by Chuck Logan
“Jesus, Lemmer . . .”
“That’s not my name,” he says. Then he tilts up his head, balancing on the moving pedals, and probes one eye then the other with his finger and holds up two contact lenses. His eyes are still rimmed with fatigue, but now they’re green. “Joe Davis,” he says in a barely audible voice, extending his right hand across his chest.
Okay, it’s just too weird, like being swept along in a dreamlike funhouse moment, bobbing side by side on the machines. But she’s curious about what he’ll say next, so she lowers her elbow to offer her hand and, dodging the seesaw motion of the trainer handles, their hands clasp. “Jesse Kraig. What, ah, is going on?”
“Either the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life or the most important thing in yours—if me and some people are right,” he says in a hush.
She frowns. “Could you be a little more specific?”
“I’m here to get you out of this hospital.”
“Oh, boy,” Jesse swallows. “You came here looking for me?”
“Keep working the machine and listen,” he says. “I’m out of time, so you can yell for those guys”—he nods at the aides standing on the other side of the glass panel wall—“in which case it’ll get ugly. Or we can work together. It’s your call, Captain.”
There is something about his tone, the leaden focus of his eyes, and the way he says “Captain.”
“You’re serious,” Jesse mutters, staring straight ahead, pumping the handles and the pedals. Talk about running in place.
Then.
A clatter erupts down the hall followed by a muted yell and the crash of something heavy hitting the floor and glass breaking. Tony and Neville go alert and face in the direction of the noise.
“Now what?” Jesse blurts, skittish, teeth on edge.
“Shhh.” Davis raises his hand like a conductor signaling silence, and the look on his face is moving way past serious into something else entirely, and pins and needles are doing a scary tickle up her back.
A man in maroon scrubs darts into view on the other side of the paneled wall; he’s tanned, and his streaked blond hair is askew.
“Get ready, I got a bad feeling.” Incredibly light on his feet for such a burned-out-looking guy, Davis hops from the machine.
Maroon Scrubs waves his hands at Tony and Neville. “We have a problem in physical therapy. This patient’s gone ballistic, and we need some help,” he yells with a slight accent Jesse can’t place.
Tony turns to Davis and Jesse. “Stay put,” he orders, reaching for a small staff radio stuffed in his hip pocket, as he and Neville hurry down the hall.
This time when Davis reaches for her wrist, she doesn’t pull away. Together they dash for the door and then pause, gingerly listening to the commotion in the physical-therapy suite. Davis sweeps her behind him in a sudden forceful motion. His right hand hovers.
“Hey,” Jesse mutters. You’re making me nervous, guy.
“Whatever happens, do exactly as I say.” Cold, direct; an order. “Now let’s back out of here real slow until we get to the corner. Then we run for it.” He is now balanced, poised on the balls of his feet. Seeing her confusion, he adds, “I’m on your side.”
“Great,” she mutters. Fighting a trapped sensation, her eyes travel up and down the hall.
“Look,” he says, trying to calm her. “I know your dad, Conrad, farmed for twenty years, now he works for the Ag Extension. Gail, your mom, volunteers a lot at the Big Pembina Lutheran Church in Langdon.”
“Now you are scaring me,” she gasps.
As the sounds at the end of the hall cease, they hear footfalls behind them and turn and see two well-groomed men in green scrubs come up the corridor. They have sleek, styled black hair and light-brown skin. Jesse notices that their smocks bulge around the waist. The perception coils icily in her stomach: Waytoo tough-looking for VA staff. One pushes a wheelchair. The other carries a clipboard with a syringe in a plastic sleeve pinned under the clamp. He stops and smiles at Jesse. “Captain Kraig?”
Before she can answer, Davis steps between them. His posture and the intense smile on his scarred face now definitely move her past nervous into galloping tachycardia. Casually, Davis holds up a metal cigarette lighter and turns it in his fingers in front of the two guys. Like he’s showing them the embossed circular emblem.
“Hola,” he says amiably in Spanish. “Vamos a fumar algo de hierba.”
For a heartbeat they both stare, narrowing their eyes, at Davis as he pockets the lighter. Then they lunge. One grabs her arm. Davis crouches, torques right, and staggers one of them with an elbow smash. Simultaneously he hooks his foot behind the ankle of the guy grabbing Jesse’s arm, twirls him off balance, and breaks his grip. “Run!” he shouts.
Jesse is frozen, flatfooted. What? What?
The second guy recovers, and the three men flail for advantage in a crackle of punches, blocks, and counterpunches. Jesse has been in enough grappling training to know that Davis is real good. But so are they. And there’s two of them. Now one of them has a Taser and, with more luck than skill, he jabs through the swinging arms and hits Davis in the throat. Jesse winces at the sizzle of electricity and tenses to run as Davis grunts, his eyes flutter, and he staggers back. Then the man with the Taser brings up his other hand and Jesse sees a blur of dull metal as he chops an automatic handgun, butt down. Davis takes the glancing blow along the side of his head. His knees collapse, and he falls to the floor.
Time elapsed, three seconds. Jesse’s mouth forms a circle, but the scream is stuck in her throat.
Then the guy who zapped Davis turns and holds the prongs of the Taser up to her face. He grins and keys the spark an inch from her eyes as the other one slaps a piece of duct tape on her mouth. The guy in maroon scrubs, who drew off Tony and Neville, comes out of the door to physical therapy. Alone. He has another Taser in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Strong hands pin her arms as they confer quickly and check their watches, then look up and down the deserted corridor. One of them grabs Davis’ feet and hauls him into the exercise room, comes back out, and closes the door.
Jesse braces against the suspended glide of shock, and finally she reacts and tries to wrench from their grasp, brings up her knee to . . .
The vicious punch to the stomach doubles her over and takes her breath. Her vision tightens to red-rimmed pinholes and she almost vomits into the gag.
The man who hit her says something—sounds like Spanish—to his comrades. They all laugh. Then he turns to Jesse who is gasping, sagging on wobbly knees, being held up by the Taser guy. He smiles with cold-eyed amusement and says in a conversational tone, “Hello, Captain Kraig. I’m Dr. Jaurez. Your X-rays are back from the lab, and we know what your problem is.”
Then they open the first door past the exercise room, a bathroom. Maroon Scrubs retrieves the syringe and the clipboard from the floor, joins Jaurez, and they shove her inside the small bathroom. The third man stays in the hall. Jaurez shuts the door as the other guy pushes Jesse against the sink. Their demeanor is terse, workmanlike.
She bolts for the door, but they easily manhandle her back against the sink. For a moment there’s only the sound of her panic breathing through her nose.
Then the one in maroon gives a tight little smile and says, “Hi, I’m Hector. You don’t remember, but we met before in Walter Reed, but you were kind of out of it at the time. I promise you this won’t hurt; it’s just a sedative. You’re going for a ride. I think I like you with your pants down. I think I’ll give it to you in the ass.” He eases the syringe from its plastic sleeve, holds it up to the light, and flicks it with a manicured fingernail.
Very distinctly Jesse sees a bead of moisture glisten on the needle tip.
The one who calls himself Hector nods at Jaurez who, grinning, forces her toward the toilet stool, groping one hand at the hem of her sweatpants, yanking them. When she feels the back of her bare thighs hit the plastic seat, an insane rage gathers in her very bone
s. It’s beyond life and death. It’s about bathrooms and freakin’ privacy and goddamned pushy men!
Then.
Three fast gunshots crash in the hall. Hector and Jaurez whip their heads toward the skitter of a ricocheting bullet. This time, as the shots echo, Jesse’s body finally gets it. All the drugged, demented, passive hospital days fall away, and she explodes. Before they turn back to her, she surges to her feet, pulls up her pants, and dropkicks Jaurez in the groin. Windmilling like a wildcat, she’s all over Hector, clawing and tearing and punching, and she manages to pry the syringe from his hand and stab it overhand into his arm. Frantically he extracts the syringe and flings it away like a repulsive insect. In that flash of distraction, she ducks, sidesteps Jaurez, jumps toward the doorway, twists the handle, bolts into the hall, and rips the tape from her mouth as Jaurez swears, “Puta!”
She freezes when she sees the third man stagger at the end of the hall, sees the pistol in his hand. In slo-mo fascination she watches the gun swing up. The tidy hole in the muzzle levels on her heart as she sees a dark stain spreading on the left side of his ribs. A prickly cordite haze hangs in the close air and raises an instant rash of goose bumps on her bare arms.
Davis is pushed up on his left hand in the exercise room doorway. Blood trickles from his hair. Black and blue bruises from the Taser swell like vampire bites on his neck. He holds a Colt .45 in his right hand. An ejected cartridge casing twinkles, still rolling, on the linoleum floor.
The man with a bead on Jesse’s chest turns to face something to his left. Tony stumbles in the physical therapy doorway, dazed, his arms outspread.
“No,” Jesse yells as the bleeding guy fires at Tony, but the big orderly jumps back into the room and the shot goes wild. The gunman shifts to face Davis, who is on his feet now and swings the Colt up in a two-handed grip and pitches forward from the waist, making a smaller target. Instinctively, Jesse cringes to her knees as a second volley of shots crash up and down the hall. Blasts stab her eardrums and bits of flying plaster sting her face, and the wounded man smashes back against the wall and slides to the floor as Juarez pops his head out of the bathroom. Davis, sagging against the wall, one hand gripping his side, yells, “Run past the gym!” as he swings on the bathroom door and fires again. Juarez ducks back inside.
Jesse blurts, “What the hell?” as she stares, fixated on the gunman who sprawls on his back with a hole punched in his forehead. Reflex. She spies the familiar shape of the 9mm Baretta on the floor where the dead man dropped it.
“Forget it. Run, dummy!” Davis commands.
Like hell I will. She scrambles and snatches up the weapon, sees Davis push off the wall, sees blood drip on his pants. “You’re hurt,” she says.
“Run.” Then he fires two more shots into the bathroom as she sprints past the gym. Davis is right beside, pushing her on. A junction of halls confront them: green signs to the left, purple signs to the right—which way out? The place is a goddamned deserted maze.
An overhead PA fills the empty hall: There is an intruder alert in Section C; all patients stay in your wards.
Tony must be okay, Jesse thinks, and has his radio working.
They race to the right and see a bank of windows and a sign: Elevators. Davis pushes Jesse into another corridor adjacent to the elevators, ducks out, checks the direction they came from, then leans out and pounds the down buttons. He checks the intersection of corridors again and sees two terrified female nurses slip out of a doorway and crouch across the hall.
“Get back, outta the hall,” he yells. Too late. The elevator door opens and the panicked nurses make a dash for it.
A flurry of shots snap down the hall. The windows next to the elevator shatter, and both nurses flop down in a loose-limbed tangle. “Oh God, oh God!” One of them screams, batting her hands around her head like she’s fighting off a swarm of bees.
“Cover,” Davis yells and sprints into the open, ripping off three shots. Jesse drops to a crouch, peeks around the corner, and sees Jaurez and his partner hug either side of the hallway, flattened into doorways. She leans out gripping the nine two-handed and fires steadily down the hall until the slide locks back. Empty.
But it drives the two gunmen to deeper cover in office doorways. From the corner of her eye she watches Davis execute a speedy coordinated maneuver. He tosses his pistol to Jesse as he snakes out his left leg and catches the elevator door with his foot before it closes. At the other end of this lunge he grabs a frantic nurse in each hand and physically drags them and then heaves them into the elevator. The door closes.
Sighting down the heavier, unfamiliar .45 Jesse isn’t prepared for Juarez, who appears at the bottom of a doorway, laying prone. Jesse adjusts, but Juarez gets off two quick shots and snakes back out of sight as Jesse returns fire. She blinks, amazed at the amount of lead that just went up and down the hallway.
Davis is back. They lock eyes.
“Okay,” she pants, hyperventilating. “I’m a believer. Now what?” She winces at the bruised, bloody mess over his eye. He does not mention the nurses. He reclaims his pistol. “Hold onto the nine,” he says as he stabs a quick look down the hall to where the gunmen are hiding. “Stairs,” he nods toward the Exit sign down the short corridor across from them. He thumbs the magazine from the Colt, tucks it under his warm-up, and replaces it with a full one. Cold metal clashes as the slide snaps forward. Then he swings out, crouching in the open, and yells “Go” as he fires three, four, five rapid shots. Jesse dives across the hall and comes out of the roll. Jaurez is a green blur, Hector in maroon; they flatten into the shallow cover of the doorways. Loud whiz. A bullet cuts the air next to her ear.
She runs for the stairway door and slams it open with Davis right next to her. Scrambling down the stairs, he releases the empty magazine, sticks it in his pocket, and reaches under his sweatshirt again. A flash of his muscled belly slick with blood. He wears a harness thick with flat pouches, from which he yanks another mag and slams it in the Colt. Thumbs the slide.
Jesse cringes as a bullet splashes cement from the stairs and clips, ringing, off the metal rail. Cement particles bite her face.
They dash through a stairway exit, and they’re on the second floor, where packs of patients and staff huddle in the halls listening to the overhead announcement. People scurry as Juarez appears at the end of the corridor waving a pistol.
“They don’t quit,” Jesse says.
“Fuckers are taking it personal,” Davis says, pulling her back out into the now-frenzied hall. Then the crowd parts in front of them and two VA cops in blue uniforms jog toward them. Both have radios held to their ears. They’ve drawn their pistols. They see the blood on Davis’ face and approach on the run.
“Hold it right there,” one yells, raising his pistol. Davis yanks Jesse by the arm, jerks a look back down the corridor, and sees Juarez and Hector coming at a dead run. Juarez fires. The cops fire back. Davis hurls Jesse left, shielding her, as rapid-fire shots ring out behind them. One of the cops staggers. The other one drops to one knee and is also hit as he aims a shot, and he sprawls as someone screams. People scurry, double over, lay flat. Several aides pushing an elderly man on a gurney freeze. One of them covers the patient with his body. Down the corridor, a middle-aged man holding a bouquet of flowers slumps against the wall clutching his hip. A huge atrium panel collapses, and Jesse knows her eyes are taking snapshots she’ll never forget. A pudgy man with Blackwater Aviation stamped across his shirt crouches, shaking, against the wall. Next to him a bearded older guy—jeans, beribboned cap: Viet Nam Vet—stands nonchalantly wearing his black MIA colors on his chest like some ghost shirt, invulnerable to the flying bullets. With a remote quizzical expression on his seamed face, he comments to no one in particular, “Fuckin’ A.”
“Gotta get away from population,” Davis grunts, wrenching open another exit door. They plunge down the stairs to a landing. A man in a custodian’s gray uniform stands at an open door on the landing, fumbling with a set of ke
ys. “Get outta here,” Davis yells. “They’re right behind us.” The custodian’s eyes swell, and he hurries down the stairs, leaving his keys in the lock.
“In here.” Davis grabs the keys and shoves her through the door, and they plunge into a cramped, dimly lit walkway. Sprayed messages cover the sheetrock walls like gang graffiti. Machinery whirs, faint emergency lights, tubes and pipes and ducts wrapped in silver insulation. They scoot off the walkway into the maze of pipes. Davis fires two more shots, blasting out the nearest emergency lights. As the shots echo away, they hear their pursuers entering the dark space.
Davis pushes her ahead of him, and she senses the chasers have split up and are picking their stealthy way through the machinery. Jesse tries to control her deep, sobbing breaths. No time to think. It’s all headlong senses, a hot bath of sweat, adrenaline, and fear.
“Go ahead, stay low, make some noise,” Davis whispers.
“What?”
“Draw fire. Go.” He gives Jesse a shove. She lurches forward in a crouch, thinking how she always wondered what it was like for the grunts she ferried in Tumbleweed Six. Well, girl, now you’re getting a crash course. A moment of ringing silence. Eyes adjusting to the quarter-light. Christ, she can feel the sweat on Juarez’s face out there. Everybody still-hunting. Waiting. As she cautiously steps, she eases a hand along a metal shelf and feels a box with some kind of containers in it. She takes one and hurls it into the darkness to her left and ducks low. The moment it clatters, two muzzle flashes stutter to the left and right, and the sound is deafening as Jesse hears the death scramble among the machines resolve into a staccato burst of closing shots that throb in her ears like incandescent wires. Then she counts out the long silent seconds holding her breath.
“You recognize my voice?” Davis calls out.
“I do,” she answers.
“Don’t move. I’ll come to you.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
When Davis finds her he stands motionless, catching his breath. The Colt hangs loose in his right hand and his bloody face is a gaunt shadow. Neither jubilant nor contrite, he stoops like a workman who has survived an ordeal of particularly hard physical labor.
