Mad Dogs

  “Climb off, Victor.”

  I crawled off the dead woman. Off Zane. Turned to see Hailey appear in the kicked-open door and say: “Office sign reads Gone For Dinner, and it’s true.”

  Russell sighed: “Gotta say I’m sorry, guys. Especially to you, Victor.”

  “Vic,” said Zane, “look at this.”

  Zane sat on the motel room floor, the dead woman’s legs splayed open and out to his sides, her hips cradled across his thighs like one of the Kama Sutra techniques I’ve never gotten to try. I focused where Zane pointed, toward the white cotton crescent of her pubis; blinked then saw what he wanted me to, a rash like dozens of pin pricks high on the inside of her left thigh.

  “There’s an answer,” said Zane. “Mice.”

  Russell said: “I’m sorry, Vic. For what I did. Spacing out.”

  “She was a ‘C’ girl,” said Zane.

  “Spacing out is your thing, Vic,” continued Russell. “Hailey’s our mumbler…”

  MICE: Money. Ideology. Compromise. Ego. The Four Horsemen Of Espionage. The four categories of motivation that create spies or traitors.

  “Zane here melts down in heat…”

  “She’s probably a real nurse,” said Zane. “A stressed-out medico who got hooked on dispensary stock and salesmen samples. She probably ran out of other skin to shoot. Somebody found out, somebody owned her. Somebody stocked her and schooled her, sent her on her way. Straight to us. To Dr. F.”

  “Eric is Mister Robot…”

  I shook my head: “She killed him, but she was a puppet on a string.”

  Nurse Death sprawled against the heap of bed. Zane got to his feet, picked up her pistol—a .380 Walther PPK like James Bond carried. She stared at me with five eyes.

  The pushed-up bra revealed her brown nipples and they stared at me.

  Her mascaraed lids drooped down over glassy green orbs and they stared at me.

  A singed red star dotted the meditative center of her forehead and it stared at me.

  “But me,” continued Russell, “I’m Mister Kick Ass Guy. Yet I froze. Kicked the door in cool, plenty of Op Time… Froze. When I saw her standing there. In the bathroom. What’s up with that? What the hell do you think that means?”

  “Things happen.” I dumped a dresser drawer of Nurse Death’s clothes, checked the drawer’s bottom and back where nothing was taped.

  “’Xactly,” said Zane. “But don’t screw up again. I wasn’t born to die dumb.”

  “We’re running hot.” I dumped the next drawer. Hailey filled a bag from the closet with Nurse Dead’s cell phone, purse, all the paper. I threw Russell the motel room key from a different corpse. “Dr. F’s room. Four minutes. Toss, Grab & Go.”

  We met in the parking lot.

  Hailey threw the bag with Nurse Death’s litter in the car.

  Russell tossed Zane a tan Burberry topcoat from Dr. F’s room: “Your long arms will geek out of the sleeves, but a guy running around the last days of winter in only a shirt, pants and sneakers billboards: ‘Call the cops on me!’”

  He put a suitcase in the silver car’s trunk. “Doc’s laptop, address book, disks. He had under a hundred in cash stashed in a James Dalton novel about Watergate.”

  “Thanks for the coat,” said Zane. “Smart thinking.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still sorry about that weird freeze-up.” Russell sidled closer to the white maned Jesus. “So, ah, smart thinking says I should carry her gun.”

  “You froze.”

  “But that was back there and this is out here.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Victor! Not fair. You won’t let me drive, but OK, you were the last one locked up, you got the most recent road muscles, so I’m cool with that. But everybody knows I’m better with a pistol than any of you. Zane won’t let me have it!”

  Hailey rolled her eyes. “We gotta go.”

  Eric bobbed his head in agreement, his eyes full of her and the road.

  I said: “Not yet.”

  Ten minutes later, the red neon MOTEL sign trembled in the rear view mirror of our road rumbling silver car. With the steering wheel vibrating in my grip, I watched that crimson sign disappear as we swooped around a night black highway curve. The rear view mirror was full of dark. So far.

  But by now, our Keepers had found our empty ward. The blue bus. The blanketed driver. Data confirming Dr. F was missing and implying that he was dead. They’d hit the red neon motel parking lot. Maybe they’d get there only after red-light spinning, siren-screaming State Troopers called by a hysterical retiree who thought running a motel in The Great Maine Nowhere was his cushy ride to the big gone. Our hunters would find a kicked-in door. Nurse Death with her five eyes.

  And Dr. F. Not lying on the floor. Fuck that. We left him on his feet in the red neon night. His belt cinched his waist to a t-pole of the motel’s chain link swimming pool fence. White tape from the Castle lashed his wrists to the chain links. Taped his arms out high and wide away from his body as if he were crucified. Crazy, sure, just like us, but we all told ourselves that it was also a perfect Psy War freakout to rattle our hunters as we roared away down the dark highway.

  12

  “Lucky you guys got here in time,” said the smiling salt-&-pepper haired woman holding the steaming coffee pot and standing beside our table in the bright yellow light.

  “We’re lousy with luck,” I told her.

  We walked into the Hideout Diner after the dinner rush. Our stolen silver car hid out back of that lone shack along a two-lane highway. Wood paneling and scone lights filled the diner with a homey feel. Only we five sat at the metal tables. A display case held cherry pie. The diner smelled like coffee and beef gravy.

  Our waitress gave us menus. “Hate to rush you, but we need to start cleaning.”

  “We’re in a hurry, too,” I told her.

  “So many choices,” whispered Zane. The glow from the laminated menu pages reflected in his wide eyes. “Not just a line you stand in for the one thing they give you.”

  Our waitress smiled at Hailey: “You ought to take these guys out more, Hon.”

  “Don’t I know it,” answered Hailey.

  We ordered five different dinners. With pie.

  “It’s OK,” said Russell. “We got enough money.”

  “Nobody ever has enough money,” I said. “Not when you’re on the run.”

  “Money’s not the only thing we don’t have enough of,” said Hailey.

  “We’ve got a Walther PPK with one bullet in the pipe, two in the mag,” I said. “We got $847, minus pie. A stolen rental car with half a tank of gas. Our GODS. Raw intell we scooped up from Nurse Death and Dr. F.”

  “And hellhounds on our trail,” said Russell.

  “One thing’s for sure,” said Zane. “I’m not going back.”

  Hailey said: “Somehow I don’t think that’s an option.”

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” said Russell. “To finally just go.”

  Even Eric grinned.

  “Yes,” said Hailey. “But where?”

  “And how?” said Russell.

  “No alone.” Eric trembled. “No alone.”

  “’Xactly. Nobody’s leaving anybody. We already did that back at the Castle.”

  “I’ll be with you as long as the plague lets me,” said Hailey. Eric trembled. She forsook her honor and caution to gently touch his arm and his eyes misted.

  “Hey, it’s OK,” Russell assured him. “We’ll all be gunned down long before any plague gets you. The Oppos are playing for keeps.”

  “Who are they?” asked Hailey. “Who is the opposition?”

  “The Keepers who’ll be freaked by losing us,” I said. “Whoever contracted Dr. F’s hit and framed us for the fall. Lawmen who got two murder corpses. The Agency whose number one rule is no m
ess gets stuck on them. They is whoever is out to get us.”

  Russell said: “You gotta be practical to make it as a paranoid.”

  “Who’s Dr. F’s ultimate killer?” asked Hailey.

  “We’re everyone else’s answer to that question,” I said. “We’re on the run. That’s enough to make us prey.”

  “So what are we going to do?” said Hailey.

  “Fuck ’em,” said Russell.

  “We already did that,” I said. “It’s not enough. And it’s not enough to just survive. We need to take back what got lost. What got done to us. And more.”

  Hailey said: “And get what?”

  “A chance.”

  Zane said: “A chance for what?”

  “Beats me. But I’m not going to go down like a chump just because they can play it that way. Besides, I’m still pissed about Dr. F.”

  “So let’s get them,” said Zane.

  “If we do it right,” I said, “we can nail the Doc’s real killer. Find out who’s the traitor spy in Team USA. Clear up Nurse Death. Buy ourselves a pass from Uncle Sam.”

  “Oh sure,” said Russell. “That’ll work.”

  Everybody laughed.

  I asked: “What’s our better choice?”

  Zane nodded. “You need to do something more than save your own ass to justify running free in this world.”

  “Right,” I said. “Nothing’s worth much if all we are is drifters.”

  “What the hell,” said Russell. “I’m hungry.”

  He held his right fist over our table.

  Zane and I put our fists to his.

  Hailey let her clenched hand touch ours, nodded to Eric whose fist made us five.

  “Time is our one certain enemy,” I said. “We’re all off our meds. How long do we have until we just plain go off?”

  Hailey shrugged. “Five patients, five different drug regimens. Hard to say. We won’t go over the edge all at once, and we each have a different ticking clock.”

  “But the big clock,” I said. “The countdown ticking towards when we decompensate so far we’re worse off than a bum drooling on a park bench. How long do we have before we go down?”

  Eric whispered: “Already missed dinner dose. Bedtime, too.”

  “I’ve seen guys like us skip their meds,” said Zane, who’d been locked up longer than any of us. “Best guess is that we’ve got a week before we crack-up.”

  “Seven days.” Russell made his rock star face, sang: “Time has come today!”

  That diner gave us our first taste of freedom. Real mashed potatoes and gravy and beef and dark meat turkey and fresh broccoli, hot coffee in tan mugs. Clear clean water. Zane ordered cold milk that was as white as his hair and beard.

  Inspiration jelled between the main courses and pie. Hailey made the trip to our car with Zane covering her. She brought back a cell phone.

  “You sure it’s hers and not Docs?” Russell held up his hands, backed off from Hailey’s glare, alibied his insult with: “You only live once, so check twice.”

  She clicked the pen, moved plates aside to set a notebook on the table, and thumbed on the cell phone, hit REDIAL. Watched the LCD screen and wrote the had-to-be-another-cell-phone-area-code number it showed on the notebook: 772-555-4554.

  The phone clicked in her ear.

  “It’s me,” said Hailey.

  “Why are you calling again?” said the man in the phone. “You reported success.”

  “We’re broken,” said Hailey to the man. “We need to meet.”

  “Don’t panic! Do not come to D.C. Don’t… My mother’s house is blue.”

  Hailey licked her lips. Waited.

  She’d bluffed him past the Recognition Code Sequence, and when he realized that, truly heard her voice, he fired the R.C.S. at her, got nothing back…

  Hung up.

  Zane said: “Go!”

  Hailey pushed 0.

  “How can I help you?” said the woman operator.

  “Remember when you were a teenager?” said Hailey.

  “Excuse me, Ma’am, this is the Operator.”

  “This is the mother who let her 15-year-old daughter use her cell phone and now can’t find her but knows that guy at the Mall Friday night looked more like 23 than 17 when I picked up Jenny and her friends, and now she’s not downstairs doing her biology like she’s supposed to and I’m scared to death that she’s in trouble because all I’ve got is the number she called on my cell phone and it’s answering NOT IN SERVICE.”

  “I can try that number for you if—”

  “Won’t help. I tried it five seconds ago. I need you to tell me this creep’s name and everything else about him so I can…”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, that’s against company policy.”

  “So Jenny getting her whole life run over is company policy?”

  “I could lose my job.”

  “Were you ever 15 and knew everything?”

  We waited. Waited. Russell’s fork hovered with a bite of cherry pie.

  Hailey’s brow wrinkled as she strained to hear a whispered: “Kyle Russo.”

  “Please be right!” said Hailey. “Jenny told her friend he lived on a street called—”

  “Thank you for using Tower Cell Service,” said the Operator.

  For the second time that night, Hailey got hung up on.

  “There is no Kyle Russo,” guessed Zane as Hailey turned off the phone.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but there is a D.C. like he mentioned, Washington, D.C.”

  “How long until we get there?” asked Hailey.

  I shrugged. “On paper, we could make it in 12, 14 hours.”

  “We ain’t on that paper,” said Russell.

  “Seven days to get somewhere and do whatever it is we’ve got to do,” said Zane.

  “More swell news,” said Russell. “Whoever’s hunting us knows we’re too street smart to run north, hit the Canadian border that’s been beefed-up with Homeland Security.”

  “We could bust that,” said Zane.

  “Yeah,” said Russell, “but we’re too smart to work that hard when we’ve got to keep running. And way up here, the best direction to run is south, towards D.C. Even if they don’t know where we want to be, they know which way we’re going.”

  “So let’s get gone,” I said, car keys in my hand.

  Twenty minutes from the diner, our stolen car rumbled over a two lane highway’s low wooden bridge spanning an ice-skimmed river, rounded a curve—

  Red lights spun in the night a mile beyond our windshield:

  Cops.

  13

  “Roadblock!” I yelled, killing our headlights, steering the car by moonlight, shifting to NEUTRAL and pulling on the emergency parking brake so our taillights wouldn’t flash. Gravel crunched under our tires. We sat lightless on the side of the road. The silver car smelled of burned brake pads and fear.

  Spinning red cop lights stayed on our night horizon.

  “Could be an accident,” said Zane, but even he didn’t believe that.

  “Can’t be for us!” said Hailey. “No matter how much the Agency wants to catch us, the CIA’s mantra is Never Say Nothing. They wouldn’t tell the cops!”

  “The Firm wouldn’t tell the cops the truth,” I said. “Not the whole truth. But they probably haven’t had time to nail a full lid on us. That roadblock—Hailey’s right, those cops aren’t after us. They’re looking for this stolen car tied to two murders.”

  “License plate was probably on file at the motel,” said Hailey. “I should have…”

  “Can’t go back,” whispered Eric.

  “We can bullshit our way through,” said Russell.

  “We’re in a stolen car with its original plates and no driver’s licenses,” I said. “Those are th
e first things roadblock cops will check, hard facts no bullshit can hide.”

  “We can ditch the car, hike around the roadblock,” said Zane.

  “Wandering won’t work,” said Eric. “Forest. Swamps. Cold.”

  “Cold works for me,” said Zane.

  “We need a dead man’s car,” said Russell. “No stolen car report.”

  “We’ve got what we got,” I said.

  Zane said: “Anybody got an idea?”

  We sat on the side of the road in the dark car, knowing that each second we did nothing increased the odds of us losing everything.

  Then I said: “James Dean.”

  “Fuck you!” said Russell. “Don’t make us part of your suicide!”

  “It’ll work.”

  “In theory!” argued Russell. “Hell, they don’ let trainees play James Dean now! Too risky to learn outside of ‘in theory.’”

  “I practiced it once.”

  “And?” said Russell.

  “Now I’ll do better.”

  “James Dean is—”

  “All we’ve got.”

  14

  Headlights off, the stolen silver Ford idled on the road to the bridge. My hands gripped the steering wheel. I was alone. Frigid air flowed in the open windows. The night outside smelled of pines and river ice and highway.

  Half an hour since we first spotted the spinning red lights of the police roadblock.

  Now or never.

  Headlights on. I shifted into forward gear. Let the gray road’s yellow stripes reel the car ever closer, ever faster. The car tires rumbled over the wooden bridge. Guardrail planks flowed past my windows. Shapes on the side of the road flicked past in my headlights as I tried to memorize, calculate, gauge. The car slid into the curve that came before we’d seen the roadblock’s flashing red light.

  I stomped on the gas pedal. Sped out of the curve. Red lights spun ever closer in my windshield. I flicked my headlights to the high and hopefully blinding beam an instant before a spotlight winked on from the three cop cars blocking the road. I stomped on the brake pedal. Tires cried. Metal shuddered. Red lights loomed closer, coming closer. The spotlight grew bright.

  Crank the steering wheel! Jerk on the emergency brake! The silver car skidded—