Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump

by George R. R. Martin

  "Wrong," Jay said. "We go in there, guns blazing, with a bunch of your numbnuts, and Casaday whacks Mark before you can get to him. We'll do this my way. I'll get Creighton and Starfin back from Nam, tell Peter to hop a plane, and we'll sneak in before Casaday even knows we're there. All aces. Once we find Mark and his daughter, I can pop everyone else out and - "

  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Santayana. We tried that plan fifteen years ago in Iran. You will recall how that ended. And you're forgetting something. This is not a rescue mission. Our task is to destroy Casaday's supply of the Black Trump. If we fail in that, the fate of Mark Meadows and his daughter becomes largely irrelevant."

  "Spare me the Soldier of Fortune shit, Belew," Jay said. "I don't buy a word of it. You risked your own life to get me out of Iran in one piece, and you don't even like me. Meadows was your friend. There's no way you're going to abandon him."

  "Iran was a different circumstance. Genocide was not in the cards. Don't delude yourself, Ackroyd. I like Mark Meadows, I even admire him in a way, but I will sacrifice him, if that's what the mission requires ... as I would sacrifice you, and Dr. Finn, and even Sprout, poor child. I have seen friends die before."

  Jay looked at Belew. "Jesus, you're a cold bastard."

  "I'm a professional. If it makes you feel any better, I'd risk my own life just as readily."

  "Swell," Jay said sourly. He would have said a lot more - including a few things he might have regretted - but suddenly he heard the sound of hoofbeats, He looked back over his shoulder and there was Bradley Finn, galloping up the steep hill like Man O' War driving down the backstretch.

  J. Bob stroked the underside of his mustache with the back of his hand. "A brilliant disguise," he said drily. "I would never have recognized Dr. Finn. Unless I was looking for a centaur."

  Finn came panting to a stop in front of them, chest heaving, all sweaty and lathered, his shirt stuck to his skin. "They, pant, they found him, pant."

  Jay exchanged a look with Belew.

  "Perhaps you could you clarify that, Doctor?" Belew said.

  Finn was almost hyperventilating. Jay put a hand on his shoulder. "Take it easy. Catch your breath first."

  The centaur took a couple of deep breaths. "Jerry and Sascha. Found Casaday. Reading minds. Followed leads. Told Peter. The Black Trump. In Burma. Drug lab. Sascha saw it." He tapped his forehead. "In the mountains. Peter told me." He fumbled a damp paper out of his shirt pocket with fingers stained brown from wiping away cheap dye. "Here," he said, thrusting the paper at Jay.

  Jay glanced at it, shrugged, and handed it to Belew. "Same latitude and longitude. Jackpot. Looks like I didn't need to play pattycake with the monkey after all. Jerry is turning out to be an honest-to-god detective." He grinned at J. Bob. "Hey, why not, I taught him everything he knows. We need to work out a rendezvous and plan our - "

  Finn interrupted, shaking his head wildly. "No. No. You don't understand. Peter told Jerry to wait, but Jerry wouldn't listen, he said he and Sascha could handle it, he had a plan, they were going in, no time to waste. By now they're in Burma."

  For a moment, Jay could not believe what he was hearing. "You're kidding right? You've got to be kidding. Tell me he wouldn't do anything so stupid."

  "Why not?" Belew said. "You taught him everything he knows."

  "Shit." Jay sat down in the back of the rickshaw and cradled his head in his hands. "Shit shit shit shit shit," he repeated in a furious burst of eloquence. He felt sick.

  Belew crumpled up the paper and said crisply, "Well, that's done. Casaday will kill them both, most likely."

  "If he doesn't, I'll kill them myself," Jay promised in a bleak voice. "We have to get to Burma."

  "We will," Belew promised grimly. "We may even arrive soon enough to identify the bodies." He climbed into the rickshaw beside Jay. "Doctor, the airport, double quick, if you'd be so kind."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Monsoon season was past, but rain had returned to the mountains, as if to remind the human inhabitants of the power of the storm and keep them duly humble. At first Mark thought the sounds from outside, breaking through the white-noise roar of rain on his trailer to kick him out of sleep, were thunder.

  But thunder didn't stutter with that knuckle-rapping cadence of Kalashnikov-series assault rifles, which had become so drearily familiar during the liberation of Vietnam.

  His first reaction was to sit bolt upright in bed, crying, "Sprout!" Belatedly the combat self-preservation reflexes J. Bob had dinned into him kicked in. Realizing the thin-gauge metal walls around him wouldn't even slow metal-jacketed small-arms rounds, be rolled out of bed onto the floor.

  Curiosity got him next. He belly-crawled to the window, elbows and hips dragging sheet-wound legs in a weird lamia slither. He knew the thing to do was to lie as flat as humanly possible and then some, and think thoughts of oneness with the rough, puke-colored carpet. But the fear was beginning to bubble within him, along with a clamor of voices.

  Slowly - as if that made any difference to a stray bullet - he raised his head. Pushing flimsy curtains up with his forehead, he peered over the sill.

  The night was black, the rain dense. Random muzzle-flashes lit the downpour like lightning. Mark couldn't tell if the fire was incoming or outgoing, but a lot was going somewhere.

  "Sprout!" he screamed, and stumbled to his feet. Time for more gratitude to Belew, who had also insisted on teaching Sprout to hug the floor when she heard gunfire. She'd be as safe as possible.

  For a while. The only reason Mark could conceive of for the sudden noisy outburst of nocturnal emissions, on his bare-legged scramble through the trailer, banging knees on furniture and scraping elbow on the walls, was that government troops were attacking the opium-army camp. Nothing he had heard about the forces of the socialist military junta in Yangon suggested they'd bother distinguishing between the Black Karens and their captives. He recalled talk about the games the Army liked to play with captured rebel women, and his throat filled with sour bile as he slapped frantically for the front-door knob.

  A grenade crunched off somewhere as he yanked the door open. He didn't see the flash. Water hit him in the face as if a frat rat had been lurking in wait with a bucket.

  This high in the mountains, rain was cold at night. Mark ran in a wild, high-stepping splashing dash toward Sprout's barred hootch, elbows pumping. To his left a muzzle flare danced. Bullets went past his head with a sound like a giant sheet tearing. He realized he made an ideal target: a great capering pale scarecrow, wearing white briefs that almost glowed in the dark.

  He kept running. He had no room inside for fear for himself. All that mattered was his daughter.

  No lights shone from Sprout's hootch. A broad lumpish figure stood before the door. It turned as Mark came splashing up.

  It was Ditmar, wearing a black East German Army leather greatcoat. The legs of his pajamas had penguins on them. A Makarov pistol glinted in one chubby fist.

  A smile spread across the torturer's face. "Ah, Herr Doktor. It seems both of our first thoughts were for your daughter."

  A pale oval in the barred window. "Daddy!" Sprout cried.

  "Baby, get down!" Mark exclaimed, gesturing frantically. He turned to Ditmar. "Get away from her, you perverted son of a bitch."

  Ditmar shook his head and clucked reprovingly. "Ah, Doctor. Certainly it is imprudent to speak so to a man with a gun."

  Mark gathered himself to leap on the German. The little Mak didn't have much stopping power, and Ditmar wasn't Layton; if Mark didn't take more than a round or two, he might be able to break the torturer's neck before he dropped. The odds weren't good, but then, once he was dead all decisions would be made, and the Sharks could no longer compel him to destroy his own kind ...

  "Steady, there, Meadows," a voice rasped. O. K. Casaday came stilting out of the rain, white suit translucent and molded to his gaunt frame, what hair he had plastered to his great round Charlie Brown head. He had
a government Colt .45 in hand.

  Mark let a long breath out through bared teeth. The moment had passed. The fight had fled him.

  Casaday turned to Ditmar. "All right, Fatso, shove off. I got this under control."

  Ditmar blinked moist frog eyes. "Bitte?" His single black eyebrow hunched in the middle, like a cramping caterpillar. "Your voice - is something wrong?"

  It was occurring about then to Mark that Casaday didn't sound at all like himself. The CIA spook turned his head and coughed into his hand.

  "Gotta cold. Laryngitis. Just hit me. Now shag ass. Don't you know there's a battle on?"

  The German stuck his side arm in a pocket and bustled off. Night and rain swallowed him in one wet gulp. Keeping his pistol pointed at Mark, Casaday went to the hootch door and pounded on it.

  "Open up," he yelled. "It's Casaday." Mark heard metallic fumbling sounds familiar to any former New York dweller.

  Casaday turned his head toward Mark and caught his eye. Then he winked.

  The door opened. The round, brown face of Sprout's Black Karen duenna peered uncertainly forth.

  "The girl," Casaday demanded. The woman expostulated in her own language. "Now."

  The woman vanished. A moment later she came back, herding Sprout like a sheepdog, trying to twitch a pink terry cloth bathrobe closed over her T-shirt and panties.

  "Daddy!" the girl exclaimed. She hurled herself at Mark and caught him with a stranglehold around the neck. Her pink Gund bear dangled from one hand.

  "Baby, baby, it's okay," Mark said, feeling like a lying shit. Casaday gestured with the gun.

  "Let's get a move on."

  "Come on, honey." Mark disentangled himself as delicately as he could, caught her by the biceps and urged her into motion.

  The firing seemed to be dying down. Mark had the impression most of it was now outbound from the compound, which might or might not be a good sign. If it was a government raid, it seemed to have been repulsed.

  "Where are we going?" Mark asked.

  The spook snowed him an odd lopsided smiled. It was an expression Mark had never seen out of Casaday before, and not one he would have thought him capable of. "Out of here, with any luck, Dr. Meadows."

  They were among parked vehicles, the rain making tiny explosions on the hunched dark backs of the cars. "Got to be one with the keys in it somewhere," Casaday murmured. "Be a real pain to have to hot-wire one."

  Mark stared at him. "What's going on here, man?"

  Casaday chuckled. "There's more here than meets the eye, Doc," he said. "Here we go." He pulled open the door of a Jeep Cherokee and shoved Sprout in.

  A spotlight nailed them from the concertina-wire perimeter like a Network death-beam. "Uh-oh," the CIA man said under his breath.

  A squad of Black Karens approached at the trot, rifles at port arms. Casaday stood up straighter and stepped forward. "What the hell's going on here?" he demanded.

  "I was just about to ask that frigging question," a voice said from behind the advancing Karens. O. K. Casadays voice, and no mistake.

  The black-clad soldiers fanned out around the Cherokee, trying to point their rifles at Mark without aiming them at Casaday. Mark froze.

  The tall figure of O. K. Casaday resolved out of the glare of the spotlight to stand confronting O. K. Casaday.

  "All right. Meadows," the new Casaday said, "what the fuck kind of shenanigans are these?"

  The Black Karens were gaping from one Casaday to the other. All Mark could do was the same.

  "It's a fucking impostor," Mark's Casaday said. "Achoo! Shoot the son of a bitch and stand back."

  The Karens muttered at each other, then stepped back to cover all four white people impartially. "You know," the new Casaday said conversationally, "if these dinks get too confused they're just gonna shoot us all and let Buddha sort us out."

  "This is bullshit," the other said. He coughed consumptively. "Fuck this cold."

  The newcomer cawed a laugh. "No shit. The question is, who's trying to bullshit which bullshitter?"

  "Boss," Layton appeared with more rifle-toting Karens in tow. "We caught this motherfucker - "

  He stopped. His head swiveled from left to right. His ponytail swung like a drowned mink. His eyes bulged.

  "Don't throw your neck out, Layton," the new Casaday said. "What've you got?"

  "We, uh, we caught this shithead sneakin' around outside the wire." A pair of Karens dragged an obvious Occidental forward. He wore a waterlogged white tropical suit like the ones on the Casadays. The right sleeve was stained dark from the upper biceps down.

  The wounded man moaned, lifted his head a fraction. He had a pencil-thin mustache and no eyes.

  Mark recognized Sascha, who used to work in the Crystal Palace when Chrysalis was still alive. The new Cassaday's lip curled. "A fucking joker. What is this, Meadows?"

  Mark licked lips which were already as wet as they were likely to get. "I don't know," he said. "I swear to God."

  "We got some kind of ace asshole playing cute tricks on us, Layton," the first Casaday said sounding more like the real thing. He jutted his lantern jaw at the other. "Shoot that puke and let's get out of the rain before we melt."

  Layton's hand started inside his camouflaged bush jacket. "Don't be a bigger jagoff than usual, Layton," the second Casaday said.

  The kickboxer stopped, let his hand slide back into the open. "Boss," he said, eyes flicking from one Casaday to the other. "Uh - how do I know which is the boss?"

  "Don't be stupid, Layton," Mark's Casaday said. "Shoot."

  "You got a good knockout punch, Layton," the intruding Casaday said. "Take your best shot. Coldcock us both and see what the fuck we turn into."

  Layton was nothing if not obedient. He glanced from one Casaday to the other, then took a skipping step sideways, whipped his stiffened right leg back and around and up in a spinning reverse roundhouse kick to the jack-o'-lantern head of the Casaday who had just spoken. He flew out from under his hat and landed on his ass in a bow-wave of brown water.

  Even for a kickboxer, a move like that took time. The Casaday of the first part took advantage. As the kick was getting underway he was diving into the driver's seat of the Cherokee and cranking the key.

  The engine caught like a pool of spilled gasoline. Wheels spun, flinging a roostertail of mud that drenched Layton as he turned with a shout and dove for the Jeep. Outreached fingertips grazed the rear bumper, and Layton went facedown in red muck.

  The Black Karens were watching these weird round-eye antics with undisguised fascination. The satellite dish never pulled in anything as entertaining as this.

  Layton hauled his face out of the mud, spat some out, and screamed, "Don't fust stand there, you fucking little monkeys! Shoot the asshole!"

  "No! Wait!" Mark jumped before their guns, capering and waving his hands as the angle-cut muzzle brakes came up, hoping they'd think he was the asshole. The Black Karens scowled at him and danced around trying to get a clear shot as the Cherokee busted the perimeter wire with a musical twang.

  The second Casaday had picked himself up. He now wore a two-tone suit, red in front, white in back. He held a handkerchief to a blood-drooling mouth.

  "I should have said, punch one of us, and bust the one you didn't pick," he said. "You're such a dumb fuck, Layton. It was inevitable you'd whack out the wrong one first."

  "I'm not dumb!" Layton said. For some reason he looked to Mark as for support. "I'm not dumb."

  Casaday shook his head. He was working his tongue around inside his mouth as if trying to dislodge a piece of food stuck between his teeth. He spat a broken tooth into his handkerchief, stared briefly at it, and threw tooth and handkerchief into a puddle.

  From the night beyond the wire, a gout of yellow flame, outlining black brush. The whoomp of a gasoline explosion compressed their eardrums a second later.

  "Sprout!" Mark screamed. He ran for the breach in the wire, not caring that he was inviting a burst in the back.


  "Keep up with him, you jagoffs!" Casaday shouted. Layton and the Black Karens raced in pursuit.

  The hurtling Cherokee had gouged a flattened half-tunnel down a brushy hillside. Mark went vaulting and slipping and sliding through, and if adrenaline didn't lend his lanky frame grace it gave him the wherewithal to make it througn more or less upright.

  The Cherokee had nosed into a little gully that now ran with chocolate-colored water, runoff from the camp clearing. It was fully involved in a fire that didn't give a good goddamn for the torrent. Mark stopped dead, and was just wishing that God would stop his heart and get it the hell over with when he saw Sprout sprawled on the ground beside the wreck.

  He slid on his knees in the mud, like a figure skater bringing home his routine, gathering his daughter in his arms. She was wet and hysterical, but unharmed. Her bear was gone.

  They were on their knees, clinging to each other like clumps of seaweed and sobbing uncontrollably, when a Black Karen stepped up behind Mark and slainmed the back of his head with the heavy wooden stock of his AKM.

  Mark didn't fuzz out right away. He lay on his back blinking at rain that kept trying to get in his eyes, while a torrent of voices poured through his head. He couldn't make out what they were saying, and drew a vague comfort from that. Then he went away.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Ray slept.

  Despite his torn flesh, ruptured organs, and smashed bones, despite his pain and anger and grief, Ray slept. He dreamt of his childhood, of the countless roadhouses his mother dragged him to. He dreamt of the hundreds of cheap motels, the dozens of men, some kind, some angry, most indifferent, whom his mother lived with from time to time. They never abused Ray, not seriously, unless indifference could be called abuse. He dreamt of the doctors who diagnosed him as hyperactive and the drugs his mother was too scatterbrained to administer effectively.