by James Grady
Suddenly he realized Renee wore black panties and no bra. Her breasts were swollen teardrops. His gun trembled.
And she blushed. Pulled her hands from their martial pose to cover herself. She looked past the black bore of his gun to his eyes. Said, “What now?”
“You can put your shirt back on.”
“Don’t watch.”
“We’re not there yet.”
He kept his gun on her as she grabbed the blouse, used her other arm to cover her breasts. She gave him her naked spine as she put on the blouse. She turned around.
Found he’d clipped her gun on his belt. He sent her to the living room couch. He took the chair opposite her long bare legs and buttoned blouse. Kept his gun in his hand.
The parrot hopped wildly in his cage.
“So,” said Condor: “How was your day?”
“Same old, same old.” Renee glanced at the glass coffee table between them. An art deco ashtray with swooping naked beauties sat out of plumb with the table edges. She casually leaned forward to adjust the heavy glass object.
“Stop!” She froze at Condor’s order, flicked her gaze toward his alert pistol as he said: “You don’t need to straighten anything.”
Renee shrugged. “Whatever you want. You got the gun.”
“Let me tell you about my day.” And he did.
Sunset streamed through the windows when he finished.
She stared at him through the crimson light. Said, “Why?”
“Why what? Why kill us? Why equals who. Not a berserker nut or a gangbanger, it was too … polished. But all the superpowers are gone; now it’s just us.”
“Plus some slice of a few billion people who think we’re the new evil empire.”
“Yeah, but, al Qaeda, they…” Condor blinked. “It’s a world of cells. ‘Cells’ is what we call secret teams of terrorists or spies. But even if CIA and FBI are right about al Qaeda cells operating inside our country, why all this?”
“Why come to me?” Renee shifted.
Even distracted as he was, Condor’s gun bore shifted with her like a watchful eye.
The parrot squawked.
“You’re who I’ve got left,” said Condor. “Plus somebody’s framed me with an offshore account. Plus I put my fingerprints on the Uzi. Plus I shot a cop. Accidentally, but you’re the pro, you add up my score.”
Her eyes pulled him like gravity. “What do you really want me to do?”
“Believe me. Believe in me.”
“You’ve got the gun.”
“And if I put it down?”
“I believe you’re in trouble.”
“Hey, I am trouble.” Wasn’t a laugh he made. “And I’m not a trouble guy. Not a gunner like the Delta guys in Rising Thunder. Maybe, what I was doing, all this is linked to Dray, my boss. He talked about getting complaints about me, but …”
Condor’s blink keyed Renee to unfold and spread her legs, her black bikinied half moon facing him as her bare feet gripped the floor. Condor seemed not to care.
“But it was all of us who got killed,” he said, his eyes floating back to the Starbucks. “Not just me. So if it wasn’t about me or Rising Thunder … Hershel!”
Condor’s shout startled Renee, but she used that natural reaction to disguise her hands finding a grip on the edge of the couch.
“Hershel! He was wild about something he popped onto last Friday! He would have run straight to our boss, Dray! But forget Hershel. Home Sec’ and the Agency will have my boss and everybody else focused on me because of the frame job and …”
Renee’s bare thighs squeaked on the black leather couch.
Condor’s Glock zeroed her heart: “No!”
“I was just …”
“No,” he said. Saw the way her jaw set and knew he’d been right.
“Do you have any rope?” he said.
She blinked. “I’ve got twine in the utility drawer in the kitchen, I’ll go get …”
“Don’t!” Condor rocketed out of the chair and away from her as she naturally started to rise with her suggestion. “You’re not the helpful kind.”
He made her kneel on the hard wooden floor. He backed into the kitchen, gun on her the whole time, aiming over the open counter. His free hand groped in the counter’s utility drawer, lifted out a sheathed throwing knife.
“So much for your domestic side,” he told her.
Renee watched his eyes float around her home while keeping her kneeling form in his gaze—and in the aim of his gun. His gaze locked on a P.C. in the corner. He ordered her to unplug and gather up all the P.C.’s cords, then march into the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” she said, as he made her sit in the middle of the bed.
“I have to get Dray to see everything, not just the frame trapping me. Together we can focus Home Sec’ and the Agency, the FBI on the truth. If nobody kills me first.”
He made her tie one chord to her right wrist, tie the other end to the headboard’s same side brass corner pole. Made her lie down, her right arm lashed up behind her. He made a loop of a chord, cinched it around her left ankle.
“You can’t get to Dray!” She raised her head off the bed while he lashed her left leg to that bottom corner pole. “They’ve got a team securing him at the Graylin Hotel!”
“How’s our whole intelligence community done with security so far?” He shook his head. “I never thought I’d be standing here.”
He pulled her right leg wide and apart from its mate, lashed it to the other corner post. Her spread-wide legs exposed her bikini panties’ dark crescent.
“Watchers are on all my exits! You can’t get out of here!”
“I’ll do my best to disappoint you,” he told her.
And grabbed her left wrist. Tied her to the headboard.
“Don’t leave me like this!” He went into the bathroom. Came out with a wide spool of white medical tape. “What if you don’t come back?”
“Don’t worry.” He stared at her spread-eagled body. “Somebody will find you. You’re the lucky kind.”
Then he pressed a strip of white tape over her beautiful mouth, left.
The elevator dropped him down to the subbasement. He found a laundry room, storage bins, the furnace room jammed with a giant aluminum Christmas tree and a matching Star of David, strings of lights and ornaments. But no door out.
He rode the elevator up to One. The elevator door slid open. He saw the reception desk, two men sitting in the lobby, watching the building entrance. The elevator door closed. Condor pushed the button marked Roof.
He stood beneath the night sky of Washington, DC—not the artistic rooftops of Paris, or the pigeon-cooped roofs of New York, but neither of those skylines hold the glow of the Capitol Dome, the blinking red light atop the Washington Monument.
On the rear of Renee’s building, the park side, Condor found steel rungs—and a plaque reading: Warning—Ladder Rungs End with Forty Foot Drop.
Pollution covered the stars. He spun in a frustrated circle under that lost light. The red eye atop the Washington Monument winked at him.
Condor blinked.
He found it back in the subbasement amidst the Christmas decorations: a thick snow-proof orange extension cord; had to be 100 feet long. Rode the elevator back to the roof. He cinched one end of the cord around his chest, tied it to the other end. Dumped the orange loop off the roof by the steel rungs. Condor grabbed steel rungs …
And climbed down the back of the eleven-story building.
He lost count of the rungs, his arms and legs aching, his heart pounding, his shoe—stepping down to find nothing. Four stories of nothing. The big drop.
Condor untied one end of the extension cord, fed it over a rung until whoosh: gravity sucked the long cord down into darkness.
“Bad idea,” he whispered.
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Hand-over-hand, working the thick rubber extension cord like a pulley, Condor lowered himself down four stories of brick wall. The loop cinched around his chest dug into him, but pain meant he was still alive. On the ground, he had to tie the cord looped on the rungs where it could be found by any midnight rambler. He ran into the park. Trees leapt out of the darkness. He swatted them away, got to a main street, caught a cab.
“You hear the news?” asked the cabby.
Condor found the cabby’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “What news?”
“Them massacre shootings. Like a dozen dead. But you know the good thing?”
“No.”
“TV says it’s them Russian mafias dusting each other. ‘Means they ain’t gonna be locking up more Black men.”
The yellow cab rolled through the dark night.
“What am I doing here?” whispered Condor as the cab stopped near a cheap hotel.
“—where you told me to take you,” said the cabby.
Condor paid, sent the taxi on its way. Watched the twin red tail lights disappear in the night of the city street. Condor unbuttoned his filthy gray sports jacket.
In the bowels of the Graylin. A no-registration hole to hide a potential witness. Condor circled the block until he stared at the alley behind his target zone.
Coming up on midnight, his watch told him. An indigo city night, USA.
In daylight Pakistan, RT/Delta techs would be prepping the stealth helicopter.
He ran to the mouth of the Graylin alley. Nothing moved. He checked his back, his sides; saw only a laughing trio of club hoppers getting into a car a block away.
“Hell,” muttered Condor. “I should have been dead this morning.”
He walked into the alley, the Glock in his hand. He eased along the back of a building. Closed doors. Fire escapes overhead. A blue neon sign above a door by a foul-smelling dumpster read: Grayl n. A rat scurried past him.
Condor noticed the dumpster lid was wedged open—by a shoe.
He eased the lid up …
The shoe was on a dead man—atop another dead man.
The dumpster lid crashed down. Bang!
Condor threw open the hotel’s backdoor and jumped inside to a dank concrete maze of air ducts and cluttered corridors and throbbing machinery.
He thrust the Glock in front of him. Jumped around a corner: long corridor, service carts, overhead pipes, and a shaft of yellow light spilling out an open door.
Condor eased toward the light—stepped on a brass cartridge case. Stumbled into a serving cart piled high with dirty dishes. The cart slammed the wall. Plates crashed and shattered on the corridor floor.
A dead man flopped from behind the rolling cart.
Face-shot corpse! Black man with a badge on his belt. Condor swung the Glock away from the corpse, aimed down the corridor. A dead white male lay by a metal cabinet twenty feet further up the hall. Partners.
Condor leapt into the glowing yellow room.
Over the Glock sight, he saw a closet and a cot, a TV, a table against the far wall with a chair where his boss Dray slumped, the eyeglasses dangling from a shoelace around his neck getting smeared by blood streaming from his slashed throat.
Bleeding, he’s still …
The closet burst open. The bald killer slammed a palm strike into Condor’s back. The Glock flew from Condor’s hand, hit a cinderblock wall, bounced back on the gray-tiled floor as Condor’s feet swept out from under him. Sprawled on the floor, Condor grabbed for the Glock. The killer kicked Condor’s head. White flash burned his vision, but he saw a flutter near the killer, white paper scrap floating …
“Freeze!” yelled someone else.
Looking from the floor between the bald man’s legs, Condor saw a third man in the hall—a third man aiming a pistol into this yellow room.
Third man jerked/crumpled, his gun stabbing toward the ceiling firing Bang! The bald killer ran from the room.
Condor scrambled to his feet. Grabbed the Glock. Stuffed the paper scrap in his pants pocket. Stepped into the hall.
The third man lay back-shot, conscious, his eyes turning up to Condor.
“Halt!” yelled a voice from the corner of the corridor where Condor had come.
Condor ran the other way. A gun roared. A bullet splattered the wall near him. He ran through a yellow maze of pipes and locked doors.
Saw a giant open gap in the wall to his left. The sign above the gap read: Laundry Bundles Only.
Feet first, he plunged into the dark chute. Slid to the basement laundry room. A conveyer belt angled up to a barred door. Condor scrambled up the conveyer belt, threw the bar off the door, leapt outside, ran through the city night as sirens wailed.
Two taxis and a half-mile walk later, he stood behind Renee’s building. The orange extension cord loop dangled from the iron rungs four stories up. Condor envisioned RT/Delta training, those men using a rope loop to pulley and walk up an obstacle course wall. Knew he had to will himself into a Delta superman. Or die.
Renee heard her locks click. Her front door open and close. “Squawk! Fuck you!” Condor stood staring down at her on the bed. He looked terrible. Smeared filthy. Flecked with red. Trembling. He tried to speak, shook his head. Left her tied to the bed and went into the bathroom. Shut the door.
Took himself down to naked. Let the shower rain on his still-alive flesh. He didn’t know if she could hear him gasping, sobbing in the steam. He dried off. Couldn’t put his bloody shirt on again. Spotted a huge maroon Harvard sweatshirt she slept in, pulled it on. Wore his modesty-protecting filthy trousers. Opened the bathroom door.
She stared at him with her brown eyes, hands and legs tied spread on the bed. Tape covered her mouth. He slumped beside her. The guns were on the bathroom floor.
He said: “I don’t want any more killing.”
Gently as he could, he pulled the tape off her mouth. She licked her lips, and he held her head so she could drink from the nightstand bottle of water.
Words flowed from him, babble summed up with: “They got there first.”
“They? Who are they?” she said.
“Bald guy and his buddy who shot the man in the hall. Plus that shot man and his crew. So many theys, and I got trapped between them.”
“The hit squad. And the good guys.”
“How can you tell the difference?” asked Condor.
“That’s your problem. How did bald guy know about the Graylin? Unless his cell is hooked into the good guys. Which means we can’t trust anybody.”
“We? You believe me?”
“The verdict on you is crazy, corrupt or confused. I’ve never seen a more confused man.”
“That’s what I’ve got going for me?” He stared at her. “Why do you believe me?”
“Because you came back.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s enough. For a start. For you.”
“For me?” Condor shook his head. “I’m some guy running in the night. I don’t even know who or what I’m running from.”
“You’re staying alive.”
Condor stared at the woman he’d tied to the bed. “I have to trust you.”
She shrugged. “Makes sense.”
He untied her right hand. She lowered it to her side to let the blood flow back into it as he untied her left hand. She sat up, her legs still tied spread wide.
Exhausted, Condor told her: “You could beat the hell out of me tonight.”
“I could beat the hell out of you tomorrow.” She smiled. “Might as well wait. Plus, if you’re right, the bad guys are where they can watch us. Me. If I break my pattern they’ll move on us before we’re ready. So everything has to wait.”
He untied first one of her legs, then the other. She flexed them. Stayed on the bed and didn’t kill him or knock him down or go f
or the guns on the bathroom floor.
He blushed. “What that security guy told you. About me having a monster crush on you. I didn’t … want you to find out like that.”
“I already knew.” She looked away. “Why do you think I transferred you out of my section—beside your annoying tendency to poke around and make trouble?”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not. At least, I’m not sorry about your monster crush.”
He blinked.
She said: “I didn’t want you to die feeling sorry for liking me.”
“You’re too romantic.”
“Yeah, that’s my problem.”
His hand floated up to her face. His thumb rubbed off tape adhesive stuck to her lower lip. Her face stayed held by him. She saw his eyes close as he leaned in for a kiss. Mission accomplished, he pulled back, saw his reflection fill her gaze.
Then her hands cupped his face. Her thumbs lay along his cheekbones. She whispered: “I could gouge out your eyes.”
Condor blinked. “Don’t stop there.”
She pulled him in to kiss. Put him on his back. Straddled him, long white legs and black bikini pinning him to the mattress. She stared down at him, ripped open her blouse and let it fall. He imagined her nakedness mirrored in the glass of the picture above the bed, superimposed over a sepia scene of wild horses in a blizzard as Renee picked up his trembling hands, filled them with her teardrops of flesh.
Later. Under the covers of her bed. Lying face to face.
He whispered: “This isn’t what I imagined.”
“Never is,” said Renee.
“Yeah, well the how and the why of this us never figured into my dreams.” He kissed her. “You have no idea how glad I am to be here. But …”
“No buts until after tomorrow.”
He absolutely knew what she meant. Nodded. Said, “What time is it?”
“Right now.” Then she smiled. Gave him the situational answer: “Near 3 a.m.”
“Noon for RT/Delta. Nine hours and counting. Will you stop them?”
“How? Why? Besides, they—we—still have time.”
Condor shook his head. “Feels like I’m trapped in some net.”
Her bare leg rose over him, her hand soothed his cheek. “You’re here now.”
