Anxious within the rain and darkness, they crept closer. The first car took an eternity to walk by until they realized no one was sitting inside. Not wanting to expose their position with flashlights, they couldn’t tell what else could have been within, although Ramone indicated these Lincolns were by no means of any recent make. The second and third car, parked closer as if arriving together, were similarly bereft of obvious passengers.
"Up ahead," Simon muttered. "There’s some people off the road, I think. Let’s get behind some cover." Ramone nodded as Jessie pulled out his tape recorder and pressed Play. The three of them then moved behind a series of corroding metal drums.
It wasn’t until they settled in, ducking behind the drums, that Jessie and Ramone actually began to make out the figures. There were somewhere between three and five, although none of the boys could be certain. They were dressed in long dusky trench coats, wearing identical derby hats, and similar to Simon's choice accessory, sunglasses. They appeared to all be bare faced males with no solid defining features.
Focusing in on what seemed to be a meeting taking place, there was a hint of speech going on. What they spoke with their low, if otherwise crisp voices was lost against the background of the rain. Yet what these men were doing was of the greatest interest. At least two stood before another one, all of them taking no shelter from the rain whatsoever. That other one, who faced them, handed one of the two a suitcase. They would hold it for a moment. And then had it back. Over. And over. And over, again. There was no sign of argument or frustration.
The men in dark coats were watched by the three boys from their hiding position for a solid twelve minutes. What seemed peculiar at first grew increasingly bizarre, as by that twelfth minute, Jessie counted they had passed the suitcase back and forth in over seventy revolutions. No one opened it. And none of these men moved aside from passing it back or accepting it. How long was this going to go on? And why?
"The hell are they doing?" Ramone finally asked in an exasperated whisper between his clenched teeth. Neither Simon nor Jessie could give any insight to this. It wasn't too interesting to watch and yet they couldn't look away from the fact that it was inexplicably happening all the same.
Finally, the men finished up whatever they were attempting to accomplish and went back to their cars in unison. Moments later, they also left together, one following behind the other. Simon and the others stayed silent for several more minutes to be safe.
"Alright. I don’t think they’re here anymore," Simon said, feeling comfortable with his sight in the dark. "Let’s take a look. Maybe they dropped something to explain why they were here."
In Hollywood, such logic would be acceptable fare and a likely, convenient solution. But unfortunately, not so much as a used up cigarette was left behind, let alone some business card. The three stood in a circle where the men conducted their business.
"Again, what the hell was that about?" Ramone demanded of no one in particular, out of disbelief. "They didn’t come out here to wait for a damn bus. Did anyone hear what they were going on about?"
"I’m not sure," Jessie began after a moment of ponderous hesitation. "It’s quite possible those were CIA operatives, but I can’t fathom why they would pass the suitcase back and-" He stopped suddenly, squinting at the ground.
"Something wrong?" Simon asked.
Jessie glanced around as if to ensure the cost was clear and then pulled out his flashlight, aiming it at the ground. "Hrmm... look at this."
The light shined upon the muddy earth where the men previously stood. It revealed there were actually five of them after all, with two more having stood nearby unnoticed, likely observing the suitcase exchange passively. What’s more, the shoe prints left behind were distinctive. Simon and Ramone soon realized what Jessie was so hard focused on.
Their prints were non-matching. One man was wearing a dress shoe and then a rugged boot on the other foot. His companion had a sandal and a running sneaker on. So on and so forth. All of them, utterly mismatched.
"That is seriously strange," Ramone inquired. "Still CIA, Jessie?"
"Ehh. Probably not CIA, but I can't really say... I don’t know what significance this has. Let’s get back to the car for now. Maybe if I play back the tape recorder somewhere quieter, I might be able to make out what they were saying."
Just then, the sound of a roaring engine came speeding back into the camp. A Lincoln with the high beams lit.
"Oh shit! They know! Let’s get out of here!" Jessie shouted with an uncommon start.
"Go! Go! Go!" Ramone yelled in a voice tinged with excitement, not wasting any time.
"They must have seen the flashlight!" Simon called out. He didn’t need much reason to wait around. Getting nicked by the authorities was a risk they all ran. Paying a fine for trespassing and losing his job over something like this wasn't appetizing.
The boys hurriedly made their way through the tighter alleys of the barracks, preventing easy pursuit by the vehicle. They had some instincts at this point for bailing out from a bad situation from the many false starts and spooked moments they had from earlier trips. Following after the first car in short order, the other Lincolns showed up quickly, each seeming to know every possible side lane the boys needed to cross. It was then that Simon got a glimpse of two of their faces in the shadows. These men looked like identical twins. Flat humorless expression, sallow skin, and not an ounce of hair to be seen. Their faces brought forth a poorly prioritized vague memory of having seen someone looking very similar from a movie, but Simon couldn’t place where for the life of him. Escaping was so much more important right now.
Scarily, the black Lincolns weren’t trying to block them in or scare them off. Ramone just managed to dive out of the way when the wheels of one such car squealed past his boots. He glanced up from the muddy ground to find it quickly pulling in reverse. His eyes widened as he swore under his breath. Quickly, he got back to his feet, plowed past some rain water filled garbage cans and continued ducking through the buildings. This wasn't simply a matter of them trying to apprehend the boys, Ramone realized. The man behind that wheel was deliberately trying to hit him.
Jessie found this out the hard way. With an old nagging limp resulting from a youthful injury involving a fall down a staircase, he never had a completely smooth gait, thanks to his right kneecap. It tended to lock and subsequently unlock with a modest extension of that leg, causing him to engage in a staggered hustle rather than the mad dash that Simon and Ramone were making. In practical terms, it caused him to be the slow wounded deer surrounded by wolves.
Eerily, the men in the black cars seemed to have it down to a science when to make an accelerating run whenever Jessie had to cross a side lane before ducking into cover betwixt the buildings. If he moved, they seemed to know without fail, every single time. And they were skillful enough to work in tandem; that someone pulling in reverse from a previous side line would have coverage enough from another comrade in the street Jessie would need to cross. His dodging was miserable and he knew it. So he faked out the cars after the first clumsy tries by pretending to run ahead and then catching himself on the side of the building with a free hand. An ebony water sloshing car careened past with momentum and hydroplaning. Mud was kicking up everywhere in the wake of this.
But such tricks were not to work forever and by the fourth dash, the driver flat out waited for him to cross. Jessie wished he and others had managed to see how many cars there were. It was definitely not three. So, one for each of the presumed men with mismatched shoes then? He also cursed himself for being responsible for...
And that’s when the idea hit him. These men in trench coats seemed to see pretty good in the dark even with sunglasses on, not terribly unlike Simon.
Jessie jogged but didn’t run out into the side lane. Expectantly, the car slammed into gear with obvious intent on running him down. He could only wonder if what they had stumbled upon here tonight that was so damningly secretive as to warrant vehicular homici
de.
As the muddy soil kicked up around the car like a stampeding herd animal, Jessie stared back with a bead of sweat on his brow and raised each arm revealing not only his flashlight but his high intensity pocket LED. With a flick of his thumbs, he turned them on and aimed them at the driver’s side. He could only hope the driver had Simon’s visual sensitivity as well, either normally or due to the lack of time to adjust, otherwise his gambit would get potentially messy beyond just the spraying of mud from the tires.
It took an unpleasantly long second (in Jessie’s mind) for the driver to even notice the lights pointing at his face. Whether he shielded his view at the last second or merely tried to swerve at the wrong angle, The Professor wouldn’t properly know, but the end effect went in Jessie’s favor. The car cut a turn towards the twenty-something too sharp and far too early, as if trying not only to run over Jessie but avoid the light in one maneuver. It failed spectacularly, loudly striking the side of a building with a sickening crunch of metal and water saturated old wooden beams. Almost immediately, a quarter of the building collapsed upon the car in a haphazard fashion.
Jessie couldn’t help but stand there, his hands shaking, unable to lower his flashlights as if he had an actual weapon pointed at his enemy. He was breathing heavily, staring. Jessie was not the nicest person but he wasn’t particularly violent either. Although he always gave his best, he hadn’t won a fight in his life for what mercifully few bullies he ran into during his formative years. He typically just made use of his low center of gravity and grappled people until they got weary of fussing against his stubborn exhaustion inducing tactic. Tired, they declared mission accomplished in their minds, so they could go home with an ego trip and feel better about exaggerating what happened to their friends the next day.
This was different. Jessie didn’t know what was going on just yet, but the thought that he might have killed a man left him unsettled. What was going to happen now? Was he a murderer? Or had he just defended himself, if a little too effectively? Did he just kill a federal agent- with a set of flashlights? In his mind, filled with conspiracy study from those paranoid online forums, he imagined himself going away to some horrible prison few are ever heard from again for most of his life.
But, something else stayed his feet. It was the same thing which killed the cat and called forth the wonderment of the scientist. Slowly, he lowered only one flashlight and approached the car with trepidation and a racing pulse...
Simon, meanwhile, was catching hell all on his own. Two of the cars were after him with surprising aggression. He shoved garbage cans in his wake, hoping to deter them or hear the sound of old tin and steel cans crumpling, as they caught up a wheel well. No such luck. But things grew worse when he began to hear the popping bursts of guns. They were pistols, from the sound of it. He couldn’t believe his ears. They were actually trying to kill him in a drive by! It was far too much for trespassing... unless they had stumbled onto something that was truly not intended to be seen by anyone else.
His adrenalin raised higher than he could recall in a good long time and feeling more than awake, Simon detoured himself from heading directly to the opening in the fence. He felt like he was running faster than anyone possibly could. He was also sure if he went there first and even if he managed to escape, they might sit and wait for the others, realizing it as their exit from this place. Simon would doom everyone to these maniacs. On his conscience, he couldn’t do such a thing knowingly. He was terrified but had to act within his nature as a man who would watch over his friends. No matter how vacant inside, he felt he had at least that much still within his chest.
Somehow, some way, those people in the black cars were perfectly coordinated, at least with each other. They always seemed to know exactly what alley he would go down. One tried to run him down or otherwise block him from the front, while the other was trigger happy with a piece from behind. Each shot made him race forward, faster and more anxious. He was thankful he hadn’t even been grazed yet. He imagined the trigger happy aggressor must have been shooting while reaching out through a passenger side window- it likely made him quite inaccurate against an already evasive target, particularly while under pressure in a moving car. But it was no reason to assume Simon couldn’t be shot in the back or by dumb luck in general. Now, if the driver in front of him decided to open fire...
Trying to decide what in the world he should do, Simon concluded that had to get off this predictable pathing of his and mix it up somehow. Somehow, he had to shake them. His luck could not hold out forever. So Simon, not so simple, saw an opportunity when the car in front of him tried to block him off again. Adrenalin pumping, he jumped onto the hood of the black Lincoln as it slammed to a stop. He used the elevation to get himself a little bit higher, just enough to scramble atop the roof of one of the barracks across the lane from where he began.
Simon knew it wasn’t going to be enough, but they couldn’t very well try to run him over anymore. And if he kept himself ducked low enough, maybe they couldn’t shoot at him, either. Well, at least until they climbed up or stood on their cars to increase their line of sight while firing upon him. The barracks weren't particularly tall by any means. He started to wonder if he trapped himself by doing this. Glancing around, there was only more of the same. Maybe he could evade them like this if he could make it to the other roofs. It was not as though they could shine lights on him as before. If he could just make it to a guard tower at some point, perhaps he could hide up in one. Or was that a bad idea? He hoped his friends were doing better as he was running short of breath, wheezing in the cold rain, ignoring the strain it put upon him through sheer adrenalin.
Ramone was first to make it to the Ford Fairlane, still nestled in its soggy little hide out. He used no tricks to get out, he simply outpaced the cars and their attempts to corner him. It was not unlike dodging around the defensive line with subtle maneuvers in the glory days of his football interest, except the cars were far less capable of snapping to a different direction at the last moment in these narrow dirt lanes between buildings. More so, they didn’t even manage to follow him to the fence opening in time before he vanished on them. Not that he stayed around to look. He had a good bead of sweat intermixed with the rain on his leather jacket and slicker, but nothing more.
He was dismayed to find his fortune of being the first one there also meant Simon and their stumbling friend Jessie were still out there. He had truly hoped the cars were mainly focused on him, giving them time to run. Catching his breath briefly, he looked behind, expecting any time for Jessie and Simon to come trotting over. He unlocked the doors and got into his car.
He peered out the car windows, ignoring the rain, looking for familiar faces in grey rain coats, listening for stomping boots in the mud and grass. He started the car. He even honked the horn, unconcerned about subtlety right now.
Fifteen more seconds passed. Fifteen long seconds. His friends weren’t there. And he wasn’t there with them. He stared at the polished knobby leather steering wheel in Old Man Peterson’s historic Ford Fairlane. Then he banged his palms against the wheel and shut the car off. Letting loose a tirade of obscenities, he grabbed a tire iron from the back seat and ran back outside towards the fence, heedlessly. Fuck the consequences.
Jessie thought he might throw up. He stood before the open car, partially buried in roof tiles and timber. Inside, the unbuckled driver was slumped over the dash, his head literally splattered like an over ripe watermelon at a Gallagher show. It was disgusting. Jessie couldn’t even make heads or tails of what anything used to be in this man’s head. It was just earthy smelling glop, everywhere.
Lowering his glance slightly, he found the driver had been drawing a Glock pistol with his free hand from his trench coat pocket as if to greet Jessie’s flashlight with a bullet to the brain. On the other side of him, sat that suitcase they were trading back and forth like the world's slowest moving game of hot potato. And finally down below, his shoes. One running sneaker and one ball
room tap shoe on his feet. Both left facing and muddy.
Jessie didn’t understand. Who were these people? What was so important here? And why was any of this worth killing over? This was supposed to be a simple weekend exercise. The chances of anyone else being here were considered miniscule at best. He would have been fine just finding some scrap of conveniently dropped paper or a rusty brass bullet casing. Not standing here before some strange dead man with two left feet he’d inadvertently killed and a... suitcase. His sunken eyes returned to that. It was non-descript black leather in the shape of a rectangle. Surely, the contents of that perfectly ordinary suitcase would be better than finding all the hidden pirate treasure in the greater New England area. Well, maybe not. But he didn’t know that. Jessie couldn’t overlook an opportunity like this, nausea or not.
The moments of thrill missing in Simon’s life had surely been found tonight. It wasn’t quite what he was looking for in truth, but it would make a better story in his later years than ‘I watched sitcom reruns‘. Or so he thought. He was still working on the whole surviving the night part.
They had not given up. Not easily. They fired shots and tried to stay with him as he madly flung himself across to whichever closest rooftop he could reach that wasn’t the last one. Oddly, they seemed to have pronounced difficulty in locating him now. He was certain he wasn’t that sneaky. Whereas before they simply homed in on him unfailingly, now it was as though these men never learned how to crane their heads back and look up. They were literally shooting blindly as far as Simon could tell. Not even at the right roof most of the time, either. He found it strange but was unable to dwell on it due to the stress of being shot at, no matter how bad their aim was.
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