Doubled or Nothing

by Warren Esby

  “But it sounds like if I can’t provide you with the information you want, I get a bullet to the back of my head if you really believe I’m a member of that sleeper cell.”

  They both started laughing. “Still the comedian, huh?” said Ben. “You must have watched too many of those old spy movies. Killing people with guns is so last year. What will happen is that we’ll wait until you decide to take a trip out into the desert, or to some other secluded part of California, and then we’ll simply take you out with a drone strike. It’s the latest and most modern method.”

  “A drone strike. Just to kill someone. Isn’t that a bit messy?” I asked. “And expensive?” I added.

  “Messy? Maybe a little. But the government doesn’t care about the expense that much, at least not when it comes to drones. We’ll tell you a little secret so you’ll know we’re willing to share information with you. You know drone strikes have been a big success in places like Pakistan and Yemen. So the government put in a big order for them. But as is often the case in government, someone made a mistake and placed the decimal point in the wrong place and they ordered ten thousand of them instead of one thousand and now we have drones up the kazoo and the government is trying to make use of them any way they can since we have so many. Every department has been made to take at least a few. We, of course took quite a few. Homeland Security took a bunch of course, and the FBI and ICE and ATF. They do have a need. But we heard that even the Department of Education asked for a half dozen as did the GSA. Now I can understand the GSA. They like to make a big bang wherever they go, but we’re still trying to figure out the Department of Education. The kids aren’t that bad yet.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that if you try to take me or someone else out by drone, even in an isolated area, that you might kill some innocent people or your operators might make a mistake and hit the wrong target.”

  “Not really,” said Jerry. “They’re quite accurate now and with all the recent drones that they’ve received, there are plenty for them to practice with. They have them at a lot of military bases around the country, and they’re setting up target practice areas in various remote places so the operators can hone their skills. We understand that they just opened up a brand new site around twenty five miles east of Flagstaff on government property that had been used for something else. It seems that there’s a rather extensive prairie dog town out in the boonies that goes on for a mile or more. They’ve been using the prairie dogs as targets and they’re getting very good. They’re so accurate that they can now take out a single prairie dog with one strike. And they can do it repeatedly. Some of the numbers they’ve been running up have been pretty impressive. Two of their best operators had a little contest and out of fourteen drone attacks, seven each, they are tied with five prairie dog kills apiece. Now that’s pretty good shooting with any weapon in my book.”

  I wondered to myself what Raffy was thinking about all this activity out there. And then I asked out of curiosity, “How much does it cost for the ordnance used in a drone strike?”

  Ben said, “It’s pretty cost effective. A single drone load now costs only around ten thousand dollars.”

  I did the quick calculation. It cost them one hundred forty thousand dollars to take out ten prairie dogs. Raffy and I had taken out our ten with fourteen .22s at a cost of three cents each for a total of forty two cents. Now who says that the private sector can’t do the job cheaper and more efficiently than the government?

  By this time breakfast was over and Ben and Jerry said we had talked enough for the meet and greet session, and since I had a lot to think about they would take me home. We would meet again the next week. I decided I had better quickly finish my pancakes, but when I looked at my plate, there were none left and I didn’t remember having but a few bites. On the way back they told me they would pick me up the same time the next weekend. Before I got out, I asked them what I should do about the money and did they want to take it with them.

  “Hell no! We can’t take those marked bills. Look, just keep them for now and we’ll let you know what to do with them next week when we meet.” As I got out of the Escalade, I heard Ben say to Jerry, “Where do you want to go for lunch?”

  Chapter 18

  After I got inside, I called Raffy out of curiosity and asked him how things were going. He seemed happy to hear from me.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “How’s the old prairie dog town doing?”

  “Oh, you must have heard.” He sounded unhappy.

  “They’ve decided to use that old place for bomb practice or something. There’s a lot of ordnance being dropped out there and there ain’t nothin’ out there now except craters. Last time I went out, I couldn’t get near the place. There are military people blocking all the roads comin’ in. I did go up on a ridge I know that’s nearby where I can look into it with my binoculars and all you see all day long is incoming strikes. The old prairie dog town looks like the face of the moon, it has so many craters.”

  “I guess they must have killed a lot of them.”

  “It’s hard to say, but there’ve been a lot of buzzards flyin’ in. I think they’ve killed some of those as well. Maybe as many as the prairie dogs. I think a lot of those little critters have left though, because a friend of mine down the road said that he’s seen a lot of ‘em settin’ up shop not too far from his place another couple of miles down the road. I may be back in business soon since he doesn’t want them on his property either. Maybe you can come for a visit. He said he’d be appreciative if I could bring some friends and keep the ones settin’ up camp close to him from gettin’ any closer. He’d be willin’ to pay a nickel apiece which means we could make some beer money, so think about comin’ out. Ol’ Wyatt still has his old couch waitin’ for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. It’s always nice to be wanted. “It may be a while since I haven’t earned any vacation time yet.” He said he understood.

  “Oh by the way,” he continued. “Did your cousin ever catch up with you?”

  “My cousin?”

  “Yeah. Pretty little black haired gal with a weird hairdo. Came by here day before yesterday drivin’ a black Buick Regal and lookin’ for you. Said she was supposed to meet up with you in Flagstaff, but you never showed, and she didn’t know where you went. She described you pretty well and knew the Corolla had Massachusetts plates, so I figured it was okay to tell her you was headed to San Diego.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Let’s keep in touch Raffy and I’ll let you know when I can come out.”

  I hung up and began to think. I knew I better accept the CIA’s offer of double agent status because I would be dead if I didn’t, and I now knew the people following me were Russian agents. I just didn’t know which of them was Igor and which was Vladimir. I knew which of them was Olga, but Ben and Jerry hadn’t mentioned her and I hadn’t asked. Since the Russians were after me, they must think that I had whatever it was they were after and Ben and Jerry did also, or suspected I knew where it was hidden. I didn’t know anything about it, but I did know that as soon as they found out that I didn’t know anything, there would be another contest to see who could kill me first. I expected the Russians to come to San Diego and start looking for me. I figured they might be smart enough to check the colleges and research institutes around San Diego since both Ivor and I had been at MIT. Thank God there were plenty of colleges and research institutes in the San Diego area and I hoped it would be awhile before they found me, and at least not until Ben and Jerry returned the next weekend. Then again, maybe Ben and Jerry would remain nearby. I thought I might keep my eye on the Baskin Robbins across the street for them or keep watching the parking lot for a black Cadillac Escalade Hybrid.

  The week was pretty uneventful, until Friday anyway. I parked the little Corolla on the street next to the Salk Institute and started into work. I was two thirds of the way to the entrance when I heard an explosion and was knocked flat on my face by a big woosh of air. Then a lot of
car alarms started going off all up and down the street. I turned around and the little Corolla had disappeared and been replaced by a pile of twisted metal that was still on fire. My nerves of steel turned to rubber and I just sat on the ground and began to perspire until they had hardened enough to make my legs move and I could stand up. Out of the corner of my eye, at the end of the road, I thought I saw a black Cadillac Escalade Hybrid turning onto North Torrey Pines Road. I wondered if Ben and Jerry had decided that I wasn’t worth the risk or they had found the information they were looking for and I wasn’t needed anymore. It turned out to be neither of those two reasons and they hadn’t tried to kill me. I didn’t think it had been a drone strike since there hadn’t been a crater where the car had been, and there were several gliders in the air at the time and no one had seen anything with a motor in it. I later asked Ben and Jerry if the government was experimenting with hang glider drones for stealth operations. When I did, they said they hadn’t heard about it, but it was a good idea and they would pass it on, which they apparently did. The next time I talked to Raffy, he said they had turned the old prairie dog town into a hang gliding area, but it was not for civilian use. And there were still a lot of explosions out there and he didn’t understand how they could use it for a peaceful purpose like hang gliding and still use it as a bombing range. I later found out that Ben and Jerry had received a promotion and large bonus from the department for their great and novel idea.

  Anyway, the police came and questioned me about the Corolla and then they arranged to have it towed away to a junk yard at my expense. I showed them that I was the owner and when they looked at the age of the car on the registration, they just nodded. They told me that I was lucky, and that a car that old was a hazard and I should have known it. They apparently were not surprised it had caught on fire. Some of the old Toyotas they had heard had done that. I had never heard that, but they wanted to believe it since they didn’t want to bother having to investigate it too much and miss out on the mid-morning doughnut run. They told me I was lucky they didn’t have an ordinance against driving hazardous old cars so they couldn’t cite me. Since no other cars were damaged except for having their car alarms go off, I was free to go. I went into the laboratory and thought about what I would do now without a car and if I could afford the payments on a new one on my salary. I got some sympathy from Astrid and asked if she would drive me home after work since we lived fairly close to each other, and I also thought that maybe she would let me ride back and forth to work for a few days until I decided what to do about getting a new vehicle. She felt sorry for me and said she would help, so I offered to take her out to dinner for the favor. I took her out to dinner and we had a good time, and I even visited her big sister for a while before she took me home.

  The next morning was Saturday and I got up and took a shower. I was philosophical about the old Corolla. The brakes were squeaking all the time and barely holding on the steep grades on many of the roads in the North San Diego County area where I lived and worked, and the car was having trouble getting up those steep grades. So it was just a matter of time before I had to get rid of it anyway, and I guessed that this was as good a solution for the Corolla as any. I thought I would ask Ben and Jerry that if I joined them, could I be issued a government car or something. As it turned out, I didn’t have to ask. They arrived at about the same time as they had the previous Saturday and asked me to join them for breakfast. There was a good French pastry shop at a shopping center that bordered Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe that had outdoor tables so we could talk without being overheard. I got into the Cadillac. I didn’t even have to bring up the subject of the Corolla. Ben said,

  “Pretty neat job huh, taking out the Corolla without damaging anything else. We’ve been experimenting with PEDs. We call them that instead of IEDs because, as you know, IED stands for improvised explosive devices, but these aren’t improvised devices like the ones the insurgents use in Afghanistan and Iraq, so we call them PEDs which we think stands for provised explosive devices although someone else told us it stands for purposeful explosive devices. Any way ours are much better than theirs and you just had a demonstration. People just think it’s a gas tank explosion or something. Pretty neat huh?”

  “Yes, but why did you do it? Now I don’t have any transportation.”

  “Because your buddies have picked up your trail and are headed for San Diego, and your Corolla would have made it too easy for them to find you with it sitting out there next to the Salk Institute like a big red flag saying here I am.”

  I made the mistake of saying, “Yeah, I heard they’re on their way, but how did you find out? They were still in Flagstaff day before yesterday.”

  Ben looked at me with a concerned look on his face. “The question is not how we know. It’s our business to know. The question is how do you know? You must still be in touch with them. We were beginning to like you and we want to trust you, but we won’t let you be a triple agent. You’ve got to choose sides. So how do you know about them picking up your trail, or did you tell them?”

  So I told them about Raffy. “I became friendly with the tow driver when my car was fixed and I’ve kept in touch. Apparently one of them came into his station looking for me and he told them I had gone to San Diego. He doesn’t know anything else except that, but he let me know.” I didn’t tell them the reason for Raffy and I talking.

  “Okay. That fits,” said Ben sounding relieved. “We do know they lost track of you and went to Los Angeles before returning to Flagstaff, and it doesn’t make sense that you would tell them where to find you after all this time. And we do know about Raffy and Wyatt.”

  I was impressed and it showed in my voice when I asked, “How do you know all that?”

  “Don’t insult us. We’re professionals, remember. We’ve had our boys tailing the Russkis since they left Boston. We know every move they make. You’re still not very good at this being a sleeper and all. You apparently didn’t notice that each of those Buicks was being followed by a black Cadillac Escalade Hybrid and every time one of them pulled in after you, an Escalade was not far behind. You must have been too concerned watching out for the Buicks, and our boys were always a lot further back on the interstate for you to notice.”

  Just to get a little even, I mentioned that I didn’t think their drone people were doing too good a job anymore taking out prairie dogs. I told them I heard they couldn’t tell the difference between a prairie dog and a buzzard. I hoped I wasn’t compromising Raffy, but I didn’t think they’d go after him.

  Jerry said, thoughtfully, “You’re right. Those buzzards are all over the place right now, because of all the dead prairie dogs. It’s like a giant picnic out there for them and they are in the way, and some are going after the dead ones just as our operators are sighting in on a live one. But the last we’ve heard, they’ve got it all taken care of now.”

  “How’d they get rid of all the buzzards?” I asked, really curious.

  “Oh, they didn’t get rid of them. They just decided to make the contest more interesting by deducting half a point for anyone hitting a buzzard whether they got a prairie dog or not. The last we heard, the revised totals had one guy leading by only a half point because the other had an extra buzzard in his column. It’s getting really competitive out there now.”

  We got to the pastry shop about this time and went in and ordered coffee. They ordered two pastries each and I ordered a blueberry muffin which I was determined to hold in my hand the whole time since I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and I was afraid to put it down because I knew it wouldn’t be there if I reached down for it again. Those boys could easily distract me and I had learned from the week before that, although they were slow moving on most occasions, they were quick moving when it came to food.

  “What have you decided?” asked Jerry when we had all sat down at the table farthest from the pastry shop entrance.

  “I’m with you. I agree. What do I need to do?”

  “You can st
art by turning over whatever it is they’re looking for.”

  “You mean you don’t know what it is that I’m supposed to have?”

  I could tell by the look on their faces that they didn’t. But I didn’t either and I couldn’t tell them that, or I was dead. So I had to stay alive and have the chance to find out. Then I said, brazenly,

  “So I can give you any piece of shit I want to and you wouldn’t know.”

  They looked a bit sheepish because I was questioning their professional competency and they knew it. Ben finally said,

  “We’ll know it once you hand it over. We can get it analyzed so you can’t give us something bogus. You must know that.”

  “Yeah, but I could give you a piece of something real and still have enough to satisfy Mother Russia and you wouldn’t know.” I was of course bluffing like hell to keep alive and didn’t think they would kill me until they were certain I hadn’t given them everything they wanted.