Lost in Middle America

by Colin Conway

  “Turn off the light!” The man instantly shielded his face with his arm, with only his whitish-gray hair showing, and stopped in his tracks. “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Who are you?” Misha clenched the throttle tightly, revving it twice as he considered making a run for it.

  “Turn it off!” He used his other hand to further cover his face. “Brian sent me instead on short notice.” His accent was British, but not completely. Misha sensed a trace of Russian or Ukrainian that was not entirely camouflaged.

  Misha switched to his native Ukrainian. “I have very clear instructions only to meet with Brian, and no one else,” he said. And this was true. From the very beginning, Brian had told Misha not to trust anyone, and that no one was supposed to meet Misha on Brian’s behalf.

  “I only speak English,” the man said, his voice hardening. He casually crossed the beam of the motorbike’s headlight, still covering his face. “And please turn off that light. If you don’t, I’ll break it.”

  Misha turned off the headlight as he cast about for an escape plan. “I don’t like sudden changes.”

  “We have our reasons.” The man turned briefly to light a cigarette.

  “What’s your name? Who do you work for?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I will not meet like this again.” Misha stared at the stranger’s face faintly illuminated by the glowing end of his cigarette the moment he took a long drag.

  “It would be easier to talk if you turn off your engine.”

  Misha reluctantly did so.

  “There is no reason to worry.” The stranger took a step closer and another drag of his tobacco. “Do you have the materials?”

  “Yes.” But Misha suddenly realized that if this meeting were a trap, he’d have no leverage after handing over the thumb drive. “I mean, only some of it. The rest is in a safe place—I will give it later.” He hoped the man would buy the lie.

  The stranger stretched out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  The hair on the back of Misha’s neck stood on end but he struggled to keep his voice steady. “I don’t understand what’s so urgent. It is just transactions—boring financial records that only people like me appreciate. If Brian can wait a few more days, I will have better information than I do tonight.”

  The man expelled a deep, smoke-filled laugh and threw down his cigarette. “If we don’t have all the information tonight, it might be worthless tomorrow.”

  Misha breathed in deeply and quickly reminded himself of the money. Brian had been generous. He wasn’t about to give that up. He dug into his jacket pocket and retrieved the thumb drive. “They are mostly PDFs and a few spreadsheet files.” He dropped it into the man’s open palm.

  “How much more is missing?”

  “This is most of the data I told Brian about. It also shows that money is being diverted to two unknown entities possibly operating in the Exclusion Zone. They may be used for brides, or even unauthorized construction or maintenance projects in the area. As I said, I will need more time to collect the rest.”

  The man said nothing. He simply glanced at the thumb drive and then closed his fist.

  “And my money?”

  The man stayed silent.

  Despite the cold, Misha felt his armpits grow clammy with sweat. “Brian assured me he would transfer it to my account in Vienna.” Misha thought of his mother’s surgery, which he’d paid for last time he’d given Brian names and addresses of key engineers at the Chernobyl complex. “You better clear it up with Brian tonight, because I won’t accept silence on this issue.”

  “How much was your arrangement?”

  “Five!” Misha said, insulted he’d have to remind this man of the deal. “Five fucking thousand, you hear me?”

  “Euros?”

  “No, beers.” Misha’s anger boiled. “Yes, Euros, what do you think?”

  The stranger let out what seemed like a chuckle and then crossed his arms, slowly taking a step closer, the sound of crunching branches breaking the dead air. “Not my problem, but I can give you all I have on me now as an advance.” He reached into his inside coat pocket, took out and opened a bulky wallet, and pulled out all the banknotes. He folded them once and handed it to Misha. “It’s probably just under a thousand. Take it.”

  Misha cautiously reached for it and slipped the wad of bills into his pants pocket without counting it.

  The stranger then stepped back and lit another cigarette. “I will relay the message that there’s still an amount we owe you.” His tone reeked of insincerity.

  The cold fear Misha had sensed the moment he’d come into the forest swept back into his head, tempering his rage. He didn’t say anything else, his indignation bottled up by self-preservation. But as he watched the stranger pocket the thumb drive, Misha felt a sense of shame wash over himself as well. He had been accustomed to longer, pleasant chats with Brian, along with the very finest of British civility. A glass of wine, a fine cigar, and even once a game of chess. They’d built a rapport that had comfortably cleansed the soiled reality of an agent-handler relationship. This stranger had exposed the treasonous role Misha had been seduced into playing—a pawn, a mere microscopic cog in a slimy wheel of a major power’s espionage machine. And as the stranger turned away, Misha understood that he had very possibly sold out his honor for nothing.

  The stranger disappeared into the darkness toward where the car had flashed its lights.

  “You’re welcome, asshole,” Misha mumbled alone as his hands trembled. Before putting on his helmet and turning on his bike’s headlight, he scanned the trees, fearing a sniper might be hidden in the dark. He turned on his bike’s motor. The pine needles rustled as he revved the engine and headed out of the forest, sweating through the chill of his still-wet clothes.

  A long stretch of desolate, rain-soaked roadway in the near pitch-black night is a lonely, scary place when you’re on the payroll of a foreign power, betraying your employer—and your country—by turning over official financial records. This sullied truth clung to him like the mud on his motorcycle boots. Misha’s heart was still racing as he watched the speedometer needle vibrate over the 100 km/h mark—about as fast as he could go on this battered rural road. The rendezvous bothered him. Had he just been duped? He replayed the stranger’s voice in his head. Brian had always reminded Misha of the sensitive nature of his role, something that had to be kept secret from his Ministry—and from anyone else, for that matter.

  But if he’d been duped, he’d be dead by now, he surmised. Misha forced his thoughts to slow down. As the distance away from the witches’ lair increased, his heartbeat seemed to steady itself. The stranger had broken protocol, but he hadn’t harmed or threatened Misha. Indeed, Brian must have sent him. He was now sure of it, and once he was home, he’d message Brian to make sure everything was proper.

  The rain beat down as Misha sped up to reach his destination. All he wanted now was to be back in his apartment, in the relative safety of the Exclusion Zone. As he sped along the road, his body shook, the cold heaviness of his soaked clothes nearly unbearable. He squinted, quickly wiping his visor with his gloved hand as he tried to see the road more clearly. There was something ahead. He again wiped with his sleeve.

  A wire!

  He instantly squeezed the brakes but knew even as he did so that he couldn’t stop in time. He slammed into the wire stretched chest-high across the road. A loud snap followed. He flipped backwards, catching a glimpse of his legs flinging upward as he twisted airborne, the bike darting forward from under him. His helmet smashed onto the pavement, the rest of his body following, the impact on his ribs knocking the wind out of him. He rolled four or five or six times before coming to rest in a motionless state.

  Misha heard his own rapid panting echo in his helmet, his breaths steaming the cracked visor. The pain hadn’t arrived yet, which surprised him. His lungs pumped out short wheezes. The raindrops hammered his helmet
. The motorbike’s engine whined in the background. But no pain.

  No pain because suddenly he realized he couldn’t feel a thing below his shoulders. His legs were numb. His arms and hands, too. No pain, no tingling, no cold, no wetness. Nothing. He tried to yell but couldn’t push more than faint puffs of air out of his mouth.

  His body lay face down on the pavement. He clenched his jaw and turned his head, barely. All he could see was the soaked asphalt through his cloudy, half-shattered visor. The rain continued to hit the pavement, the pelleting sound blending with the bike’s engine and his hard breaths. He lay there unable to get up for what felt like ten minutes or more.

  Suddenly, the sound of another engine approached from somewhere behind him, and the wet asphalt glowed from a beam of light. A car, he guessed. He heard two doors open and close. The engine idled. His Voskhod suddenly went silent. Muffled voices echoed amid the sounds of rapid footsteps sloshing over the puddled road. Misha tried desperately to move, but every appendage remained numb. He wheezed out a weak cry and jiggled his head back and forth, attempting to bring the vehicle into his line of sight, but to no avail. The drenched pavement was all he could fixate on as he heard what sounded like two or three people pacing nearby. But none came to his aid.

  Misha tried again to speak but instead began coughing as warm fluid quickly filled his mouth. It tasted like blood.

  The footsteps were now closer. A shadow covered the glowing pavement. He felt his helmet being pulled sideways and upward, violently, until it was completely removed. His face hit the asphalt and a second later he heard his helmet slam to the ground some distance away.

  “Help me!” he said faintly in between coughs.

  Suddenly an arm bumped his jaw as it reached under his chest. As it pulled back, he saw the hand gripping banknotes—the same cash he’d received in the forest.

  “Break his neck,” a man then shouted in his native tongue.

  Misha coughed out his lungs, realizing they were not rescuing him. They were going to finish him off.

  The shadow loomed again into Misha’s narrow line of vision.

  He screamed, “Nyet!”

  Click here to learn more about The Pyongyang Option by A.C. Frieden.

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  Here is a preview from The Furious Way by Aaron Philip Clark, published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

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  PREFACE

  Lucy Ramos sat on the edge of her mattress naked under her robe while a blonde boy freshened up in the bathroom. He came out trailed by a musky cologne and planted a moist kiss on her lips. He had gotten dressed, back into his tailored slacks and Italian loafers.

  He was probably twenty-four with a youthful face. Lucy wasn’t certain and had never cared enough to ask.

  “Gotta run,” he said, “see you soon?”

  “Okay,” Lucy said.

  She was still a bit turned on and there was a half-bottle of Shiraz left. She would have asked him to stay, but figured being alone would do her best—she needed time to think.

  “You should probably eat something,” he said as he slipped into his blazer. “I could order for you. Maybe from that Thai place you like?”

  Lucy laid her head against the pillow and was silent. He stood for a moment, his wispy breathing filled the space.

  “You mind blowing out the candle?” Lucy asked.

  He walked over to a nightstand and picked up two one hundred-dollar bills. He gently blew on the candle wick and the room went dark.

  “Don’t forget to lock the door,” he said as he stumbled over Lucy’s clothes. Lucy’s tank top had gotten caught around his foot. He shook it off and left.

  Lucy barely spoke for most of her childhood. Various doctors said her lack of speech was aligned with her psyche, some side-effect of trauma over her mother’s death. It would take her years of speech therapy and shrinks to overcome the condition, but even after, she was seen as quiet and disturbed. As a child, her doctor had diagnosed her with Asperger Syndrome—a mild form that presented in Lucy a keen memory. Her mind worked like an old VCR, she could rewind to moments in her past and recall every consequential detail—it had a way of keeping her up at night, robbing her of the ability to truly forget the fateful events in her life. And perhaps it was her quiet nature, her off-kilter way that intrigued the gigolo, the blonde boy, who went by the name Kip. She was a challenge for him. Every Tuesday night at 9:30 he would arrive inundated with virility, walking with a wide gate, upright and justified. It reminded Lucy of how John Wayne strolled about in his Westerns.

  Lucy enjoyed time with Kip but she never knew ecstasy, and this only frustrated him. She left him a browbeaten boy with all confidence shaken. Sometimes she would allow him to clean up afterwards while she stood on the balcony listening as he sung 1980s power ballads in the shower. With a cigarette clasped between her two fingers, she would overlook Los Angeles. She saw the city as a great maze of unpredictability and this frightened her. She often couldn’t walk out of her door sober and struggled not to become a complete shut-in. Kip was her connection to the outside world. She liked to listen to his ramblings. Highly animated, he’d gesture when recalling his day—the car that cut him off on Fairfax, the barista who scorched his latte, the chicken salad he gave to a homeless man on the 110 off-ramp for “good karma”—reminders of life in the city.

  Twice a year, Lucy would venture outside the seven-block radius of her apartment. Usually she’d skateboard or take the bus to a museum where she could observe life in near silence. But this time Lucy had a plan—she’d take the bus to San Pedro, a port town south of Downtown. There, she would see a man who could help her make good on a promise, a blood oath that she made as a young girl.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The 81 was the only bus that traveled into the South Bay from downtown Los Angeles. The bus was always packed. The adage that no one walked in L.A. was true, but they damn sure rode. The bus reeked—mostly of sweat and cheap fragrances like the knock-offs peddlers sold on street corners near Lucy’s apartment building.

  The bus had been sitting in traffic for ten minutes. The city seemed even louder on the 110 Freeway—car horns and squeaking brakes. Even from the confines of the bus, she felt assaulted by the noise of it all. Lucy thought if the devil was real, he’d make hell an L.A. freeway and the traffic never-ending.

  Lucy observed her fellow passengers. She wondered if she was missing out on things by staying in her apartment for several months straight. She rarely received paper mail; all her bills were delivered to her email. Even her meals were delivered by the same five restaurants she had on speed dial. If she needed products she ordered from online retailers. Lucy had her groceries delivered three times a month. She wagered that if she were to die, it would possibly take weeks before anyone noticed. But what difference would it make how long her body rotted? She wouldn’t be around to care.

  Despite the loneliness, Lucy knew she was better off living a solitary life. She was in control. She didn’t have to answer to anyone—not some nagging boss or manager at a superstore. She took jobs when she wanted to and spent weeks listening to records and reading books. Lucy’s apartment was her haven. She was free, unlike the passengers on the bus—they were zombies. They were tired and empty husks having worked themselves to the bone like machines or the enslaved androids she read about in her Manga books. They looked real but their souls, those other worldly ghosts inside, had vacated long ago. They were dead like her mother, only her mother had decomposed in her grave—erased from the world.

  Lucy never romanticized about death. In her mind, her mother didn’t exist—no heaven, no hell—just gone. Lucy could accept that her mother was no more, but what bothered her was the way she left the world. When her mother was taken from her, it was as if someone had struck a match and lit Lucy on fire and she’d been burning ever since. But
after twelve years she had found hope. She was on her way to San Pedro, to the home of Tito Garza. An old article in the Los Angeles Times had dubbed him: El Perro of Pedro—The Dog of San Pedro. Other news organizations coined him the Hell Hound of Downtown and South Bay Butcher because of the high volume of victims found in both areas. Lucy hoped that Garza could still live up to the monikers and that he was every bit the killer she had read about.

  The bus dropped Lucy off on Gaffey Street. She used her smart phone’s GPS to navigate the rest of the way. She walked two blocks through a neighborhood that looked as if the homes were waiting to be torn down. Apartments and bungalows that were condemnable, so old they had to have been poisoning the occupants with lead or mold. She thought if one of the houses had ever caught fire, the entire neighborhood would burn like torch paper.

  The phones’ GPS alerted Lucy that she had arrived. She watched Garza’s home from across the street. The lawn was in desperate need of mowing and weeds had overtaken the flowerbed. The paint was weathered and peeling; roof shingles were missing. Lucy thought that Garza likely lived alone and didn’t get many visitors.

  The small voice inside her head was telling her to go back home, but no amount of trepidation was going to keep her from ringing Garza’s doorbell.

  Nineteen—the number of times Tito Garza avoided prosecution, only spending ten years in the California State Penitentiary for decades of criminal acts. Now, an old man, he was weary and alone—a shadow of his former self—respected by the dead and pissed on by the living. Two days ago, the neighborhood kids stole his dog; a Chihuahua bitch he found in an alley, rain soaked and near death. He had nursed the dog back to health but now he feared she was dead and was expecting, any day, for them to throw what was left of her on his porch. If only he were twenty years—no, fifteen years younger. He’d be healthier and fit, and he could do something. When they tagged his mailbox and house, he grumbled, cursing at them from the window. Only for a group of boys to return later, painting vulgarity and what looked to be a large penis on his front door. “Little shits,” he’d say, blotting out their scrawls with white paint. Garza was running out of white paint and patience.