Chronic Fear

by Nicholson, Scott

  Then she glanced left and right before pulling the curtains closed.

  Gundersson finally released a breath. They said sixth sense was a bunch of baloney, but in his experience, people often expressed discomfort when they were being observed, even if they didn’t quite understand why. Something just felt different.

  But the house was quiet and still, and the pair was likely in the shower, rinsing off last night’s dirty play with a round of aquatics.

  From his briefing, he’d learned that these two were involved in some sort of secret drug test. Harding, a Desert Storm vet, stressed that it hadn’t been a CIA drug test, like when they’d given hallucinogenic drugs to civilians in the MK-Ultra experiments during the Cold War. Harding made it clear he didn’t like that “wavy gravy shit,” and that Gundersson wasn’t to engage the targets. Somebody way up the chain, somebody so high that Harding could merely roll his eyes heavenward, ordered that the pair be monitored until further notice.

  With the curtains drawn, Gundersson figured he was done for the day. The couple’s routine was to eat breakfast on the porch, feed the gaggle of hens they kept in an open pen behind the cabin, take a little walk along the creek, dig in the garden for maybe an hour, and then rest a little before lunch. After lunch, he’d log onto his computer and she’d get out the paints and brushes.

  Gundersson zoomed in on the painting currently drying on the easel.

  Sure looks like some drugs involved. Freaky stuff like that, it’s no wonder they kicked her out of the university. Couldn’t have her warping the minds of our next generation of grade-school teachers.

  But he’d not observed any drug use of any kind, not even a bottle of cooking sherry. For crazed, anti-American hippies and possible threats to national security, they sure seemed docile.

  He was just getting ready to climb down from the tree and head back to his camp on the edge of the national wilderness area when the couple came out on the porch.

  Gundersson slowly lifted the binoculars again.

  Shit.

  Roland Doyle was armed, wearing nothing but boxer shorts, a black revolver dangling at his side. He clearly wasn’t trained with it, because he carried it like somebody in a movie. Wendy Leng hunched behind him in a bathrobe.

  “Where did you see it?” Doyle asked, not bothering to lower his voice.

  She pointed about thirty feet to Gundersson’s right.

  Roland marched down the porch steps, across the narrow skirt of ragged grass, and into the forest. Leaves crunched and scuffed under his bare feet. Gundersson was armed but he didn’t dare move, although he gently let the binoculars rest by their strap against his chest.

  Harding said Roland Doyle was “a nothing,” despite a few alcohol-related legal troubles in the past. The unspoken message was that Gundersson was on a babysitting errand and it was time to just shut up and follow orders. Wendy Leng was even cleaner, despite her subversive art. On the surface, they were just intellectual rebels, maybe a little too liberal for their own good but certainly not plotting to smuggle nuclear weapons.

  But Gundersson was trained to believe nothing was as it appeared on the surface, and Harding’s directive of “Don’t ask questions” had certainly spawned a lot of questions.

  Roland moved between the trees, not bothering to muffle his footsteps. He didn’t look up, either, which meant Gundersson hadn’t been spotted.

  He was in Gundersson’s line of sight now and headed toward a small clearing. Roland raised the pistol in front of him and moved aside a birch sapling. Gundersson calculated how long it would take to draw his Glock from his shoulder holster. Being in such an awkward position might slow him and it would be hard to do so silently.

  “Do you see it, honey?” Wendy called from the porch.

  “No,” he said. “You sure it was out this way?”

  “It ran from behind the pen straight down that little trail.”

  It. She’s calling it an “it.” Which means it isn’t me.

  Still, Gundersson remained tensed and ready for action. Roland had a furtive aspect about him, as if he was enjoying the hunt.

  The shrubs to Roland’s right exploded with motion and Roland raised the pistol, squeezing off three shots in rapid succession. The sudden thunder boomed across the hills. Gundersson had the impression of a sleek, dark animal bounding away, but it was the bushy red tail that helped him identify it.

  A fox?

  The animal couldn’t have been more than ten feet from Roland, which reassured Gundersson that the guy was too liberal to practice his marksmanship. The fox, instead of bolting deeper into the woods, took a detour and splashed up the creek. Roland fired one more wild shot, sending a ricochet off a rock that zizzed through the woods. The fox slowed and trotted up the creek about twenty more feet, almost taunting its attacker, and then vanished in a thick tangle of laurels.

  Roland gave chase for about fifty yards, lost from Gundersson’s view but traceable by the commotion. Roland apparently gave up at that point and returned to the clearing, where he brushed twigs and leaves from his feet.

  You have to admire the little critter. Even in danger, it still takes the time to double back and trick out its scent so it can’t be followed.

  That was probably a good lesson for federal intel agents as well. Gundersson wondered if he’d been diligent in covering his trek from the tree to his camp, as well as a couple of other reconnaissance points he’d established—a massive tumble of granite slabs on the south side of the cabin and a dense thicket of rhododendron near the chicken shed.

  But he was more of a desk jockey than anything, a little out of shape, with curly, unkempt hair that didn’t fit the ramrod stereotype, and a freckled complexion. Nobody would mistake him for a secret agent of any kind, and someone spying him in the tree would have taken him for a redneck poacher. Hell, he’d barely even made it up the tree, skinning his elbow in the process.

  He probably had been a little less careful than he would have been on a real assignment, checking up on an alleged KKK militant or scouting transfer students from the Middle East. And mistakes like that could get you killed. Mistakes like that were why the clandestine service was needed in the first place.

  “Did you get it?” Wendy asked from the porch.

  “No,” Roland called back, irritated.

  Roland bent and stirred around in the leaves a little, plucking something from the ground where the fox had been. Still clutching the pistol, but relaxed now, he headed back to the cabin.

  When he reached the porch, Gundersson raised the glasses. He could see the feathers in Roland’s hand as Wendy reached for them.

  Fox must have been raiding the henhouse.

  The couple went back inside the cabin. It was time for breakfast. Gundersson was hungry himself. Eggs sounded real good.

  But he’d be eating out of a can instead.

  He made his way down the tree and, taking a hint from the fox, he navigated a new route back to his camp so that he wouldn’t create a trail that Roland might follow.

  Sly as a fox. I hope I’m quick enough to dodge four bullets when my time comes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Morgan!”

  Mark snapped alert. His Basic Law Enforcement Training instructor was in his ear, leaning into the sedan.

  “Yes?” Mark asked, avoiding the automatic “sir” he was compelled to add. While most of the students were in their early twenties, Mark was close to the same age as Derrick Frady, a former sheriff’s deputy who’d lost his job during a political housecleaning. Frady, who made up for his diminutive stature with a militaristic zeal, was of course nicknamed “Frady Cat” by the students, but none of them dared call him that to his square, flinty face.

  “The suspect just ran another car off the road during the chase. It looks like a probable PI. What do you do?”

  “PI” was the police code for “personal injury.” Mark was faced with the choice of continuing his pursuit of the suspect or serving the public he was sworn to prot
ect.

  Well, I haven’t sworn anything yet. I still have another two hundred hours of training to go.

  Mark figured that a real cop faced with such a dilemma would punch the accelerator and indulge in the adrenaline rush of a high-speed chase. Because that was Mark’s first impulse, he figured it was probably the wrong one.

  “What’s the Ten-Twenty of my backup?” Mark asked. He was in the back parking lot of Durham Tech, behind the wheel of a dummied-up police cruiser. The car sported a two-way radio, siren, bar lights, and all the accessories of a real cop car. It even had the black-and-white, two-toned paint job, although it bore no emblem or insignia of any kind.

  “Half a mile behind, but the neighboring department has a road block a mile ahead,” Frady said.

  “I pull off pursuit and check on the collision victims,” Mark said. “Calling it in, of course.”

  Frady pulled a twisted crease in one side of his mouth, an expression that passed for a smile. “Serve and protect,” he said. “The first word is serve.” He slapped the top of the sedan. “Good enough.”

  A series of orange cones were arranged across the empty parking lot. Mark had negotiated the obstacle course in just under three minutes, burning a little rubber off the tires but managing not to tip any cones. He’d scored an 87, which wouldn’t have him busting Vin Diesel in a Fast and Furious sequel anytime soon, but at least he hadn’t skidded into the chain-link fence that surrounded the lot.

  Several students waited their turns on a weedy courtyard between the lot and main campus building. They were all dressed in the loose black athletic pants and gray T-shirts that bore the BLET logo. The outfit was part of the indoctrination, a sort of junior varsity uniform to prepare them for blues and badges. Two women were in the class, and they were both as tough as twisted rawhide.

  Mark had not beaten the women at anything yet, although he suspected it would be his turn to shine when they trained for presenting evidence in court. If only he could keep his head straight and concentrate.

  “All right, Morgan, we need a braking maneuver and a full turn in pursuit,” Frady said.

  “Which way?”

  Frady smirked. “Listen to the radio, rookie. Now wheel it to the start.”

  While Mark navigated the cruiser to the end of the hundred-yard lot, he eyed the crumbling asphalt. The roads wouldn’t be in any better shape once he pinned on a badge, given the sad state of infrastructure funding. Fortunately, government leaders didn’t dare cut law enforcement budgets, so he should be able to land a job even if he didn’t make top of the class.

  Frady had a short-range CB radio system set up in the courtyard. The receiver in the cruiser was set to a channel used infrequently but sometimes prone to interference. Frady’s reasoning was that real-life emergency communications often featured overstepping and crowding, so an officer should be skilled in filtering out the noise.

  “How’s it looking, Unit Seventeen?” Frady’s broadcast voice issued from the dashboard speaker, using Mark’s assigned number to simulate on-duty patrol.

  “Looks like asphalt’s a little—”

  “All units, Ten-Thirty-two!” Frady barked. “Armed robbery suspect heading west on Tree Street.”

  “Unit Seventeen in pursuit,” Mark said into his mike, gunning the engine and accelerating. “Tree Street” was the name of the straightaway where the students practiced accelerating, braking, and dodging obstacles. The route had a series of four exits, each at a different angle and all named after various species of trees.

  As Mark pushed the cruiser to sixty, he fully expected Frady to throw the 90-degree left turn at him, which was the most difficult. He braced for the fake name of “Dogwood Avenue” to come over the radio.

  “Suspect in a maroon SUV, armed and dangerous,” Frady said, spitting the words like staccato bullets.

  “This is Unit Seventeen. I’m Ten-Eighty with suspect in sight,” Mark replied, talking fast but steadily. Even though the situation was make-believe, he couldn’t help the surge of adrenaline coursing through him. Part of the drill was to maintain control with only one hand on the wheel, the other busy manipulating the mike.

  Mark glanced to the side where Frady stood by the radio unit, the students gathered around as if part of some frat prank.

  He zoomed past Dogwood. Goddamned Frady. Trying to show me up. He’ll probably throw Birch at me just to keep me off balance.

  “Suspect turning onto Cedar!” Frady said.

  The fuck?

  Mark slammed on the brakes, and despite triggering the anti-lock mechanism, the rubber bit at the pavement with a squeal of resistance. Cedar was two streets back, the first left turn.

  “Suspect still in sight, Unit Seventeen?” Frady asked, artificially maintaining urgency.

  Instead of replying, Mark dropped the mike, yanked the wheel wildly to the left, and cut a donut. I’ll show that asswipe.

  As he leaned into the turn, fighting inertia, his body pulsed with a rush of warmth. The glow was exhilarating and heightened his senses. The tires wailed in a symphonic scream, the surrounding fence glinted like sunlight dappling the surface of uneasy water, and the vehicle was like a sled riding soft snow beneath him. He could even smell the stale cigarette smoke from some prior student’s law-breaking indulgence.

  He rolled out of the circle, startled by his own mastery of the move. He’d not even broken the painted boundaries of Tree Street. By the time the wheels quit complaining, he was already up to forty and headed for Cedar, which was now on the right.

  “Goddamned, Morgan,” Frady said, breaking protocol. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  Mark felt the grin fixed on his face like a skeleton staring stupidly at its own epitaph. He yanked the mike into his fist by its cord and thumbed it on. “I’m Ten-Eighty on Tree Street,” Mark said, wondering if the students could see him through the tinted windshield.

  Mark realized he’d already botched the assignment, because he’d forgotten to engage the bar lights and siren. Not that the criminal cared, and it wasn’t like Mark needed to warn vehicles in a deserted parking lot.

  He communed with the roar of the engine, 250 horses galloping toward hell. As he thrust the accelerator to the floor, he was dimly aware of the unexpected pleasure of power. In high school, while the jocks were picking up chicks in muscle cars and hot rods, he’d driven a rusty Toyota, reading Forbes instead of Car and Driver. Now, here he was, hunched over the wheel and wanting more juice.

  He got it.

  And it felt good.

  “Break off pursuit, Unit Seventeen,” Frady ordered.

  Instead of slowing, Mark whipped the cruiser to seventy and veered between the painted lines that designated Cedar Street. The “street” was only forty yards long, ending in a fence, and beyond it was a strip of lawn and landscaping that buffered the college from the highway.

  Now where’s that suspect?

  Where are you hiding?

  Officer Morgan has a surprise for you.

  Armed and dangerous. That was an excuse to shoot him, right?

  Mark tossed the mike away, barely aware of Frady’s frantic jabbering on the radio.

  Mark reached below the seat to where the Glock was strapped above his ankle. Sure, the college didn’t allow concealed weapons, but how did they expect Mark to keep the streets safe if only the crooks had guns? What was he supposed to do, write a warning ticket?

  The baggy pants that had disguised the bulk of the weapon were a barrier, and Mark nearly let go of the wheel in his haste to free the pistol.

  “Break off, Morgan!” Frady shouted, one last attempt to restore order.

  “Fuck off, Frady Cat,” Morgan shouted to the sky.

  The fence was dead ahead, approaching fast, and Mark glanced around, surprised. The suspect was nowhere in sight.

  You’re not getting away that easy.

  The cruiser plowed into the fence, jerking Mark forward. He bounced against the seatbelt and the passenger’s-side air bag explo
ded. The chain links stretched taut with a brittle skreee. Then Mark was through, peeling the fence loose from its posts as metal grabbed at the cruiser’s flanks. He bounced over the uneven terrain and plowed through a stand of flowering shrubs. By then, he was sufficiently slowed to merge with the midday traffic.

  The other cars miraculously made way, even slowing to the speed limit so Mark could easily move through them. Going with the flow, Mark was able to free the Glock and lay it on the seat beside him.

  He checked the side and rearview mirrors, then peered through the windshield.

  Somewhere there was a maroon SUV that had made the mistake of stepping out of line while Officer Mark Morgan was on duty. It would be a mistake the crook would live to regret. Or maybe not live. Whatever.

  He was humming, glowing, flushed with heat as he clicked off the chattering CB radio.

  It felt good to be a cop.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dominic Scagnelli didn’t like the way this was going.

  That wasn’t unusual.

  He hadn’t liked the goddamned Drug Enforcement Agency. He hated the FBI. And this new gig as a fixer for Danny-Boy Burchfield was about the bottom of the fucking barrel.

  The bitch of it was, this new job paid better than any of them. At least on the numbers reported to the Internal Revenue Service. But the IRS could roll up those check stubs and cram them up their puckered little buttholes, for all he cared.

  They were all part of the same machine, the upper end of the trough. And people like him were paid to stand guard while the hogs fed.

  Simple as that.

  And in a way, he was getting his share of the swill, too.

  Scagnelli reached into his pocket to touch the metal tin of “breath mints.” You’ve got to hand it to that two-faced bastard, Wallace Forsyth. He really knows where to score some good shit.

  Scagnelli glanced out the car window. He was parked in a handicapped space near the rear exit to the neurosciences building. He wasn’t sure when Dr. Alexis Morgan would make her daily trek to her car, but it was close to lunchtime and that was as good a bet as any.