Hot Start

by David Freed

  I’d just handed the man a political death sentence and now he was offering me a beverage. What part of that equation, I wondered, doesn’t compute? I didn’t ponder the question too long.

  “Sure.”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Black.”

  “Black it is.”

  Walton stood like a man in pain and walked slowly out of his office, subtly shaking his head side-to-side. He’s going down, I thought to myself.

  I checked my phone for e-mails. There were no new ones. I scrolled through the latest international stories on the BBC and Associated Press news wires. Humanity seemed to be in free fall, even more so than usual. Across the globe, people were blowing each other up in huge numbers for reasons that made no sense. And, if they weren’t, Mother Nature was doing the killing for them.

  “Here we are.” Walton returned with two steaming mugs, blue, each bearing the congressional seal. He elbowed the door shut and handed me one.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you,” he said, standing by the window and looking out. “You’ve been more than fair to me in all of this. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

  Coffee is coffee as far as my unrefined palate goes, but even I could tell that this stuff was high end. Strong and full-bodied, it had subtle cocoa flavor and a slight bitter aftertaste that I couldn’t quite place.

  “So,” Walton said, “just so we have all the cards on the table, you wanted to talk to me about Praha Aeronautika?”

  “That and Emil Sokol.”

  He looked at me blankly. “I’m sorry. Who?”

  “Your friend, Congressman, the international pimp. The silent Praha partner. The secret contributor who chunked in a hundred large to your campaign the very day you voted to allocate NATO funds for the specific acquisition of Praha training jets.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Walton said. “I won’t deny that I’m familiar with that particular company. Praha makes fine, affordable aircraft—certainly more affordable than what our own defense industry produces these days—but this gentleman, I’m sorry, what did you say his name was again?”

  “Emil Sokol. Nina used to work for him. I’m sure you remember Nina. She remembers you, quite well. Look, Congressman, we can chitchat all afternoon. I need an answer and I need it now.”

  Walton sat back down behind his desk and rubbed his forehead. “You’re talking about a big decision here,” he said. “I need time to think, weigh my options.”

  His words began sounding strangely far off. At first I thought it was my imagination. I blinked to clear my brain, but that did no good. I glanced down at my hands. There was a weird haze around them, and around Walton’s face. I was suddenly feeling the way I used to when I drank.

  “Mr. Logan?” Walton walked over and leaned into my rapidly diminishing field of vision. “You don’t look too good. Are you feeling OK? Can you hear me? Mr. Logan? . . . Would you like me to call you an ambulance?”

  I could feel my eyes rolling back in my head.

  THE DREAM was always the same: I was on the phone with Savannah. I don’t recall what we talked about specifically, I never did, only that she was still very much alive and that I’d simply forgotten to call her after all this time. There were no words to describe the exuberance I felt, knowing she wasn’t dead. And then her voice grew faint. I begged her to come back to me. I don’t remember why she couldn’t. Like sand on the tide, her words washed clean from my memory the moment I woke up with a start, leaving me only with the crushing, guilt-ridden anguish that she was, in fact, gone, and that nothing I could do would ever bring her back.

  My eyes ached. My stomach hurt. My skull felt like it had been squeezed in a vice. As I came to, I comprehended where I was: in an unfinished, dimly lighted basement, or maybe one of those bomb shelters from the fifties, when everyone lived in fear of Russian nukes. I also realized that I was in my skivvies, spread-eagled, with Velcro straps binding my wrists and ankles to the frame of an electronically adjustable hospital bed.

  Glancing around, I saw in one corner of the room a wheelchair and a stack of portable oxygen canisters. Against one wall was a freestanding metal locker and, next to it, a metal pole on wheels, the kind you find in a hospital for IV medications and plasma bags. The walls were windowless cinder blocks. Exposed utility pipes hung from wooden floor joists above me. To my right, a flight of wooden stairs led to a closed door edged by daylight shining through the frame. To my left, sitting in a tattered corduroy recliner and engrossed in a paperback copy of Moby Dick, was a massive Samoan-looking guy. He was about thirty, decked out in Hawaiian-style board shorts, neon green, and a sleeveless black muscle shirt. His dark hair was slicked back, the sides shorn high and tight, marine-style. The only light in the room petered from a brass floor lamp next to his chair.

  Subtly, so as not to attract his attention, I tested the Velcro restraints around my wrists. The left strap was snugged tight. Not so the right. There was the slightest bit of give. That’s what I learned about Velcro when I was with Alpha, where we were always trying to find more effective ways to secure the occasionally high value targets we captured rather than killed outright. Once Velcro fails a little, we found, it fails a lot. Always better to use duct tape or plastic zip ties.

  Being bound and spread-eagled isn’t what you’d call comfortable. As I shifted my weight slightly, trying to find a less painful position, the bed creaked. The giant Samoan-looking guy looked up at me from his reading.

  “Good. You’re awake.”

  I nodded toward his reading material. “You know what Moby Dick’s favorite meal was?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Fish and ships.”

  He smiled and set the book aside, but not before carefully marking his place with a folded corner. A well-read bruiser. I liked him immediately.

  “You’re not going to tell me where I am, are you?”

  “Where you are doesn’t matter right now,” he said. “What matters is that you and I come to an agreement.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “You have some photographs. My acquaintance would like them.”

  “By acquaintance,” I said, “you mean Congressman Pierce Walton, who spiked my coffee.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the giant Samoan-looking guy said.

  “This isn’t going to end well for you. You know that, right?”

  “How so?”

  “Me lying here, all tied up? It’s called kidnapping. Walton’s looking at prison time. You are too.”

  He stood, towering over me, an intimidating presence. “All you have to do,” he said, “is tell me where the originals of those pictures are. Once they’re in my possession, I blindfold you, you get dropped off, and you never lay eyes on me again. That’s Plan A.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “From a health standpoint, I really can’t advise Plan B.”

  “I see. So in other words, I go with Plan A and I don’t end up swimming with the fishes.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well,” I said, “all things considered, I’ll have to go with Plan A.”

  “An excellent choice. Where are the pictures?”

  “In my truck, under the driver’s seat.”

  “Where’s the truck?”

  “Parked outside Walton’s field office.”

  The giant Samoan-looking guy said he was glad he didn’t have to hurt me. I told him that made two of us and asked where my clothes were. He nodded toward the freestanding locker. I’d get them back, along with my phone and revolver, after he fetched the pictures.

  Not for a second did I believe him. No way did I expect to get out of there alive. He would go to my truck and discover that the pictures weren’t there. Then he would come back and make me pay.

  “Sit tight,” he said, checking my restraints and tightening the loose one around my right wrist. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  After fi
shing my car keys out of my jeans, he climbed the stairs two at a time and opened the door. Light filtered down, along with the sound of a television, before the door closed and he was gone.

  I yanked on my wrist straps, cursing silently for not having tried to take him down while I had the chance. Now I was stuck.

  Or was I?

  If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, then I needed to do some inventing, pronto. I quickly discovered that even with straps restricting both ankles, I could curl my right foot over the edge of the adjustable hospital mattress and almost touch the buttons of the bed’s electronic control panel with the tips of my toes. I strained as hard as I could, gritting my teeth, feeling blindly for the buttons, my head pounding, my surgically repaired knee aching, wishing like hell I’d been born double-jointed.

  C’mon, Buddha, cut me some slack. Literally.

  Suddenly the bed began to move—but in the wrong direction. Instead of folding inward, which would’ve brought my torso and hands closer to the straps binding my lower legs, the mattress started flattening out, pulling the straps even tighter. In pain, I groped desperately with my toes, almost losing contact with the controls, before the bed began moving in the opposite direction, bending in on itself like a horseshoe.

  As the mattress moved, the Velcro restraints slowly began to slide closer together along the bedrails. I grabbed the tip of the left strap with my outstretched fingers and pulled for all I was worth. Just like that, my leg was free. I could now shift my hip and stretch my right hand closer to my left ankle. In seconds, both legs were unbound.

  I’m no gymnast, but I’d like to think I’m still pretty limber for a relic. I can still bend over and touch my toes. As I discovered in that adjustable hospital bed, I can also touch my wrists with my feet. Curled on my back, I used my toes as fingers to pry apart the Velcro and free my right hand. The left hand quickly followed.

  I was in business.

  My gun was gone along with my wallet and keys, but my shoes, clothes, and phone were heaped in the locker. I dressed quickly, then went searching for a weapon, any weapon. My options were hardly vast. I hefted one of the oxygen canisters. It felt light but it was solid metal. An impromptu club. It would have to do.

  I climbed the stairs as silently as I could, the canister in my right hand, grimacing with each creak and groan of the wood. Pressing my ear to the door, I could hear people talking before I realized that the voices were coming from the television I’d heard earlier. I turned the doorknob, which wasn’t locked, and looked out.

  Not ten feet away, between the front door and me, another giant Samoan-looking guy was kicked back on a sofa, watching The Price is Right. Only this one was armed with a hunting rifle.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Special operators learn quickly what guns function more effectively than others when fighting in tight quarters. Hunting rifles are far down the list. With their long barrels, they’re harder to maneuver around corners and can generally fire only a single round at a time. Had big Samoan-looking dude number two been armed with a short-barrel Heckler & Koch or an M-4 with a collapsible stock like those I once carried, both capable of fully automatic fire, I might have thought twice about attacking him, but the guy had a hunting rifle, and it was leaning against the couch where he was watching TV. He’d have to turn and shift his weight to reach for it, which definitely tilted the prospects of a fight in my favor.

  I would’ve preferred stealth. Surprise was my only option. I hoped he was alone. One on one, I had a fighting chance. Two-on-one, I was toast.

  I kicked open the door and charged.

  His eyes went wide as he saw me and he stood, trying for the rifle, but his stance was ungainly and unbalanced, and when I clocked him in the side of his face with the oxygen tank, the way Mickey Mantle once did baseballs, down he went. A smaller man might’ve stayed down, but this dude was as strong as he was large. As he staggered to his knees, I swung the canister and tattooed him once more. His jaw made a noise like a breadstick snapping in half. This time, he didn’t get up.

  The house in which I found myself was small and dilapidated. Worn carpet. Cottage-cheese ceilings. Thrift-store decor. The palm trees I observed upon parting the filthy, water-stained curtains covering the front window suggested I was still in Rancho Bonita, but I really didn’t know. Under less urgent circumstances, I might’ve checked the guy on the floor for positive identification and scoured the place for any bits of in-tel, but I didn’t know when Moby Dick was coming back after realizing I’d deceived him. What I did know was that he’d be angry when he did. I needed to get out of there, pronto.

  I paused long enough to eject the cartridge seated in the rifle’s firing chamber. The caliber was engraved on the receiver, as was the rifle’s manufacturer—a .270 Winchester. Different rounds and a different gun had been used to kill the Hollisters. I thought for a split-second about taking the rifle with me, but had I gone running down the street armed in such fashion, I would’ve been deemed fair game by any cop who happened to spot me. To most police officers, a man brandishing a gun on a public street isn’t innocent until proven guilty. He’s target practice.

  I was about halfway down the block when a mud-splattered Ford F-250 pickup with oversized off-road tires came roaring up behind me and screeched on the brakes. Out stepped one livid Moby Dick. Of course, I did what anybody with a half a thimbleful of smarts would’ve done.

  I bolted.

  The guy was built like a fire hydrant. No way was he going to beat me in a foot race. He knew that. He didn’t try. He got back in his truck, burned a one-eighty, and came roaring after me.

  Sidewalks didn’t stop him. He bore down on me, his truck jumping the curb, crashing into recycling receptacles lining the street. It must’ve looked like one of those B-movie car-chase scenes, where chickens go squawking and push-cart fruit vendors leap for their lives, melons flying, but this pursuit wasn’t choreographed. The gap between his front grill and my rear end was closing rapidly. Moby Dick was doing everything he could to run me over.

  A teenage hottie in denim short shorts and a mauve tank top was bent over on her porch, painting her toenails bright red. She looked up nonchalantly as I cut across her front lawn at full speed.

  “Call the police!”

  She didn’t move.

  I one-hopped a chain-link fence and vaulted into the backyard next door as Moby Dick’s truck skidded to a stop on the street behind me. He jumped out and started to give chase on foot, then realized the futility of his effort and ran back to his truck. Glancing back to see where he was, I didn’t see the dog taking a sunbath directly in my path and tripped over it.

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  The pooch, an unneutered pit bull mix, was as startled as I was and started barking as I rolled to my feet. I vaulted over the back gate, into an alley, before he could sink his chompers into me. The alley led to perpendicular cross-streets on either end of the block. I recognized the neighborhood—the same working-class enclave north of downtown Rancho Bonita where, a day earlier and about six blocks away, I’d encountered pilot Pete McManus’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Peyton, in her nausea-inducing garage butcher shop. Which direction to run in hopes of escaping Moby Dick was a toss-up. I decided to go south.

  I should have gone north.

  Having rounded the block, Moby Dick’s truck suddenly veered at high speed into the alley and cut me off. I reversed course, frantically trying to force open a couple of side gates, but they were both latched from the inside. The fences themselves were eight feet high—too tall for a winded, middle-aged guy with one bad knee to scale. I’d have to make a stand.

  I pressed myself flat against a dented aluminum garage door as Moby Dick zoomed past. The front end of his truck missed me by inches. The mirror on the truck’s right side didn’t, launching me down the alley. How far, I couldn’t tell you, but it was definitely a personal best. I landed hard. The next thing I remember, I was on my back and Moby Dick was straddling me, clutching the fron
t of my shirt and beating my face like he was kneading raw dough.

  Why didn’t he simply run over me and be done with it? You’d have to ask him, though wailing on the object of your ire with clenched fists does have its appeal, I’m here to attest. The downside of trying to punch somebody’s lights out is that they’ll punch your lights out first, before you can finish the job.

  With my strength waning but not my resolve, I rammed my left thigh up and into Moby Dick’s crotch as savagely as I could. An odd little grunt escaped his throat, the kind people make in the loo when they could use a little more fiber in their diet. He grabbed his groin with both hands, fell to his knees, then pitched over, whimpering like a third-grader.

  I was intending to get in his truck and drive over to the office of the honorable Pierce Walton, member of the US House of Representatives, when the first police cruiser showed up.

  “THE LAST time I checked,” Detective Kopecky said, “members of Congress don’t typically go around spiking people’s coffee.”

  “Well, I’d have to say it was definitely a first for me, that’s for sure.”

  I was sitting in an interrogation room at RBPD headquarters. Kopecky brought me a hand towel for the cut under my left eye and asked me for the third time if I needed a paramedic. For the third time, I said no. Aside from that meddlesome cut, a few new bumps and lacerations, and my latest broken nose, I’d survive.

  “Let’s go over it one more time if you don’t mind,” Kopecky said, “just to make sure I got everything straight.”

  “That’s not why you want to go over it again, Detective. You’re looking for discrepancies in my story, because you don’t think I’m telling you the truth.”

  “No, actually, I don’t.” He tossed his pen on the table where his notepad was and leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “You’re talking about a four-term congressman with a spotless record of public service, Mr. Logan, a guy who’s never had so much as a speeding ticket, and you expect me to believe that he spiked your coffee? That he was doing business with a Czechoslovakian pimp? That he had sex parties on a jet with hookers?”