Aces and Eights

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  I froze in position, my eye riveted to the crack of light at the top of the door.

  Outside, something stirred.

  Holding my breath and offering eternal homage to whatever archangels have charge of sound and movement, I awaited developments.

  A full minute of nothing.

  And then movement, a disturbance of light patterns outside. Sound of footsteps. Shod. Breathing noises. A yawn. The screech had interrupted someone’s sleep. But would the someone guess its origin?

  More waiting and then another series of footsteps—this time receding in the direction of the hangar doors. A slow march there, checking them out. Another halt at the far corner; something heavy tapping on wood and then on metal. The butt of a rifle, I theorized. A long wait. And then more steps.

  Coming in my direction.

  He would be armed and semi-alert; not really expecting trouble, but ready all the same. If he opened the door, my best chance would be a quick kick to the head. I clenched the fingers of my right hand inside the grille mesh to steady my base, and waited. But the opportunity never came.

  Halting just outside the door, the guard spent a moment audibly shifting whatever weapon he was carrying—I could imagine him settling it on its sling with the snout aimed at the door jamb—and rattled the outer knob. It was secure, and that seemed to be all he wanted to know.

  The footsteps marched away.

  And I allowed myself to draw another breath.

  My wristwatch was gone, as were my wallet and money and keys, but I stood still on the toilet lid and counted out 1,800 seconds before allowing myself to make the next move.

  Time enough for a sleepy man to find his way back to dreamland.

  And time enough to think up a nice silent way of getting that grille out of the way.

  When the time was up, I began slowly to unwind the turnbuckle, handling the lever through each turn instead of letting it do its own thing, while keeping an eye on the grille to see that it didn’t spring noisily back into place.

  It stayed put, and a minute or two later I was picking at the various knots to take the turnbuckle apart and cursing the inspiration that had made me soak the clothes in water.

  But finally it was done.

  The shirt and vest had suffered worst. No hope of salvage. Not that there had been much in the first place.

  Struggling back into the trousers and trying not to notice the additional damage inflicted by recent abuse, I picked up the rest of my clothing and climbed back on the stool.

  Most of the noise had come from the one rusted screw, and I stuffed the remnants of my shirt into the space between the grille and its mooring, smothering the surrounding area as well as possible and stuffing tag ends into the wire mesh to hold it in place. The left side of the grille frame got the same treatment, this time with the vest. And the rear edge, directly over the toilet tank, got the coat.

  I took hold of the free side of the grille and began to bend it. Inch by inch, pausing to assess damage and to remove loose—potentially noisy—bits of dirt and rust as well as freed screws and miscellaneous hardware, I was able to pull the free edge down into the little room. I stepped off the toilet seat when the edge was low enough and put my whole weight into the effort of forcing it through the last few inches of arc. And finally it was done.

  Sometimes the luck is bad. But sometimes it is good, too. The pulling and hauling and bending produced only one more sound that might have been dangerous; a reluctant screw toward the back of the frame gave way with a sharp snap. But the sound was muffled by the folds of the shirt and brought no footsteps in my direction.

  I recovered the clothing I had used as sound dampers and tried not to look too closely as I stacked it on the toilet lid, adding socks and boots as soon as I could get out of them.

  Then I put a bare foot on the doorknob. Sprang upward to grasp the top sill of the metal wall.

  And climbed into the ceiling.

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  This is the knowledge that we hug to ourselves, the fire of the soul at which we warm our hands in the long winter of self-doubt: “I am one of the good guys...and if I had the power, I would use it well.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The legendary ninja of medieval Japan are said to have been the originators of tsuchigumo—literally, “bat in the rafters”—the technique of hanging undetected from the ceiling of a room.

  It’s an interesting exercise and I had a little training in it, early on.

  But I didn’t need that kind of expertise to move around the upper reaches of the hangar, and that was good, because my last practice session was years behind me and I was in no shape to give it much of a shot.

  Climbing through the steel girders to the curved side of the roof was a chore in itself, and once there I found that the altered perspective seemed to emphasize the dizziness carried over from recent rude handling. I clung to my perch and offered the only available argument. No hurry, Preacher. No schedule to meet. Don’t have to move at all until you want to. We could stay up here for a week, have meals brought in...

  Slowly, handhold by handhold, I moved down again to the spot where stringers joined the main roof girders and followed one of those laterally toward the sliding doors.

  Along the way, I found something useful.

  Someone—perhaps one of the steelworkers who built this part of the hangar—had left three steel bolts cradled in a pocket formed by the juncture of two T-bars. I put one of them in my pocket and moved on until I was above the plywood shack nearest the doors.

  That was far enough.

  Almost too far, in fact. The roof of the shack, like the roof of the steel-walled room I had just left, was made of wide-spaced steel-wire mesh. A guard shack, I decided. With a guard asleep inside.

  The man was wearing dark coveralls, and there was something odd about one of his arms. It appeared to be strapped to his chest. But the important thing was that his eyes were closed.

  I eased slowly back out of sight.

  And took the bolt out of my pocket.

  Surveying the area outside the guard shack, I decided that a man coming to investigate a noise would be likely to halt about two feet outside the single door, looking and listening. Especially if he had been asleep.

  Guesswork, sure. A best-case scenario in a world of worst-case events. But I wasn’t going to do any better, and besides, I was getting dizzy again. I waited for the scenery to settle down and then moved carefully into the perch I had selected, above the door and just out of sight from inside the room.

  I threw the bolt as hard as I could against the far wall and was rewarded with a metal-on-metal note that would have roused a statue.

  Results were all that could have been hoped.

  A muffled oath floated up from the direction of the guard shack and a moment later the ex-sleeper emerged, mini-Uzi slung in firing position under his left arm, and halted with almost uncanny precision on the precise spot I had selected.

  I released my hold on the steel rafter and fell on him.

  Like a tree.

  Weight alone would have put us both on the floor, and I landed rolling, using the guard’s torso as a pad and whirling to foil any possible countermove.

  But it was waste motion.

  The guard lay still where he had fallen, facedown and jaw slack. I approached with caution—his hand was still on the butt of the Uzi—and removed the weapon before checking for signs of life, but there were none, and I wasn’t surprised. I had felt the neck go when my bare foot connected with the head.

  No regrets. He was dead and I was alive and that was just the way I wanted it to be.

  All the same...

  I took a deep breath and rolled him over. And gave myself a long minute, squatting there, to assimilate and otherwise deal with what I saw there.

  Children live in a world they never made.

  But adults have no such excuse; the world they live in is a world they made and if it isn’t one they lik
e very much, well, tough. With very few exceptions, indeed, the choices are your own and the consequences of each decision are entirely predictable. Credit and blame alike are the earned portion of the man in the mirror. But you don’t have to like it.

  The season of death was upon me.

  I had come to Las Vegas for a game of high-stakes poker, but seemed instead to spend most of my time looking upon the dead faces of old acquaintances.

  The man whose neck I had broken was Jorge de la Torre, Little Trouble Martinez’s sometime drinking and sparring partner from Khe Sanh.

  First Sergeant Big Trouble.

  I left him where he had fallen and picked up the Uzi. Habit. We were alone; if anyone else had been on the premises he would have seized the moment to blow my fool head off long ago.

  But that didn’t make sense.

  At least four more people—the driver of the Trans Am, the knife thrower who had killed Happy Apodaca, the pilot of the helicopter, and the door gunner—were in the play. Had to be. Big Trouble couldn’t have filled any of the slots because he had the use of only one arm.

  The other one was, as I had noticed while he was sleeping, strapped to his chest with adhesive tape and I thought I knew why. Ex-sergeant de la Torre would have been the killer who got away after I broke his collarbone during the fight in the penthouse of the Scheherazade; escaped to the rooftop, leaving Little Trouble to be picked off by the helicopter gunner.

  But what the hell had he been doing there in the first place?

  And why was I still alive...?

  Arranging the Uzi’s sling over my right shoulder, I began a systematic tour of the premises. Know the land, know the equipment, see what is available. Maybe even find a few answers.

  Or maybe not. The first door I came to was locked. It was of wood, like the space it guarded, and I decided a hard kick or two might be in order. But later, perhaps. When I was wearing boots again.

  For the moment, curiosity was partially appeased by the view through a mesh-covered window. This was the ammunition locker, the old-fashioned powder magazine. Boxes of wood and crates of steel were plainly labeled, .50-caliber armor piercing, .25–caliber small arms, .30–caliber military ball, 9 mm Parabellum, frag grenades—British, American, and French types, no German ones for some reason—ranged below a bin of concussion types and some police flash-bangs.

  Shelves seemed to be stacked with larger items, self-propelled antitank missiles and similar nasties.

  I moved on.

  The Huey with the phony NANG markings was at the back of the hangar, as I had surmised. I put my hand against the main engine compartment and was surprised to feel a little heat. That meant it had been running less than two hours ago. Odd. I’d expected it to be cold.

  Time passes fast when you’re having fun.

  I checked the side door. It wasn’t locked, but the machine gun and ammunition had been removed. Nothing sloppy about these troops. Someone competent in charge. I looked back to where Big Trouble was lying and remembered him and spent a moment or two wishing that I had the past couple of days to live over again, and that was depressing because, thinking about it, I realized that even if I did I would probably do most of the same things again, and the two Jorges would still be dead.

  Knowing yourself is supposed to be an asset. And it is.

  But no one ever said it would make you happy.

  The rest of the hangar was probably about par for the course as small-scale private arsenals go. I’m no expert on the breed. But there was one little room—the only metal compartment in the building except for my late prison—that I couldn’t get into, so of course I had to have a look. That’s how we primates are put together. Check your local zoo.

  On the way back to the guardroom, I stopped off at the john and used the key hanging outside that door to retrieve my clothing.

  The coat and vest hardly seemed worth the effort, and I almost left the shirt behind as a matter of sanitary engineering. But the socks and boots were still in good shape, and they were first priority if I was going to do any walking in the immediate future. And I hoped I would.

  Big Jorge’s pockets were empty.

  As Little Jorge’s had been.

  But there was a key rack in the guardroom and I checked it out. Most of the items were clearly marked, and I pocketed the keys to the half-track’s ignition system (what lunatic had installed locks on military hardware intended for irregulars?) and a couple of others I thought might be useful, but had to scan the labels a second time before finding the one I was really after. Or what I decided had to be it—the last key on the bottom of the rack and the only one without a label.

  Crossing the hangar again, I spared another glance for the remains of Jorge de la Torre and decided we still had unfinished business.

  Later, man...

  The half-track was in good condition and only groaned a couple of times before starting; I let it warm up for a minute or two and then shut off the engine after making sure the fuel indicator was well toward the top. At least I wouldn’t have to walk.

  And then I went back to the mystery room.

  The key slid easily into the lock, which I noticed was new, and turned what felt like a dead bolt without difficulty. But the knob below was original equipment, old and rusted and slightly out of alignment, and it gave me a moment or two of argument before giving way with a rush that sent me staggering off balance a full step into the space the door had been guarding. I muttered something that might have cost me an hour or two of vigil back in seminary and pulled the key loose and turned to give the room a quick once-over. And stopped breathing.

  Two boxes sat on the table before me. One large, painted red. One small, painted yellow. Both labeled in French, but I didn’t need an interpreter to recognize the stylized trefoils stenciled on their sides. Or to know what they implied.

  The big box red would be the electronic half of the system. The detonator.

  The little yellow one was the fissionable material. Enriched plutonium, if the label was to be believed.

  Corner Pocket—and Interpol—had been right, after all. Sam Goines really did have an atomic bomb.

  Past tense.

  Now it was mine.

  The boxes were heavy and I needed a hand truck to get the larger one over to the half-track, and then the problem of loading it into the bed was simply out of sight. No skip loader, no chain hoist. They must have humped it around by multiple manpower, but I was alone. And in a hurry.

  So...

  The red box came open easily enough. Just two clips at the top and two more on the sides. The device inside made no sense to me, but I hadn’t thought it would. Dials, switches, and a shiny globe with wires running into it. Work of genius, most likely. Marvel of the age.

  I tipped it out and smashed it to pieces with an emergency ax from the side of the half-track.

  Some people like being a one-man atomic power.

  Some don’t.

  When I was done, I picked up the pieces and tossed them into the vehicle, closed up the box and hefted it in, too—still heavy enough, even without its late contents—and put the heavy little yellow box in beside it. Then I went back to the guardroom.

  Someone there had been a heavy smoker. Not Jorge, evidently; no matches or lighter or cigarette droppings in his pockets. But the ashtray was full of half-smoked butts, and beside it were the two items I’d hoped to find: a full pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. All right!

  I removed the magazine key from its hook and went in there and made the arrangements I’d been planning while I was trying to deal with Sam Goines’s private-enterprise nuclear capability. Then I went to the back of the hangar and began the easy but time-consuming work of tipping high-octane fuel drums on their sides and rolling them into positions where I thought they might do the most good.

  And then it was time to finish my business with Big Trouble.

  A lot of time had passed and a lot of changes might have taken place, but back in Vietnam Sergean
t Jorge de la Torre had been a devout and believing Roman Catholic. I had resigned from the Episcopal priesthood before rejoining the army, and we had never discussed religious matters. But resignation does not cancel a priest’s orders. Or relieve him of certain responsibilities.

  I went back into the rest room and washed out a plastic tumbler I found there and then put a little more water in it and set it aside and went through the ritual of cleansing my hands and then said a few words over the water and took it and went back to kneel beside Big Trouble and began: “O God the Father, have mercy upon the soul of thy servant...”

  It seemed to take no time at all...

  And then it was time to go.

  The big roller-doors were blocked from inside, and I pushed one out of the way and started up the half-track and drove it outside and left it grumbling there while I went back to attend to the final chores.

  In the magazine, I checked the loose powder I had piled in the nearest ammo bin and made sure the paper towels covering it had no stray grains to foul things up and shorten my getaway time.

  The place reeked of gasoline, but that was a deception. The stuff I had poured over the explosives was really kerosene—jet fuel for the Huey’s engine—with a lower volatility that I was counting on to do the work on command rather than by accident.

  I opened the cigarette pack and tapped one out and lighted it and choked on the first drag. But I took two more, to make sure it was burning well, and then used the cover of the matchbook to clamp the cigarette in position under the matches, with the burning end a millimeter or two away from the heads. I figured I had about ninety seconds, give or take a few one way or the other, before ignition.

  Carefully, cautiously I set my improvised fuse in the middle of the paper towels. And ran for the half-track.

  Its engine had stopped, and I had a moment of real panic wondering if the whole plan was going to backfire on me. But it started again as soon as I turned the key, and I hit the throttle and got away from there.