4 Real Dangerous Place

by K. W. Jeter

  A couple of them glanced away from their boss’s image on the screen, over to the tall windows looking over the freeway. From here, they could see the bottle that Richter and his crew had set up. Somewhere in that mess was the limo that the news copter had swooped in on. And in the back seat of the limo, stewing away, was Karsh.

  “You know . . .” After a moment, one of Karsh’s people spoke up. “I’m kinda glad he’s over there. And not here.”

  The others all looked at the guy. But they didn’t say anything.

  They knew what he meant.

  † † †

  Away from the rear of the jackknifed big rig, Richter found a relatively private spot to take care of himself. Which was pretty urgent at the moment. Just as it was for his partner Cray, in the cockpit of that freight airliner flying south from Seattle, the black fluid that’d come trickling from his nostril was not a good sign.

  Richter slumped down beside the front bumper of the truck, his back against the left front tire. From here, he could see the video monitor sitting on top of Feldman’s electronic equipment and faintly hear the voices coming from the news coverage.

  He ignored all that for right now. He dug inside the jacket of his motorcycle cop outfit and pulled out a small imitation-leather packet. Zipping it open, he extracted a hypodermic and an unlabeled vial filled with a colorless liquid. He loaded the hypo, then pushed up his sleeve and brought the needle’s point to his forearm. There were already a lot of angry red injection marks on the skin . . .

  A moment later, he replaced the hypodermic and the vial back into the packet, taking elaborate care to secure them under their little elastic straps. Eyes half-lidded, he let the back of his head rest against the truck tire. The stuff in the vial was pretty strong – it always knocked both him and Cray out a bit, whenever they had to use it.

  Richter wiped his hand across his face, then looked at his palm. The thick black fluid had stopped leaking from his nostril. So he’d be okay for a little while longer.

  He looked over toward the video monitor. There was some news anchor type on the screen, looking all serious.

  “The man the hostage-takers have specifically asked for is Colonel Welbourn MacAvoy, formerly head of one the of U.S. Army’s elite antiterrorist operations . . .”

  Richter watched as the news anchor’s image was replaced with file footage of a talk show interview. He’d seen it before.

  “Colonel MacAvoy – any regrets?”

  The colonel’s face, looking not much younger than he did now, showed up on the screen.

  “Maybe a few.” MacAvoy’s expression had been a long way from any kind of smile. “There are a couple of sonsabitches I’m sorry we never caught . . .”

  Richter closed his eyes all the way, just listening. And remembering.

  † † †

  I’m pretty sure I know what was going through Richter’s head.

  This is stuff that got left out of the movie, the one that got made about the bottle on the freeway. Like I said, there are some things the government just doesn’t want you to know about. Or if you did hear of any of it – because there were at least a few details that leaked out then – they’d prefer if you just didn’t think about it anymore. Just watch some other show on TV; that’s why they’re all there.

  Some of it, though, I pieced together from MacAvoy’s book, when I finally got around to reading it. And there were some other people I managed to look up, who had known both him and Richter from before. They didn’t have a lot to say – people like that never do – but I found out enough from them.

  So when Richter flashed back to what had happened long ago, between himself and MacAvoy, this is what I figure he was remembering –

  This would’ve been far enough back that MacAvoy’s hair wouldn’t have been completely gray, the way it is now. In the scene playing inside Richter’s head, the colonel was dressed in night camouflage gear and carrying an assault rifle with a laser sight mounted on the barrel.

  “All right, spread out!” MacAvoy snapped orders to the rest of his similarly equipped team. “They’ve got to be in here someplace!”

  If you didn’t know better, you might’ve thought this had all taken place somewhere in the Middle East, where antiterrorist types are always running around fully armed, taking care of all sorts of dangerous business. Actually, it happened some place in Kansas – or maybe Idaho; I wasn’t able to nail down that detail – at some unmarked industrial-looking buildings behind chain-link fences topped with razor wire. The kind of place you might drive by on some remote one-lane country road, and you would only briefly wonder what went on in there, as you tried to find any kind of station on the car radio other than rural gospel music. The kind of place that the government also doesn’t want you to know about.

  In another part of the complex, with the overhead fluorescents all shut off, Cray ran down the bare, darkened corridor with a metal cylinder clutched to his chest. It was about the size of a fire extinguisher – but fire extinguishers don’t have biohazard symbols marked on the side.

  His partner Richter was up on the roof, wiring up yellow packets of plastic explosives by the air-filtration towers.

  Inside the dark complex, MacAvoy somehow got separated from the rest of his squad. He halted, looked around, and heard the sound of running footsteps. With his weapon ready, he quickly headed toward them.

  Where the corridor connected with another, MacAvoy spotted Cray running in the distance.

  “Halt!” MacAvoy swung his gun up into firing position.

  Cray kept running. MacAvoy aimed and fired. His target turned slightly, looking back over his shoulder. The bullet hit the metal cylinder, hard enough to send Cray sprawling.

  He looked down at the cylinder still clutched to his chest. It’s top seal was broken, hissing ominously. Cray got to his knees – even in the darkened corridor, he could see that his chest and arms were stained wet.

  Up on the complex roof, Richter closed a small handheld switch –

  The place burst apart, fire and smoke blasting through the roof.

  With his spine tight against one of the walls, Cray watched the debris crash down.

  Farther down the corridor, MacAvoy backed up, shielding his face.

  A folding metal ladder extended down through one of the jagged holes ripped in the ceiling. Looking up, Cray could see the night sky – and Richter, reaching a hand down toward him.

  “Come on! Let’s go –”

  “No . . .” Cray shrank back from Richter’s hand. “I can’t . . .”

  “What’re you talking about? Come on!”

  “I can’t!” Cray’s voice was a fierce shout. “I’m contaminated!”

  Halfway down the ladder, Richter looked over and spotted the broken cylinder at the edge of the debris. When he looked back to Cray, it was obvious that now he understood. Everything.

  Richter hesitated a second, then stepped down another rung of the ladder. As he grabbed Cray’s arm, the two men’s eyes met.

  “Now we both are,” said Richter.

  He pulled Cray up toward himself.

  “Wait a minute –”

  Cray broke away from him, scooped up the cylinder, and climbed back onto the metal ladder. As the dust cleared, MacAvoy ran forward, then halted when he saw the two men escaping up onto the roof – and what one of them was carrying. He looked down and saw a glistening wet puddle on the bare concrete floor.

  “Get back!” He turned and signaled to his own squad, running up behind him. “This place is hot!”

  Up above, Richter supported Cray with an arm around his shoulders, helping him to the edge of the roof . . .

  † † †

  “Hey – you all right?”

  It took a moment for Richter to pull himself out of his dark memories. He looked up and saw Feldman standing there, gazing down at him with concern.

  “I’m fine.” Richter slowly nodded. “Just needed a little rest.” He rubbed his face, then looked down at his hand
again. Nothing. He got to his feet and headed back to the other end of the truck, the other man trailing behind him.

  † † †

  He might’ve been okay – at least for the moment. But Cray wasn’t.

  In the cockpit of the freight plane, the thick black fluid was leaking profusely from Cray’s nose and one corner of his mouth. From inside the courier service jacket, he pulled out a small medical kit, just like the one Richter carried.

  Cray unzipped the kit and flipped it open. The contents – the hypodermic, the unmarked glass vial – were shattered. When he’d fought with the copilot in the rear of the plane, he’d taken a hard shot to the chest. He’d shrugged it off then, but now he saw the result of the blow. The interior of the kit was wet from the clear fluid that had been in the vial.

  He flopped back in the pilot’s seat and closed his eyes. This was not good.

  Not good at all.

  † † †

  At the police command post, down on the surface street below the freeway, MacAvoy leaned past the video equipment operator. The image on the screen broke up and jittered as he ran the hard disk back to something he had spotted before.

  He hit the STOP button. Frozen on the screen was the close-up of Richter’s face, when he had been up on the roof of the car trapped in the bottle.

  MacAvoy peered more closely at the image. The trickle of thick black fluid from Richter’s nostril was clearly visible.

  He nodded slowly. He knew what that meant.

  † † †

  “Hey, I think I can see the limo from here!”

  The others at Karsh’s production company turned away from the video. In a couple of seconds, they were all clustered around the secretary standing at the tall windows. She pointed to the freeway in the distance.

  “You sure?” The associate producer squinted and scowled. “I’m not catching it . . .”

  He went back over to the big flat-panel screen with the continuing news coverage. “Better view on the tube,” he said.

  “What are we going to do?” The secretary fretted. “About Mr. Karsh, I mean?”

  “Do?” One of the others, a script supervisor, shrugged his shoulders. “Why should we do anything? Isn’t that what we pay the police for?”

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t Mr. Karsh be, like . . . you know . . . grateful or something?”

  They all looked around at each other. Then one of them started to laugh.

  Then they all did.

  TWELVE

  THE CITY was dark now. When the sun went down, out past the Pacific, the freeway bottle was glaringly lit up by the police spotlights on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.

  Down on the surface street, the open tent containing the police command post was lit up as well. And Glover was on the phone again.

  “Look, how much do you want?”

  Up on the freeway, Richter leaned back against the stacked electronic equipment, toying with the other man.

  “That’s a good question, Captain. Just how much is a human life worth?” With his mirror-lensed sunglasses off, his eyes looked like two narrow angles of blue flint. “I’d say at least a million dollars. Maybe two . . . maybe three. Guess it depends upon how big-hearted you are. Do you think of yourself as a sympathetic sort of person?”

  Glover sighed. “Most of the time.”

  “That’s unfortunate. From a negotiating point of view. Tends to jack up the rate. But then again, we’ve got quite a few on our hands here. So perhaps I should offer you a volume discount.”

  “Just name your price.”

  Up on the freeway, outside the jackknifed big rig, Richter’s crew watched him talking on the radio phone. Mozel and some of the other exchanged ugly smiles.

  “Better yet, Captain –” Richter gazed off across the city’s lights. “Why don’t you have MacAvoy call me back when you people are ready to make an offer? I’ll be waiting.”

  Richter clicked off the phone.

  “He’s dicking with us.” Glover glared at the dead phone in his hand. “Make an offer – what kind of shit is that?”

  “This isn’t a money thing.” MacAvoy had listened in to the whole conversation. “Not with Richter. It’s always been straight politics with him. He’s not a mercenary.”

  Glover gave another weary sigh. “Maybe he wants to fund his retirement account. Look, I don’t care –”

  “There are too many things wrong here,” said MacAvoy. “This kind of operation isn’t Richter’s style. It’s too public. Too out in the open.”

  “So he’s gone Hollywood. What’s it –”

  “He’s never shown his face before.” MacAvoy was talking to himself, more than to Glover. Working through his thoughts. “He’s a supplier; he gets the stuff for the ones you do hear about. Weapons, money, whatever they need. But he’s always been in and out, bang, just like that. And not with a group like this, but with just one partner, a specialist named Cray –”

  “Specialist in what?”

  “Air transport,” said MacAvoy. “Started out as an RAF pilot, got a reputation for being able to bring a C-130 in and out of landing strips about as big as your living room rug, under all kinds of conditions. Finally crashed in a black ops run in Zaire. While he was being put back together in some hospital in Brazzaville, that was when he hooked up with Richter. Kind of a career change – he must’ve figured that if he was going to get shot at, he might as well do it for more money.

  Glover peered at him. “And this Cray guy – is that somebody you spotted here?”

  “No.” MacAvoy shook his head. “This crew he’s got are just thugs with guns. Richter would never have had anything to do with them before.”

  “Yeah, so it’s hard getting good help these days –”

  The police captain stopped as he heard some kind of commotion from outside the command post. A moment later, there were two more people inside the tent. He had never seen either one of them before, but he could tell they were some kind of government heavyweights. They gave off that TOP SECRET aura.

  “Something I can help you with?” He looked from the balding guy in the stark black suit to the dumpy woman with frizzy gray hair. “Because otherwise, we’re kind of busy right now.”

  The woman ignored him. The gaze behind her horn-rimmed glasses narrowed when she spotted MacAvoy. Without turning her head, she spoke to the bald guy. “What’s he doing here?”

  “You in charge?” The bald guy spoke to Glover.

  “I’m beginning to have my doubts. Who the hell are you?”

  “Weiss.” The other man flashed a federal badge, then dropped it back inside his suit jacket. He pointed a thumb at the woman. “This is Esther Cammon. Dr. Cammon to you.”

  She had that psychological problem that makes it hard to talk to other people. Still glaring at MacAvoy, she spoke again to Weiss, from the corner of her mouth: “Get him out of here. Now.”

  “No way,” said Glover. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Weiss scowled at him. “Don’t make me pull rank on you, Captain –”

  “You don’t have to. You want to be responsible for throwing out the one person this Richter maniac told us he wanted to be here, then you get to be the one to tell your superiors about why all the bodies started getting tossed over the side of the freeway. Your call, pal.”

  Weiss turned and whispered something into Cammon’s ear. She whispered something in reply, then Weiss turned back toward the police captain.

  “You make it sound like this Richter is running the show.”

  “Right now, he is.”

  Dr. Cammon looked like she was about to burst a blood vessel. She turned and stomped out of the command post tent, Weiss following her. A beat:

  Glover looked over at the colonel. “So you know her, too, huh?”

  MacAvoy nodded. “It’s like the family reunion from hell.”

  “Sounds more like Christmas at my house.” He looked closer at MacAvoy. “Just what’s going on here, Colonel? Why have the fed
s shown up?”

  “I think we’re about to find out.”

  Weiss came back into the tent, leaving Cammon sulking outside.

  “Yeah?” Glover gave him a raised eyebrow. “Now what?”

  “We need to get a close-up of one of the vehicles on the freeway.”

  The other eyebrow lifted. “We?”

  “That’s right,” said Weiss. “Dr. Cammon is ordering you to do it.”

  “Oh, well; that’s different.” Glover pretended to be amused. “Of course, we want to cooperate with the authorities. What vehicle you talking about? I’ve already got plenty of video on those trucks Richter’s using.”