Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  Adrianna nodded slowly, rolled her chair back from her desk. ‘Who else have you told, besides Monty?’

  ‘No one,’ Darren said. Then, in a flash that seemed to last a long time, he realized that he should have lied, should have told her anything to protect himself, should have said that lots of other people knew that something wasn’t right with Final Winter, that he had contacted his friends in the NSA and CIA and FBI, that a flying investigative squad was coming right now to check into her. He should have done that, should have done anything, he knew, as Adrianna came at him from around her desk. And punched him square in the throat.

  ~ * ~

  In a small room at a terminal building at Andrews Air Force Base, Monty Zane tried one more time with his secure cellphone, and gave up after another long series of unanswered rings. Darren wasn’t answering his phone or his pager, and calls to his apartment weren’t being answered.

  He looked at the cellphone, thought about calling Adrianna. To say what? For one thing, she’d probably want to know why in hell he had been detached again, and he didn’t like going into those swamp arguments. He just did what he had to do. He stood up, clipped the cellphone back onto his belt, and picked up his tote bag. Time to fly.

  Monty walked up to a senior airman who was standing by a wooden lectern, examining a clipboard full of papers. The senior airman — wearing camo BDUs — looked up as he approached and said, ‘Help you, sir?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Monty said. ‘You’ve got a C-20 transport leaving in ten for Lakenheath. I need to be on that aircraft.’

  The senior airman shook his head. ‘No can do. That’s carrying a Congressional delegation, complete with wives, staffers, and luggage. Especially luggage. No room.’

  Monty nodded, reached into a jacket pocket, pulled out a plastic-sealed embossed card that had his photo and lots of words around it. He silently passed the card over to the senior airman who glanced at the card, glanced again longer, and then - eyes widened - looked up at Monty.

  ‘Man ... you must have had to impress God Himself to get travel authorization like that.’

  ‘Not God. Just one of his servants on earth.’

  ‘Maybe so, but it’s good enough.’ The senior airman picked up a hand-held radio, motioned Monty to follow him as they went through an open doorway, out to the flight line. Military aircraft of all types were stationed on the tarmac, as far as the eye could see.

  ‘Come with me, sir, we’ll get you on that jet. There’s a Congressional staffer there who kept on asking me for tea with honey this morning and pissed me off. I’ll be glad to leave her sorry ass behind.’

  Monty shouldered his tote bag. ‘Won’t she put up a fight?’

  The senior airman laughed. ‘Who can win a fight against God?’

  ~ * ~

  Adrianna rubbed at her punching hand, glad that Darren had closed the door behind him. Darren was sprawled out on the floor, gurgling and wheezing, his face red. She knelt down next to him, lowered her head close to his.

  ‘Sorry about that, Darren, but your larynx has been crushed. One of the many talents I learned at Camp Perry. Eventually you’re going to choke to death. It will take a long time and be very painful.’

  She leaned in further. ‘My name is Aliyah Fulenz. I am an Iraqi Christian woman, and because your country killed my family many years ago I am going to kill many Americans in just a few days.’

  The gurgling and wheezing grew louder. She said, ‘I am doing all this for revenge. For hate.’

  She reached out, gently touched his forehead. ‘But Darren ... I always liked you, always. And what I am about to do to you, I do out of friendship.’

  And with her strong arms she clasped Darren’s head close to her and broke his neck.

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The BOLO alert that went out from the Northwest Homeland Security office was distributed, as ordered, to a variety of law-enforcement agencies that fell within the arc that showed how far the Freightliner tractor-trailer truck could have traveled after passing through the border checkpoint at Washington State.

  At a South Dakota Highway Patrol substation off 1-90, the incoming alert from the Homeland Security office was faxed to the on-duty dispatcher, who was a replacement officer filling in for a dispatcher who had had to go home sick that evening. This particular dispatcher was a fresh graduate from the South Dakota Highway Patrol Academy in Pierre, and in the hours he was on duty, because he was busy with fielding calls and trying to refamiliarize himself with on-air radio protocol, he did not notice that the fax machine near his elbow was out of paper.

  The fax machine would not get refilled with paper until the next shift, several hours later and well after a Highway Patrol cruiser from this particular substation had stopped a Freightliner truck that had a missing taillight and was heading east.

  ~ * ~

  For the last dozen or so kilometers, Vladimir Zhukov had kept his hands clasped tightly together as they at last got closer to the Memphis airport. It was amazing, really, to see how this country had changed so much in the thousands of kilometers they had traveled east. From the Pacific Ocean through the Rocky Mountains, across the deserts and plains and now, in this large city, on paved highways and bridges and overpasses. The traffic seemed heavy and he had a longing, for a moment, for the simplicity and purity that he had known in the wild emptiness of the steppes, working for a cause, nearly alone in the small city that he had grown up in. Such emptiness in which to support the Motherland, the Party, and all the greatness it represented.

  He glanced over at Imad, who was driving with what looked like a bored expression on his young face and he said, ‘Isn’t the traffic heavy?’

  Imad shook his head. ‘This is nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Vladimir looked again at the streams of traffic, recalling how seeing even two or three trucks a day back in Russia was a noteworthy event.

  ‘Ah, nothing,’ Imad said confidently. ‘They may be unbelievers, they may be infidels, and millions of them deserve to die, but they know how to build roads and make them work. To drive - you should drive in Damascus, Russki, then you’d know what bad and heavy traffic is ... ah, here we go.’

  Then it was up ahead. A magical sign that they had been waiting for, all these days on the road.

  MEMPHIS AIRPORT NEXT TWO EXITS

  ~ * ~

  Adrianna sat back on her heels on the floor, breathing hard. The cooling body of Darren Coover was on the floor next to her, starting to smell as the bladder and sphincter muscles let loose. Well, that was a fine way to start the morning, she thought. But what else could she have done? Short answer: nothing.

  All right, she thought, getting up. Time to clean this mess up. She left her office, locked the door behind her. She made a quick reconnoiter of the other offices. Empty. Except for Stacy and a few support staff upstairs, she had the place - at least this level - to herself. She went down the hallway to the small kitchen, snooped around. There. The walk-in freezer. She undid the freezer door and looked in, suddenly shivering. Part of all that expensive planning to ensure that if they were stuck here for a week or so, at least they would have frozen peas and French fries to fall back on. She walked in, saw what she needed, and then went back to her office.

  Unlocked the door, walked in. Darren Coover, staring sightlessly up at nothing. Poor American sodomite. Thought he was so very smart, and in a way he was. He was so very smart at sitting in a safe and secure room in a safe and secure city in a safe and secure country, pretending to be a warrior who was defending his nation against evil. Ah, but if evil is standing right in front of you, alive and breathing and ready to strike at you...then you are helpless. Just a helpless little boy.

  She went around to her desk, brought out her office chair. Working quickly, she knelt down next to the body and undid his leather belt. She moved the chair closer to Darren’s body, and lifted the corpse by the armpits. She had to grunt with effort as she managed to get the body to sit in the chair.
Then, working with the belt, she strapped him in.

  Adrianna stopped, breathing hard. She got behind the chair, put her hands against its back and started pushing it out the door. It was hard going at first, but once she got momentum in her favor she was out of her office and into the hallway.

  In the hallway, gaining speed, she made it about a couple of yards when the sound of a chime caused her to look behind her.

  The elevator door was beginning to open.

  ~ * ~

  They took the airfreight exit and Vladimir felt again a grudging admiration for the skillful way the boy drove the truck. Imad maneuvered the tractor-trailer truck and its cargo with ease as they got closer to the support buildings. There was a constant roar of jets taking off from the airport, up into the blue Memphis sky. Vladimir followed the trails of some of the jets, thinking to himself that Elvis, one of the few Americans he admired, had once looked up at this very same sky.

  ‘Where now?’ Imad asked.

  Vladimir looked back to the sheaf of papers in his lap, part of the package sent to him anonymously in Macao all those months ago. To think of all the work that their unseen employers had done to bring them here . . .

  ‘Well?’ the driver demanded.

  ‘Up to the main gate,’ Vladimir said. ‘Once we get through the main gate, take your second left.’

  ‘All right.’

  The truck slowed as the traffic grew heavier. All of the vehicles ahead of them seemed to be just like their very own: trucks bringing freight and packages to be shipped elsewhere. Something caught in Vladimir’s throat as he saw the busy traffic, the aircraft overhead, the quality of the roads and fencing and everything else. This was one of the smaller cities in this benighted nation, yet it seemed busier than Moscow had ever been. No wonder Russia had lost.

  Imad braked and wiped at his brow. ‘You know what I’m going to do, once we get paid off?’

  ‘No, what?’ Vladimir asked.

  ‘I’m going to rent a hotel room and sleep for a day and a night. Take a long shower. Eat room-service food, good food, not that diner and McDonald’s shit we put up with these days. And then go hire two whores. Two whores to entertain me, all day and all night. . . And you?’

  ‘Almost the same. But a hotel in a small town. With good cable service, so I can watch all the news channels, when ... when things begin.’

  Imad said, ‘Then maybe I’ll do the whores first. Just in case.’

  ‘That’s a thought.’

  Imad shifted into gear again. The truck moved forward. He said, ‘What kind of security will they have?’

  ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Another jolting shift, and then a gatehouse. An overweight black woman, wearing a dark blue uniform, carrying a clipboard. Imad rolled down the window, passed over a sheet of paper provided by Vladimir. The woman barely glanced at the truck as she matched the shipping number on the dispatch sheet to the daily printout and then passed the paper back up to Imad. She made a quick flicking motion with her wrist, already looking to the truck behind them.

  Imad glanced over, grinned as he shifted into gear again and gave the accelerator a jolt.

  They were in.

  Vladimir said, ‘Looks like security was great.’

  ‘Are you joking? The security was nothing!’

  It was Vladimir’s turn to smile. ‘The security was great. For us. Up ahead, the second left, like I said.’

  ~ * ~

  When the elevator door started to open, Adrianna dug her heels into the carpeting and pushed the chair carrying Darren’s body down the hallway. Don’t look back, she thought, don’t look back. Don’t look back.

  Ahead of her was the kitchen, and there was a jolt as the wheels of the chair passed from the hallway’s carpeting to the tile floor.

  Don’t look back, don’t look back.

  To the right, the door to the walk-in freezer. She opened the freezer door, went back to the chair, the lolling form of Darren. Then the door started to close.

  Damn it!

  Adrianna propped the door open with one of the dining-table chairs, and then went back to her own chair. Into the chill air of the freezer. There. Some of the boxes of frozen food were piled so that there was a space a few feet wide at the rear. She undid the belt with cold fingers, jolted the chair forward, and the body of the NSA analyst tumbled to the floor with a loud noise.

  Not too loud, she thought. Please, God, not too loud.

  Another bit of maneuvering, and then she started to pull her chair behind her. Then she thought better of it.

  Dining chair back out into the kitchen, freezer door closed. Adrianna walked to the sink just as—

  Stacy Ruiz came in, heels clicking on the floor. She wore a tight yellow dress that emphasized her impressive chest and her auburn hair was down around her shoulders. She yawned, looked at Adrianna as she headed to the coffee maker.

  ‘How’s it going, Adrianna?’ she asked.

  Adrianna’s heart was racing so hard she couldn’t believe Stacy couldn’t hear it. Stacy poured herself a mug of coffee, and Adrianna swallowed. ‘It’s going all right.’

  ‘Good. Jesus, this place is practically empty. Just you and me and a couple of staff in the back rooms upstairs. Sure is quiet.’

  ‘That it is,’ Adrianna said.

  Stacy took a swallow of coffee, looked over at the closed freezer door. ‘Yeah. Quiet as a tomb.’

  ~ * ~

  On the airfreight access road there was a small pylon, painted yellow and black. AIRBOX, it said, in large letters.

  ‘What next?’ Imad asked.

  ‘Hangar one, bay four.’

  Imad said, ‘All right. Hangar four, bay one.’

  ‘No, I said hangar—’

  ‘Russki, you have no sense of humor. None. I heard you right the first time. Hah.’

  Vladimir said, ‘Just drive. No jokes.’

  Imad laughed again.

  An intersection, signs marking the hangar designations. Imad turned at the sign for hangar one. Other trucks followed them. The sun was starting to set and the sky was a deep reddish purple out to the west. The last day, Vladimir thought. The very last day of this hated place. Now a low, wide hangar was in front of them, a long row of truck bays leading off to the right.

  Imad whistled a tune as he made a wide U-turn, and then started backing the truck up to bay four. Vladimir looked at the sideview mirror. It was only now that he realized his legs were trembling. So close. They were so very close. Men were now standing at the open roll-up door. With a hiss of the air brakes, Imad brought the truck to a stop. He left the diesel engine idling. Vladimir looked and noticed that the two truck bays flanking bay four were unattended. Security? Probably.

  Vladimir said, ‘Stay here. I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Sure, whatever,’ Imad replied.

  Outside there was the smell of diesel and aviation fuel. Vladimir walked past the trailer as blue jumpsuited workers started working to unhook it from the truck. Up ahead was a set of concrete steps. He went up and two men stood in front of him. One was squat, muscular, wearing blue jeans and an AirBox sweatshirt. The other man was taller, held himself like a military officer. Vladimir recognized the man. The general who owned the company. Vladimir felt like laughing out loud. A proud member of the military forces who thought they had bested the USSR, forces who were about to be brought to their knees . . .

  ‘Your papers,’ the general said.

  ‘Sir,’ Vladimir said.

  He passed over the dispatch and identification documents to the older man. He looked at the paperwork and said, ‘How was your trip from Alabama?’

  Just for a moment, the question confused Vladimir. Alabama? Why in the world would he think— Of course. The exhaustion of traveling across the country had muddied his mind. Of course this man would think that he had come up from Alabama.

  ‘It was fine. Just fine.’

  ‘Good.’

  The gener
al looked at the papers some more, said, ‘Identification, please?’

  Vladimir reached into his pants pocket, removed a thin leather folder, passed it over. The general opened it up, looked at the photo inside and at Vladimir, passed it over. ‘Very well, Mr Komanski. Ready to open it up?’