How many guys?
Two guys, got to be no more, maybe less.
Plus one.
Please: plus one.
And please: Don’t let rain wash these streets. Not yet.
House windows blocked by drawn white shades. White door. Five red steps.
Her rolled-down windows brought sounds Faye strained to hear, the scent of lilacs. She slouched behind the steering wheel, eyes staked out scanning, not locked on the TZ where nothing moved, where nobody could be home. Her gaze dropped to the front seat, a laptop screen and the steady pulsing of a blue dot, the words: RANGE 232 FEET.
And that address.
That house.
The TZ.
Her left thigh pressed down on the Glock .40 on the seat between her legs.
Come on, Condor! They’ll make me if I keep posting here!
He’d left her alone in the hotel room for ninety-seven minutes last night.
Left her propped up in a chair with the Glock first-aid-kit white-taped in her hand in case she fell asleep or the concussion inspired a seizure at the wrong moment, the door getting kicked in while she’s flopping around with no gun.
Took three taxis, two stops, he said.
Fuck cruising cover teams: We own these streets. Or die trying.
Code-knocked on the hotel room door, followed up with his “It’s you.”
Showed her what was in the store sacks.
Look what we’ve got now, he’d said. Look what we can do now.
Now, motherfucker! thought Faye as she sat in the stolen car. Now.
An engine whined behind her on this suburban street to the cul-de-sac.
Faye scrunched beneath the stolen car’s dashboard.
Thumping behind her came from the duct-taped man locked in this car’s trunk.
Collateral damage. Civilian casualties. The blood of innocents.
Nothing’s ever easy. Nothing’s ever free. Nobody is a saint.
We’re all sinners.
We’re all the duct-taped man locked in the trunk of a stolen car.
Still … Sorry.
A whining engine wave rolled like a wall over the stolen car. Faye saw a blur of brown metal, then it was gone and the screaming engine noise flowed with it.
Ease up. Just enough. Eyes above the dashboard, watch the cul-de-sac.
You’ve seen a thousand such brown delivery vans in the streets of America, of Europe, of China and India, too. A global delivery service beyond any one government system. Street meat sent via cyber. You want it, you pay, brown brings it to your door.
The oversized step van everybody knew whined to a stop in front of a house across the cul-de-sac from TZ, one of the homes with no cars parked nearby.
The brown van’s engine cut off.
No! What if it doesn’t start again? What if it can’t move?
Don’t worry, Faye told herself. The driver’s a professional.
The brown van’s driver stepped to the pavement of the cul-de-sac. Even from half a block away, Faye recognized the driver’s expected brown uniform pants & shirt. She saw his bald head, cue-ball bald and pink, and that’s what you noticed, plus he wore those dorky flip-up sunglasses clipped to black horn-rimmed hipster eyewear. And even at this distance with her eyes behind Condor’s aviator sunglasses, Faye’s attention got diverted by a weird black smear on the left side of the driver’s neck but she couldn’t identify it as what it was, a spider web tattoo.
The brown-clad driver rattled open the van’s rear cargo door. She couldn’t see what was in the back of the van where a SWAT team could have huddled, but houses in the cul-de-sac could. The driver pulled a padded shipping envelope from a respectable load of shipping bags, packages, and boxes. He hurried up the sidewalk to the house he’d parked in front of, pushed what looked to be a doorbell.
Waited no more than five seconds before he knocked on then unlatched the aluminum storm door, put the padded envelope on the narrow ledge between the two front doors and scurried to his waiting brown van, no time to waste.
The brown van roared its engine to life. Gears ground.
The brown step van pulled away from that delivery address.
Circled along the top of the cul-de-sac.
Drove just past Faye’s visual lock on the TZ.
Fucking stopped.
Again the van’s engine died.
The bald spider-webbed driver hopped out of the van.
Rattled open the rear cargo hold. Got a brown-paper-wrapped box the size of an attaché case. Gripped one box edge in his left hand as he hurried …
Up the sidewalk to the TZ. Up the five red cement steps. Up to the aluminum outer door. Pushed the doorbell. Again, no more than five seconds and he’s knocking on the aluminum storm door, opening it wide, bending over to position the heavy box on its narrow edge, but when he eased the aluminum door closed, it wouldn’t shut all the way, gaped open enough for a curious citizen or a cruising cop to notice. The bald driver didn’t care, hurried back to his van, fired up the engine, drove out of the cul-de-sac, turned left and cruised past where Faye huddled behind the steering wheel of a stolen car.
The van engine whined back the way it came, out of sight of where it had been.
Faye kept her eyes locked on the TZ with the gaping-open aluminum door.
Saturday morning in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Back on Wednesday—Jesus, was it only Wednesday, three days ago?—at Complex Zed, when Sami sent her out, turned her loose, and she’d gone to the EDD, the Equipment Disbursement Detail, got Santa to give her cash and credit cards, give her ammo for her own gun and the ballistic vest she wore now, the .38 and .45 Condor used.
And Santa’d said: “You going to war, Agent?”
Faye’d lied and told him: “I know what I’m doing.”
Wish I could go back, say something different.
Tell Santa: “Not going to war, going to finish one.”
Now on a suburban Saturday morning, the backpack purse Santa’d helped her fill lay crumpled and flat on the backseat of the stolen car. One of Santa’s two Delta Force compact flash-bang grenades was gently duct taped to the left side of the bulletproof ballistic vest she wore under her fucking pink hoodie.
Eyes on TZ.
The door—the white door, last door before in there—that door slowly opened.
Let her see a compact man, short brown hair, beard like Spec Ops, unbuttoned shirt. The man in TZ’s now open entryway stood on the other side of the outer aluminum door propped open by a delivered package, scanning for shooters.
Saw nobody.
He picked up the brown van–delivered package.
White light BANG! as the Delta Force grenade IED duct taped to the bottom of the delivered box blew the bearded man backwards into the house.
Faye swung up behind the stolen car’s steering wheel, keyed its engine to life and stomped on the gas, careened a hard right turn into the cul-de-sac braking to a stop in front of the TZ, jumping out of the car with a Glock .40 in her right hand, her left hand slapping a store-bought, magnetized emergency spinning light that spun red flashes of officialdom from the top of the stolen car that might—might—convince civilians in the cul-de-sac that there was no need to call 911 after that big boom and flash at the house where the could-be-a-cop-car car now parked, with a woman wearing a pink hoodie charging the glass-broken, aluminum-buckled outer door.
A bald man now wearing black jeans and a black leather jacket ran toward the stolen car with the spinning red light.
Faye cleared the five red concrete steps in two strides, shoved the buckled aluminum door aside, snapped her Glock up to zero—
Man on the empty living room floor! Uncurling from fetal position! Beard, brown hair, gasping, face burned making noise he can’t hear and—
Gun, he’s got a gun, fumbling a pistol with a silencer, hands turning it!
The blind, deaf, and burned man was a warrior who knew his weapon.
Knew how to push its silencer
-sausaged barrel into his mouth, jab the cold black bore toward the top of his skull—Phutt!
Crimson gore sprayed the white wall by the kitchen door.
The man with the gun in his mouth lay crumpled like a gone-to-sleep child.
What lie did you buy?
What truth couldn’t you face?
No time, gun up, Faye zeroed the hall to the right of the empty living room:
Two open doorways on the hall, right side. Probably bedrooms.
End of the hall, open door, medicine cabinet above a sink: bathroom.
Left side of the hall, open door, a glimpse of … washer spigots, dryer plug-in, machines gone. Laundry room, storage closet.
Condor, beside her, bald head from the electric clippers and razors he’d bought at the late-night drugstore, the same family emporium with a children’s aisle full of close-outs from last Halloween, temporary tattoos made from and washed off by water like the rain that mercifully hadn’t yet fallen today to smear the ink on his neck, the eye-trapping spider web. He had his .45 combat focused, obeyed her gesture to clear the kitchen.
As he moved to his fire zone, she eased down the hall toward the open bathroom.
The hallway seen over the barrel of her Glock:
First bedroom door.
Edge forward along the wall.
Faye dropped to her hands and knees—
Whirled/rolled flat on her back & stomach past the first open bedroom door, facing & gun aiming in, watching a spinning topsy-turvy turning view of …
Sleeping bag * open suitcase * dirty clothes * water bottle * closet open empty—
Nobody.
She pulled her legs under her as she sat with her back pressed against the wall, the second bedroom door open and to her right, better view of the laundry room empty, see most of the interior of the end of the hall bathroom empty, second bedroom Gotta be!
One grenade left fuck it lob it in the bedroom close eyes cover ears open mouth—
White light/BANG!
Faye’s world burned and bonged for maybe fifteen seconds before she could see and stagger to her feet, combat charge into the room she’d blasted.
The man pushing himself to sitting against the empty white wall was a mess: scrapes on his goatee/scraggly-bearded face, Band-Aid on his forehead below short-cropped dirty brass hair. He wore a white scooped-neck T-shirt, gray sweatpants, and bare feet. A non-hospital-applied long white bandage striped from his left collarbone down his sinewy muscled chest to well below his heart, like it covered a furrow from, say, a .45 bullet. He had a black eye, puffy lips that must have drawn stares when he stalked through the zoo the day before, but he’d made it then, and he made it to sitting up now, but his gun, some kind of prototype black automatic pistol with a silencer, his pistol he’d been a star with yesterday, that gun lay blown across the room.
Faye guessed his still-dazed eyes came from field-kit pain-fighting morphine.
He’d been the executioner who crucified her asshole partner with knives.
He’d been the protocol Homeland Security agent outside Condor’s house.
He’d been the Monkey Man on the subway platform before Condor’s shots dropped him into a rushing-out train.
He was the biker.
He pushed his bare heels on the carpeted floor—not to get away, but to sit straighter against the white wall.
As he stared into the bore of Faye’s gun.
She let her vision expand to take in where he’d been living. Sleeping bag on the floor, camping lamp and other gear, a cheap suitcase with his clothes, two high-quality black cloth material bags she instinctively knew were full of combat gear.
A paperback book lay on the floor beside his camping pillow. Some novel.
The Vs squatting in this house were out-of-towners. Brought in from the black.
The battered V stared at the woman beyond the gun zeroed on his life.
Said: “So … Hey.”
“Hey,” said Faye.
Black gun barrel pointed straight at the man sitting against the white wall.
Who told her: “Your turn.”
Faye didn’t see her Glock flash or hear the roar as she shot him in the head.
Then: There he is, shooting nobody no more with his bloody three eyes.
She combat swept the empty kitchen where the only documents were eviction notices this team had torn off the white door when they moved in to squat.
Eased down the basement stairs.
Condor sat on the basement floor beside a support beam for the ceiling. Once upon a time, the basement’s other room had been a home office, wired for computers and a big-screen TV, but now that carpeted room was empty, as was its adjoining bathroom. Out here, where Condor sat, was only empty basement with a clear plastic drop cloth unfolded over the home-owner-installed floor tiles. On that plastic drop cloth sat Condor.
With Merle.
She was naked. Slumped with her spine against the support beam, arms limp at her sides, wrists stuck to strips of white tape. Condor’d cut her free from the beam. Her cheeks were red from ripped-away white tape stuck over her mouth. Blond-gray hair hung matted and tangled to her slumped bare shoulders. Faye smelled that Merle sat in her own waste. Condor’d been whispering to Merle as Faye followed her gun down the stairs to the basement, but by the time she joined them, he’d stopped. Merle’s eyes were open but whatever she was seeing wasn’t there.
“Did they drug her or…” Faye found no more words.
“Doesn’t matter,” whispered the suddenly old-looking man. “She’s gone.”
Faye heard him strangle a sigh, or maybe it was a sob.
He told her: “Maybe Maine. The hospital. Maybe she’ll come back there.”
Then …
Oh then!
… he softly so softly pressed his lips to her forehead.
Clumped back up the stairs, the .45 dangling limp and impotent in his hand.
They found Merle’s phone on the kitchen counter.
Faye never knew what made her open the refrigerator door.
But she did.
The only thing she found in that cool-air refrigerator waited on its top shelf:
A clear glass jar where two eyeballs floated in pink lemonade-like liquid.
She felt Condor come stand behind her.
He said: “Your partner. What they took to frame me after they crucified him.”
Faye whispered: “Who are these people?”
Condor reached around her, closed the refrigerator, said: “They’re us.”
When she looked at him, he added: “Only let’s hope we’re better and luckier.”
“This isn’t who I wanted to be,” said Faye.
“Me either. But here we are.”
Faye said: “We’ve got to decide—”
Condor dropped to his hands and knees beside the suicide corpse, sniffed the curled-up body like … Like a werewolf, though Faye. Or a … vulture.
“Smells like gasoline.”
He spotted the bulge in the dead man’s front pocket, pulled out an iPhone.
“There’s a GPS in it, right?” he asked the younger woman.
She showed him how to access the GPS and its search request. She went to the bedroom, to the other KIA enemy, got the cell phone from beside his bed and didn’t look at him, at what she’d done, no she didn’t. Deserved is deserved and dead, Chris is dead.
Faye got back to the living room as Condor headed toward the front door, car keys he’d scooped off the counter in one hand, the suicide man’s iPhone in the other.
Is his .45 in the holster under his black leather jacket?
Siren: coming closer.
Neighbors.
Not such an ordinary suburban Saturday.
“Wait!” said Faye as Condor walked outside, as she chased after him.
He stood on the red concrete front porch. Pointed the car key’s fob at the parked vehicles other than the stolen car he’d scouted the night before then gotten the tools for at t
he drugstore and broken into with Faye at dawn three peaceful neighborhood blocks away from the hotel. Condor pushed the LOCATE button on the fob.
Lights flashed on a new-model Japanese-designed car built in Tennessee to politically appease Americans. Faye heard its driver’s door unlock with a clunk.
Faye asked Condor: “What about the delivery van driver we hijacked and taped up and stuck in the trunk of the car we stole?”
Bald Condor said: “Let him breathe.”
Then he roared away in the car that had been the killers’, the Vs’.
Siren: maybe five blocks away.
Faye held the HOMELAND SECURITY ID folder out and open in her left hand.
Used her right thumb to work the cell phone from the man she killed, I killed him, I killed him, call the number she knew.
After two buzzes—he’s checking caller ID, launching trace—Sami answered.
Faye said: “Guess who.”
A police car topped by a spinning red light sirened into the cul-de-sac.
31
Gonna take someone apart.
—Richard Thompson, “I Feel So Good”
You’re driving a stolen car where it’s supposed to go.
A robot woman talking out of a cell phone tells you so.
“In fifty feet … turn right.”
Of the last seven locations this phone had mapped, five had been gas stations near on/off ramps for the Beltway.
The sixth address belonged to the Crash House where Condor’d stolen this car.
Where Merle.
Location seven had to be it.
Familiar streets.
He wasn’t sure if he remembered where he was, and if so from when, or if he’d just driven so many American suburbs that the streets now all looked the same. Certainly nothing outside the windows of his car showed a geographic or cultural individuality, an unmistakable identity, an easy clue that this “town” claimed its turf alongside quick highways to CIA headquarters and the Pentagon. To the National Security Agency, FBI headquarters, Complex Zed.