Sometimes, when I got down, I would remind myself I had saved the world—twice—and that I was a hero, like the firefighter who rushes into a burning building to rescue a trapped kid. But I was no firefighter. I was no hero. Even when I faced Mogart and Paimon, the demon king, it was about me, not the world. The only reason I got stabbed by the Sword was I gave the Sword to Mogart. And I took on Paimon because he was killing me, from the inside out, filling my body with maggots and slowly driving me insane.
It was never for the sake of the world. It was always for the sake of Kropp, and that the world got saved too was a kind of happy by-product.
I leaned my head against Ashley’s and after a minute I fell asleep. I was flying again. I came to a towering cliff, and on that cliff rose a castle of sparkling white stone with flags flying from its ramparts and a man in shining armor sitting on a horse before its gates. He drew a black sword from the scabbard at his side and raised it over his head in a salute.
Then I started to fall. I dropped like a stone toward the sea. A monster reared its head above the crashing surf, its mouth stretching open to reveal fangs as tall and glittering as the walls of the castle.
I woke up before I fell into the dragon’s mouth.
“Alfred,” Ashley was saying. “Alfred, we’re boarding.”
On the plane, I sat down beside her—she took the window seat—and waited, my knee popping up and down, counting off the seconds in my head. This was goodbye, but it was a goodbye without a farewell.
I gave her hand a squeeze and said, “I think I got hold of some bad lettuce—have to go to the bathroom,” the third lie, and then I worked my way toward the front of the cabin with a lot of “excuse me’s” and “I’m sorries” as I slid sideways past passengers filling the overhead compartments. At the front of the plane, I risked a glance toward our seats. All I could see was the top of her blond head and for some reason that broke my heart: the last I would see of her would be the top of her head.
I told the lady attendant I’d left my carry-on at the gate. She was distracted, trying to find room in a little compartment for a first-class passenger’s coat. She waved me through the hatch but told me I’d better hurry.
I hurried all right, bumping into people on my way to the gate, counting the seconds in my head. Once they close a hatch on an airplane, they can’t open it again. Hopefully by the time she realized I was missing, it would be too late.
I sank into a chair just outside the double doors of the gate and waited for her to come rushing out. When she didn’t, I stood up and walked to the big window facing the tarmac. The plane was already backing away from the terminal. I wondered if she was going berserk, demanding they let her off. If she pitched a big enough fit, they might. I stood and watched until the plane was out of sight, heading for the runway. Then I stood a few more minutes until it took off, and I watched it until it dwindled to nothing in the blue.
Goodbye, Ashley.
01:07:54:12
I hoofed it back to the men’s room, praying no one had made a garbage run while we sat at the gate. The guns were still at the bottom of the bin where I had stashed them, buried beneath three feet of discarded paper towels. I tucked one gun in the front of my jeans and one in the back and examined my sweatshirt in the mirror for any unsightly bulges.
For the next three hours, I wandered the Helena airport. Besides algebra class and anyplace where you have to wait in line, airports are the most boring places on earth. This was my opportunity to come up with a really brilliant plan, like creating a disabling device out of a shampoo bottle and my pee. But I was a little panicky and tired and already regretting not keeping Ashley with me. Having a seasoned field operative by my side might come in handy when Vosch and company touched down.
When you have time before a life-threatening situation, you feel the need to clear the air, to settle any dangling loose ends, so I called Alphonso Needlemier to unstick the thing stuck in my craw.
“You lied to me,” I said.
“Alfred, I would never—”
“You knew they had Samuel the whole time. Hell, I bet you gave them Samuel.”
“Alfred . . . Alfred,” he sputtered. “I hardly know what to say.”
“Vosch and Jourdain must have contacted you after Nueve pulled me from the warehouse.”
Pushed into a corner, he went all stiff and formal on me. “That is an outrageous assumption on your part.”
“And you were scared out of your mind. I understand that. But I also know how these things work. They’ll lean on anyone who knew me—anybody close I might have confided in. So they leaned on you—they must have leaned on you. Was that the deal, Mr. Needlemier—did you offer them Samuel if they let you go?”
My answer was the soft hiss of the long-distance connection.
“When did you tell them my death was faked? At my funeral? Or did Vosch go with you so you wouldn’t try to give them the slip in Ohio?”
“Alfred, may I say, this is completely . . . Alfred, from the beginning I have always done all I could . . .”
“Stop lying to me!” I yelled into the phone.
“I have a wife!” he yelled back. “A family! I never had any business in this business! You don’t understand what it’s like to face losing everything, Alfred.”
Oh boy, I thought. Oh, boy.
“They said they’d kill them if I didn’t cooperate!” he went on.
“Did you set him up, Mr. Needlemier? Did you give them Samuel?”
“I would pay any price to protect my family. I am not ashamed of that. I will not apologize for that.”
“That’s it,” I said. “I knew it. It didn’t make sense. Even at half speed, Samuel could have taken Vosch. You lured him somewhere and they ambushed him.”
“I saved his life,” Mr. Needlemier said. “Say what you want, judge me if you wish, but I saved his life.”
“They’re going to kill him anyway.”
“Alfred, truly, I never meant to harm anyone. I was put in an untenable position. I can’t . . . there must be . . . please, Alfred, tell me what to do. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
I remembered this fifteen-year-old kid, scared out of his mind, chasing a tall, lion-haired man down a hallway, crying after him as he marched to his doom, There’s gotta be something I can do. Take me with you; I could help.
And I remembered the tall man’s answer.
“Yes,” I said. “Pray.”
01:06:38:29
I was sitting in Captain Jack’s drinking a Diet Coke and listening to an old Billy Joel song (“Saturday night and you’re still hangin’ around . . .”), when a voice came over the intercom instructing Alfred Kropp to meet his party at baggage claim. Baggage claim, I thought. Perfect. I dropped a five on the table and said goodbye to Captain Jack’s. I felt like a regular.
Two men wearing trench coats were standing by the conveyer belt, hands jammed into their pockets, hats pulled low over their faces. Between them stood a third man, tall and pale, with a hound-dog face and very bushy, very black eyebrows. His face showed no expression as I approached; if he was happy to see me, he wasn’t going to show it. I figured he wasn’t happy to see me. I was right.
“You shouldn’t have done this, Alfred,” Samuel said.
Vosch was standing on his right, the slit-eyed, flat-face brute I first met driving the Town Car on his left. I ignored Samuel and turned to Vosch.
“Where’s Jourdain?” I asked.
“At the end of the circle,” Vosch said.
“A circle doesn’t have an end,” I pointed out.
“Or a beginning,” Vosch said.
He smiled a humorless smile and gestured toward the terminal doors.
“Shall we? We have a private jet with all the amenities.”
I looked at Samuel. He looked back at me.
“Which one do you want?” I asked him.
He cut his eyes toward Vosch. “That one.”
“Take the big one. Vosch is mine.”
>
Samuel’s chin dipped toward his chest. Mr. Flat-Face’s mouth came open and he said, “What?” Samuel punched him in the throat. Flat-Face fell to his knees, spitting and choking. Vosch’s right hand rose from his pocket. I reached behind my back. Vosch raised his gun toward Samuel.
I didn’t fumble. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t weigh the odds. Nueve would have been proud.
I shot Vosch point-blank in the chest.
He fell straight back, landing hard on his butt, his shot going wild and puncturing the ceiling tile. Flat-Face reached inside his coat. “Sam,” I called softly, tossing the gun from my waistband at him as I rushed toward Vosch. Samuel caught the gun and swung the muzzle against Flat-Face’s flat face.
I straddled Vosch’s chest and put the end of my gun against the end of his nose.
“Get his gun,” I called to Samuel.
Behind me, I heard someone yell, “Call security!”
I pulled the gun from Vosch’s hand and shouted, “Somebody call the paramedics! This guy’s been shot!”
I bumped Samuel in the shoulder as I pushed off Vosch’s chest. Sam was holding a gun in each hand just like me, the one I threw him and the one he took from Flat-Face.
“We go,” I said.
He took it in quickly: the terrified onlookers, the red emergency light pulsing, the alarm howling in the distance. He didn’t need me to explain it to him: Vosch was down and Flat-Face was in no shape to chase us. Time to haul it, not kick it.
We burst through the doors into the biting cold. A taxi was parked next to the curb, engine idling so the driver could run the heater. The only other vehicle nearby was one of those big tour buses. Samuel dived into the front seat of the taxi; I took the back. He put one of the guns against the startled driver’s temple and told him to get out. No big surprise when he did. Samuel slid over, slammed the door the cabbie left open in his haste, yanked the gearshift into drive, and floored the gas. He merged without looking into the driveway leading to the exit, scraping the side of a minivan that had slammed on its brakes to avoid running over the terrified cabdriver.
I twisted around to look out the back window. Vosch and Flat-Face came out of the building. Flat-Face pointed at our cab and Vosch didn’t hesitate—he made straight for the bus.
“What is he, Superman?” I wondered. “I shot him pointblank.”
“They’re wearing Kevlar vests,” Samuel said in his trademark deadpan.
“You could have told me.”
“I didn’t know you were armed.”
We roared past a sign for the I-15 ramp.
“Get on the interstate,” I said. “They’ve hijacked the bus.” The taxi was old—it smelled like stale cigarettes and coffee and the seats were torn—but I figured even this old rattletrap could bury a big bus at high speed. He grunted something at me in appreciation for my grasp of the obvious and ran the red light for the southbound lanes, barely missing a pickup truck. The bus behind us didn’t—and didn’t let the truck concern it: the Vosch Express slammed head-on into its side, sending the truck into a spin, tires screaming in protest as they slid sideways across the asphalt.
I rolled down the window as Samuel accelerated onto the lane.
“Don’t waste bullets!” he shouted over the whipping wind.
The bus lost some ground making the grade up the ramp, but once it hit the highway it began to make it up. I heaved myself through the open window, planted my butt on the doorframe, and twisted to my right toward the bus. I could see Vosch at the wheel as it barreled straight toward me. I tried for the tires first. I didn’t want to fire at Vosch. Not that I had deep feelings for him, but if I did take him out, the bus would wreck and might hurt some innocent person. Then I saw the door on the side of the bus slide open and Flat-Face leaning halfway out, taking aim at me with what looked like a rifle.
I dove back into the cab and yelled at Samuel, “He’s got a rifle! Where the hell did he get that?”
“Under his coat!” he yelled back.
“I told you to take his gun!”
“I did!”
“But you left the rifle!”
“My hands were full!”
The window behind me exploded. Glass rained down, dusting my head and shoulders.
“Thanks, Mr. slitty-eyed flat-faced big hulking fatso palooka man,” I muttered. I kneeled on the seat, pressed my chest against the back and, holding the gun with both hands, leaned out the busted window, resting my elbows on the trunk to steady my aim.
“Alfred!” Samuel shouted. “Get down!”
I ignored him. Maybe Vosch was out of season, but Flat-Face was fair game. I fired at him; he fired at me; and neither one of us scored a hit.
We were slowing down. Flipping around, I peeked over the back of the front seat. We were coming up on a bottleneck: a car in the left lane was trying to pass a flatbed semi in the right, so both lanes were blocked.
“Take the emergency lane!” I shouted in Samuel’s ear.
Too late. When we slowed down, Vosch floored the gas, sending the front of the bus into the back of the taxi at seventy miles per hour. Samuel’s chest smacked into the steering wheel, mine into the front seat, and the cab’s rear bumper crumpled like tinfoil. The passenger headrest, about three inches from my head, exploded into a mass of cheap vinyl and yellow foam cushioning: Flat-Face had scored a hit.
Samuel yelled at me to get down again and this time I didn’t ignore him. I threw myself onto the floorboards as he whipped the cab into the emergency lane.
Suddenly the back of the car slung hard to the right, as if punched by a gigantic hand. Samuel fought the wheel as the cab filled with the acrid smell of burning rubber. He eased off the gas.
“Got the tire!” he shouted.
I peeked out the right window. Showers of sparks danced in the billowing smoke rising from our back bumper. I looked up, saw the big flatbed cruising in the lane beside us, then reached over the seat and tapped Samuel on the shoulder. He was hunched over the wheel, knuckles white as he fought to keep us from running off the road.
“Speed up!” I called.
“Can’t!”
“To your left!” I screamed. “Get us close!”
He glanced that way and nodded with a quick snap of his head. He used to be an Operative Nine; he got it right away. The steering wheel was jerking in his hands as if it might pop off the column any second. He eased us to the left, within a couple feet of the truck. I put my mouth close to his left ear and yelled, “Me first, then you!”
“Impossible!” he shouted back.
“Necessary!”
I forced the door slowly open—it’s hard to open a car door into a sixty-mile-per-hour headwind—looking straight ahead toward the truck because looking back was scary and looking down was terrifying. The flatbed was hauling a load of timber, a stack of twelve-foot two-by-fours held down by canvas straps. Holding the door open with my right, I reached out with my left hand and grabbed one of the straps. Now I was hanging halfway out of the car as Samuel fought to keep us more or less even with the truck, but the blown-out tire was giving him problems and the car bounced up and down violently—if the rim tore apart before we could bail, we were roadkill.
There was no going back now. If I let go, gravity would take me and the wheels on that bus going round and round would finish me.
I pulled—quick and hard—and flew out of the backseat.
The toes of my boots hit the pavement, bounced, then collided with the spinning tire of the flatbed. I knew I couldn’t hang here long; my biceps and shoulder muscles were already cramping, plus you couldn’t be in a more exposed position, plus I had to help Samuel get out of the taxi before one of Flat-Face’s rounds tore into the gas tank—or into my explosive-filled head.
I roared at the top of my lungs (I don’t know why something like that helps in this type of situation, but it does) and heaved myself up, flinging my right hand past the strap into the pile of wood. My fingertips slipped between two stacks and that
allowed me to let go of the strap with my left hand. About a foot was all I needed to gain a toehold on the edge of the truck bed, and then I was on.
No time to congratulate myself and no time to catch my breath. Vosch was a car length behind me, straddling the right and emergency lanes to give Flat-Face the best shot at the taxi. I scrambled over the top of the wood as Samuel, who must have seen me in the side-view mirror, eased off the gas, bringing his door roughly even to my position on the stack of lumber.
I flopped onto my belly at the edge and stretched my right hand toward him. He was shouting something at me, but the roar of the wind tore the sound apart. This would be tricky. We’d have one shot at it with no margin for error and then there was no predicting what the runaway cab might do. But Sam was a former Operative Nine. He already had the next move figured out. He had probably already rehearsed it in his head, seeing it happen in his mind’s eye, and had completed the maneuver a dozen times.
With his right hand on the wheel, he opened his door with his left, struggling to push it open just as I did against the wind. What came next happened very fast.
In the instant before he jumped, Sam whipped the steering wheel hard to the right, put his left foot on the footboard and pushed off, flinging himself in my general direction, trusting me to catch him in the one and only chance I’d have to catch him.
I caught him.
Then I rolled, fingers locked around his wrist, pulling him up.
One of Flat-Face’s bullets found its target, the rear of the taxi jumped, and with a loud whumph! the gas tank exploded.
The flatbed swerved left as the driver reacted to the blast. Sam and I lay on our backs on top of the wood, too winded to speak, contemplating the cloudless sky above.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m thinking . . .” he gasped, “that we should have killed them at the airport.”
“He’s slowing down,” I said, meaning the trucker. I didn’t know if he knew he had a couple of stowaways onboard, but he knew a taxicab had just blown up in the emergency lane and maybe was he going to check it out. “He’s pulling over.”