit. But not that town, please. Not this season.
Balthazar stopped once at a roadside phone, an incongruous orange intrusion from the twentieth century. He spent a long time there, feeding in coins, and came oack to the bus with a grim expression.
"We want to get across this afternoon," he said, answering questions none of them asked "We'll have more trouble at night. Different set of guards then. We're going to visit our Kurdish cousins about ten miles south of town. We're taking the pump to them and going back home for the summer. That's the story, anyway."
"Give me the names of these cousins," Croyd said.
Balthazar did, a genealogy complete to the oldest uncle and the newest child of a family that had been resettled into Syria, displaced across the border after a battle in Iran.
"I don't think we'll get much hassle from the Turks or the Syrians," Balthazar said. "The Turks don't really care if Kurds cross the border going out of the country. The Syrians won't bother us because they think we're going back. We don't look rich and we don't look indigent. You can handle it, Croyd."
Croyd's attention seemed to be on the roadside, intent on fields and the clumps of trees. He watched as if he looked for snipers or maybe snakes. He was never still. Always, a finger tapped, a foot. He shifted in his seat with quick, restless motions.
"This gets me to Rudo?" Croyd said. "Tell me that's really going to happen, Balthazar, or whatever your name
"This gets you to Rudo. Wherever he ends up. Last the Fists heard, it was Europe again. We're after him, Croyd."
"You've lost him?" Croyd twisted in his seat, as far away from Balthazar as he could get. He looked as if he might cry. "You bastards. You've lost the trail. I could be looking for him myself. You could be lying to me about this jumper stuff. Maybe I killed him after all and he stayed dead. Why the hell should I believe you?"
"You sound paranoid. What's the matter, man?"
"I do? Yeah, I guess I do. I'm getting sleepy. It's too early. I don't want to get sleepy yet."
The road, barely two lanes if you were imaginative, widened and curved. Squat silver tanks and a maze of fat pipes marked an oil field. Yellow arrows on the road and signs in several languages marked the approach of the border.
"Jan?" Balthazar asked.
She lifted a satchel from the floor, rummaged in it, and handed a muslin sack of rice to Croyd.
"What's this?" he asked.
"In there," Jan said.
Croyd stirred the grains and brought out a ziploc full of rainbow capsules.
"We need you awake," Balthazar said. "Take one of those and get us past the border. We'll talk about this other stuff when we're in Syria."
"I hate speed," Croyd said. He picked an orange and black capsule front the sack and dry-swallowed it. "I never wanted to go to Syria."
"My name really is Balthazar. Always was, even back in Alabama." The joker brought the bus to a stop, its diesel rumbling in idle. Croyd passed the rice sack back to Jan and climoed down to meet the border guards.
There were men with guns. There were papers for Croyd to hand over, questions and answers. Croyd flicked his hand toward the bus and Balthazar got out and stood beside him. The building was concrete block, its windows barred, its perimeter surrounded with chain-link fence. A board painted with black and white diagonals hung across the road. Zoe stared at it, willing herself not to see the three guards, not to evaluate their strength against that of Croyd and Balthazar, not to think of the photographs of hemmorhagic flesh and staring eyes, the glossy prints the Hound of Hell handed over so casually. Black Trump victims, so he said.
We're stopping that hell with the threat of another, she thought. We aren't bad people. They won't stop us here. Please.
When Croyd turned and beckoned for her and Jan, she was able to get up and get out of the bus without shaking too much. She led Jan close to the barrier while two of the guards climbed into the bus.
The third one was still talking to Croyd. If Croyd was sane enough to do
his job, they were talking money.
He would manage. He wasn't crazy yet, she had to believe it. Jan squinted into the sun, her eyes, as ever, on Balthazar.
Something clanged against metal in the bus and Jan flinched, a quickly controlled jerk of her shoulders. The guards were moving back and forth in there, looking for whatever, looking at the damned pump. Croyd's guard took a step toward the bus. Balthazar's mirrorshades watched the guard. The sun glanced off his lenses and struck Zoe's eyes as he turned to look back at the road from Turkey. A brown, dusty Ford Bronco chugged up behind the bus and stopped.
Croyd's guard yelled something. The two guards in the bus climbed out again. One flicked his right hand in a quick gesture and Croyd's guard disappeared with Croyd behind the barred door of the border shed. The pair who had rummaged through the bus went back to talk to the couple in the Bronco. Zoe turned toward the gate, too fast, making her skirts whirl, damn it, and sighed a precautionary sigh at the little motor that lifted the barrier.
"What?" Jan whispered.
"Insurance. Let's get in the bus, Jan." For under the floppy white canvas hats, it was the tourists from Odessa who sat in the Escort, sweating in the afternoon heat and staring at the back of the bus without moving a muscle.
Jan reached for Balthazar's hand and led him into the bus. He patted at her arm, his attention on the door of the shed.
We could die here, Zoe thought. We could die here or tomorrow or at any place on this road at any moment. I'll be damned if I'll stand in the way of love, of comfort between these two. What love had Jan ever known? Jellyhead's dad had died, but she knew who he was. Jan didn't remember ever having a father. Or a mother. No one, until she'd found the Escorts.
As soon as I get Balthazar alone, I'll tell him - it's okay. Don't wait. Don't wait until Jan is eighteen. She may never be eighteen.
Croyd stepped outside the shed door in the middle of a conversation, waving both arms and chattering rapid-fire Turkish. He stopped in midsentence as the barrier lifted and Balthazar rolled the bus forward. Croyd ran for the step and swung inside as they passed the barrier.
Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump Page 27