by Harper Lin
He must have flipped when he recognized me at the casino in Cheerville. No wonder he made a tight U-turn and sped off. He needed time to think about the implications.
His caution had saved my life. If I had been anyone else, he would have gunned me down on the spot.
So he had seen me speak in his early years with the CIA and then at some point he had gone rogue. I was amazed that he remained alive and in the United States. Few operatives went rogue, and when they did they usually either disappeared into remote parts of the world or they got the protection of hostile governments in exchange for information. Even so, we managed to liquidate most of them in the end. Going rogue was a very risky business, and to do so and remain in the U.S. was doubly so.
There had to be a major incentive. I doubted these small-town casinos brought in enough money to pay his salary, so what else was going on?
It looked like I had bit onto the little toe of one giant of an operation.
I glanced at Octavian, who couldn’t stop staring at me. He wasn’t even staring at my hairy mole anymore. Instead he searched my eyes, looking for reassurance or an explanation or something, anything that would make all of this make some sense.
Poor man, I’d dragged him in way over his head.
Way over mine too. How was I going to get out of this?
For the moment, there wasn’t a thing I could do. Even without Octavian as an additional risk, trying to get a gun from one of these thugs and sticking them all up was a suicidal proposition. I had no choice but to sit tight and see what Plan C entailed.
For the moment all it entailed was a quick drive away from the outskirts of Apple Bluff and down one of the many winding, two-lane country roads that crisscrossed the region. Trees closed in on both sides. The occasional house flashed by. Pierre turned on a police scanner and we heard the chatter.
“ … E.T.A. five minutes,” came a voice almost drowned out by the sound of helicopter rotors.
“Stay out of sight and we’ll advise,” came Grimal’s voice. He sounded so panicked his voice had risen to a falsetto.
“Don’t worry, I got them in my sights and I won’t lose them,” came another voice.
“Keep back!” Grimal shouted.
Everyone looked out the back window. The unmarked car that had been staking out the casino was a good distance behind us, disappearing on the curves and reappearing on the straightaways. Pierre slowed down and put on his hazards.
“Suspects’ vehicle is slowing. Looks like they’re going to make a break through the woods.”
The unmarked car was closing in on us now. I wanted to wave my hands in warning and scream, but with the Humvee’s tinted windows they would neither see nor hear me.
What they saw instead was the Exterminator roll down the window and open up with my very own 9mm. He knew they’d do ballistics on the rounds fired, and he didn’t want to compromise his own weapon. Illegal firearms, as his no doubt was, didn’t come cheap. A true professional. Even in a firefight he thought clearly.
Thankfully he thought clearly enough not to add a double police homicide to his long list of crimes. Instead he landed two rounds in the radiator, and as the car swerved, took out the left front tire. That made the car swerve in the other direction before going off the road, thumping up a low rise, and slamming into a tree.
I gritted my teeth. Were they okay? A turn in the road kept me from knowing.
I glanced at Octavian. He was keeping his cool. Unlike most civilians, he didn’t panic or shout angrily at the Exterminator for shooting at a pair of police officers, instead he sat very still, looking very pale. I put a hand on his.
“I’ll get us out of this,” I said.
He gave me a look that showed he did not have much confidence in that statement. I have to admit I agreed with him.
The police scanner crackled to life.
“Pursuit vehicle reporting. We’ve been hit,” a pained voice said. “They spotted us and took out a tire. We had a crash.”
“You guys okay?” someone asked.
“Brian’s all right. I slammed my wrist against the steering wheel. I think it’s broken. Car’s totaled. We’ve lost them.”
Grimal’s voice cut in. “We’ve called for backup. We’ll cordon off the entire area.”
“Of course you will. It won’t matter, though,” the Exterminator said with a chuckle.
For the next fifteen minutes, Pierre took a looping path along several back roads until I was thoroughly disoriented. The police scanner continued to crackle out commands and information. The Cheerville police and several other police stations had been called in to help. They got busy cordoning off the area. Their task was helped by the fact that the river was on our right and the police had already blocked off both the bridges. Every now and then I saw a gleam of water through the trees.
I have to admit the police were showing speed and professionalism. Even Grimal displayed more than his usual lackluster ability, and yet our kidnappers didn’t seem worried at all. The only thing that seemed to bother them was the possibility of the helicopter moving in. They kept looking out the window and up.
At last Pierre drove the Humvee onto a little-used dirt track through the woods. He drove only just far enough to get out of sight of the road, then parked and turned off the engine.
We all got out. With Pierre leading, and the Exterminator right behind me and Octavian and covering us with my own gun, we marched down the track for about a hundred yards before coming to an abandoned farm. A dilapidated house stood to one side and a barn stood directly in front of us. I’d spotted several of these farms in the region, relics of a more rural time before the city workers and retirees moved in. Most had been torn down and turned into modern homes or apartment complexes, but some still survived. Just a few yards beyond flowed the river. Pierre led us to the barn. I could just see on the other side of it a concrete ramp leading down to the water. The ramp was covered with an awning. Oddly, the awning continued a few yards into the water, supported by metal poles.
“You’re going to take us on a boat?” I asked, surprised. “That’s even more visible than your Humvee.”
One of the thugs laughed. “Oh, it’s better than a boat. You’ll see.”
Pierre unlocked a padlock securing a heavy chain and slid the barn door open. We stood at the entrance for a moment as our eyes adjusted to the relative darkness within.
Once I could see, my jaw dropped almost to the floor.
A pickup truck had been backed into the barn and hitched to the back of it was a long trailer.
On top of the trailer was a miniature submarine.
This was getting weird.
Eleven
“Who are you people?” Octavian gasped.
“A very well funded crime syndicate with a rogue CIA agent as their enforcer,” I replied. That much was obvious, and it wasn’t like they were going to tell him anything more.
Now I realized why there was a tarpaulin extending some distance into the water. They could enter the river without being seen from the air.
The Exterminator clapped his hands and rubbed them together with obvious relish.
“Okay, boys. This is our ticket out of here. The sub only seats six and there are seven of us. It’s going to get pretty cozy in there.”
“Why don’t we ditch the old man?” the thug named Constantine said. “We don’t need him anymore.”
My heart fluttered. The way he said it made me know what would happen to my boyfriend. I glanced around the barn. A wrench lay on the ground not far off. I might just be able to get to it. As I said before, I was still up for one good hit.
But there were five of them.
“We take him,” the Exterminator said to my immense relief. Then he gave me a cold look. “Because as long as her friend is alive our little old CIA agent here won’t cause any trouble, will she?”
I nodded.
Of course I would cause trouble as soon as I was able, and the Exterminator knew it, but he a
lso knew that I wouldn’t risk Octavian’s life, which seriously narrowed my options.
This is why evil so often defeats good. Evil isn’t limited by conscience.
Pierre got into the pickup truck while the others started clambering onto the submarine. One opened the hatch in the little conning tower and went inside. The one named Al motioned with his gun for us to follow him.
Octavian slumped, putting his hands in his pockets. Then I was surprised to see him perk up. He treated me to a smile.
“If we don’t make it out of here alive, I want you to know something,” he said.
“What’s that?” I said, moving closer to him.
“That fake mole is hideous.”
He chuckled. Actually chuckled. Was the fear making him giddy?
“Move it,” Al ordered.
Octavian clambered up onto the submarine and with the help of one of the others managed to get into the hatch and disappear inside.
Just as I moved to follow him, Pierre called out from the pickup truck.
“I don’t think it looks hideous at all. It makes you distinct.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you hear it was fake?”
Pierre looked disappointed. I didn’t want to think about why. I had enough to contend with here.
Hauling myself onto the submarine, I gave it a quick assessment. This sort of technology wasn’t my forte, not much use for subs in the Middle East, but I could tell it was a recent model. I spotted sonar, some radio gear for when it was on the surface, and a periscope with both optical and CCTV capabilities. It looked like it ran on diesel.
Once inside, I squeezed past a couple of seats to take my place beside Octavian in the second-to-last row of seats. The Exterminator and Al sat in the very back, their guns at the ready.
“We don’t have enough seats,” Al told me. “You’re going to have to sit on the old fart’s lap.”
“I am not an old fart!” Octavian objected.
“You better not be,” Al shot back. “If you let one off in here I’ll shoot you.”
“Crude boy,” Octavian muttered.
“Don’t make trouble,” I said, sitting on his lap. Octavian put his hands around my waist and suddenly remembered himself. He pulled them away, hesitated, and finally rested them at his sides.
“Don’t worry,” Octavian whispered. “I’ll get us out of here.”
Yes, Octavian, you go right ahead and believe that.
Everyone else crowded in, the last man leaving the hatch open. I heard Pierre start up the engine to the pickup truck, the vibrations making the whole submarine tremble.
“It’s like Magic Fingers,” Octavian said with a chuckle. “Remember Magic Fingers?”
“What are Magic Fingers?” Al asked.
“Before your time,” Octavian said. “They had them in motel rooms. You put a quarter into a slot and the bed would shake. Very soothing.”
“Why, you dirty old man!” Al laughed.
“I am neither dirty nor old.”
Al snorted.
I turned to look at Octavian. He was acting strangely. I hoped the stress wouldn’t make him crack. He looked at me, smiled, and flushed. I realized suddenly that I was sitting on a man’s lap, something I hadn’t done in far too long, and I kept squirming.
Well, at least Octavian’s last moments would be pleasurable.
The pickup backed up and we went down the ramp. We all tilted back, which made me lean against Octavian. He didn’t object.
Pierre stopped the pickup, switched off the engine, and we hard him clomping around on top of the sub, his footsteps sounding loud and metallic inside the narrow confines of the submarine. There were several loud snaps as he released the clamps and then we felt ourselves sliding backwards.
The minisub plunged into the water, bobbing along like a cork. I craned my neck to look up out of the hatch and saw we were still under the tarp. Even if the helicopter was nearby, we wouldn’t be spotted.
Then the interior dimmed as Pierre’s body filled the hatch. He squeezed inside, pulled the hatch closed and locked it. Then he clambered into the pilot’s seat.
“You can drive just about anything, can’t you?” I said.
Pierre gave me a grin over his shoulder.
“It’s a pity such a talented young man is wasting his life with these hooligans,” I went on.
Pierre’s look turned doubtful and guarded.
“Just get us out of here before the heat tracks us down,” Constantine said.
Pierre started the engine. It was well maintained and purred like a tiger. When he switched on the CCTV, we could see on a screen right above his head the interior of the barn. I kind of hoped to see Grimal burst in at the head of a SWAT team, but no such luck. The barn slowly receded and raised up as Pierre backed up the sub and began to submerge.
Within another moment we were under, and the CCTV went black.
Then it went a muddy brown as Pierre turned on a light at the front of the sub. Dimly I could make out the bottom, but the water was so murky I could barely see ten feet.
Luckily the sub also had sonar, and when Pierre switched it on I saw an excellent 3D image of the area around us for a good hundred yards. The riverbed sloped away behind us, Pierre still backing up and submerging. The sonar was so sensitive I could even see the poles that held up the tarp until we receded out of range and they disappeared.
Pierre turned the sub and we headed upriver, skimming over the top of the riverbed at a depth, the readout told me, of ten yards. Another readout told me we were going 30 mph. A pretty good speed for such a small sub. This was almost military grade.
“You’re running drugs, aren’t you?” I asked. “There are cheaper ways to get away from the police, but this is the perfect thing to bring drugs up the river from the port. Heroin, perhaps? It’s been flooding the market recently.”
No one replied. That told me all I needed to know. Organized crime had been getting more high tech in recent years. In England, drones had been used to fly drugs and weapons into prison. A remote-controlled Cessna filled with cocaine crashed in Florida, no doubt bound for some secret drop off point. Cybercriminals had become so good that the only way the governments of the world had found to control them was to put them on the payroll with lavish salaries. A gang using a miniature submarine to transport hard drugs along the nation’s rivers wasn’t much of a stretch.
“It’s stuffy in here,” Octavian said.
He was right. The air felt close.
“That’s because we’re overloaded. We shouldn’t have brought you along,” Constantine said.
“I’ll turn up the oxygen levels,” Pierre said, reaching for a dial. “What the hell? The oxygen tanks are almost empty. Al, I told you to fill them last night!”
“I did!” Al objected.
“No you didn’t, or they’d be full,” Pierre shot back.
“You idiot!” the Exterminator shouted, smacking him upside the head. Al cringed, even though he held a gun in his hand.
“Do we have enough to make it?” the criminal named Jack asked. He wasn’t much of a talker, but he sure asked what we were all wondering.
“Not even close,” Pierre replied.
Octavian and I traded glances. He took my hand and squeezed it.
Twelve
“What do we do?” Al said, rubbing the side of his head and looking fearfully at the Exterminator.
“Let’s ditch the old man,” Constantine said. “We can throw Al overboard too.”
“We’re not ditching anybody,” the Exterminator said.
I decided not to remind him that he had ditched several of his colleagues back at the casino.
“It wouldn’t do any good anyway,” Pierre said. “The tanks are almost spent. We’ll have to surface.”
“They’ll see us,” the Exterminator said.
“We’ll just surface enough to put of the periscope and air tube. We won’t be all that visible. Besides, they won’t be looking in the middle of th
e river anyway.”
The Exterminator gave a grunt that expressed that he didn’t like the idea but that there wasn’t much he could do about it, and if the cops cornered them, he’d shoot Al. Quite an expressive grunt, really. He and Grimal should have a grunting contest.
Al understood the significance of the grunt too. He looked like he was going to be seasick.
I didn’t feel too well, either. The air was getting stifling and I found myself taking great gulps just to fill my lungs.
The depth readout indicated we were surfacing, although I didn’t feel the motion. Pierre switched off the front lights as the camera showed us break the surface, or to be accurate the camera on the top of the periscope broke the surface. The front of the sub appeared as a dark shadow in the water in front of it. I wondered how visible it would be from the police helicopter.
Pierre flipped another switch and a little circle of sunlight appeared on the back of the seat in front of me. A breeze came through a little pipe on the roof, sucked in through an electric pump.
“Excuse me,” Octavian said, shifting under me and plopping me on the seat. He leaned forward and got right under the pipe, his face turned upwards. I had a grand view of his derriere a few inches in front of my face. Not a bad derriere considering his years. Must be all that Seniors’ Yoga.
“What are you doing?” Al demanded.
“Getting some air. I feel faint.”
“You’re blocking it from the rest of us!” Al shouted.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if you had done your duty, young man.”
“I’m warning you—” Al’s warning got cut off by another smack upside the head courtesy of the Exterminator.
“Catch your breath and sit down, old man,” the Exterminator said.
Octavian remained where he was for another few seconds and then got back in our seat. I sat back in his lap.
