by Andrew Post
“If they were going to raid the house, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t send you an e-mail beforehand.”
“True. Still, though. Wish I had known. I would’ve gotten a gallon or two pumped out earlier when we were in the basement because the goddamn genny is right about in the E—”
In that second the generator made a defeated thud, silenced.
The horses whinnied nervously.
“Great,” Thorp grunted.
Brody clicked on his phone’s flashlight for Thorp’s benefit. “You mentioned something about pumping gas?”
“I had a reservoir installed in the side yard. I’ll go get it.” Thorp retrieved his own flashlight and tested its beam against his palm, grabbed a metal gas can from the corner, and set out across the yard.
Brody stroked Carol’s face, scratched behind her ear. He told her it would be all right, that Thorp would be back in a minute.
When Thorp returned to the barn, he found Brody standing outside. His hands were buried in his pockets and his eyes were closed, but he still seemed to be facing something. Thorp saw him twitch, his head cocking like an alarmed doe. Apparently, despite only being a few yards away, Thorp had gotten within range of the sonar. Just as quick, as if trying to pass off he’d been startled, Brody settled. Thorp assumed it took a second to recognize someone through the sonar. That or Brody was better at hiding how jumpy he truly was.
Thorp stood under the barn’s awning with him, setting the gas can down. Aligning himself with his back against the barn door like Brody, Thorp could tell where he’d been sending the sonar’s ping to see, to map, to calculate. “I don’t suppose we even need to say it.” He clicked off his flashlight. “Do we?”
“That entirely depends,” Brody said, sipping coffee.
“On?”
“To what end we are doing all this.”
“What do you mean?”
“What we’re thinking with Ceramic Groom. It’s not very likely we’ll walk away from that. If it works, great, but if it doesn’t, what is our objective?”
“To stop Hark.”
“What about Nectar?”
Thorp choked. “Well, of course we want to find her. But being pragmatic and all …”
“Yeah? Go on.” Brody opened his eyes, and they shone milky, catching the glow of early morning sky. “You’re being pragmatic and what does that mean, exactly?”
“What the fuck is this all about?” Thorp snorted. “You act as if she’s your sister.”
“Do you believe she’s alive?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters. Do you, though?”
“Sure,” Thorp shrugged. “On a scale from one to ten it was like a seven or eight before and now after meeting that Mateusz guy …”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I’m just not as convinced as I was before, okay? Finding Nectar, stopping Hark, finding Nectar’s body, finding the piece of shit that Hark hired to kill her—it’s all one and the same, isn’t it? But let’s be real for a second. You really think they’d kidnap Nectar? What, for money? It’s Hark. Come on, man. Despite that, I still believe she’s alive. Never mind, back to the point you were making. I’m being cooperative. I’m the one who suggested we do our own version of Operation Ceramic Groom, aren’t I? I want to find her.”
“You want to get even; that’s different.”
“Again, what the fuck difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference,” Brody shouted, his voice drumming throughout the farm.
In reply a sylvan resident howled far off.
“What’s in your head when you go into something is what’s important. You and I, we get a Darter pieced together and fly it into the city and we manage—somehow—not to get shot down, then we get onto the roof of Hark Telecom and we encounter some minimum wage security guard who wants to play hero. How you’ll react to that is entirely dependent on what’s in your head, your motive, right now at this second.”
“You want me to tell you what I’m thinking?”
“Yes, yes, I do.”
Thorp crashed two open palms against Brody’s chest. “I think you’re a fucking Boy Scout. I think you’re going through all this shit because you believe you owe me. I think you’re keeping such a fucking sunshine-and-lollipops attitude because you’re scared if Nectar turns up dead, I’ll go even more off the fucking rails—and then what will you do?” He took a double handful of Brody’s coat. “I think you potentially see yourself becoming like this. I think you’re praying to God that you weren’t one of the ones they picked for this shit, and you feel bad for me.” He wiped his nose, looked at his hand—red—and wiped again. He released Brody’s coat and stepped back.
“You finished?” Brody grunted, adjusting his collar.
“Am I right?” Thorp asked and sniffed, his eyes downcast toward his blood-smeared fingers.
“I’m not even going to say whether or not—”
“Am I right?” Thorp roared. “Tell me. Am I fucking right?”
“Who the fuck wants brain cancer, huh? Of course I hope I’m not in the same boat as you, but I’m not doing this out of pity or a guilty conscience. I’m doing it because you fucking asked me to.”
Thorp paused, then decided to say what he felt—no sugarcoating here. “You fucking liar.” He pulled back a fist.
But Brody was quicker. He took Thorp’s halfhearted hook, pulled him in, and delivered a punch of his own to his belly. Thorp made a surprised bellow of pain. There was a small clink of something colliding with his belt buckle. It was the sound that let Thorp know that Brody didn’t have preternaturally hard fists but had in fact used the knuckleduster on him. Thorp doubled over, one hand slapping the barn door for stability, and coughed—laughter slowly came into it after the third or fourth hack.
Brody stood by and said between labored breaths, “I’m sorry. It was a gut-reaction kind of deal.”
“That thing really fucking hurts.” Thorp cackled. “Man alive. No wonder those girls pay you so much. Christ.” He stood, putting his hands on his hips to retain a straight spine. “I honest to God think I may’ve gone and shit my pants.”
“I apologize. It’s just a reflex. You can hit me if you want.”
“No,” Thorp said, blew the air out of his lungs, refilled them. “I deserved that. Yep. I did.” He leaned back, hands on hips. “Jesus.” He gave Brody a puckish look that he hoped he picked up on, even with the sonar. “I wouldn’t hit a blind guy. That’s not very … neighborly.”
They stood outside the barn amongst the scattered footprints in the snow, a record of their tiff like numbered dance steps. Both of them gazed out from under the awning toward the military vehicles—all of them wearing a coat of white. The two Darters were the closest, and their glass bubble cockpits were half-mast with eyelids of snow, staring and judging the two men still heaving from their argument that came to blows.
“Do you have a mag scope here?”
“One that works? No.”
“Going to need one if we’re going to sustain lift over Chicago.”
Thorp sighed. “I know.”
“What about an aircraft registration number? Can we get one of those online?”
“That one”—Thorp nodded to the Darter on the right—”still has an active number.”
“How much would it take?” Brody asked.
“To get it to fly?” Thorp snorted. “Just let me bend over and pull that million bucks out of my ass.”
“I don’t mean money. I mean the actual labor,” Brody said.
“We could make a whole one by scrapping the one next to it for parts. Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a rider compartment, but I guess we probably won’t be needing it, with it just being us two.”
“Could end the fuselage right behind the cockpit,” Brody suggested. “Cut down on weight.”
“Faster,” Thorp added, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, that’s good.”
They both gave pause.
“Ar
e we really considering this?” Thorp said.
“If they pass the thing they’re trying to pass statewide, the first time I use my jigsaw in January, the cops will be called. I’m going to jail. They want me there. And to tell you the truth, I’d rather crash and burn than spend the next ten to fifteen in prison.”
Thorp was finally able to stand without feeling as if his abdomen would split open. “If we do it right, that won’t happen. I don’t want you to do any time, either, but you know what I mean. In the big house is better than the one upstairs, right?”
“With the friends I have in there, unfortunately I think I’ll be relocated to the other one in no time at all.” Brody smirked.
A beat passed. Thorp continued to wipe at his nose and peel the ruddy crust from the rim of his nostril. He flicked a flake of it away. “Brass tacks for a minute, okay? Whether I believe Nectar is alive or not isn’t really that important. You may think it is but it’s not. I mean, in my head I’m looking for justice. Not revenge, mind you, but justice. It’s different. If she’s gone, we have a good reason to believe it was Titian Shandorf who did it. Whether or not he was working for Hark Telecom because of what she and Abigail and Mateusz found out—I don’t know. I’m not sure what point I was making here, but … you don’t owe me shit. What’s going on with me is my bullshit to manage. You and I will crack this thing, and in the end, however it turns out, I just want to say thank you for putting up with me. I think that sock to the gut you gave me shook my common sense loose.”
“Anytime.” Brody cuffed him on the shoulder.
“I’m serious. I mean, this could go south real quick. And … I don’t think either of us will likely walk away from this unscathed, odds are. Putting this thing together”—he gestured at the dead aircraft—”and putting her in the air, excuse my math, but probably just a few thousand felonies. And that doesn’t even count the landing her on the roof of a downtown building, breaking in, and all of that. From what you said, you’re already in deep shit back home, and if you don’t want to go through with this, now’s the time to say something.”
Brody nodded. “I’m still in.”
Thorp brightened sarcastically. “And on the other hand, if we do manage to get in there and snag what we’re after, who the hell knows what we’ll do with it.”
Brody didn’t smile. “I have a friend in the St. Paul Police Department.”
“He the one who wants to put you behind bars?” Thorp chuckled.
“Well, maybe he’s more of an acquaintance. I know a guy; let’s say that. And I’m sure Nathan will listen if we give him something concrete enough.”
“What are we after? Before we even break open the toolbox, let’s have that out in the open.”
“Hubert Ward. It was him who had Probitas send the letter to Nectar. He’s the only major name that’s come up in all of Hark’s personnel so far.”
“And what do we aim to get?”
“Evidence that he has Titian Shandorf on payroll. Even if the stuff The Mothers were trying to expose has to wait, we can at least start the process by getting proof that they’ve hired Shandorf to kill people they’d like to see dead.”
Thorp scoffed. “You think they’ll just have pay stubs sitting around for us to find?”
“Think about it. Hardly anyone uses cash anymore. They practically don’t even print the stuff anymore. Any payment, any movement of money from one account to another needs to use one kind of jigsaw or another. And since Ward was sending the letters to tell The Mothers to stop sniffing around, his database would be the most likely place to find the starting line of the paper trail. We get some kind of record and send it to Nathan, and we get Titian, Hark, everyone in one whack.”
“You say ‘we get this’ and ‘we get that.’ Don’t get pissed off, but I have to ask how.”
“Well, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that accessing his ordi will be as easy as playing Alton Noel’s videos.”
“Wait a minute,” Thorp said. “You mean we.”
“We can’t both go,” Brody said. “You drop me off, circle round, come back, and pick me up in fifteen or twenty minutes. We can’t risk them surrounding our ride on our way out. No, no way. I’m going alone.”
“You’re not going alone. I can write a program to have the Darter circle around on autopilot, drop us off, and pick us up. You got lucky with Alton’s ordi. He didn’t have it encrypted. Hubert Ward’s tech is going to be just a wee bit different, especially if he was up to the shit we think he was.” Thorp picked up the gas can and opened one of the barn doors, drawing it out wide.
“All right,” Brody said, following. “But no guns.”
Thorp upended the gas can into the generator. “Guns but no live ammunition. How about that?”
Brody scowled. “What, rubber bullets?”
“Got a whole box of them down in the basement.” Thorp started the generator with one kick, and the lights hanging from the rafters of the barn came on.
Brody pulled the lens charger out of his coat pocket and handed it to Thorp. He plugged it in and the device beeped; the unit immediately began boiling with a soft trickle. “Speaking of which, we have to go back to that field, pick up the guns, clean things up a little, and …”
When he looked up, Brody’s head was thrown back, as if preparing to sneeze. “What is it?”
“Listen,” Brody hissed.
Thorp heard it, too. The monotonous screech of aircraft engines. He shut the generator off, though it hadn’t even had a chance to warm up. The lights above faltered, died out.
Shielding themselves from above with the barn’s awning, they stood in the backyard, watching the two Darters pass overhead. They moved at a steady clip, their narrow bodies barely perceptible in the overcast morning.
“Tell me what’s happening.”
“They’re circling around the property,” Thorp answered.
They listened, watched.
It was almost easier to tell where the aircrafts were just by sound. They’d drift ahead of darker clouds and disappear for a moment until their running lights winked. Thorp caught a better glimpse when one of the Darters moved across a lighter patch of sky where the sunlight managed to break through the dense cloud cover. It appeared bulky, swollen. As if the mechanical insect was pulling along a pregnant belly.
“They look different, not the same model as the ones we know—not like these here.” He gestured at the decommissioned vehicles.
“What are they doing? It doesn’t sound like they’re getting any farther away.”
“They’re coming back around.”
“Should we run?”
“They’re not even at half-speed. They’re not chasing anything.”
The Darters descended gently along the copse at the rear of the property and down over the hill. Perfectly timed, the first Darter halved its girth when a large, flat object tumbled from its underside, falling heavily. Then the second Darter released its cargo. This time, Thorp could make out a flash of color—a creamy hue or off-white—as it fell into the bog.
Brody cocked his head in the direction of the violent splashes.
Thorp pulled him under the eaves of the barn as the Darters crossed the yard. Brody ducked when the Darters screamed overhead. With their loads severed, they ascended sharply—their engines blaring with the effort—and punched up through the clouds and were gone within a moment. Stillness returned to the Illinois countryside.
“What was that all about?” Brody asked.
“I think they just dropped something in my cranberry bog.”
“It sounded enormous. What the hell could make splashes like that? It would have to be the size of a …” Brody’s shoulders dropped. “About the size of a Fairlane and a Zäh.”
28
The Fairlane had sunk, and the battered grille of the Zäh stuck out of the muddy water defiantly. Brody and Thorp stood on the banks of the cranberry bog, Thorp saddled atop Maribel. Thorp had offered to allow Brody to ride Carol, but he had n
ever ridden a horse in his life and thought it wasn’t exactly the appropriate time to learn.
“We have to get out there,” Thorp said.
“How deep does the bog go?” Brody asked.
“Four feet mostly, but it gets up to about eight out there in the middle.” Swinging his leg up and over, he dropped off the horse and guided her to the water’s edge. “We can’t have the car sticking out of the water. It’s obvious they put them here to drop the dime on us. When the cops show up, if the vehicles are hidden at least it’ll buy us some time while they’re looking.”
Thorp threw Maribel’s reins on a leafless branch of a shrub and waded into the water. He took in a quick gasp through his teeth once the water had spilled in over the top of his boots.
“Get out of the water,” Brody said, hands in pockets.
“What?”
“Get out of the water,” Brody repeated, harsher.
Here and there a sheet of ice had developed, forsaken, shriveled cranberries suspended within. Even with the sonar, the water was clearly cold—it didn’t move like the lakes and rivers of Minnesota when it was warm. The wind passed over the bog’s surface and the water didn’t move freely; it moved as if in slow motion. It was on the edge of freezing over, a mere half-degree change from crystallizing.
“It’s not worth it,” Brody said. “Let them call it in. Let the cops show up.”
Thorp stepped out of the water, groaning with his numbed feet, his pant legs darkened halfway to his knees. “Okay, so who is it that needs the pep talk, me or you?”
“I’m most likely going to prison. And you said yourself that you can’t even make a cop arrest you. You couldn’t do any time if you asked. So, fuck it.”
“Fuck it?”
Brody waved his hand at the leering, broken mouth of the Zäh. “I’m not going to waste my time with this. They want to plant evidence on us, let them. Let them fucking rain down a hundred dead cars on us. We’re going to start working on that Darter tonight.” He walked away.
