by Ed Teja
“I'm listening,” I said.
“Finally!” She laughed. “It's amazing and slightly disappointing what a woman has to do to get a man to listen to her.”
29
I drove like a madman through Exuma's narrow winding streets, all the time fighting the temptation to take my eyes off the road and look at Amy. I did have glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye—images of her growing weaker with every passing minute, shrinking, sinking into the bloody car seat. They formed an indelible image.
I hated that she was right. I hated having to spend her last minutes doing what she wanted, the thing that might make her life mean something. Knowing I couldn't do a fucking thing for her but drive the car and see the mission through sent agonizing pain shooting through me. And all the time she expected me to be macho, to pretend that the way her blood soaked into the shabby car seat didn't make my entire soul ache.
I heard her take a guttural, gasping breath, gathering her strength. She pushed her shoulders back, arching her spine and twisting to face me, wanting to be certain I heard her. Then, in a thin, reedy voice that was nothing like the voice of the woman I knew, she began telling me what I needed to know.
“A small cargo plane will be near the freight hanger—it's a nondescript older prop plane. The crew will make sure the gate is open; the plane's cargo door will be wide open and the engines running. The moment you arrive, you grab Brad and get him and your own dumb ass to that plane as fast as you can. Toss Brad in, climb in after him and tell the crew to get the damn thing in the air. Those shots had to raise an alarm, and we don't know if the cops will think to shut down the airport. There is no time for explanations.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “No time for goodbyes.”
That made sense. “Right. No goodbyes.”
“As the plane taxis to the runway, the crew, cautious souls that they are, will probably point guns at you. They aren't being impolite, but they are expecting me to be there. Tell them Agency Code 575575 applies and that the agent in charge has called for operating on Plan Zebra, Modification 2B.”
“Another audible.”
She gasped. “Just repeat that back to me so I know your brain isn't somewhere else.”
When I did, she nodded.
“Assuming you get in the air, they will fly you direct to a base in the US. Don't ask where they are taking you. In fact, don't ask questions at all. Keep your goddamn mouth shut and do whatever they tell you.” She moaned. “Can you do that?”
“I won't enjoy it, but yeah.”
“Get it right. Otherwise, they might dump your body out over the first available blue hole.”
“I'll be good.”
“When you land, you need to do what you are told. You'll be met by crew who will take over the prisoner. Then you will be debriefed—interrogated about the events.” She tried to chuckle, but it came out as a cough. “You might have noticed that my ability to report in has been sketchy lately. The team will want information and they'll wonder exactly what happened to me. So don't get pissed if they treat you like a hostile. Try to be civil. They will sort it out.”
“Got it.”
“The officer in charge is Hodges, my boss. You can trust Hodges—completely.”
“I'll have to.”
“Whoever it is, they will probably resent you. They'll know you left me behind and we all know that's a no-no.” Her raspy breathing stopped her for a moment. “Tell the complete story as honestly as you can. It will take time, but once they confirm the details, you should be all right. Be aware that Hodges will try to con you. That just means she likes you.”
“Con me?”
“You'll understand when it happens.”
“I don't care about that,” I said, not exactly sure what I meant, not sure what it would mean for me to be all right. Not if Amy... She wasn't even dead yet and already I was battling against a powerful sadness that seemed to well up inside me.
She reached a hand out and touched mine. “We did a good job, Martin. That fucking Chandler, though—he came out of nowhere. That surprised me. Despite being set up and double crossed, we did what we set out to do.” She handed me two memory sticks. “Give these to Hodges. Hell, they'll take them from you, along with your clothes and your dignity. But that's okay, got it?”
“Should I mention that this is the data from Vermeer's computers?” I asked as I took the memory stick, noticing how her hand trembled. I put them in my shirt pocket and took her hand. It was icy cold.
“Yeah.”
“Hold on, maybe we can get you in the plane and I can apply pressure on that wound.”
“You've been a great partner, Martin. I'm glad we met. I'm glad we slept together when the moment was there and didn't wait for a better time. And I'm sorry we couldn't go on that cruise. It could have been fun.” She gave a hollow, hacking laugh. “It wasn't in the cards. Better times never seem to come in this work.”
“Let me—”
“I need you to stay focused. You know damn well that no amount of pressure is going to pump blood back into me. You can't save me and trying will only jeopardize what we've done.”
“Will you stop being right about the bad shit already?” I said.
“Hey, pal. This is my moment. Let me have the cheap victories. Pretty soon, I won't be right or wrong about anything.”
My attention was drawn to a sharp turn that led to the back of the airport where the freight terminal backed up to a chain-link fence. As promised, the gate stood slightly open. As I slammed on the brakes, I saw a small cargo plane was warming up. “Is that it?” I asked.
There was no answer. I glanced over and saw Amy slumped against the door, her head rocked back. She looked tiny. Her petite mouth hung open, and her eyes stared fixedly into space.
“Damn you, you still get to be right,” I told her. Then, before getting out, I reached over to close her eyes. I couldn't resist kissing her cold cheek.
30
My brain was reeling, overwhelmed with emotions and dark thoughts. I don't know how I managed to carry Brad to the plane. As Amy had promised, the engines were idling and the door stood open. A crewman watched me blankly as I tossed Brad in and climbed in after him. When I was inside, he slid the door shut behind me, slamming it.
I lived and moved through a surreal space. I couldn't see the path that had led me here, to this unreal place and time. An accumulation of loss, stupidity, and death that I'd experienced during a lifetime of special ops had finally forced me to walk away from that life. Too many times I'd been forced to walk away from dying comrades and friends. I'd quit. That was supposed to be the end of it. I went off to live a normal life, one where people didn't slink in shadows and kill other wonderful people simply because they could.
I rocked my head back, suddenly aware of the stares of the two crewmen in the cockpit. The sight of them twisted in their seats and staring at me, dressed neatly in white shirts with epaulets, brought me back.
“We need to roll,” I said. “We might have pursuers.” Seeing their blank looks, I remembered what Amy had told me to say. I spat it out, not sure how I remembered their super-secret code.
The copilot gave me an odd look, a scowl that suggested disbelief. The pilot simply turned his attention to the plane, his hand moving to the throttles and his voice mixing with the crackle from the radio. He was deep into the routine. His calm, matter-of-fact chatter with the tower, getting permission to take off, seemed as alien as the idea that Amy was dead. As unbelievable as me leaving her lifeless body in that fucking Fiat hatchback.
The plane rumbled forward, taxiing up to the runway. The pilot held us in position at the end of the runway, revving up the engines in preparation for taking off; the copilot again twisted in his seat to face me. “Agent Pfeiffer?” he asked.
I took him in. He was a young man, maybe in his twenties. He had a face unmarked by time or trouble and framed with short wispy yellow hair.
I shook my head
. “She's still in the car,” I said. “She had to miss the flight.”
Realization dawned on him, wrinkling his brow. A few years in this line of work would give him a permanent scowl.
“And you are?”
The question was calm, almost untroubled, but I noted that he clutched a 1911 EMP automatic in his right hand, held out of my reach. His professionalism was oddly reassuring, although my brain automatically analyzed the situation, telling me that I couldn't get the gun from him before he got a shot off. I even considered that the 9mm he held, a compact version of the original 1911, was a perfect choice for self-defense in such close quarters.
I cursed my brain. That detailed appraisal was an insane reflex for a freighter captain, if that's what I was now. But how did a freighter captain agree to go to war so easily? How did a freighter captain fall in love with a woman he knew damn well was knee deep in special ops and capable of killing a man in cold blood? Would a freighter captain fall in love with someone like that—and if he did, would leave her body behind, sitting in a battered car on some island?
All those begged the serious question: Had I left that life behind at all? Certainly, Ugly Bill had expressed doubts, but I'd ignored them as simply teasing me about making the transition, pretending to cast doubts on my sailing abilities. Now I wasn't so sure.
Although the copilot's pistol wasn't pointed at me (yet), it was ready to bear. I didn't want him anxious, and he'd asked a logical question. So, with him glaring at me expectantly, I raised my hands. “Martin Billings,” I said. Then I reiterated the Plan Z stuff and told him I'd been on the mission with Agent Pfeiffer.
“We followed the plan change, but apparently we were compromised. We were ambushed. Agent Pfeiffer exchanged fire with the attacker and was fatally wounded. She gave me instructions and here I, we, are.”
The recitation made me feel like a schoolboy in front of the class reciting a lesson.
“Condition YA six,” the copilot told the pilot.
He turned back to me. “We are sending in a cleanup crew.” Then he sighed, painfully, emotionally. “Fuck! I can't believe they got her.” He looked at me. “She's a legend.”
I sighed. “I understand. I was there. I saw it happen and I have trouble accepting it,” I told him. I didn't mention the irrational part, the sickening, second-guessing guilty feeling that whispered that she'd still been alive. The irrational thought that after I left her sitting in the car she'd woken up, only wounded, and needing me.
“And the other man? He didn't get away, did he?”
I gave him a weak grin. “She blew his fucking face off.”
He nodded. “I need you to hand over your weapons,” he said.
“Sure.” With the surreal dream continued unfolding exactly as my dying friend and lover had scripted it, I took out my sidearm, carefully dropping the magazine in my lap and ejecting the round in the chamber before handing all three over to him. Then, numb, aching, moving slowly and deliberately, I unsheathed my tactical knife and handed it to him, handle first.
“There were more weapons in the car,” I said. “I had a tranquilizer gun and Amy—”
“Don't worry about them,” he said. He reached down and then handed back a small, zippered bag. “Now I need you to put any cell phone, ID, jewelry, wallet, anything personal in here. It all goes in this bag.”
I emptied my pockets, thinking that it seemed odd they didn't ask anything about Brad, who had started squirming periodically beside me. It was reassuring to know he was still alive. The whole mission was about him, after all.
I put everything in the bag and handed it back to the copilot. When he took it, he put it in a slot beside his seat. Then he passed back a larger plastic bag and a blanket.
“Finally, I need you to remove your clothes, all of them, and put them in the bag,” he said. “The blanket should keep you warm enough. If you need another one, let me know.”
I nodded. I had no idea what that part was about, but then I didn't know why they wanted my ID or why they were doing any of the things they were doing. The short answer would always be that it was protocol.
I considered the possibility that their instructions included burying me in a shallow grave with my teeth pulled and my fingertips removed so I couldn't be identified or dumping me in a blue hole as Amy had suggested. At that moment, those prospects didn't bother me much. My future didn't hold a lot of interest. Besides, Amy had said I'd be okay. I had to believe her. I clung to her words just as fiercely as I clung to her memory. Even if my last images of her were agonizingly painful memories of watching her die, I wanted to hold on to them. They were all I had of her.
She had told me not to ask questions, and that turned out to be easier than she'd expected. A deep resignation sank me into a funk. Asking questions was pointless. There was nothing I wanted to know. And knowledge wouldn't help me at all. Whatever they decided to do with me was fine. I’d lost interest in my future. Whoever they were was fine too. I’d long since quit pretending to myself that Amy was on a DEA mission. Amy was no more a DEA agent than Hank was trying to stop the drug trade.
Once I was naked and wrapped in my blanket, the co-pilot lost interest in me, and turned his attention to the instruments and talking to the pilot. That made sense. Having him focused on flying did us all a lot more good than him chatting with me. Besides, I had nothing more to say. I was spent, empty.
I slumped back against a storage box and let myself wallow in self pity, finding it oddly satisfying. That seems strange, but that's how it felt as I let loss and grief wash over me. It amazed me to realize how attached I'd gotten to that woman in such a short time.
“A kindred spirit,” Bill had called her. He thought she I and shared a sense of life. Although he'd accepted her as “one of us” wholeheartedly, the kindred spirit had more to do with something else.
I suppose that kinship probably explained the sense of loss as much as anything ever would. I'd found someone who 'got' me, as they say. There had been potential there, even if I had no idea what she wanted, where she was going. Just finding someone like that had made everything bright and shiny and the risks worth taking.
Beside me, Brad moaned softly. The sound irritated me, and I considered smashing him in the face. Even though the mission has been about him, which was why it got to me, Amy's death was on Hank, not Brad.
The thought of her sitting cold and dead in a stupid Fiat at the Exuma airport violated my sense of rightness.
I have no idea how long I agonized over those thoughts. I slumped back and let the vibrations of the plane creep into my bones, making it into a meditative mantra that would keep me from thinking. It didn't work. The last image of her, her lifeless face, haunted me.
At some point, the copilot handed me a bottle of water. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, even to thank him. I unscrewed the lid and drank it down. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten or drunk anything. Breakfast? No, we'd already been on the island then. It was lunch the day before.
After I drank, I sank back again. It occurred to me to wonder whether the water had been drugged. I had no idea what their protocols were or who the hell they thought I was in the grand scheme of things. I felt like shit, and they didn't need to worry about me. Besides, I was too wrapped up myself for drugs to touch me.
None of it mattered. Not at all.
The sound of the engine changed. The pilot was having those official conversations on the radio that got him making adjustments, tweaking controls.
With my messed-up head, my world having been jerked around in an emotional roller coaster ride, I had no idea if it had been hours or days since we'd left Exuma. That didn't matter either, but now that we had begun our descent, I started trying to pull myself together. Whatever awaited me, wherever it was, all would be revealed soon, and it would be handy to get rid of the fog in my head.
Lying there on the floor in my blanket, the stupid thought popped into my head that, for once, n
o one was going to tell me to put my seat up or buckle my seat belt. If I'd asked what to do, they would just tell me to shut up and lie on the floor. So, in the absence of any instructions, that's what I did. Like loose cargo in the hold always does, I bounced more than the plane did, and my shoulder slammed into hard things as we touched down. And that was a good landing!
31
The plane came to a stop, with the engines reversing and then idling. Shouts from outside told me we had a welcoming committee. Then the door slid open, letting in cold air, reminding me I wasn't in the tropics anymore.
It was dark, and the glare of work lights blinded me. We seemed, logically, to be in the middle of a large tarmac. Dark, shadowy figures dressed in tactical gear stood in a defensive semi-circle at the door, pointing evil-looking guns in my direction. The closest one to me waved the barrel of an automatic rifle. It took me a moment to work out that he wanted me to move toward him, to the open door.
I did the best I could, scooting across the floor on my butt. I got to the edge, let my legs dangle for a moment before jumping down. When I landed, I found my legs had turned to rubber. I wobbled there for a moment before two burly men grabbed me, one taking each arm and dumping me facedown onto the stinking tarmac.
“Stay down,” the first man said.
I stayed there on my bare knees and hands on the tarmac, as other men went in the plane. They carried Brad out. He could've been a corpse as they shuffled him into the back of a black SUV with no markings. I guess it hadn't been a good day for him, either.
I found it ironic that although Brad was the entire reason for the mission, the only times I'd given him a moment's thought was when I was wondering, out of idle curiosity, if he was still alive. Even when planning the mission, nothing we discussed had much to do with him as a person. He'd been the target. Capturing him had been the excuse for everything that happened, including Amy's death. And I doubted I could pick him out of a lineup—outside of the bag, of course.
