Swap Out!

by M. L. Buchman

  “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Davis. Tell me another one,” but he kept his mutter soft enough that only he could hear it. He wished there was another scenario to come up with, but there was only him standing there in someone else’s sweats. The oatmeal mush that he was presently using as his brain didn’t offer him a clue.

  A bright ping sounded in the air. It echoed strangely in the unfinished space, but the sound was unmistakable. An elevator had just arrived on the floor. He spun and faced the building’s core where a half dozen elevators were arrayed in a neat bank. Unadorned with lobby walls or carpeting, they were the only interior walls on the entire floor other than his two concrete cubicles. The newest innovation in the alternate reality of office cubicle-worker world, once in, you can’t get out. Their only mistake was having a door at all.

  The nameless woman, make that nameless and armed woman, was waving at him from the unfinished lobby. Not a friendly wave, more a get-your-lazy-ass-moving wave.

  One of the elevators blinked its light to “up.”

  Her wave became more urgent.

  He started toward her at a shambling trot, but was soon running as fast as his weakened condition allowed. His bare feet slapping loudly on the flat concrete unbaffled by walls or ceilings. He didn’t know what she wanted, but if the other option was going back into one of the concrete cubes, he was out of options.

  But that much he already knew.

  CHAPTER 18

  Jeff and the nameless woman went up. Not down. Eighty-three floors was the top. Not many cities reached up that high and he’d been in most of them. Dallas maybe. Hard to tell from his one brief glance in the flat evening light.

  When the elevator pinged out at the top floor, they clambered out into a penthouse clearly set up for the highest-end corporate parties. Lush paneling adorned the walls, exquisite linen covered the tables lining the windows, and tasteful groupings of dark leather armchairs. It had all the flavor of an old-world exclusive men’s club. How many times had corporate America been bought and sold in this room? It had that feel. The deep carpet tickled the bottoms of his feet, intensely plush. Had anyone else ever walked barefoot in this room? Probably not. Had anyone in prison sweats ever been allowed in this room? Definitely not.

  The view out the windows was astonishing, even to a seasoned New Yorker. The setting sun, just touching the horizon, made the city glisten gold in every direction. The buildings’ lights adding to the shimmer until it was a fairy kingdom.

  The woman pulled a small black box from a thigh pocket. She pulled out an antenna, lifted one of those red switch covers Jeff remembered from Vietnam explosives days, and pressed the button underneath.

  The building shuddered. Eighty-three stories of building shuddered.

  Jeff dropped to his hands and knees and covered his head. The bombs were falling again. The Saigon labs were being blown to shit and he and Phillip were once again bathed in the blood of others.

  He could hear the screaming. Was screaming. It was his own scream.

  “I don’t want to die!”

  The woman he’d followed, trusted for reasons unknown, had blown up the building. The Twin Towers were falling all over again. He’d been less than three blocks away when it fell. He’d never forget the way the street had heaved and shaken that morning. It had been the most wrong moment in that entire terrible day.

  “Just the elevator motors.” She might have been discussing the amount of salt used on a plate of French fries. “The motors are anchored to the roof right above us. Anyone who follows us will have a bit of a climb.”

  “Follow us? They’re going to follow us?”

  She didn’t bother to answer as she pulled him to his feet so easily that he knew he’d underestimated her earlier. She wasn’t merely strong. She was fit at a level few people ever achieved. At least few of the people he’d known. Cocktail parties schmoozing with television and publishing executives about the next show or cookbook didn’t have people like this woman in frequent attendance. Even the interminable big-city hotel workout rooms for traveling overachievers and New York gyms didn’t buff up women to this extent. Or men for that matter.

  Of course they’d follow, whoever “they” were, and they’d be following much too fast.

  Yet he couldn’t make his feet move. He just bobbed and weaved in the storm of danger floating about this oh-so-civilized penthouse suite.

  She grabbed his arm in a steely grip and dragged him along. He stumbled at first but with a quick trot managed to catch up with her hurried walk. They crashed through a stairwell door and continued their upward progress on more concrete stairs.

  She pulled out a keychain. It had a little car unlock button, just like his Mercedes. It was such a mundane action that he actually laughed aloud.

  “Oh yes, sure. Let’s go for a quick drive around the roof. That will make me feel so much better while half the nation is hunting for me. Hope you have a sunroof. I’ve always enjoyed a nice sunroof.”

  “No sunroof. You’ll like the view though.”

  He considered several snappy retorts but didn’t have the breath as she moved up the three flights of stairs as if striding along a hallway. His thrice-weekly workout wasn’t nearly up to her brisk pace, even discounting his weakened condition.

  The first thing he noticed when the roof door slapped open was the odor. Engine exhaust, it smelled like an airport. The second thing was the wind. The door was flung wide and the t-shirt and sweats he was wearing were shuddering across his body so hard it was halfway between a tickle and pain.

  A helicopter was revving up, revving up with no one in it. A copter like none he’d ever seen. Not at New York’s Wall Street heliport. Not on the news. Not in the old Blue Thunder television series. It was small and lean. The tail was T-shaped with what looked like a giant household fan built into its twisted tail. The sides were dull black and at a dozen strange angles, just like the B-2 stealth bomber that first flew through the CNN clips of Desert Storm raiding attacks. Even in the failing light, he could see two missiley things were hanging beneath stubby wings and there looked to be room for many more. Absolutely military, but without a single marking on it. Not even a light.

  She pushed his head down as they trotted beneath the whipping rotors. She pulled open a door and shoved him through it. Her shout barely louder than the engine.

  “Seatbelts first. Then helmet.”

  He had to crawl into the seat. Consoles and levers surrounded him. There was even a panel between his legs and controls you could probably only work with your knees. He scrabbled around to puzzle out the multiple straps of the belt as she latched the door.

  Breathe.

  He couldn’t.

  Each moment the rotor revved faster, his pulse followed it upward. It thundered so loudly inside him that he’d scream if he had time, but the thin sliver of rational brain he had left was too busy getting the cross-chest harness latched down and snugged as tight against him as he could stand.

  The woman climbed into her seat through another door, close in front of him but a bit lower. Her head was about the height of his chest offering him a clear forward view. The rooftop and the entire city was spread before them. A sea of lights rising in the darkness.

  Chicago, he’d been right about flat, wrong about Dallas. And way far away from New York where he’d started this adventure who knew how many days ago. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty? He’d long since lost track.

  The Windy City. A metropolis of nine or ten million people who had no idea he’d been locked in a concrete prison in one of their tallest buildings. Nor that two more people had died there in the night. He made a small bet with himself that their demise wouldn’t appear in any newspaper report or on any police detective’s caseload. The exploded elevator motors would probably be passed off as some minor service repair so as not to strike terror into any high-rise workers. He was in some kind of rea
lly deep shit.

  Thanks a bunch, buddy boy. What the hell had Phillip and Mandy really been up to these last few decades? And why in the name of fucking Christmas and Thursdays had they dragged his sorry ass into whatever they were doing?

  Even as his nameless rescuer buckled in, the engine roared and the rotors spun into a blur.

  He had the seatbelt reasonably fastened, if still a bit loose around the waist, by the time they jerked aloft. He almost lost the helmet from his lap and only a quick grab kept it from banging into her head. He yanked it on as she lifted the nose high and took off going backwards. The chopper kept tipping back until the nose was aiming straight up and he was lying on his seat rather than sitting. The control by his right hand slapped to the right and the helicopter flipped sideways with a twist even John Travolta couldn’t do on the dance floor.

  “And Davis?” She turned her head enough to yell at him.

  “Yeah?” he managed to gasp out. It was the first time she’d used his name.

  “Don’t touch anything I might regret.”

  An array of video screens faced him. He glanced over her shoulder and saw the same array. He looked at the console by his fingers where his arms had naturally come to rest. By his right hand was a control that was still moving, probably in synchronization with his rescuer’s actions. Or kidnapper’s. The top was dotted with a dozen buttons and looked like a joystick for one of those computer game consoles. By his other hand the labels “Stinger” and “Hellfire” were more than enough information. She aimed the nose down and slammed the throttles on full. The skin was practically pulled off his face as they leapt forward.

  Never the best of flyers, he shut his eyes tightly, clutched his cross-your-heart safety harness, and hoped it was enough to hold him together.

  CHAPTER 19

  Two hours. For two hours she’d swooped and bobbed south like a demented bumblebee. Jeff could attest that the Huey pilots in Vietnam didn’t have a thing on her for wild rides. The slender crescent moon appeared to be the only witness to their madcap dash across the rolling countryside.

  At first the fear had been overwhelming. She flew most of the time barely higher than a cow standing on the field. Then she’d sweep to one side or the other and he closed his eyes, convinced the blades were going to dig them a grave in a corn field.

  It took a while to get a handle on things.

  First, he was starting to think that even though she was clearly insane, she was a good enough pilot that they weren’t in immediate danger of death.

  Second, the sweeping turns followed the path on one of the screens between his knees. When she swung left, a little map slid to the right. They passed over a road at the same moment a road slid beneath the dot in the center of the screen.

  Once he had that figured out, he could see that she was avoiding houses and towns in her screaming, low-level sprint. Maybe she did have some idea what she was doing.

  He tried asking her some questions, but her total lack of response, not even to tell him to shut up, made him search the console again. He’d bet that if he pressed the button just by the weapons grip, his microphone would turn on. He might also launch a missile at some unsuspecting John Deere manure spreader parked in the field for the night. Probably best to keep his hands to himself.

  Finally, much to his own surprise, he slept.

  When he woke, the weight of the helmet had added to the unbearable crick in his neck, worse than when he fell asleep during an old movie rerun in his apartment.

  He rolled his head about and worked on the crick.

  His apartment. Mandy in his apartment. His apartment, but designed for her even if it hadn’t been consciously done. Their apartment, he’d designed it for them. The Chagalls and the kitchen for him, and for her, the books and fireplace.

  Damn! Think of something constructive, man. That was the path to nowhere. Please let her be safe.

  Now he needed a distraction. Stare at something. Learn something.

  Jeff studied the consoles before him. He’d always thought a helicopter had a stick in the middle, another beside the seat, and a couple of dials. There were more controls here than on the video mixing console in the TV studio’s control room. They’d insisted on showing him their toys when his show first moved into that space. He’d understood almost none of it, except that it was in sections. Sound here, they called it audio. Lighting there. Cameras controlled by the big patch in the center, subsections for each camera. A big patch of dials and sliders in the center they called mixing. A dozen different television screens they called monitors.

  The console in front of him wasn’t all that different. Well, it was, but at least it was in sections. Search for patterns, Davis. That’s what you’re good at. Someone had designed this thing with a purpose. Yeah, the purpose of making a killing machine. Great.

  Four large screens and four, five, six smaller ones. Each surrounded by a circle of buttons, some redundant, perhaps in case a screen broke, some not. Two in the center, most important, like the central cameras controller in his studio. Weapons and navigation. Off to the sides: communication, engine status, and a lot he didn’t recognize. By his left hand was a nest of buttons and switches sporting far too few labels. By his right, a joystick that was also covered in controls accessible to the thumb and forefinger. Anyone who wrapped their hand around it would look like close kin to Edward Scissorhands.

  The engine changed sound and a stick he hadn’t noticed along the left side of his seat moved. It too sprouted more buttons. Looking to the side, Jeff could see that the woman’s hands rested on an identical stick.

  Their speed, it had taken a while to find that display, began to drop. Three hundred, two-fifty. A small “km” in the corner probably meant kilometers per hour. He tried to convert to miles per hour and his brain offered the answer, “Too damn fast.” He’d buy that.

  On the moving map screen a flashing red “X” crept down from the top as they flew toward it.

  He looked over the pilot’s head out the window. Still night. Not much to see. Not a light anywhere.

  Two hundred.

  One-fifty.

  Now they were nearing the flashing red icon.

  Still black night outside. The thin crescent moon of no real help. Nor the stars, a faded blur through the whipping rotors.

  The helicopter slid to a hover and his stomach kept going for several yards beyond. But it came back fairly quickly, maybe he was getting used to this.

  Jeffie Davis the Helicopter guy, his next incarnation.

  Jeffie.

  Damn!

  He’d managed not to think about Phillip for…

  She continued to descend into the darkness.

  They landed gently, exactly on top of the “X” he still couldn’t see except on the console. The rotors whirled to a stop.

  With a slight jerk, they descended, helicopter and all. The stars that had followed them the whole way slowly disappeared —from the horizon upward. The were lowering into a hole. Then a door or a roof or something slid across the top and blocked out the overhead stars once and for all.

  The sudden silence was deafening.

  “Where are we?” His voice cracked. Not as badly as when Mandy had arrived, but no chance of pretending to his ego that he was doing well.

  His nameless rescuer, or captor, or crazy person pulled off her helmet and stepped out of the craft.

  It took him a while get free of the cockpit that wrapped cocoon-tight around his body.

  They stood a few paces apart, the metal floor cold against his feet. A single light revealed that the helicopter was parked in a large circular space, just a few feet bigger than the now silent rotors. The ceiling was barely visible in the darkness.

  Without a word she led him over to a small silver car.

  He climbed into the Honda Civic’s passenger seat and buckled up. After the
close-fit cockpit of the helicopter, this was positively luxurious.

  Another one of her electronic key fob tricks and a garage door opened in the side of the wall. They drove up a ramp and back into the night.

  “You’re safe for now. We’re home. My home.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “This is your idea of safety?” Jeff wrapped his hands tightly around the pint of beer. He couldn’t even remember what he’d ordered.

  The woman glanced over her shoulder at the crack of pool balls that was followed by a drunken cheer. Four guys moved around the beat-up table in the corner, leaning on pool cues and talking loudly. The bar was one of those worn down, dingy places that had seen better days, twenty or thirty years ago. Dark wood, dim lights, a long bar with a half-dozen taps, the place was half or maybe three-quarters full.

  “Seems pretty safe to me.” She began picking at her fingertips.

  “Great hangout for helicopter pilots who like scaring the shit out of people?” His voice rose toward panic at the end and he bit it back. Now that they were no longer moving, no longer running, the fear was starting to catch up with him. It attacked in nasty little waves from dark corners and made him spill more of his beer than he drank.

  Finally he pinned the pint to the table with both hands and left it there. How had he come to be here? He was America’s number one television chef, not some guy freaking out in a Midwest bar with his bare feet stuck to old beer on a worn-out linoleum floor.

  Easy, Jeff. That’s how you got here. Real easy.

  He’d traveled from studio to concrete box in Chicago high-rise. Concrete box to state-of-the-art helicopter. Helicopter to rundown Honda Civic. Honda Civic to rundown, smelly bar that could have been in any of a thousand towns. Smelly bar to cruddy table. Now he had a cold mug of beer clenched in his fingers no wiser about where they were or who she was.