The Tracker

by Chad Zunker

  “Charlie. My name’s Charlie.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Come on, Charlie.”

  We walked through a hallway into the small kitchen. As the pastor mentioned, there were three large boxes of bagels and donuts on the counter. They looked and smelled incredible. Pastor Isaiah told me to help myself. He said they always had plenty food left over after prayer breakfast and he usually took it over to the shelter. I immediately stuffed three warm donuts into my face without even taking a breath. Then poured a large cup of orange juice and nearly downed it in one gulp.

  “You a Broncos fan?” he asked me, nodding at my sweatshirt.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, guess so.”

  “I like the Cowboys,” he said. “Grew up in Ashdown, Arkansas, near the Texas-Arkansas border, not far from Dallas.”

  “I hate the Cowboys,” I offered.

  He laughed. “Yeah, most people either love them or hate them. There is no in between. You ever been to a Broncos game?”

  I told him about a game I went to last year when the Seahawks were in town. I left out the part about how I’d pickpocketed a man outside the gate for his tickets, sold them to a scalper, and then purchased other tickets in case the police tried to find who was sitting in the stolen ticket seats. The pastor and I talked a few more minutes about football as I worked my way through a half dozen donuts and two cream cheese covered bagels until I could barely put another bite in my mouth. Pastor Isaiah didn’t seem to care that I was cleaning out an entire box all by myself. He was an easy conversation. I immediately liked him.

  “How old are you, Charlie? Sixteen?”

  I nodded. “How old are you?”

  He smiled. “Twenty-seven. You living on the streets?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes. When you lock the church up.”

  We exchanged an easy grin.

  “Right. No family around?”

  “No, sir. Not a soul.”

  “Sorry to hear that. You’re not in foster care?”

  “You sure do ask a lot of questions, Pastor.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I do. But the gospel compels me. Can’t get to the heart without getting to know you first.”

  “Well, no offense, but you can save your breath and your gospel. I don’t need to be saved, okay? If God was going to save me, he should have done it a long time ago. I can take care of my own self. I have been my whole life.”

  “I understand. But everyone needs the gospel. Everyone needs hope.”

  “Not me. Just donuts.” I sighed. “Look, you seem like a real nice man, Pastor Isaiah, and I appreciate this food and you not turning me in to the police and all for staying here overnight. So please don’t take this the wrong way, because I really don’t mean any disrespect. But you don’t know a damn thing about me or the hell I’ve been through in life.”

  “That’s true, I don’t, Charlie.” He leaned against the counter, sipped his coffee, considered his next words for a moment. “When I was five, my father used to burn me and my brother on the back of our legs with a scalding cattle iron, when he’d had too many beers. I have scars all up and down both legs. My father got life in prison for murder when I was six. My brother drowned in the neighbor’s pool when I was seven. My mother overdosed on crack when I was eight. Found her cold dead body myself in the bedroom. I went to live with an uncle in Little Rock, who used to pass me around to his drug addict friends, if you know what I mean. Then he skipped town on me, and I lived on my own in his apartment for a month until the landlord took issue with no rent coming in. I bounced around the streets for three months as a ten-year-old, living secretly at different friends’ houses, sometimes sleeping under the bleachers in the gym at school by unlocking the door before leaving. Until the school found out and called in Child Protection Services.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But you’re right, I don’t know you. And I certainly don’t know anything about your hell.”

  I was chewing slower, studying him.

  “So you went into the system?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, avoided it. They found a great aunt living here in Denver who agreed to let me come live with her. She brought me into this church. That sweet angel of a woman had a heart attack and went to be with Jesus when I was sixteen. Your age. I didn’t have anyone outside of that. No other aunts or uncles that I knew about or who would at least offer to take in a kid like me. Maybe a bunch of half-brothers or half-sisters scattered across Arkansas. I was basically homeless again.”

  “You seem to have turned out okay.”

  “Not without help. And a lot of grace. It could have gone really bad for me. But the senior pastor here took me in and gave me a second chance.”

  “That’s nice. Good for him. Good for you.”

  I finished up my donuts and bagels, wiped my hands with a napkin. Then stood.

  “Nice to meet you, Pastor. Thanks for the donuts.”

  “Sure. You’re welcome here anytime, I mean it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, before you go, son, can I get your real name?”

  I smiled. “It’s Sam.”

  ELEVEN

  Saturday, 11:56 a.m.

  Austin, Texas

  2 days, 12 hours, 4 minutes to Election Day

  My plan was to simply rest.

  Just take a few minutes, lay down, and close my eyes.

  I needed it and had nowhere to go anyway. I was supposed to just hide out and wait for Ted to call. See what his lawyers had to say. But the king-sized luxury hotel bed was so comfortable and my body was so exhausted that I slipped off into a deep sleep. The body was only capable of so much.

  I was startled awake by a knock on my hotel door.

  I turned, stared at the digital clock.

  Another firm knock. I pushed myself up. Who was at my hotel room door? Ted? I hadn’t heard the phone ring. Maybe I’d slept through it?

  I quickly planted my shoes on the carpet. I was already fully dressed.

  A third firm rap, followed by a deep voice. “Sir, hotel security. We need a word with you, please.”

  Hotel security? I pushed myself up, walked to the door. The security bar was still locked at the top. I placed my eye on the peep hole. There were two men. The man right in front of the door wore a brown blazer with the Four Seasons logo emblazed on it. Looked legit. He was probably in his late twenties, slick black hair, buff, slight scar on his chin that looked like a check mark. He also had black sideburns that reminded me of a young Elvis. But it was the second man standing behind him, to his left, that sent a charge of adrenaline straight through me and cleared the fog in a second. The man from the woods. The security guy on Mitchell’s team. Right there, four feet away from me, separated only by the hotel room door. He wore a matching blazer with the Four Seasons logo, black slacks, no tie. A few frantic thoughts ran through my head. Had they wired my mom’s phone, waiting for me to call her?

  Or had Ted Bowerson set me up?

  I didn’t have time to have this conversation in my mind. They knew I was in the room. I heard a room card key hit the slot outside my door, the electronic bolt unlock, the door push open an inch, only to be stopped by the metal bar at the top. My heart pounded.

  I stumbled backward, my shoulder bumping the wall, alerting them to my actual presence in the room. The door was cracked an inch but they couldn’t see into the room, only at an angle toward the wall by the bathroom.

  “Sir, open up. We just need a few seconds.”

  Yeah, a few seconds to kill me. I spun around and spotted the private balcony. I rushed to the glass door, slid it open, stepped onto the balcony. It was maybe a fifty foot drop to a grass lawn with sidewalks. Probably wouldn’t kill me. But it could break both legs if I landed wrong. I whipped my head around when I heard a metal clinging by my hotel room door. They had a tool, like a miniature crowbar. I knew they would have the door open within thirty seconds. I’d done this kind of job myself. The clock was ticking. I rushed back to the king-sized bed, yanked the cover
s off, ripped the top sheet away. I ran back onto the balcony and tied the sheet to the metal railing. I pulled it tight and tossed it over, letting it flap in the breeze.

  I was tracking the time in my mind. Ten. Nine. Eight.

  I pulled off one of my gray running shoes. Dropped it at the edge of the railing, right next to the white sheet knot. Then I darted back inside the room. The thick burgundy curtains on both sides of the balcony glass doors hung floor to ceiling. I chose the corner tucked behind a brown leather reading chair, ducked behind it, felt sweat drip onto my upper lip.

  Three. Two. One.

  As expected, they were inside. I heard the metal bar slide, and the door was open.

  I could hear shoes on the carpet.

  “The balcony!” one of the guys said.

  The men raced toward me, hitting the concrete balcony.

  “You see him?”

  “No, come on. Let’s get down there.”

  They ran back through my hotel room. I heard the opening of the door, then it clicked closed. Silence. I held my breath for twenty more seconds, listening. Nothing. I finally exhaled, slowly pulled the curtain back. They were gone. I stepped cautiously over to the balcony and retrieved my running shoe, put it back on my foot. I swiftly gathered my new belongings. A quick peek into the hallway outside my hotel room. No sign of Elvis or Square Jaw. With luck, they were racing down to the ground level and out the back, looking for me.

  Rushing out into the hallway, I found the stairwell. Maneuvered down. Carefully. Quietly. Stepped into the busy lobby and tried to go unnoticed as I located a side exit from the hotel lobby and stepped out onto a crowded sidewalk.

  I quickly got lost in downtown foot traffic.

  TWELVE

  Saturday, 5:47 p.m.

  Austin, Texas

  2 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes to Election Day

  Every major city has a secretive underground network. Young men stuck somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. Guys mostly my age, mid-twenties, with beards and bellies or all skin and bones, no real care for their physical appearance, slackers who trust no government authority or corporate entity, and who mostly operate under goofy computer code names like Czar12, TheEmperor, Mongoose87 and Sukafudawg. They are rarely found without their head mics on, sitting in front of their hub of computers, where they are constantly connected to a vast network of other techies just like them around the country. They operate in dark basements and garages, back rooms of tattoo parlors or video game shops, maybe living with their parents because they have no real careers, so-called legitimate jobs, or even girlfriends. They have everything they need right in front of them. But they are some of the most powerful players on the planet, feared by most governments, militaries, and major corporations because no online network, server, or computer system in the world is safe from their reach.

  I was connected to that underground network in DC. I had become friends with Tommy Kucher. He was twenty, skinny as a rail, spiky black hair, tattoos everywhere, and he was already head of a ruthless online blog called The Watchers, a group of renegade teenagers, really, whose mission was to expose every possible U.S. government conspiracy around the globe. According to Tommy, there were thousands of conspiracies going on all around us all the time. I used to be slightly skeptical, but after the past twenty-four hours, I was becoming a full-fledged, card-carrying believer.

  I’d met Tommy, code name Maverick, playing Texas Hold ‘Em on one of the online poker sites. Something I dabbled in here and there, late at night, to pick up a quick hundred bucks, when needed. Which was all the time. Fortunately for me, Tommy Kucher talked a big game but actually sucked at online cards, and after a head to head battle at the digital table one night, he ended up owing me a good amount of money. In a private chat session, I mentioned that I was playing cards to earn extra money to help with my mom’s bills. He’d looked me up and realized that I was legit. I really did have a mom with cancer living in a facility nearby. Tommy felt like a jackass, admitting to hacking into the poker system and depositing a decent amount of fake cash into his online poker account. But Tommy was an honorable guy. Crazy or not, he actually had a conscience. He had no problem cheating crooked corporations and the government, since they’d made billions cheating us every day, but he had no interest in stealing from a regular guy like me. He swore to make it up to me.

  So Tommy started doing me small favors. Harmless stuff. Like courtside seats at Wizards games and front row concert tickets. A few clicks of the keyboard and Tommy Kucher could really do magic. He even managed to get me and a law school buddy inside the Redskins’ owner’s suite for a game against the Broncos last year. No one knew for sure who I was, but no one really questioned it because my VIP badge was legit. I belonged in the box right next to Jon Bon Jovi, of all people, who was taking in the game as a special guest of the owner. Tommy thought it was hilarious to put my legal name down as John Wayne. I got a few skeptical looks about that, but it was confirmed right there on my new driver’s license. I had no choice but to roll with it. It was totally worth it to see my Broncos win 34-28 at FedEx Field. Tommy started to call me The Duke thereafter. Soon, Tommy and I actually became friends. He admitted he would probably need a good lawyer one day if the Feds finally got lucky and found his private lair. Before he escaped to Switzerland.

  Tommy and I rarely spoke by phone. He didn’t trust phones. He said the government owned AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, pretty much all of them. They were puppet corporations created so that the NSA could spy on people. There was a secure chat room buried deep inside a science fiction movie website called Leia’s Lounge, named after Princess Leia of the Star Wars movies. Tommy set me up with a private account and had me go to the chat room each time I needed to communicate with him.

  I was very thankful for that now. I no longer trusted phones, either.

  After getting lost for a few hours, I found myself eight blocks north of the Four Seasons hotel, in the middle of downtown Austin, on the second level of the Faulk Public Library. I found a free desktop computer in the corner, next to a man and a woman at nearby stations who looked like they might be homeless. This was where you’d go if you didn’t own a computer, which I did not at the moment. I owned almost nothing. There was my tiny studio near campus in DC, but who knew what kind of activity had already blown through there in the past few hours. Was any of my stuff still there? Not that I had anything too valuable or worthwhile that mattered to me.

  I logged into Leia’s Lounge, typed in my username (TheDuke) and password (TrueGrit12087). Then I pinged Tommy with a phrase from the old western movie that he required to authenticate that it was really me: You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister. You gotta kill him or let him be. I waited. Ten seconds later, I was being pulled into a private and secure chat room. Tommy was home.

  Maverick: Dude. You really kill that guy?

  TheDuke: Of course not.

  Maverick: Yeah, didn’t think so. Wassup with all that?

  TheDuke: Conspiracy at the highest levels.

  Maverick: I hear ya. What do you need?

  TheDuke: New ID. New face. To start. ASAP.

  Maverick: The full works?

  TheDuke: Yes, anything and everything. And a secure phone and tablet, if possible.

  Maverick: Hold on. Give me a few minutes.

  I waited, glanced around me. A portly old security guy walked through our area on the second floor. I kept my eyes buried behind my black ball cap. The Longhorn logo on my cap probably made me look like a local college student. I watched, waited. Tommy was back online five minutes later.

  Maverick: Okay, be at Affinity Tattoo on 6th at 10 o’clock sharp tonight. Ask for The Hog. We go way back. He’ll take care of you.

  TheDuke: You’re a life saver.

  Maverick: What else?

  TheDuke: Can you trace a license plate number?

  Maverick: Shouldn’t be too hard. Send it over.

  I typed in the plate number for the blonde woman’s Cadillac
Escalade.

  TheDuke: Also, have you ever seen an online server with a cartoon pig skull and crossbones in the logo?

  Maverick: Doesn’t ring a bell. But there are tens of thousands of servers all over the world. What are you looking for?

  TheDuke: An account that a guy named Rick Jackson has access to.

  Maverick: The dead guy?

  TheDuke: Yes.

  Maverick: Let me get on it. Could take some time. Needle in a haystack.

  TheDuke: I owe you big already.

  Maverick: You know where to find me, Duke. Don’t get shot.

  I signed off, let out a deep sigh.

  I noticed the security guy eyeballing me. Made me uneasy. While I didn’t want to end up dead, I certainly never wanted to see the inside of a jail cell again, either.

  Been there, done that, don’t ever want to wear the t-shirt again.

  SAM CALLAHAN

  Age Sixteen

  Denver, Colorado

  The yellow jumpsuit was two sizes too big.

  Youth Detention was printed in bold black letters on the back. It was the uniform they put on me and my two buddies after they arrested us three days ago. I’d been sitting in a jail cell for more than seventy-two hours waiting for my time in juvenile court. It was brutal. Not that I was getting worked over by other inmates or anything — I was actually in my own cell — but I was bored out of my mind and ready to get the hell out of there. Especially when Billy and Casper were released almost forty hours ago. Lucky jerks. Today was finally my day. My adjudicatory hearing in front of the judge. I was ready. I just wanted to stand in front of the judge, say that I was sorry, beg for forgiveness, swear it would never happen again, promise to be an upstanding young citizen, then get slapped with standard probation and be on my merry way. I knew the routine. I’d known plenty of guys on the streets who went through the same juvie court process. No one gets harsh treatment on the first round. The juvenile jails were already overcrowded.