Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  At the last moment he flinched, jerking his head back and to one side. The sock came down on Eicher’s brow, just over his left eye. It struck hard and burst open.

  The impact dazed Eicher. As he looked about for the girl, shaking with rage, he felt wetness on his face and realized it was what remained of his left eye. His eye and the cheek below had been flayed open by the small explosion of concrete shards bursting free of the sock. There was a momentary tightness around his throat and he heard a metallic twang. Jeannie had grabbed the key and pulled until the chain broke.

  He staggered in a half circle and lurched toward the stairs. Jeannie was already halfway to the kitchen door, climbing as quickly as her weakened state would allow. From his vantage point a few steps below her, Eicher saw that Jeannie was wearing blue jeans under her robe with the pant-legs rolled up, and powder blue sneakers which he had thought were her slippers. The thought that she had planned this assault with such care filled him with righteous anger, and his anger gave him the strength to leap up the stairs two at a time. He heard the key slip into the lock, saw her twist the knob and fling the door open, heard her sob as she saw the sun for the first time in almost a year, and then he reached out and grabbed one slender ankle.

  Jeannie screamed and fell on her stomach, her head and shoulders in the kitchen, her legs on the cellar stairs. Eicher’s grip felt unbreakable. She was well aware of how strong the old man was. She kicked out with her free foot, her heel slamming into Eicher’s right cheek and rocking his head back.

  Careful Lionel, he thought, you simply cannot afford to lose the other eye.

  With his free hand he tried to grab Jeannie’s kicking foot. As he held onto her ankle he was astounded to realize she was actually dragging herself further into the kitchen and pulling him up the stairs. While he admired her spirit and sudden strength, he had reached the conclusion that things had gone far enough.

  What was he going to have to do to keep her where she belonged, he thought, surgically hobble her legs? Blind her, and risk damaging those beautiful eyes?

  He managed to stand on the top step while still holding Jeannie’s ankle as she crawled into the kitchen. In spite of the loss of his eye and the tremendous pain roaring through his skull, her struggles were giving him an erection. Gott, ich bin ein alter kranker Scheiss!

  He stepped into the kitchen and released her ankle as she scrambled into the shallow recess of the pantry. Nowhere to hide now, my pretty little bitch. No secret weapons either, except for tinned vegetables and packages of rice and pasta. Eicher moved into the pantry entrance, blocking Jeannie’s path, eagerly awaiting her tears or screams. What he saw was a face that was almost black with unimaginable rage. He saw that, and her hands raising and now lowering a large metal can of Chef-boy-ar-dee Ravioli.

  “Not again,” he said, as the tin can crashed down on his head. There was a terrific crunch that Eicher heard even as his brains were spattering across the worn linoleum of the kitchen floor, a final grotesque ejaculation triggered, as the others had been, by his cherished number four.

  Jeannie slumped to the floor. She did not cry. She simply stared at the collapsed ruin of Eicher’s skull, her anger flowing out of her as steadily as his blood poured out of him. Her breathing slowed. She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at Eicher anymore. When her eyes opened again her body was stiff, and it was night. When she was able to stand she went to Eicher’s room. After a quick search she found an old cigarette tin filled with money. It was only a few hundred dollars, but she thought it would be enough to get her out of the city.

  The baby was where Jeannie had left her, comfortably tucked into a drawer in the clothes dresser. She gave the baby her breast, studying the face and eyes she knew she’d never see again. She packed a few clothes, changed the baby and wrapped her in a clean blanket, and then left the house for the last time.

  By dawn she was on a Greyhound bus headed for San Francisco. All she carried was a bag containing a few clothes and some makeup and hair dye she had just purchased. The baby she had left in L.A., in the emergency room of a hospital. She had left a note with the baby, begging that her child be given a good home.

  Part of the note read, ‘I named her Betsy. I like the name because it sounds so American. You can change it if you want.’

  Writing the last seven words of the note had hurt her more than all the violence Eicher had thrust upon her. The bus took a long time to reach San Francisco, and Jeannie cried through most of the journey.

  12

  The Fireball

  She looks just like me, Betsy thought. Same face. Same body. Same smile. I’m her.

  Betsy heard a vehicle coming to a stop outside. She slipped the photo into a pocket, set down her soda and peered across the diner. Beyond the shattered window she saw a long black van pull up in front of the diner. The driver stepped out holding a cell phone. He said, “Clean-up crew nine has arrived at In the Shade.”

  Betsy slipped out the back door of the diner as the men from the van walked in the front door. Betsy left them to whatever it was they were doing. She walked the Harley onto the road. When she was a hundred feet away she hopped on and kicked-started the bike.

  The road flowed under her like a river. Soon she passed a car lying on its side, looked at the bodies lying there and returned her attention to the road. She passed what looked like a van from a TV station and pushed the bike faster. Ahead of her was a white convertible. It passed another black van like the one at the diner. The left arm of the man behind the wheel was resting on the doorframe. He raised a hand, not really a hello, more of an acknowledgment, as the van passed by in the opposite lane. Then the convertible turned off the highway onto a mere scratch of a road that seemed to go nowhere. Without really being aware of it, Betsy turned off the road, following the convertible at a safe distance.

  * * *

  Brian and Ravi had watched as the motorcycle appeared on the road behind them. It swerved as the rider studied the corpses on the ground and then the engine roared and it swept past them.

  “Hmmm,” Brian said. He’d been left with the fleeting impression of long windswept hair and a nice figure.

  “Cute,” Ravi said.

  As they sat in the news van on the shoulder of the road an unmarked black van wider and longer than their own vehicle passed them, coming from the direction the convertible and the motorcycle had gone. The windows were tinted, like two-way mirrors. The van pulled off the road by the Taurus. Four men in dark overalls hopped out with bulky equipment cases. The black van pulled back onto the road and raced toward the reporter and the cameraman.

  Ravi and Brian noticed at the same time that the van had no license plates.

  “Oh shit,” Brian said. He put the news van in gear and stomped on the gas pedal.

  * * *

  The four men from Compound West who were toiling in the heat of the day near the wrecked Taurus were little more than glorified garbage men. They zipped the bodies of Laura Scudder and Oscar Meyer into body bags and then used rakes, shovels and ShopVacs to remove everything from shell-casings and shards of bone to blood spatters, hair, and clothing fibers from the ground around the corpses.

  They moved on to the two suits near the car. They had received enough information about Richards and Dicks to know that the Taurus was untraceable and could be left behind once it was cleaned out. While two men unrolled and unzipped two more body bags and another checked the interior of the car, a fourth man began vacuuming the dirt around the red-haired man in the blue suit.

  The tech with the vacuum thought he heard one of the others say something. Like the others he was wearing rubber gloves and boots, protective goggles, a respirator over his nose and mouth, and a Tyvek coverall with a drawstring hood. He was completely covered in disposable gear so nothing could touch him and he could not contaminate the scene. Like the others he was sweating his ass off, and their Tyvek hoods were rustling and crackling so much that they had to shout to hear each other. He switched off the Sho
pVac and froze, listening.

  “Asshole.”

  The tech’s frown was hidden from view. He looked over his shoulder.

  The dry, breathless voice came again. “Jerkoff.”

  The tech looked toward the car resting on its side, and the technician burrowing inside it. “Hey,” he yelled, “Who you calling a jerkoff, Lemansky?”

  Lemansky’s hooded head popped up through a shattered window. It was that dipshit Borthwick, yelling out names again. “I didn’t say anything. And remember, we’re numbers out here, six-seven-six, not names.” Lemansky’s head descended again. He had to check the pockets of the driver with the fucked-up face.

  Technician 676 stared a moment and then shrugged. “Gotcha, two-three-four-one.” He bent over the ShopVac again, reaching for the on-off switch.

  “You fuckwit!” A pained gasp.

  The tech was getting pissed. “What the hell?”

  He looked down at the man in the blue suit and realized he was standing on the man’s right hand. The man’s hair was bright red and sticking out in tufts. His face was a mottled purple. His eyes were open and staring, an enraged bright blue. His teeth were exposed, clenched. He looked like something out of a Warner Brothers cartoon. The man was lying on his back, his right arm stretched out over his head.

  “Cockjaws!” the man whispered harshly, “Get off my fucking hand!”

  “Holy shit!” The technician backpedaled and shouted, “We got a live one!”

  Richards sat up, his right hand throbbing horribly. The movement caused his dislocated shoulder to feel as if it had just exploded and he lurched to his feet.

  The two techs messing with the body bags looked at Richards and 676.

  676 stumbled backward and tripped over the vacuum canister, one boot striking it with a hollow bang.

  Richards had seen what the suited man in front of him was going to do and instinctively reached out with his left hand.

  The two technicians unzipping the body bags heard a bang and saw 676 falling backward. The red-haired guy had obviously reached for and drawn a gun, shooting down 676. The techs tore open Velcro-sealed flaps in their suits, withdrew small automatic pistols and let the red haired man have it.

  Behind the wheel of the Taurus Dicks was slumped and unmoving, but when an unmistakably masculine hand groped his balls, Dicks came up out of the black pit he had been dropped into. He opened his eyes. He was in horrible pain. From the eyes down his face felt ravaged, as if he’d bitten down on an old and sweating stick of dynamite. He didn’t know who this masked and suited clown was who was patting him down and he wasn’t going to ask. Masked-man stared at Dicks. Dicks drove a fist into Masked-man’s face, shattering goggles and nose and driving shards of plastic into the man’s eyes. As Masked-man slumped forward, Dicks eased him into the back seat, feeling the unmistakable shape of an automatic in one pocket of the Tyvek suit. He went for the gun.

  Richards had just gained his feet when he felt small-caliber bullets hit him and spin him around. Left calf! Left bicep! Ass! Right shoulder! What the fuck!

  Dicks rose up through the shattered passenger window and plugged the three remaining hooded men with headshots. The weapon he had was a crappy little .25 automatic, but it did the trick. It was only after they hit the dirt and he had a clear line of sight to their scattered equipment that he realized they were probably a cleaning crew from the Compound.

  With a groan Dicks pulled himself up and out of the car. He fell heavily and nearly slipped when his feet hit the ground. He’d landed in a pile of shit. “Aw, Chrith-t,” he said. He didn’t have the energy to say more. The exertion of climbing out of the car winded him, and he paused to catch his breath.

  Richards lurched toward him, gesturing at the body bags. “Thanks. Another few seconds of dancing like that and I’d have been wearing one of those.”

  “You’re bleeding like a thumbit-th,” Dicks said. Talking was going to be a chore.

  Richards winced. “Need I point out how badly you fucked up?”

  Dicks shook his head. “Thorry old pal. It wath like I wath pothethed.” Now that the waitress was gone, Dicks wasn’t so angry with his partner. “All I wanted to do wath fuck and kill. It wath pretty thcary.”

  Richards nodded, wondering if his disability had anything to do with his passive reaction to the woman. Dicks had always been a randy bastard, and she seemed to have exacerbated this character trait. Richards had chosen to continue working even though he could have retired with full benefits years ago after losing both testicles in an accident at Compound West. He was taking testosterone injections that were just enough to keep him from developing a pair of tits, because they sure as hell weren’t doing anything for his sex drive, not that he missed it. He actually got more satisfaction from the job now and was more focused than ever before, and that was a good thing. Dicks could fuck up and would be cut some slack; his father William was an administrator higher up the Compound food chain. Richards had to stay sharp.

  He moved his arm and the ball of his dislocated shoulder popped back into its socket with a dull squelch. “We’ve got to get back on the road.”

  Richards limped to the Taurus and looked it over. The paint job was history and the car had shaken off every piece of chrome. Both windshields had blown out and the paneling on both sides was crimped and crushed. The wheels still looked solid, however. Bracing his back against the roof of the car, Richards dug in his feet and began to push. His bullet wounds burned as if they had flecks of phosphorous in them.

  Dicks appeared beside him and put his shoulder to the car.

  “Damn,” Richards grunted. “Something smells like shit.”

  Dicks grimaced. “Tell me about it. I th-tepped in a fuckin pile.”

  The Taurus finally came down on its wheels. The driver’s side door might as well have been welded shut, so Richards slid through the passenger door and eased behind the wheel. He turned the ignition key. There was a sound like a sneeze and the engine roared to life.

  Richards grinned through his pain. “At Ford, quality is job one.”

  “I alwayth thought that line wath bullthit,” Dicks said through his ruined face.

  They got out of the car. Richards popped the trunk. Dicks retrieved a small first-aid kit. They quickly cleaned and bandaged their wounds, each reacting with wonder and revulsion over injuries the other had suffered. In fifteen minutes they were back on the road, heading for Compound West.

  * * *

  It was hot. Al stood beside his patrol car a half-mile from the foot of Big Blue Rock, studying the huge mound with a pair of field glasses. The dirt road had petered out and ahead was a landscape of gullies and rises covered with scrub and scree. It would take something hardier than his patrol car to go any further.

  The two men in his custody were safe and sound in the back seat of the car. The little Latino was putting on a stoic face, but Al could tell he was nervous. The Caucasian was as cool as a cuke, completely at ease. He had one foot jacked up against the cage separating the front and back seats.

  If it weren’t for the difference in their ages, Al would have sworn he’d met that white boy before. The guy’s face seemed familiar in a way, but Al’s picture of that face was dimmed by memory. In that memory Al was in a crowd and the air was sweet with peanuts, popcorn, and cotton candy, the perfume of a county fair. The last time he’d been to a fair of any kind he had been a small boy. How could Al the boy have seen this guy back then? The faces were the same, though. He was good with faces, which helped when you were in his line of work. Maybe he’d met the guy’s dad. To hell with it, Al thought, I’ve got enough on my mind.

  Big Blue Rock looked the same as always. A weathered mountain of dark granite that looked dark blue when the light hit it a certain way. The mound of stone with the rounded top was always in the corner of the eye when driving the roads out here.

  Al took another look at the map he had spread across the hood of the car. There it was. Big Blue Rock, elevation five hundred f
orty-two feet. Al tossed the map and binoculars into the car, glancing at the boys behind the cage. He’d seen a lot of nuts in his time, and the guy with the ball cap didn’t look like a nut. He certainly was involved in some strange shit though. Al was reluctant to buy into any wacko conspiracy theories about nameless agents of the government trying to kill American citizens, but he did see those suits with the bogus ID, and now he was beginning to wonder.

  Al opened the trunk. As a peace officer he had to account for every bullet fired from his service weapon. He even had to account for drawing the revolver from its holster in certain circumstances. He had another gun in the trunk. His issued weapons were his Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 caliber revolver, and a Winchester Defender pump-action twelve gauge that was locked into a mount between the front seats. The handgun he removed from the trunk was an automatic, a no fuss Colt Government model. It wasn’t a drop gun. It was a registered off-duty weapon.

  Al was sure he could make Mr. Conspiracy shut up by doing just what the man asked. He would use the Colt to fire a few rounds into Big Blue Rock. Nobody would ever know about it except the two jokers in the patrol car, and if they mentioned it when Al took them in to the CDC, Al would deny everything.

  “Well I’ll be god-damned,” Will said as he saw Al pass by with the .45 in one huge hand. “He’s gonna do it.”

  Carlos gave a non-committal nod. The thought that shooting a few bullets at the low mountain in front of them could cause any kind of reaction was ridiculous, but if someone had told him this morning how his day was going to turn out he would have laughed at that, too. He watched the big cop and mentally prepared himself for whatever might happen.

  Al released the safety on the Colt. He assumed a comfortable position, holding the weapon firmly in his left hand, knowing that the automatic had a bit of a kick.