Playing A Losing Game

by MF Bishop

  Chapter Ninety

  With all the turmoil, Helen hadn't visited Howard and Gunnar since the announcement of the first defeat, but she was sure that Howard would help her. Helen left the office in the early evening and headed for Enterprise Magnetics. Feeling happy and hopeful for the first time in days, she hummed 'Stars and Stripes Forever' as she steered her Sunbird around the potholes.

  The courtyard was darkened by evening shadows when she pulled in, but she saw at once that things had changed. There were no cars. She had never seen the courtyard with no cars parked against the fence. And the fence itself was gone, so she could see across to the other wall, but the courtyard was empty except for several large cardboard boxes and three thick metal posts set in concrete.

  Her happy mood changed to anxiety. She got out of her car and hurried to the door. Another change. Always locked in the past, the door now hung open. She slipped inside. The hallway lights were on, but the elevator didn't work. She remembered seeing a stairway in the corner by the front entrance. A door at the end of the hallway opened to the lobby. There was no guard at the armored door, but she found the stairway.

  Enterprise Magnetics was never very clean, but now the hallways and stairs were downright messy; papers and boxes lay scattered everywhere, even on the stairs to the second floor. Helen picked her way through the litter. What could have happened? She refused to think the terrible thoughts, but the second floor confirmed her fears. The rugs, the furniture, the fine paintings, all were gone, leaving only the trash covered wood floor and bare walls.

  Dazed, Helen wandered across the big room. She kicked at the larger piles of paper, and picked up some of the pieces. Most of them were invoices for office supplies, or bills for phone or electric service. Nothing important, and nothing that gave a clue as to what had happened to Enterprise Magnetics.

  Howard's office was as bare as the reception room. His giant television screen was gone, along with his desk and his display of diplomas. Howard and Gunnar and Michelle and the others were gone. How could they do this to her, She thought, after all they had been through together?

  There was a door at the far end of Howard's office. Gunnar often appeared from that end of the room. Helen went through the door and found another hallway and more offices. All were empty, except for the now familiar trash. She found another elevator at the end of the hall. This one was much larger than the elevator out front, and must be for freight. She punched the button without much hope and was pleasantly surprised when the elevator door opened. She rode to the third floor.

  The shooting range was still there, almost unchanged from when she had last seen it. This was where Howard had shown off her gun. Checking her purse, she felt the gun nestling in its little compartment by her wallet. She slipped the safety off. It made a dry click. Helen found the sound comforting and moved the safety on and off several times. She left it off. I'll probably shoot myself in the rear, she thought, but if I run into unfriendlies, I'll want this in a hurry.

  The rest of the third floor was living area, with kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms. All was empty; there wasn't even much garbage.

  Helen returned to the elevator and looked at the choices on the panel. She had already seen the first and second floors so she chose 'B'. The computers were in the basement. If the computers were gone, she would have to face the fact that Howard had abandoned Enterprise Magnetics. Maybe they weren't gone yet, maybe Howard intended to call her. She rode the elevator to the basement, hoping for lights and people and the hum of activity.

  The basement was dark. Helen fumbled in her purse and found the small flashlight on her key chain. She focused on the nearby walls until she found a switch panel. Most of the switches did nothing, but one of them turned on a few overhead lights. The upper floors had been finished, with painted plaster board and modern dropped ceilings. Down here, the bare concrete and brick of the original building was broken only by crude partitions made of metal studs and unfinished wallboard.

  At first, Helen was reassured as she poked around; she entered a large alcove and saw there was a lot of electrical equipment down here. But she soon realized that the terminals and small computers were all dark and silent; connecting wires were cut, and some of the equipment had been smashed. Past the alcove, she came to a room with a gaping hole in the wall. Metal studding was bent to the side, and pieces of broken plasterboard littered the floor.

  The room was dark; the dim light from the hall didn't reach past the shattered opening. Helen used her light and stepped into the room. As she swept the walls and floor with the narrow beam, her worst fears were confirmed. High capacity electric conduit ran across the ceiling and down the walls, next to air conditioning ducts. But the ducts and the wires had been crudely cut and ended in jagged tangles. Paper, pieces of sheet metal and unidentifiable electronic parts covered the floor.

  This was the computer room. It had to be. The hole in the wall was to move the big computers and air conditioning units and God knows what out of here. They really were gone. Helen leaned against the wall. That bastard Howard, she thought, he pretended to be my friend, he pretended to be devoted to the cause. But one little setback, and he cuts and runs, and leaves me to deal with everything alone. Damn him!

  Nothing for her here, better get out, then decide what to do next. She swung her light back toward the hall. What was that? Something in the corner wasn't paper or metal; it looked like a pile of cloth. Moving closer and aiming her light into the corner, she cried out in surprise. Two men lay next to each other, both on their backs. Their arms were stretched above their heads, and blood smeared the floor. They must have been dragged to the corner after being killed. She examined the bloody trail. It was crossed by marks that were probably made when they took the computers out. So these two were killed before the computers were removed. Why? She shined the light on each of the bodies in turn. One was immensely fat, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. The other was tall and lean, dressed in dirty white overalls, now stained with blood.

  Helen had the chilling thought that these two were a part of the scheme that Howard had discarded as casually as the broken computer equipment down the hall. Maybe it was just as well he hadn't called her. Definitely time to go. She turned her light toward the hallway and screamed. The beam illuminated the faces of two men.

  "Yo, lady," one of them said, "easy with the light. You hurtin' my eyes." Shading his face, he stepped into the room, the other man close behind.

  Helen backed away. "Who, who are you?" she stammered. The one she could see was young, not much more than a boy, and had hair that looked black in the flashlight's beam.

  "We the landlords, mama. The dudes been rentin' the place from us. Now they's gone, we checkin' our property."

  His accent was slight, but certainly Hispanic. Helen remembered Howard's story of the money Enterprise Magnetics paid for 'protection' to the local Hispanic gang. Maybe they knew something.

  "How long have they been gone? Where did they go?" Her fear left her. These were just boys, after all.

  The one doing the talking shrugged. "Dunno, yesterday, this morning, not long. We don' care, we just checkin' on what's ours. You're a trespasser, lady. Now put down the damn light." He came toward her.

  "Don't come any closer," Helen snapped, "and get out of my way."

  "You ain' tellin' us what to do, white bitch, and this says you ain' goin' nowhere 'till we've had a little fun." He flicked his wrist and a knife appeared. Light reflected from the long, thin blade.

  The sight brought memories of another knife, and Helen's breath caught in her throat. Not again! Absolutely not again. She backed away and shifted the light to her left hand. There was a moment of panic as she fumbled in her purse, then she had the gun in her right hand. The boy came toward her. His eyes glittered as brightly as the knife.

  Helen shot him. The gun made a muffled
'pop' and a small round hole appeared in his forehead. For a fraction of a second nothing happened. Then his eyes crossed and he fell face down.

  His crossed eyes looked so funny, Helen had to laugh. As she laughed, she turned her light to the silent companion. Another boy, frozen with fear. Better clean this up, she thought, and fired again. She must have hit him, but he turned and ran. She snapped off two more shots and he staggered and cried out in Spanish, but kept going.

  These damn .22s have no stopping power. Helen sprinted down the hall. The boy pulled weakly at a fire door, leaving bloody hand prints. She shot him in the back of the head. There, finally down. She stood over the body and looked at her gun with disgust. It was a cute little thing, but not worth much in a fight. It was all she had, so it would have to do for now. Helen slipped the spare clip into the gun and carefully reloaded the used clip from her supply of loose ammunition.

  As she turned toward the elevator, the lights went out. She gasped in surprise. The lights came back on. Oops. The elevator was not a good place to be if the power failed. Take the stairs? And meet some more evil children? Better find another way. She remembered that windows looked from the basement into the courtyard. Rooms on the courtyard side of the hall resembled those she had already explored; empty of everything but trash and broken equipment.

  Located high on the wall, the windows were big enough to crawl through and weren't barred. Helen found a wooden crate and pulled it into position. Climbing up, she looked out on the courtyard. It was long past sunset, but there was enough light to see that her car was gone.

  Oh, those little shits! A dim shadow flitted across the courtyard, then another. Some more little shits were out there. Helen wished for a decent gun, something automatic...no, she couldn't be distracted by petty thoughts of revenge. She'd never liked the Sunbird that much, anyway.

  Howard and Gunnar were gone; now, it was up to her, the fate of the country was in her hands. The solution came to her with almost painful clarity. Of course! What she had intended to do this morning was the right thing. She would talk to Loughlin, show him what a mistake he was making, show him they could still win.

  First, she had to get out of this building and into a car. She moved quickly back to the hall. In the dim light, she could barely see the huddled shape of the second boy lying in front of the fire door. Got to hurry, his friends could be along any minute.

  On the street side, the remodelers had built false walls inside the original walls. Helen searched until she found an upright from a collapsed set of metal shelving. It made a heavy pole, and in a few minutes she smashed through the wallboard in the alcove.

  She stood in a narrow passageway between the old and new walls, with a window to the outside every ten or twelve feet. Finding some boards to stand on, she dragged them with her down the passageway. The first few windows were solidly boarded over, so she moved cautiously down the passageway, with the newer wall on her left and the rough concrete of the original basement on her right.

  Helen used her light and was surprised to see footprints in the thick dust on the floor. Someone had walked along here, and then walked back. Some sort of patrol? It didn't matter.

  Just as she decided to batter her way out, she came to a window where the cover was obviously loose. She poked with the longest of her boards and the plywood swung easily away from the frame. She leaned the boards against the wall and scrambled out.

  This was the south side of the building, around the corner from the entrance and the little grocery store. She could hear shouts coming from that direction. Now, back downtown and into a car. She held her gun in her hand as she trotted along the sidewalk.

  She headed for Vermont Street; it was busy and not far away. She half hoped some local denizen would try to give her a hard time, but the few people she met seemed to shy away from her. Maybe the Northeast wasn't as rough as she thought. She crossed Vermont and waited by the light on Q Street, just before Logan Circle.

  Cars stacked up at the intersection, sometimes five or six in a line as they waited for the light to change. Within ten minutes, Helen saw the one she wanted; a shiny Chrysler New Yorker driven by an older woman. The woman was alone, and the car was the second in line, blocked in front and behind. Perfect.

  Stepping off the curb, Helen grabbed the handle of the driver's door. It was locked, of course.

  "Damn," Helen said, and pointed her gun at the astonished woman. The woman opened the door. Helen's luck was running again.

  "Don't shoot me," the woman said.

  "Get out, please," Helen said sweetly, "I need this car. It's important."

  "What?" the woman said, "what? This is my car...."

  Helen grabbed the woman by the hair and dragged her from the seat. "Sorry, this is a government emergency."

  The light changed. Helen pushed the screaming woman aside, scrambled in and drove away.

  "Ok, back in business," she said, as she checked her face in the rear view mirror. "Omygawd, I'm a mess!" Her face was scratched and covered with blood and dirt. She looked down and saw that her suit was filthy and torn in several places. Wow, she thought, no wonder people avoided me.

  She couldn't visit Loughlin looking like this. It was barely nine thirty, so Alan was still at work, the house empty. She would go home and change, get cleaned up, then straighten everything out with the Senator. She sang 'The Ballad of the Green Berets' as she crossed the Potomac.