by Nina Mason
THE TIN MAN
By
Nina Mason
Published by
Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.
Novi, Michigan 48374
The right of Nina Mason to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover art by:
Rue Volley
Edited by:
Elizabeth A. Lance
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing.
All rights reserved.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Dedication
To all the brave souls who protect our freedoms,
whether by pen, sword, or law.
Acknowledgements
My sincerest thanks go out to the following individuals
for their assistance and/or inspiration during the commission of this novel:
Ben Bagdigian, whose book, The Media Monopoly, helped inspire this cautionary tale.
The POWs whose first-hand accounts of their treatment in Baghdad lent authenticity
to Alex Buchanan’s flashbacks.
My writing coach and friend, Bruce McAllister, for helping me tell a better story.
Jane Cowley, public affairs officer for the National Parks Service, for helping me be accurate about the Rising Sun Chair and Independence Hall.
Don Stratton, a Scottish friend and fellow writer, for helping fill in the details of
Alex Buchanan’s childhood memories of Edinburgh.
The Founding Fathers, especially Alexander Hamilton, to whom this nation owes far more
than a place on the ten-dollar bill.
Chapter 1
Monday
Greenwich Village, New York
It was pitch black under the hood, but he could feel the heat of the lights. It was quiet, too. Deathly so. They were there, though. Looming, breathing, oozing the pong of sweat laced with onion, garlic, and cumin. One of them was right in front of him. He could sense him there, could hear the rub of fabric, the squeak of a chair. Even so, he jerked when a gruff Iraqi voice boomed: “Name?”
“Buchanan, Alexander.” His throat was so raw it hurt to speak.
“Rank?”
“Civilian. I’m a journalist. With the Edinburgh Times.”
“What were you doing on the Apache?”
He bit down and fisted his bound hands to keep from shaking. He’d not been trained to withstand torture and was scared shitless.
Wham.
The blow knocked him to the ground. Pain exploded across his shoulder. Rough hands pulled him up, dropping him back on the stool.
“The mission. What was the purpose?”
He’d been riding along on a secret operation to take out their airbases—not that he planned to tell them as much. Or anything else, for that matter.
Wham.
Back on the floor, stars swimming behind his eyes. Something struck the knee he’d tweaked while jumping from the spinning chopper. The pain was a knife of agony. He yelped. Another kick, same spot. Fuck. They’d discovered his weakness.
The interrogator’s voice changed.
“Shrek?”
He could smell the sweat of the room, could taste the coppery brine of his own blood.
“Earth to Shrek. Come in Shrek.”
The voice was louder now. A woman’s voice, drawing him back. The hood was dissolving.
“Yo, Alex. Look alive. Deadline’s in ten minutes.”
Eyes snapping open, he sprang out of his chair. Breathing hard, he leaned over his desk and set his palms flat on the cool leather blotter. He was drenched in sweat, his pulse was going a mile a minute, and he felt like puking.
“Jesus, dude. Are you okay?”
Kelsey Newman, his copy editor, stood in the doorway, looking at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. He wanted to tell her he was far from okay, but he couldn’t remember how to speak. Baghdad clung like cobwebs in the corners of his mind. Dropping in his chair, he looked around—the towering windows, the soaring ceilings, the exposed brick—reminding himself where he was. Not in the basement prison of the Iraqi secret police, but in his office at The Progressive Voice, the online news site he’d started two years ago. He opened his desk drawer, removed the pewter flask he kept filled with whisky, and took a long swallow.
“I’ll take that as a no.” She scowled at him as she stepped into the room. “But isn’t it a little early to be hitting the sauce?”
He didn’t give a rat’s arse. He needed a drink. Badly. He took another gulp, cleared his throat, found his voice.
“As we say in Scotland, you can’t drink all day unless you start in the morning.”
She stopped in front of his desk. He didn’t want to look at her—or let her look at him. He lit a cigarette and took it with him to the window, favoring his right leg, a souvenir from Baghdad. The memory still swam around him like the smoke from his cigarette.
He looked out. It was a gray October morning. Overcast and dreary, with an icy wind blowing off the Hudson. Nothing like the hellish inferno Iraq had been.
“Seriously, Shrek. Are you okay?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer her, so he didn’t. She insisted she called him “Shrek” because he was a strapping Scot, but he knew what he was. An ogre. And a cripple. Crippled in body and spirit. The flashbacks. The nightmares. The outbursts. The bum leg. The stunted emotions.
Turning at last, he met eyes the same mossy green as his own. She was attractive in that dewy, fresh-faced way all women were at that age. Which was what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?
“No offense,” she said, coming closer, “but you look like death spread on a cracker.”
That was just how he felt, too. And not just because of the lingering flashback. He’d stayed out too late because of a speaking engagement. Freedom of the press, one of his favorite topics. Afterward, he’d hung around to talk with the students about how to get a leg up in journalism. One of them, a nubile lass named Mackenzie, had invited him back to her room. He’d turned her down. Mainly because, like Kelsey, she was young enough to be his daughter. Only he’d never have a daughter, would he? Or a wife.
Because he was the Tin Man, a hollow suit of armor, standing around like a bloody basket case while the minutes counted down to his de
adline. For a moment, he considered jumping, putting an end to his miserable dead-inside existence once and for all, but shoved the thought away.
Suicide was a long-term solution to a short-term problem, besides which, it would kill his mother. She’d already lost his brother, Kenny. If he took his life, she’d have no one but his miserable excuse for a father. Plus, there was the Voice to think about. His staff and what they were trying to do and the incomplete commentary beckoning from his computer.
Limping back to the desk, he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, plopped down, and regarded Kelsey pensively. “Do you know the story of The Steadfast Tin Soldier?”
She blinked down at him, clearly clueless. “Is that what your column’s about this week? Some war hero?”
He compressed his lips. That was another problem with younger women—they didn’t share his cultural frames of reference. “It’s a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. My mother used to read it to me and my twin brother when we were wee lads.”
Kelsey, brow furrowed by suspicion, folded her arms across her impressive chest. “Fairy tales are part of the patriarchal plot to trap women in their traditional roles so men never have to evolve.”
“This one’s not,” he told her, letting the misandrical dig slide. “On the surface it’s about a one-legged tin soldier who loves a paper ballerina—but it’s really about the cruel exigencies of fate. In the end, they both burn up in a fire.”
“Sounds depressing.” She came closer. “And, em, Shrek—I hate to be a hard-ass here, especially when, well, you’re the boss and all, but, ah-hem,”—she tapped her watch-less wrist—“the d-hour approaches, if you catch my drift.”
She stood over him, so near he could smell the herbal fragrance of shampoo in her long red hair. Her blouse was unbuttoned just far enough to reveal the white-lace scallop edging her bra. She had a healthy pair of chebs, as the lads would say back in Auld Reeky. Images of the Christmas party popped in his mind like flashbulbs. Their bodies pressed together, tongues wrestling, hearts pounding, hips grinding, hands everywhere. It felt like somebody else’s memory. Or a soap opera he’d seen on the telly.
“I’ll have it for you in ten minutes.” His mouth was as dry as a desert storm. “Fifteen tops.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She set a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine.” It was a lie. The flashback had faded, but he still felt shaken. She lingered, adding to his uneasiness. “Ten minutes.” He swallowed hard. “Now get out of here so I can get on with it, eh?”
She started toward the doorway, but turned back. With a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows, she said, “Maybe you could tell me your soldier story over lunch—while I’m sitting on your lap.”
As he watched her go, he tried to picture her perched on his lap wearing next to nothing. Under the desk, his cock made no response. Heaving a sigh, he got back to work, finishing in just under fifteen minutes.
Still feeling unraveled at the edges, he thought about taking another hit from his flask before deciding coffee was a better idea. He wasn’t his father and planned to keep it that way. He got up, plucked his favorite tweed sports coat off the back of the door, and slipped it on as he stepped out into the pale gray sea of cluttered cubicles.
“I’m just popping downstairs to the cafe,” he announced to no one in particular as he made for the exit.
There was a mini-Starbucks in the lobby—one of the reasons he’d chosen this particular building back when he was hunting around the Village for cheap office space. He also liked the building’s loft-like character and its proximity to Soho, where he sublet a one-bedroom flat from a documentary filmmaker.
As he waited for the lift, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the polished steel doors. He was only forty, but looked older. His once dark hair was now salt and pepper and deep grooves etched the corners of his eyes and mouth. He’d aged at least five years in the past two, thanks to the fourteen-hour days he’d logged week after week, trying to make a go of the news site.
At least his investment was starting to pay off. The Progressive Voice, which he’d started on a shoestring, now averaged twenty-five million unique visitors a month, making it one of the most popular news and commentary sites on the Internet. Ad revenues were on the rise and his staff had grown from a ragtag crew of freelancers to eight full-time employees, and he was almost in a financial position to hire more.
The elevator opened and he got on, feeling antsy as it descended. When the doors parted on the lobby, he shambled across to Starbucks and ordered a tall dose of the daily drip. He took the coffee back upstairs and shoulder-pushed through the door of the suite. His reporter’s radar shot up straight away.
Something wasn’t right. In the wake of morning deadline, the newsroom should be humming with activity, but it wasn’t. It was dead quiet. The only sound was a ringing telephone, which nobody was picking up.
Why?
Gut churning with a caustic blend of fear and dread, he limped toward the cubicles. A distressing odor infiltrated his nostrils. Baghdad flickered. The lump in the pit of his stomach became a shot-put. He crept toward Kelsey’s cubby. His chest tightened when he saw her slumped over the desk, her hair spilling across her computer keyboard. Cautiously, he drew closer. His breath caught when he saw the halo of blood.
He shrank back, unsure what to do. Holding his breath, he moved in, pushed aside her hair, and pressed trembling fingers against the side of her neck. No pulse. Anguish closed around his heart like a fist.
Withdrawing, he hobbled from one cubicle to another. They were all the same.
Shot through the head.
One bullet each.
Quick and clean.
What the fuck? He’d been gone less than fifteen minutes. How could anybody have come and gone so quickly?
Unless…
Panic jolted his heart and spread outward like nerve gas, numbing his limbs. He fought to dam it off. He needed to keep a clear head, to reason this out. There was a gun in his top desk drawer—a nine millimeter Glock—but it was several yards away. If he could get to it, maybe he could defend himself. Could he make it? Should he try? He had to do something. If he stayed where he was, he was dead for sure.
Crouching, he crept to the edge of the cubicle, bad knee barking in protest, and peered around the corner. Nothing. He started to make a break for it, but stopped short when he heard a noise. Footsteps. Panic seeped through the bulwark he’d erected in his brain. Heart pounding, throat tight, he ducked back behind the partition, senses on red alert. The phone started ringing again. Shite. Between that and the blood-thunder in his ears, he couldn’t hear a fucking thing.
He looked around for something, anything, he could employ as a weapon. He saw an umbrella. The Avengers sprang to mind. John Steed always used a brolly, though not the collapsible sort, as this one was. Desperation mounting, he scanned the cubicle. Floor. Walls. Desktop. Bookcase. Filing cabinet. Nothing presented itself. Then, his gaze fell upon a metal coat rack. Maybe, just maybe, if he could swing it with all his might—the way he used to do back when he and Kenny played stick-ball in the street with the neighborhood lads—it might do the trick. He slunk toward his objective, freezing when he heard something. A shuffle, but close. He stilled, listening with every cell. Someone was breathing somewhere very nearby.
Baghdad flickered.
The hood, the sweat, the fear, the smell.
Blinking it away, he grabbed hold of the pole and spun, swinging his unwieldy stave with all his might. It connected with a sickening thud. The force of the impact knocked him backward. He stumbled, hitting the edge of the desk. Back on his feet, he looked. The gunman, clad in black from head to toe, was on the floor, but aiming his gun—a pistol affixed with a silencer—right at Buchanan. From behind the ski mask, dark eyes full of hate stared up at him.
“Filthy dissident,” the gunman snarled through the mask.
Buchanan ducked as the gun discharged. The bullet whizzed past his ear. He r
aised the coat rack and brought it down hard. Crack. The gunman bellowed. Seeing his chance, Buchanan bolted toward the exit, slammed through the door, and humped along the corridor as fast as he could.
Where to go? What to do?
He was halfway to the elevator when another bullet breezed by. He pushed himself harder, grimacing against the pain in his knee. The gunman was gaining, but not by much. He must have done some serious damage with that coat rack.
Behind him, he heard a click—the trigger again. He flinched when the bullet grazed his shoulder, burning like napalm. Warm blood seeped from the wound. On the wall just ahead there was a red-metal fire alarm. He pulled it down hard as he passed. The alarm, as he’d hoped, began to clang. Overhead, the sprinklers sputtered on.
A few feet beyond, the fire doors swung out from the walls. He heard the click just as he dove. The bullet missed, but not by much. He hit the carpet, skidded along on his stomach, and squeaked between the closing doors just in time. They slammed behind him with a reverberating boom.
Clambering to his feet, Buchanan lumbered toward the stairwell. The elevator would go to the recall floor—the lobby, in this case—leaving the assassin with only the fire escape.
Doors opened onto the hall. Curious, anxious faces peered out.
“Get back inside,” he bellowed at one and all. “There’s a bloody gunman in the building.”
“Oh my God,” a woman cried. “Should I call nine-one-one?”
“Do,” he replied, straining to get the words out.
“Should I ask for an ambulance?”
“No,” he said. “The cops. Homicide. And the coroner.”
Chapter 2
Nirvana’s Come as You Are crashed into Thea Hamilton’s dream, shattering a scene in which she was backstage after a concert, desperately trying to talk Kurt Cobain out of killing himself. She was a huge fan, she was telling him, had even written him a couple of letters over the years—something she’d never done with any other celebrity in her life.
