The Sleeper

by Christopher Dickey

  The smoker put the muzzle of his pistol right up against my heart, which was about at the level of his face, then stepped back, his arm straight out, sighting my chest. “Tamam,” he said into the phone: “Okay…” He was following orders step by step. He didn’t have to think. But something was bothering him. He kept turning his gun on its side, flicking it with a wrist motion, a kind of gangsta-rap thing that made a good macho gesture in a video, but made this guy look real nervous. He was losing control. If he kept that up, I thought, he was going to kill me before he meant to. Now his eyes settled on mine and he listened to the voice on the phone, but he couldn’t quite make out what was said. He was rubbing the side of the pistol with his thumb and flexing his three outside fingers. I watched the trigger. And his eyes. He’d lost focus, like he was trying to see across the miles and read his boss’s lips.

  I sidestepped and caught the wrist of his gun hand, twisting it behind his back in a move as old as kung fu. Like wrenching a turkey leg, I popped his right arm out of its socket and he gasped, voiceless with pain, and dropped the pistol, but he held on to the phone in his left hand like he thought Motorola—or the man at the other end—was going to save his life.

  Bullets blasted down from the branches above us, but the biggest branch protected me in that first second. The Pakistani creep wasn’t so lucky. His face and skull seemed to melt from the top down. I wiped a chunk of brain off my face. Some of the blood seeped into my mouth and I could taste the salt. Leaves floated through the air like autumn, cut by the rain of lead. I stayed close to the trunk of the tree, shifting position. The man in the branches didn’t have any discipline. He was going to use up all the rounds in that AK just about—now.

  For a second the click of the clip release was the loudest noise in that stand of trees. I dove for the smoker’s 9-millimeter pistol, rolled, aimed, and fired. The shooter fell part of the way down, but was stopped, half-crucified, by the branches, the empty AK dangling from a strap over his shoulder.

  The bearded driver was starting the Chevy’s engine. From a prone position I was able to send one round through the windshield. He slumped back. The engine coughed and jerked and died.

  The sniper in the corn wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot at me as long as I was in the trees and as long as he stayed where I knew he was. But he was going to move. Might be moving now. If I sprinted for Crookleg Creek, I might make it, but then he would come hunting me, and if he had any skills at all he could catch me easy before I got to the culvert.

  I pried the little Motorola out of the smoker’s tobacco-and bloodstained fingers. There was no one on the other end of the line. I pushed the call button, redialing the last number, and I waited. A minute must have passed. I stared out at the corn for any sign of movement, but there was a light breeze rustling the stalks. I couldn’t see anything that would give the sniper away.

  “Mr. Kurtovic,” said the voice on the phone.

  “That’s right,” I said, surprised, and then surprised again a fraction of a second later when my own voice echoed back, electronic and hollow, “That’s right.”

  “What has happened, Mr. Kurtovic?”

  “Your men—your men—are dead—are dead,” I said. The echo was enough to make you crazy.

  “Some of my men,” he said. “There are many left. And they will kill you, Mr. Kurtovic. And your daughter will have to die, too.”

  “I am ready to give you—give you—what you want—you want.”

  “You should have brought it with you.”

  “You don’t get anything unless you give me my daughter—daughter.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “Call off your man in the cornfield—cornfield. Call him off—him off.”

  “And then what?”

  A big chunk of wood exploded off the tree beside my head and sent splinters into my cheek. I hit the dirt and crawled toward the Rocks, expecting a second shot and a third, but they didn’t come. I tasted blood again, but this time it was my own.

  “You sound out of breath,” said the voice on the cell phone.

  “Call him off,” I said, trying to talk over the echo and ignore it. Through the gaps in the trees I could see the cornfield, but still no sign of movement.

  “I would like to hear your plan first, Mr. Kurtovic.”

  I wondered if the voice and the sniper were the same. “It’s now twelve-oh-nine,” I said. “If Miriam walks into the lobby of the Super 8 Motel at one o’clock—o’clock. I will know, and I will tell you, then—then—where to find the Sword of the Angel—the Angel.”

  “Why should we trust you?”

  “What choice do you have?—you have?”

  “To kill everyone you love, and then you.”

  “You’ll always have that option, won’t you?—won’t you? But this is your one chance to get the weapon you want—you want.”

  A single bullet ricocheted off the rocks a couple of feet away from my face.

  “Was that one close?” asked the voice on the phone.

  “Do you want the Sword—the Sword?”

  “Yes. Keep the phone and call again from the motel.”

  When I got back to the truck I was shaking from adrenaline, shaking like I couldn’t control it. The sniper was out there watching, tracking, waiting for orders. The creek water was cool on my face as I washed off the blood. I toweled off with my T-shirt and put on an old blue-jean jacket I kept stuffed behind the seat. I put the killers’ phone in one pocket and used my own phone to call Betsy.

  “Have you got Miriam?” she said as soon as she picked up.

  “Not yet, but I will. Have you got everything?”

  “Got it.”

  “Then meet me—”

  “I got what you wanted and put it where you wanted. There’s a room behind the old photo department. It’s in there. But I don’t want to see you again until you’ve got Miriam.” She hung up, and she didn’t pick up again.

  The six screens in the security office at the Super 8 monitored twenty-four cameras that flashed video of just about every angle outside the building, the main hallways inside, and the kitchen and laundry areas, too. The hotel’s deputy manager, Ira Jacobsen, went to school with Betsy. I told him I was thinking of putting in a video security system at my house, and asked if I could watch how this one worked. Ira was friendly enough. “Sure,” he said. “You look like you could use some security. You’re pretty beat up.” I just smiled and pulled up a chair, looking at the screens.

  The portico was empty in the front of the hotel. There were only a half dozen cars in the lot behind. The hallways all looked pretty much the same. In one, a maid pushed a service cart. The front drive was still empty. I could see cars racing by on Route 70. None slowed or turned into the motel driveway.

  I was so fixed on the front of the hotel that at first I didn’t see the little kids walking through the parking lot in the back, walking in line, almost like a parade, just the way they learned to do for field trips at school. Now I saw them more clearly, and they looked frightened. Some of them were crying. They were the kids from Miriam’s playgroup. But I didn’t see the teacher, Mrs. Watkins. And I didn’t see Miriam.

  “Ira,” I called to the manager. “Ira, where is this camera pointed?”

  “North parking lot,” he said. “Out the back.”

  The kids were already inside the hotel, looking around, lost. One of them with long red pigtails, Charlene, was carrying a rolled-up piece of paper, like some painting she’d made at school.

  “Where is Miriam?” I asked her.

  Charlene shook her head. “She went away.”

  “Where?”

  Charlene started to cry, waving the paper. “Mrs. Watkins said to give this.” I picked her up, holding her against my chest while I unrolled it. “CALL NOW,” it said. The words were written in big crude letters like fingerpaint, but the color was reddish brown, like dried blood.

  I punched the redial button on the killers’ phone and waited, desperate
for someone to pick up. “Mr. Kurtovic?” The man’s voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “The service road. Now.”

  I sprinted across the lot behind the hotel, vaulted the split-rail fence, and ran toward the only vehicle there, an old crew-cab Dodge pickup with a cap on the back. It was parked facing away from the motel, the engine running.

  In the backseat was a gaunt, fair-skinned man with a shaved head, hollow-looking eyes, and barbed-wire tattoos that wrapped around his neck and the biceps on his arms. The driver in front had dark skin. I would have said he was Mexican or Central American. And he had three teardrop tattoos on his cheek. These men didn’t look like pious Muslims to me, they looked like gang members. Then the one in the back looked down at his groin. Miriam was lying across his lap, and he held her down easily with one hand while he put the barrel of a .357 Magnum against the back of her head, pushing her face toward the seat.

  I felt that kind of calm, almost like a trance, that comes with extreme anger. It’s a different plane of hatred. Real quiet.

  The driver made a gesture with his hand like he was talking on the phone. I put the Motorola to my ear.

  “Get in the truck,” said the voice. “You and the little girl will get us what we want. And then we will be finished with you.”

  “For good?”

  “For good, Mr. Kurtovic.”

  Chapter 33

  “Listen,” I said. But the driver with the teardrop tattoos wasn’t listening. He looked ahead at the traffic on Route 70, as uninterested in what I was saying as he was in the passing cars. “Listen to me,” I said. “You can’t handle this shit we’re getting unless you’ve got special equipment. Understand?”

  “If we don’t get what we want, we’re going to kill you and your fucking little girl.”

  “You got to be careful with it.”

  “Shut up and tell me where we go.”

  “This stuff is more dangerous—you have no fucking idea how dangerous, do you?…Straight through the light then make your next right…Do you? There’s smallpox virus in the canister I’m giving you,” I lied. “If it gets out, all of us will die. The fever is like burning to death. Your skin bleeds and starts to come off—”

  “Shut up!”

  Miriam moaned in the back. “Cállate!” shouted the son of a bitch holding her down. He slapped her on the back of the head with his free hand. She cried out for a second and was quiet.

  Miriam, my little girl, would never forget this. She would never forget the fear, and she would never forget the things she had seen and what she was about to see, and there was nothing I could do to prevent any of what was going to happen—any of what I was going to make happen—right in front of her eyes. “Don’t touch her,” I whispered.

  “Which way?” said the driver.

  “Straight ahead until you see the Kmart on the right.”

  “Kmart?”

  “It’s empty. But the stuff is there.”

  “That where we’re going?”

  “It is.”

  The driver punched a button on his cell phone. “Hay un Kmart. Dice que tiene la cosa allí.” He listened for a second. “Bueno. Okay.”

  “There it is on the right,” I said. The front doors were still covered with plywood and the parking lot was still empty except for the old station wagon sitting on its rims. But a big American flag was flying from the pole.

  “Around back,” I said.

  He pulled the truck to a stop in front of the shuttered loading platform. “It’s in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “We wait here,” said the driver.

  “Why?”

  He said nothing, and I heard Miriam groan again in the backseat. “Shut up,” said the man with the barbed-wire tattoos, and he slapped her again. “That’s twice,” I whispered. “Give her to me.”

  “She’s so sweet and soft. Maybe I keep her.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said the driver.

  A Chrysler van pulled next to us, followed by another rented Chevy sedan. Five men got out of the van, three from the Chevy. Most looked like gang members, but one had the scraggly beard and short haircut of the Salafis, who think they look like the first followers of Muhammad. They all pulled assault rifles out of the backs of the cars except for one. His dark brown face could have been Mexican and he had a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight. I looked at his black eyes. He might have been the man shooting at me from the cornfield. But he wasn’t the man I wanted.

  The cell phone in my hand rang out. “Yes.”

  “You are there,” said the voice.

  “Where are you?”

  “The brothers will go with you to get the Sword.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without my little girl.”

  “You get her when I get the Sword.”

  The gunmen were deploying on the loading dock and the corners of the building. One of the Salafis pressed an earphone into his ear. He looked like he was waiting for orders.

  “I take her now,” I said.

  The line went silent and I couldn’t tell from the electric emptiness if it was dead or not. Then the voice came back. “Hand the phone to the brother in the backseat.”

  The man with the barbed-wire tattoos listened to the voice. He pulled back the hammer of the .357 and smiled, then raised the barrel and pointed it straight at my face. He handed the phone to me.

  “Get out of the car,” said the voice. “Take the girl. But move slow.”

  I watched the barrel of the pistol as I got out and opened the rear door of the truck. The son of a bitch with the barbed-wire tattoos grabbed Miriam’s hair and jerked her head off the seat. “Go to Daddy,” he said, and I saw for the first time that her face was bruised. I picked her up and held her to me, and it was like I was holding my whole life, the whole future of my world in my arms. She cried softly, breathless, beyond screaming. “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  One of the Salafis kicked through a piece of plywood over the old entrance and three others went into the opening. They moved like men who’d been trained for urban combat, sure of their footing and their aim. The lead Salafi held up his hand, listening on his earphone, then motioned me to enter. The man with the barbed-wire tattoos came after me.

  The inside of the Kmart was dark and hot and the stale air smelled like dust. Some light came in through the hole where we entered and some through cracks around the plywood at the front, but it wasn’t much and my eyes adjusted slowly. All the merchandise was gone except for bits and pieces of boxes on the floor. But the high steel shelves were still there in the middle of the store, row after row of them, and at the back and around the side walls the big shelves for heavy merchandise climbed like scaffolding toward the steel rafters beneath the aluminum roof.

  The barrel of the .357 pressed up against the base of my skull. I hugged Miriam to me and heard the voice on the phone in my hand. “You are inside the building?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get us what we want. Now!”

  With two gunmen on each side of me and the barbed-wire tattoos just behind, I walked as fast as I could through the dark. The other gunmen came into the building and spread out around the floor, searching for anyone who might be there before them, setting up an ambush for anyone who came after them. The photo section was near the front. The developing machines had been hauled away, but the counters were still there. At the back was a door into a windowless room where the chemicals used to be stored.

  “Anybody got a flashlight?” I asked. “It’s in here.”

  The Salafi pulled a Bic lighter out of his pocket. The large cylinder was upright at the back of the little room with a heavy chain wrapped around it several times that attached it to a vertical water pipe on the wall. On the floor was a mostly empty garbage bag that looked like it had just been tossed there, except there was no dust on it. “The lock’s down at the bottom,” I said.

  “Unlock it,” said the man with the barbed-wire tattoos and the pistol to my head,
the man who had beaten my baby daughter. I knelt down, holding her close, and pushed the garbage bag to one side. I could feel rubber and straps inside and one, maybe two, canisters.

  “I need more light. I can’t see the combination,” I said.

  The barbed-wire tattoos stepped forward to shoot the chain with his .357.

  “No!” I shouted. “You crack the cylinder and we’re all dead.”

  He stepped back.

  I fumbled with the lock, studying the chains, the garbage bag, trying to figure what had been left here for me. The combination on the lock ought to be zeros, or my father’s birthday, 8-31-20. Betsy would know that. Zeros didn’t work. One of the Salafis behind me was talking in Arabic into his earphone. The birthday didn’t work. Maybe the left-right sequence was wrong. Miriam shifted in her exhausted sleep, thinking she was safe now that she was in Daddy’s arms.

  The phone in my hand rang. “The cylinder is too big,” said the voice.

  “That’s for extra protection,” I said.

  “What have you done with the Sword? This is not it.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Step out of the little room,” said the voice on the phone.

  “Damn it, where are you?” I shouted, kicking the garbage bag out through the door. “Can you see me? Can you see it?” I was well clear of the room now, holding Miriam, turning as if I was trying to find my persecutor. Two of the Salafis were still inside, fooling with the chain and the canister. “Look at the thing for yourself,” I shouted. “It’s a high-pressure cylinder. The Sword is inside.”

  The Salafi near me with the earpiece listened intently, looking back and forth between me and the man with the barbed-wire tattoo. Then he made a simple gesture: the pulling of a trigger. I looked into the barrel of the .357.