by Alan Russell
“That’s not Drew Corde, is it?”
“No, it’s not. Are you a good guy, Michael Gideon?”
“I don’t know, but like the bumper sticker says, ‘One day I hope to be the person my dog thinks I am.’ ”
Elle laughed, and squeezed my arm with her hand. “You’re funny, and I think you are a good guy. Are you really going to be there for me?”
She left her hand on my arm. I wondered if she knew how much heat her touch was generating. And if she knew how uncomfortable it made me feel.
“Cross my heart,” I said.
“And hope to die?”
“Preferably not.”
Her fingers pressed into my arm. “Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that you’re right about Drew’s hunting me down and in the process gathering damaging information. What could you do about that?”
“If he gathered that information illegally, it couldn’t be used against you in court.”
“What about the court of public opinion?”
“I’d do whatever I could do to protect your privacy within the law.”
It must not have been the answer she wanted to hear because her fingers stopped massaging my arm.
CHAPTER 22:
THE SKY IS FALLING
With Sirius at my side, I watched the Model S drive off. I still wasn’t sure if Elle was going to cooperate with me. She claimed that, other than Corde’s talking about “gaming” and “hunting” with UAVs from inside the Bunker, she didn’t have any definitive proof that he was engaged in illegal activities. Elle reiterated that she had been with Corde the night Wrong Pauley died, and could offer little more than her own “suspicions” when it came to the angel Pauley claimed to have witnessed.
It wasn’t until I vacated her car, and was saying good-night at the opened driver’s side window, that she offered up to me, “Seraph’s last tariff.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just a few nights ago I heard Drew laughing and talking with Novak. And I’m almost certain he said, “ ‘Let’s see to a seraph’s last tariff’, or something like that.
“I wished I’d heard more,” she added, and reached out and touched my hand by way of apology.
And then her black car silently disappeared into the night.
I stood there, still feeling the warmth imparted by her hand. She must have gotten over being cold.
“Jenny used to always have cold hands,” I told Sirius. “And when I’d mention that they felt like icicles, she would say, ‘Cold hands, warm heart.’ ”
If Jenny was right, I wondered if the reverse was true.
I was aware enough to know that Elle’s reaching out to me was likely nothing more than her stroking my male ego. The logical part of my mind knew she was manipulating me for her own purposes. And yet there was a part of me that wanted to believe she wasn’t just giving lip service about wanting to settle down with a good guy and how I fit that bill to a T.
“But this isn’t a romantic comedy,” I told Sirius.
My partner wagged his tail. “Exactly,” I said. “It’s a buddy film.”
As I carefully walked to my car, I found myself whistling “As Time Goes By.” I wondered if I was whistling in the dark, or thinking about a kiss, or contemplating a sigh.
“Play it, Sam,” I said.
If my Ranger was monitoring us, he probably wondered what I was doing talking to myself. Then again, he’d done enough of his own talking with Sirius. I thought about his story of the war dog parachuting down to earth tethered to his handler and looking like it was just another breezy ride along the PCH with the top down.
I looked around. If Pullman was somewhere out there, he couldn’t be seen. It felt strange thinking I was under surveillance. My every movement began feeling contrived, and I was glad to get into my car. I checked my cell phone. My Reluctant Hero hadn’t called or texted, and I was hoping no news was good news.
I felt the urge to call Lisbet and wondered if that was prompted by guilt. “Call Lisbet,” I told my phone, but the expected female android response of “Calling Lisbet” didn’t materialize. I wondered if there was no cell signal, but after checking, I found three bars. I tried manually dialing Lisbet’s number but had no better luck. Another inspection of my phone showed that it had plenty of juice.
Maybe it was one of those atmospheric things. There had been a few times in the past when cell phones in the Southland had been impacted by sunspot activity. I started up the car and began driving. Two minutes into the drive, I became aware of a thwacking sound coming from the back of my vehicle. I lowered a window and slowed down, listening more closely. One of the tires must have picked up a rock or stick. That wasn’t surprising, given the state of the unpaved road. I tried to convince myself the impediment could wait until I found an open gas station, but as I listened, the sounds got worse. At the same time my car began to feel sluggish, as if the gas wasn’t reaching the engine. A sudden shaking overtook the car. There was a coughing sound, as if strangling hands had wrapped themselves around the engine’s throat, and my car came to a shuddering stop. The only thing I could do was steer it toward the side of the road.
When I tried starting the car again, the engine wouldn’t turn over. My best guess was that I had traveled about a quarter mile from the scenic overlook. That meant my meet-up point with Pullman was another half mile down the road.
The night and day difference of this section of Mulholland Drive could be seen all around me. L.A. seemed like it was a world away. It was dark and quiet. There were few residential lights to be seen; they were almost like distant stars. Road traffic, at least for the moment, was nonexistent.
I reached for the handheld that I carry in the car, but only got static when I hit the transmit button. Clicking on different police frequencies didn’t help. Forget sunspots, I thought. This was something else. It was easy to be paranoid. I thought about Wrong Pauley and the security cameras in his alley. The electronics had been jammed.
In the quiet of my stationary car, I heard a hissing sound. The noise was coming from outside. My cell phone couldn’t call out, but it wasn’t completely disabled. I turned on its flashlight app and then exited the car to follow the sound of what had to be escaping air. Up close I could see one of my rear tires was going flat. It had been pierced in multiple spots by a flattened piece of twisted metal. Both tires had picked up pieces of metal. The flat tires could have been caused by Dirt Mulholland. I had noticed the tread on my tires was low; there was no way I should have been off-roading.
Stay or go? I thought. If I stayed with the car, Pullman would eventually meet up with me. Right now I couldn’t be sure if he was down the road waiting at our meeting spot or on his way from the overlook. If someone was targeting me, by waiting for Pullman I’d be a sitting duck. If Novak had disabled my car and jammed my communications devices, he’d be looking for a broken-down car, but even more likely he’d be looking for its occupant. Abandoning the vehicle seemed the better choice.
Before setting out, I drew a few arrows on my dusty car to show the direction I was heading. I wanted Pullman to know which way I was going. I decided not to leave the hazard lights on. The car was far enough into the brush not to be a danger to passing vehicles.
Sirius thought that our taking a walk was a wonderful idea. If I’d had his night vision, I might have been more enthused. Dogs have large pupils and lenses adapted for low-light vision, and there wasn’t much more than starlight to guide us. Behind their retinas dogs have something called a tapetum, which acts like a mirror. That’s why we can see light reflect from a dog’s eye at night. It also bounces back light, giving photoreceptors a second opportunity to capture light, even the kind of light only offered up by stars. I let my partner be my seeing-eye dog.
On the drive in I hadn’t noticed the lack of streetlights. My headlights had made me unaware of the l
ong stretches without illumination. Now I had to navigate those patches of darkness.
“Dark territory,” I said to Sirius.
That was one of the Ranger’s expressions. From what I gathered, it meant going into war.
We walked for five minutes and didn’t encounter any cars traveling along the road. If we had, I wasn’t sure whether I would have chanced flagging one down or moved out of sight among the weeds beyond the shoulder of the road. In the midst of my uncertainty, I became aware of the buzzing.
It sounded like someone was mowing their lawn in the far distance, but no one does yard work at eleven o’clock at night. Besides, the nearest lawn was probably a mile away.
The surrounding canyon took up the sounds. It wasn’t a loud buzz, but more of a reverberation. The humming sound seemed to be moving. It annoyed as a flying mosquito would. Hadn’t Wrong Pauley said something about that?
And with that realization, the hairs on my neck rose.
Corde had said the people in Pakistan and Afghanistan called UAVs “mosquitoes.” Though the drones flew too high to be seen, when conditions were right they could be heard. They were that distant buzz that reminded everyone they were being watched. They whispered of death.
In the past few days, I had wrongfully blamed drones for violating Lisbet’s and my privacy and for setting my roof afire. Like the boy who cried wolf, I had cried drone twice. But that didn’t mean I was wrong this time. The hairs on my neck were telling me I was right, even though I didn’t want to be.
I started running. What had Corde called those who fled? “Squirters,” he had said. I was a squirter.
Sirius ran with me. He thought it was a game. The buzz sounded louder and closer, but I wasn’t sure what direction it was coming from.
Before he had disappeared, Pullman had joked about a drone being sent my way, or at least I had thought he was joking. He said he wouldn’t be able to prevent me from being bug splat if that happened. Those were the kinds of drones he was used to; when a Hellfire Missile hits, there’s not much in the way of remains. I doubted that was the kind of drone I was facing. A missile strike in the greater Los Angeles area would be noticed. A “nano” drone was another matter entirely, even though drone killer bees weren’t yet a reality. A swarm wasn’t coming my way. The Dumbledore was said to be the size of a small bird, not a bumblebee. That was the stinger I was worried about.
My eyes had adjusted as much as they could to the darkness. I looked around. I wanted to see possibilities, even if I wasn’t sure what that looked like. There were no trees to be seen and nothing in the way of shelter. I was in an ideal spot to be ambushed. On one side of me was a canyon, and on the other was an embankment too steep to be traversed. I thought about trying to find a hiding spot but quickly rejected that idea. If a drone was coming after me, it would have infrared viewing. My body heat would be a giveaway; maybe a dead giveaway.
The mosquito sounds were definitely louder. I tried to track the noise. The lawnmower sounded as if it was directly overhead, but in the darkness I couldn’t see more than a few dozen feet in any direction. I was in one of those dark patches between streetlamps. As I ran, I tried to think, tried not to panic, but my head was doing a Linda Blair. Even if I couldn’t see my enemies, I knew they were coming for me.
As I drew nearer to the streetlamp, its light allowed me to better see the surrounding area. Unfortunately, there was no refuge to be seen. If I could get down into the canyon, I might find a stand of thick shrubbery, but the path was steep, and the odds were more in favor of my breaking a leg than finding shelter. If I stayed near the road, it was likely a car would come along, and I could flag it down. It might provide shelter enough from what was above, assuming it wasn’t a Hellfire missile. This was supposed to be fucking L.A. But what if a car didn’t come along?
I ducked my head, spooked by a shadow. Or maybe I was just jumping at shadows. The mosquito buzzing was filling my ears. I wondered how fast the drone could fly and how maneuverable it was. I looked up and around and wondered if whoever was operating the drone was staring at the whites of my eyes.
My breath was ragged. It wasn’t like I could outrun a drone anyway.
I stopped running about fifty yards away from the streetlamp. I was tired of being a squirter. The attack would come soon, I was sure. I thought about firing a couple of rounds into the air. The gunshots would be noticed by someone. Maybe they’d bring my Ranger. But if an attack was imminent, that help wouldn’t come in time.
An idea came to me, prompted by desperation. It was crazy, with little to no chance of success. But what else was there?
“Ninja,” I said to Sirius.
My partner went on alert, ready to track down the disc. He didn’t need for me to show him the disc; with ninja he had to be ready for a surprise, ready for anything. Or so I hoped.
“Ninja,” I said again, and positioned him so that he was staring at me, following my every movement. Then I walked off a dozen steps, putting some distance between us.
Sirius’s ears were up, and his body was tensed. It was Hail Mary time. I needed him for a miracle. Ever since our fire walk with Ellis Haines, I hadn’t put in the time training Sirius that I should have. The average handler spends sixteen hours a month doing maintenance training with his charge. When we’d been with Metropolitan K-9, the two of us had regularly put in twenty-five hours of training in any given month. In K-9 parlance, I hadn’t wanted to be a thirty-miles-per-hour trainer with a ninety-miles-per-hour dog. Sirius had always been exceptional; he needed an exceptional handler.
Post–fire walk, I should have been coaching him on tactical tracking, smoke deployment, building searches, suspect tests, and obedience. To get Sirius ready for the unknown, I should have been deploying him in different terrain and weather.
Now I was hoping that our playing with discs might save my life.
The buzzing came at me, and I began to run. “Ninja,” I shouted.
I wondered if that would be the last word I ever spoke. It was better than saying “shit,” I supposed—what Corde had said was the famous last word of most drone targets.
Even as the buzzing filled my ears, I heard another sound: breaking glass. My ears were playing tricks on me. I didn’t know if the noise came from up the road or down the road. And then I sensed a shadow flying at me, and I was sure it was the drone. But I was wrong. The shadow belonged to my partner. Sirius had thrown himself into the air. On those occasions when Dr. J. and Michael Jordan flew fifteen feet through the air, their efforts were forever etched into the minds of spectators. Sirius’s vault put them to shame. By my calculations he went almost twenty feet before his flight was cut short. I was the reason for that. Sirius’s leap ended on my back. The impact of one hundred pounds of flying dog sent me airborne, and I came down hard at the side of the road.
That’s when I felt the hot air of machinery too close, and my face was stung by pebbles shot up by shifting tires swerving on asphalt. A dark shadow—a black car—roared by, passing within inches. I had expected the attack to come from above, but it had come from the ground.
Sirius was on top of me, growling back at the threat and ready to protect me against anything. The breath was knocked out of me. I couldn’t say anything, let alone growl. As I struggled for air, I shifted, and Sirius moved from my back to my side. His hackles were raised, and he was on the alert.
When I finally had breath enough to talk, I said, “So ist brav,” and gave him a hug. “You’re the best boy in the world.”
He liked the sound of that and started to furiously wag his tail. He must have thought I was okay too, because I got a big lick. This time I didn’t do my Lucy speech about germs.
Once again the thought of a drone had put my head in the clouds, and I had been oblivious to what had been a more imminent threat. The drone had been the spotter. It was the car that was supposed to have killed me.
I slowly got to my feet. I was scraped all over and could feel seeping blood on my upper chest and face, but nothing was broken.
“You play a mean game of tackle,” I told Sirius.
I had only gotten the briefest glance of the passing car; it had been accelerating along the straightaway with no lights and had come straight at me.
I listened for the mosquito sound; it wasn’t to be heard. As I looked around, I could make out a distant glow I hadn’t seen before. Somewhere down the road something was on fire. Flames were reaching for the sky. Normally, the sight of a raging fire would have scared the hell out of me, but for some reason I found it reassuring.
My cell phone, on silent mode, suddenly did its shake and bake.
“You alive?” asked a voice on the other line.
“Barely,” I said to my Ranger. “I thought you had my six or seven or whatever the hell that number is that means you’re covering my ass.”
“It seems as if a lot of people wanted you dead, and there was only one of me. But don’t go anywhere. I’m less than a click away from you. See you in five.”
“You and your damn numbers,” I said, but he’d already hung up.
CHAPTER 23:
GAMBLING IN CASABLANCA?
While I waited for Pullman, I could hear sirens sounding in the distance. There was a nearby fire station at the bottom of Mulholland, I remembered. It sounded as if everyone was converging on the fire. Sirius and I waited, well off the side of the road. A few cars passed by, but they meant us no harm. With all the activity it no longer felt as if my partner and I were the only ones living in L.A.
It was only because I felt Sirius tense that I turned. Despite Pullman’s running at a fast clip, I had neither heard nor seen him.
“It’s okay,” I told Sirius, and he left my side and ran to Pullman.