by Brian Hodge
“I do respect loyalty. These men were loyal to Agualar, and I can respect that. Can’t understand it, but I can respect it.” Tony spoke while pacing out from behind the desk into a pathway between the desk and the kneeling men. When he came to a pair in the middle, bruised and lumpen headed, he cuffed them with open-handed slaps, one each. “And these two geniuses, they’re the ones who let me walk right in here in the first place. I can’t function with fuckups like that around me.”
He was at one end of the lineup by now. He turned smartly on his heel, military crisp. And shot the first of the seven in the back of the head. Was already behind number two when the first went pitching to the floor like a sledgehammered steer. Number two followed suit. A couple of the others whose turn was rapidly coming tried squirming to safety, wobbling frantically on their knees, and were kicked back into place by the soldiers.
“Look at you!” Tony screamed at the lieutenants, Fernandez, Rojas, Henderson, Diaz, and Monroe, whose reactions were ranging from paralytic terror to utter nonchalance.
Number four had his eyes clenched tighter than fists, and from behind the tape came what sounded like garbled prayers. Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our deaths. Tony let her kill two birds with one stone and dropped him spasming to the floor. Then continued on his way, administering the coup de grace to men who’d been dead since dawn and simply hadn’t had the foresight to cease breathing. Borrowed time was now being recalled with a vengeance.
“Look at you!” he screamed again. His voice had grown tight and husky with passion, a hoarse roar. “You can’t tell me that a single one of you didn’t look at Agualar and think of a moment like this. You saw it, you tasted it! But you didn’t have the brains or the balls.”
Number six dropped with a strangled bleat, and the stink of blood and gunsmoke perfumed the air. Wisps of smoke wreathed Tony’s head, a victory laurel sweeter than any olive branch. He could scarcely sense his feet touching the floor, swept away in a blissful angry whirlwind of Grand Guignol theater and allusions of deity. He was gliding, the angel of death.
Tony looked down at his suit, the pristine white now the canvas for a splotchy expressionist painting. Head wounds were a bitch when it came to blood. He felt another drop rolling down his cheek, as if he had wept blood. Tasted it when it rolled into the corner of his mouth. Salty, thicker than any tear. He shivered with delight…
And felt the familiar swirling sensation. The start of the plummet through aeons whose journey began with a single step of daring. Flesh and bone began to tingle, the ache in his jaws a sweet masochistic daydream. Loss of control, a fistful of sand.
The stunned eyes of his audience, the inner landscape of timeless possibilities — he felt poised between the two. Mind a cloud of wonder and fear, yes, fear, but shouldn’t he have expected something like this? Three heavy skullflush trips in just a matter of days. Residual powder chugging through his system, the possibilities more lethal than nuclear half-life, just waiting for a trigger.
The smells, oh the smells, overpowering, he wanted it so much, so much, fighting to keep a rein on his runaway mind and body while hunger burst into a ball of ferocious instinct while he watched from the inside and paled before its intensity.
“You wanna know why nobody had the brains or the balls to do this before?” he shouted, and curled a trembling fist into the seventh man’s collar. Andy, the steroid king of Agualar’s elite corps. He hoisted Andy halfway up with one arm, muscles infused with strength gone primal, and it was either keep going and prove himself the master of body and soul, or stop and let it all pound him under like a tidal wave. “I’ll tell you why—”
Four rapid shots into the back and side of Andy’s head, shearing away a bowl of skull, and Tony realized he was salivating, his chin slick and wet.
“I’ll tell you why, nobody’s hungry anymore NOBODY’S FUCKING HUNGRY LIKE THEY USED TO BE!”
He lunged forward like a striking cobra, drove his mouth into the red-gray ruins. Gnashed with teeth still human, then yanked back and felt the fresh warmth streaming down his chin. Felt the beast, now sated, crawl back into the past. And swallowed.
He let Andy’s body collapse at his feet, faced the room with fists on hips. Lieutenants and soldiers, all his. Too scared to move, too scared to even wet their pants. Even Lupo looked wide-eyed, chalky, blown away. Vlad the Impaler had had the right idea.
Tony’s breath panted as he stared them down.
“Hunger makes all the difference in the world,” he said. “Any questions?”
Tony greeted Friday’s nightfall from his condo complex’s Olympic-size swimming pool. It had been a taxing day; a respite was mandatory. So fast, things were moving so fast. His mind swam, success triggering vertigo. And fearful awe at the uncharted territories the skullflush was lighting within him.
He backstroked while gazing overhead and watching the sky deepen to blues and violets more perfect than dreams. Maybe skullflush did strap you into a roller-coaster, but admittedly, he had never lived as richly, never tasted such depth in his senses. He wished he could bring down some more powder and get into its world right here and now.
He broke water at one end, slung his hair back from his eyes, and let it bunch down against his shoulders. Smiled up at a trio of girls sitting around an umbrella table, iced highball glasses before them, a cooler at their feet. They smiled right back, all dimples and bedroom eyes.
“Thirsty?” one asked him, a blonde with a pneumatic chest.
“Got any Bloody Mary mix?”
They chatted awhile longer, and soon he looked up to see Lupo standing on the penthouse balcony. Leaning on the railing, gazing down with expectation. Tony nodded up to him, lifted a hand full of splayed fingers. Five minutes. He bade the ladies a fine evening and splashed away from the side. Wordlessly stroked past BB and Ivan Barrington as they made sure nothing happened to him. A few more laps ought to finish his workout in prime form.
Lupo. He was starting to worry about the guy. Just a whisper. Sometimes he sensed that Lupo was going soft over the latest developments in the powder world. Not that they didn’t take some getting used to, even for this line of work. And so far, so good. But now and then, a sidelong glance at Lupo’s expression showed a wane in that old enthusiasm.
Be a shame to have to retire him. Not something Tony wanted to do unless it became unavoidable.
But the opportunities skullflush offered were too broad and limitless to turn your back on. High-premium rocket fuel. The possibilities for the future, with its judicious use, were legion.
But his one kilo, minus what he’d already used, wasn’t going to last forever. While neither would the additional five, they were a much healthier stock than one. Getting them back was paramount, every bit as important as corking the gap left by Agualar’s departure.
The latter had already been accomplished, the former soon to commence. Yesterday’s phone call had changed everything.
Tony surged up and out of the water at the end opposite the girls. Rested his forearms against the tiles. Floating a few feet away, bundled into a tiny life vest, was a dry-haired little boy. He kicked and paddled and bobbed without making much headway, then looked over at Tony with a huge grin.
“Hi,” he said. Cute as hell. “You sure can hold your breath underwater a long time.”
Tony patted his head and smiled.
Justin felt as limp and wrung out as an old dishrag by the time the white Daytona gave them cause to move. It had sat idle until eleven Friday night, and he was ready to tear his hair out from the inside. Too much monotony, too little food, too long doing a slow baste inside the car. April looked just as bad. Kerebawa wore the strain the best. Getting to push the car up near seventy and stir up a brisk airflow was like a smile from heaven.
“I feel like hanging my head out the window and letting my tongue flap,” he told them. “A billion dogs can’t be wrong.”
Anything to keep the mood buoyant. Seemed that they
’d already explored every avenue of diverting small talk in this pressure cooker of the past thirty-some hours.
The Daytona led them south down Tampa’s middle along I-275, then exited to the west for a neighborhood near the airport. A definite step up from what it had just left. Justin, from a block away, saw it turn into a driveway. He cut onto a cross street and circled this adjacent block and came back around to park and watch and wait. His eye sockets left oily smears on the binoculars.
“1 can’t believe he’s doing this alone,” Justin said. “If that was me, I’d for sure be bringing some backup along.” They watched. Waited.
After ten minutes’ time:
“And here’s our boy now,” Justin murmured. The binoculars felt like an outgrowth of his face. “And he’s not empty-handed.”
“What’s he got?” April asked.
“Looks like a nylon jock bag. It’s bowed in the middle, got some weight to it.” He lowered the binoculars. “One wimpy-looking guy, he shouldn’t be any problem at all.”
After the Daytona started to roll again, Justin felt profoundly grateful that their rental looked just like a dozen other nondescript breeds on the road. They played hound and hare south, then east as the courier led them back toward the city’s heart. Through it. Past it.
They eventually picked up a street named East Platt, below downtown, one of the southernmost streets of this part of Tampa, apex of the inlet formed by Hillsborough Bay. Across the channels from Davis and Harbour Islands. East Platt was dismal by day, no better by night, an industrial and shipping district resembling several such port cities along the upper eastern seaboard. Railroad tracks crosshatched paths between and alongside streets. Beyond the dim buildings lurked still caravans of boxcars.
Traffic had thinned considerably, and by now it was well after midnight. East Platt was little better than a ghost town, and Justin began to sense a creeping feeling in his gut that the end of the line was very close. He killed his headlights, drove by following the taillights ahead. With no more headlights to blend into as part of the background, darkness was the only alternative.
One hundred and fifty yards ahead, the Daytona’s brake lights flared. After passing a grimy warehouse, it turned right onto the grounds, disappearing from sight a moment later. Justin drifted farther to the right, hoping the warehouse would keep them shielded. When he drew alongside, just past the near end, he stopped and killed the engine and hopped out with the silenced Beretta in hand.
“Be right back,” he whispered. “I want to take a quick peek, see what he’s doing.”
Justin went sprinting around the end of the warehouse, bent low and trying to keep his running shoes from doing more than whispering on the asphalt. He was wearing a cut-down T-shirt, now smelly and vile, and its oversize armholes flapped in the breeze he made. He passed loading docks and dumpsters, hugged their shadows.
The corner. Justin let the Beretta lead the way as he eased around. There were more loading docks at intervals along the back, and across the lot was scattered a loose collection of truck trailers. Some in fair shape, others rusted and skeletal. Overhead, the moon played games with clouds, sometimes there, sometimes not.
Near the far end, he saw a quick flash of backup lights as a transmission shifted to park. The Daytona sat near a haphazard group of other cars near a chain link fence. While the driver got out, Justin dropped lower and scooted along the base of the nearest loading dock, elbows and knees. Get a little closer.
From forty yards he watched the mule take the nylon bag and carry it to the back of one of the other cars. Corroded hinges squalled as a trunk lid was raised; a moment later, it slammed. The courier was a vague silhouette as he returned to the Daytona empty-handed. Justin lay prone as the mule geared his car, popped his headlights on, and backtracked for the exit. A moment later, the car disappeared around the warehouse’s far end. He listened to the motor fade until it became one with the city’s ambience. Forever lost. Fabulous. Wouldn’t even have to rob the mule directly.
Justin rose to his knees, swept his gaze over the grounds. Truck trailers to the right, warehouse bulking over his left. Its paned windows were as dark as dead eyes. Spooky place. Any security, night watchmen? Apparently not, if Tony’s network used the grounds for a drop point. Or maybe they bribed security to look the other way. Have to take that chance. He stared at the cars near the fence. From here, they looked like junkers. Six or seven, a couple sitting at a slant with flat tires. Overall, the place was cluttered with hiding places. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
He returned to their rental, told April and Kerebawa what he’d seen. Then tugged the keys from the ignition and motioned for Kerebawa to follow him to the trunk. A car cruised past on East Platt, and he suddenly felt very conspicuous. Get this over with. He opened the trunk.
“Just in case we have trouble down there,” he said, “you think you can go in from this end and work a path around to watch out for us?” Justin swept an arc with his hand.
Kerebawa nodded. “I can.”
Justin took the longbow and a clutch of hunting arrows from the trunk. Noticed that Kerebawa was already carrying the machete. Thinking ahead. Kerebawa relieved him of the bow and arrows, then slung on the bow with the string crossing his chest.
“When you see us get the bag and drive away without any problems, come back here and we will too, pick you up here at the same place.”
Justin bent into the trunk to pull out a tire tool with a beveled prybar at one end. He softly shut the lid, looked over to tell Kerebawa good luck, something, anything.
But he was already gone. No sight. No sound.
Justin brought the tool with him as he got behind the wheel and started the car. April glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s Kerebawa?” she asked.
“He’s going to play our guardian angel.”
“Justin.” She looked close to panic. ”Do you think it’s very smart to split us up this way?”
“Yeah, I do. Come on, relax.” He frowned, rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder. It was trembling. “Don’t worry, this’ll be the easiest thing we’ve done all along. A couple minutes’ work, then we can head for the motel to sleep for real.”
Justin followed the Daytona’s earlier path in. When his lights caught the menagerie of cars, he saw he was right. Ready for the scrap heap. Several of the windshields were nothing more than jagged fragments stuck in the frames. Rust had eaten into bodywork like cancer, while weather and salt air had aged them. The mule appeared to have dropped the stash in the trunk of a car near the far left, and there Justin parked. Killed the engine.
He got out, took the tire tool along. The Beretta he slid inside his waistband. The silencer probed uncomfortably into his crotch. April followed him to the car.
He looked down at the trunk lid. Broad thing, the car was once an LTD. He tested the lid. Solidly locked. At least something still worked.
“Keep watch, okay?” he said to April. “This’ll take all of my attention for a minute.”
He widened his stance and dug in his heels, jamming the chiseled end of the tire tool up under the trunk lip, beneath the lock. The muscles in his arms corded, biceps balled up as he strained. He shifted for leverage, felt sweat drip from his face. It already felt coated with greasepaint, a little more wouldn’t matter. He heaved several times, and at last the lock gave with a satisfying pop. He raised the lid and knew he had the right one as soon as he heard the hinges.
The trunk, full of night.
“Let me see the flashlight,” he said.
April gave it to him, and as it passed from hand to hand, he could feel her shaking. His own sense that this was a cakewalk began to ooze away.
Something’s wrong here, she feels it, I feel it…
He aimed the flashlight into the trunk, flicked on the beam, starting to dread what he would find. Wild imagination got the better of him, and he knew he would find Erik folded inside, no, that was ludicrous, Erik was safely buried, beyond their reach and infl
iction of pain forever, and he held his breath and saw—
The bag. The whole bag, and nothing but.
Sigh of relief.
He yanked down the zipper, parted the nylon opening, and shined the beam inside.
And felt suddenly ill when he saw that all it contained was clear plastic bags full of sand.
Kerebawa had gone farther back than Justin had before heading to the opposite end of the warehouse. He crossed the asphalt lot entirely, then a narrow stretch of ground overgrown with waist-high weeds, and came upon the railroad tracks before turning east.
The tracks were on a slight rise overlooking the back lot, a definite advantage over staying below. Too many bulky objects scattered about. If he needed to loose an arrow, he might not always have a clear shot unless out in the open. And to do any good for Justin, he had to stay hidden.
Kerebawa bent low and followed a string of boxcars. Ugly things, but strong, and big as houses. He kept to their shadows, while ahead and to the left came the sounds of Justin attacking the drop point. Metal squealed.
Kerebawa knew nothing of trains, of boxcars. Seeing something ahead of him, thin and poking horizontal from one’s doorway, seemed no stranger than the idea of boxcars to begin with.
Until it shifted.
He froze.
He began to feel panic when he realized he could not read this situation as one like Justin could. Justin knew these lands, these structures, what they were like inside and out.
He inspected the boxcar to his right. Saw how its door slid back and forth instead of swinging open and shut on hinges. This particular door hung half open, and he looked through it to see how they had doors on the other side, as well.
Clamping the machete between his teeth, Kerebawa dropped to hands and feet and scuttled directly beneath the boxcar and moved forward. Counting off one car, then two, until he was under the suspicious one. He eased out from beneath on its far side, drawing near to the doorway, machete cocked and ready to swing.
