Hartman was one of the monsters.
That’s it.
They had Axl upside down in a harness made of leather and iron by the time I walked in the room. He was still alive, still conscious. What was left of him anyway. He was naked under the straps, burned and cauterized and raw all over. I thought he looked pretty bad, but it was just a warm-up, really. For the main event. The room had been white a few hours earlier. It was a bridal suite, after all.
A place where young people start their lives anew.
I found out later that they had to remodel when Hartman was done. The stains went too deep. The grunts cut Axl loose and held him facedown on the bed, two guys in black ski masks, anonymous street thugs hired for the job at hand, the usual gorillas.
Axl begged them.
His voice was frail and beaten and childlike.
He said he would do anything to make the pain stop.
And Hartman . . . he leaned in close with a tire iron and said something I’ll never forget:
Everyone wants to make the pain stop.
But where’s the fun in that?
• • •
“It went on for about an hour, just like he said it would. When it was all over, they shot him in the back of the head, execution style. With a silenced pistol that still made a lot of noise. And you know what?”
Bennett shivers in the dark, shaking her head, not wanting to know any more.
I tell her anyway.
“He shook my hand when he was done. David did, I mean. Pulled up his pants, wiped blood off his face and shook my goddamn hand.”
“And you worked for him after that.”
“Yeah. But not because I was afraid. It was because of my dad. Because he said we only knew how to be criminals and I believed him. That was ten years ago.”
“Do you still believe that now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“My father never woulda said that to me. It’s why I left. Why I never saw him again.”
I see something that might be a tear glint off her face. She reaches up and rubs her eyes. Her voice, at a whisper again:
“You should have helped him. Wasn’t there anything you could have done?”
“It was already too late. I’m . . . sorry.”
“And here we are.”
“Yeah.”
“I won’t be like that. I ain’t gonna let Hartman do those things to me.”
“He’s looking for us now. So is Jenison. When they find us, it will get messy. I don’t really know how far Jenison’s people are willing to go . . . but Hartman . . .”
My voice fades, as I picture Bennett lying facedown at his mercy.
Gagged and helpless.
Not allowed to die in the last few hours of her life.
Humbled and broken, just the way Axl was.
She steels her face and makes her voice strong:
“We ain’t like our fathers. And we ain’t like that monster who killed them, neither. We’re the good guys, Elroy.”
“Maybe.”
I don’t say another word. Just turn back to the computer.
She stares off into the dark.
Haunted, more than ever.
• • •
I port one of the hard drives from the brown suitcase and peel open the wrapper. Let’s see what all the fighting and dying has been about.
It’s got a code key I get past easy with a lockbreaker, and then I’m inside a bunch of numbers. It’s all rows of numbers, and it won’t make any sense unless the other drives are slaved up. Or unless I can talk to it real sweet. Takes me just a few minutes.
• • •
You wanna look in the face of God, little lady?
This is resurrection.
I hear those words, over and over. You can’t stare into the face of God and live forever. God punishes those who look. You die and go to hell.
If that’s what you believe in.
It’s an hour later when I finally manage to copy the information on the drive to my hard disc. It’s only about 3GBs when its uncompressed. Walls of numbers appear on the main screens. Complex datastreams, virtual badassery.
“Some kind of software code,” Bennett says, leaning over my shoulder, wincing as her own shoulder stings her. “You put it all together like a puzzle off the disc drives, and then you have . . . whatever it is.”
“Yeah. But what the hell is it?”
“Could be something stolen from the Justice Department. That would make sense. Missing persons, maybe? Some kinda Big Brother system that keeps tabs on people?”
“No. It’s more sophisticated. Way too many nooks and crannies. That’s why it took so long to copy.”
“Put some more of the pieces together,” she says. “If you can assemble just a few datastreams, we might see patterns that’ll tip us off.”
“Way ahead of you there.”
She sees my fingers moving fast and shakes her head. “Of course you are.”
“I could get a lot of it sorted through, but I’d need days—maybe weeks—to fit the whole thing together. I might not even be able to run the program independently of whatever system it was designed for. Once the puzzle is assembled, it’ll require a specific series of entry codes, which are probably what’s stored on the little flash drives. Like a key to get past a final security firewall that probably only goes up once the whole system is activated.”
“Clever.”
“Good thing we ditched the original case these drives were living in. It might have had a tracker or a destruct code built into the metal casing. Still can’t believe it didn’t explode when I opened it.”
And, suddenly, it hits me:
Whoever designed what was in that case designed that vault, too. Of course he did. No doubt in my mind at all. The code I’m clicking through has the same devious rhythms—identical patterns that stab you in the back. I’ll have to be careful not to look for too much. It might have a tapeworm I can’t see, something that eats everything the more you hack away at it.
State-of-the-art.
Manufactured by Texas Data Concepts.
I work through some more of it.
“Definitely a program, not a database,” she says a few minutes later. “Definitely something applicable to the military or the Justice Department.”
“What makes you say that?”
She points at the screen. “I’m seeing a lotta code here that gets used in high-security defense applications—things like factories that manufacture tanks and bombs. I’ve been in a few of those.”
“It could be anything.”
But it’s not anything. It’s something. And whatever that something really is, it was so valuable to these people that they encased it in a steel bear trap rigged to blow the living holy shit out of anyone who went looking for it.
Don’t look, son. It’s the face of God.
Bennett sees the furrows on my face, as I start clicking again.
She studies the screen intently.
• • •
I get on the Internet and ask some questions, using hacker code that only the best can see through. Nobody steps up at first. I create a brand-new secure chat room fortified with radioactive firewalls and I put out the word. I don’t use any of my old aliases, not even the ones I went under when I was hacking from the inside. A few guys step up and I get my questions answered. Mostly technical stuff.
Bennett looks real worried. I know how she feels.
And that’s right when my fingers get lucky in a sensitive area.
Click.
Pay dirt.
• • •
It’s a hairline crack that only decodes part of two words from the entry port to a sub-program that governs most of the system, like the sign on a door telling you what dentist you’re getting drilled by today. Just fragments.
Mou ain p iority.
That’s all it says.
Bennett sees it clearly, even with the missing letters:
“Mountain priority,” sh
e says. “See how the M is capitalized? It’s part of a proper name.”
I know there’s more.
I go after it, telling Bennett I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I have a really bad feeling about this. I click fast and get quick results. More word fragments.
Re on Ele en.
She fills it in again: “Region Eleven. Another proper name.”
No.
That can’t be it.
I will my fingers to key a word search for something specific, using three mean sets of blackware hunters off my rig—a controlled little bit of virus rot aimed like a smart black scalpel right at the heart of whatever this thing is.
I find three letters, half the word I’m looking for.
yen
I don’t need it to tell me the rest. Neither does Bennett.
Cheyenne Mountain priority Region Eleven.
Her face goes white.
“Elroy . . . I think we’re in really big trouble.”
9
00000-9
MEN AND BOYS
I pack up the rig and the brown suitcase and get everything in the trunk of the car. I do it at light speed. Bennett moves fast, too. She knows what we’re running from is big enough to come after us, anywhere, everywhere. We’re holding on to a time bomb. Something that should have been impossible to get. Something we never should have gotten our hands on.
You think you have what it takes, kid?
It’s the face of God.
Only the chosen few can look there.
That’s why he had to kill us. The rank-and-file computer geeks who knew too much past the pearly gates. And my father, too. I should have known. We both should have. Texas Data Concepts. Cheyenne Mountain.
A time bomb.
I tell her the plot: We’re going to head for the Sheraton. Have to make our eight-o’clock date. A few hours after that, it’ll be midnight, October 24. Exactly one full day since we hit the TCD building. More than enough time for our employers to find us. So I gotta make a call between here and the hotel. One of these disposable Walmart cells has seventy-five minutes free when you buy it. They’re only good for twenty minutes or so before we have to ditch them. Pay phones are out of the question, of course. Have to stay as far off the grid as possible. Deal from strength.
The sun goes down all the way as I load the shotgun. I zip it up with the rest of our weapons, in the long sports bag I bought at the same Walmart, where I got the cells. The rest of our new clothes go in there, a bag of Fritos, too. All that’s left of our road grub. We get room service now. I need a real meal soon so I can try to get my safe deposit box key back again. That money is my lifeline.
That, and what we’re going after now.
Bennett tells me she’s scared. She knows what Cheyenne Mountain is. It’s in Colorado. Strategic Air Command, Region Eleven.
The people who control the hand of God.
• • •
We get in the car and get back on the highway into the downtown area of Houston, where anyone could be watching. The blinking, twinkling skyscrapers loom on the near horizon, just beyond winding neighborhoods of sleaze and commerce. I keep the Gold’s Gym bag on my shoulder. I feel the warm fingers of sleep deprivation creeping up the back of my throat and my soul, threatening to knock me right the hell out, but I keep it together. I dial a number on the Walmart phone and hand it to Bennett.
I tell her to order half a California roll.
• • •
One stop along the way. Jenny Rose’s Body Shop, in the Heights, just downtown. A ritzy flesh palace with a dress code.
We park across the street.
I grab the small brown suitcase, leave a gun on the seat next to Bennett and tell her not to use it unless she has to.
“If I’m not back here in twenty minutes, tops, come in after me.”
“You expecting trouble?”
“Always.”
I see a man in a white cowboy hat and black boots on the red velvet rope, using a metal detector on clusters of slick suits as they show up in force. He’s got long hair in a ponytail and a moustache that makes him look old and weird.
He sees me and nods.
“I hear you’re looking for some legal advice,” he says.
We go inside together.
• • •
Me and Bennett get to the Sheraton at a little after eight. It’s in the heart of the downtown megalopolis cityscape that bursts through concrete in the center of Houston. I slip the valet ten bucks and he lets us into the underground garage, where we park the car.
I grab the sports bag with our guns and travel gear.
The Gold’s Gym bag on my shoulder has my rig in it now.
We take the service elevator. You’re not supposed to use this ride, not unless you’re on staff and you have the key. I never worry about having a key.
We get to Room 1006A and I knock quietly.
A huge, blobby black man with one gold tooth and a reefer in his mouth cracks open the door and gives me a deadly look. A Glock in his fist. An XXL Dead Kennedy’s T-shirt hanging off his enormous frame like some odd riddle about inner city badasses.
“What’s the password?”
He looks and sounds a little like the Notorious B.I.G. I don’t like rap music, but I sure as hell remember Biggie.
I remember him because he’s dead.
“Betty Crocker sent me,” I tell him.
He kind of laughs, kind of doesn’t. Opens the door and steps back, letting us in. Looks like we’re invited. The place has low-level track lighting, smells like fresh linen and Lysol. It’s a suite with lots of elbow room, a few couches and chairs, flat-screen TV—and a hospital bed inside the main living area, racks of drugs and IV drips and other equipment for patching holes, pill bottles and saline bags locked up in tackle boxes. Kim’s private ER. I’m impressed. Most gangbangers have their field hospitals set up in a flophouse or a dirty back room off a strip club somewhere.
The mountain with the gold tooth doesn’t say a word. Puffs on his joint. Keeps an eye on us as we enter. I can see the outline of another Glock in his waistband, jutting out between his pants and the gravid flab of his gut. Dangerous guy. A keg waiting to blow. His eyes linger a lot longer on Bennett.
An older white man wearing a black dinner jacket over a flannel shirt sits up from one of the couches and stubs out a cigarette. He’s wearing a fishing hat. “You’re Elroy Coffin?”
“Yep. I think my friend here needs to speak with you.”
“Come over to the table, we’ll have a look at her.”
Bennett moves over to the doc, sits on the hospital bed, as the guy starts asking all the usual questions. Where does it hurt? How long ago were you shot? Starts cutting off the field dressing on her shoulder with a pair of scissors from one of the racks. Cracks a joke I can’t hear and laughs loudly at it. Nervous. I have one ear on him as I turn to the big black dude.
“Did Kim send the rest of my money?”
“Talk to Randall.”
“Who’s Randall?”
I hear a toilet flush when I say that. Oh.
A door to the main bedroom suite opens and here comes the brains of the operation. He’s a smaller white guy. Looks like Eminem, only tougher. Has the weird sleepy eyes, but there’s more danger in his face, and a couple of nasty scars, too.
I remember Eminem because everybody does.
He’s wearing a windbreaker buttoned only at the top, like a cholo drug dealer. He sees the ThunderCats logo on my chest and makes a jagged grin happen. Typical. Glares at the black guy and tries to look important. “You check Lion-O here out?”
“Shit, I ain’t feelin’ up no white boy on what I’m gettin’ paid.”
“I don’t mean that, dumbshit! I mean, is he cool?”
“He’s standin’ right there, you tell me.”
Eminem looks right in my eyes. “Are you cool, Lion-O?”
I wonder what the hell that even means. So I tell him I’m cool. He says that’s co
ol. So everything’s cool. I guess. Or something. These guys sure as hell won’t win any astrophysics awards this year, but they look really hard. Kim likes them hard.
The doc cracks open one of the tackle boxes and finds some antibiotics, some pain killers. He goes to work on Bennett, making bad jokes I don’t hear all the way, cutting off the rest of her bloody Hawaiian shirt, cleaning the wound up, chewing Vicodin like they’re Flintstones. That’s another thing people like Kim hold over their doctors. Habits.
Eminem goes under a couch and pulls out a fat metal briefcase, tells me to sit down and we’ll count the cash together. This could take a while.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Just let me look it over quick, I’m in a hurry. I trust Kim.”
“Gotta count it. Those are the rules.”
Whatever.
I look over at the doc, hunched over his work with sweat beading on his face. Bennett almost smiles at me, half naked, her olive sports bra spackled red. I almost smile back. “How you doing, kiddo?”
“Never better.”
Eminem latches open the case, starts counting out stacks of hundred-dollar bills in bundles of twenty thousand each, then handing them to me. I set them on the floor in neat rows at my feet. I don’t count any of it. Eminem gives me a dirty look but doesn’t say anything.
“Man, that’s a lotta squeezin’ green,” says the fat guy. “What’s a motherfucker gotta do to get in on a score like that around here?”
“Shut your big black ass up,” says Eminem casually. He probably shot five dirty white boys for breakfast yesterday. That’s how it works. They send the white guys to deal with the white guys, especially Kim. She once told me honky gangbangers were like pastry ninjas in action movies. The kind you eat, one after another, with a machine gun.
She sent the right guys to handle this much money.
One false move and I’m really dead, and right now that makes me really comfortable in this room. Security is covered.
I almost fall asleep, watching him count the money.
Hypnotized by the repetition.
So goddamn tired . . .
Ten minutes later, which seems like ten lifetimes later, he hands me the last wad. Two hundred large, with the fifteen I already had in the bag. Then there’s the getaway insurance. Almost twenty on my leg, my walking-around money. I tell him I’ll buy the briefcase for a hundred bucks and he throws it in for free. I put half the cash back in the case.
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