Point And Shoot Part 11

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, how long have you been retired?" Hardie asked. "The person who answered the phone said you were gone."

"It's been a while, man. Look, back when you went missing ..."

"How long have Kendra and Charlie been without protection, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!?"

After a quiet beat, Deke said: "I look after them."

"What, do you sleep in your f.u.c.king car outside their house and keep constant vigil? Does Ellie join you? You living your life making sure n.o.body kills my family? Who's watching your family? You got a detail for that?"

"Hardie ..."

Deke couldn't tell if the man was crying or ready to collapse or laughing from nervous exhaustion or what. All he knew was that it was finally time for Charlie Hardie to come home. He slipped the gun inside his jacket pocket and walked over to Hardie, put his hand on his shoulders, and told him everything was going to be okay, even though it probably wasn't. Right here, in this room, were three men Charlie had killed. Another on a roof just a dozen blocks away. No matter what had happened, you can't make murder go away. He could feel Hardie trembling a little under his touch.

Look at him. With a cane and everything. If the moment weren't so horrible Deke would have maybe found a little amus.e.m.e.nt in the notion of Charlie Hardie, baddest man in Philadelphia, having to get around with a cane.

Didn't explain where he'd been the past five years.

"Come on, Hardie," Deke said softly. "It's going to be all right."

Deke briefly looked past Hardie to see the interior of the car's trunk. At first it looked like somebody had shoved a bunch of medical gear inside of it-oxygen tanks, IV bags, tubing. But then he saw how neatly it was all arranged. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"

Deke was so mesmerized by the contents of the trunk that he didn't feel the tip of the cane against his chest until it was too late.

He barely felt the shock.

And when he came to, Hardie was already gone.

Deke had exactly one lead left: this impossible-to-reach lawyer named Abrams. The A in DG&A, Deke Clark's least favorite law firm on earth. And that was saying a lot, because Deke hated most law firms.

Now, you'd think that an FBI agent could demand a conversation with pretty much anyone in America-but you would be wrong. Deke's first attempt, through official channels, was met with a stern OH NO YOU f.u.c.kING DON'T from on high. A back-channel attempt was similarly smacked down, with a second reprimand from on high: SERIOUSLY, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT IF YOU VALUE YOUR CAREER. Abrams was clearly protected, as if the president himself had stamped a big old DO NOT TOUCH on her forehead in holographic ink.

That was Deke, going through the proper channels.

Instead, Deke wanted to take a page out of the tried-and-true Charlie Hardie Ultimate Playbook and go through another kind of channel.

The kind of channel where you stick a gun in somebody's mouth and let him taste the cold metal, maybe even chip his teeth a little, then ask a few questions.

All of this was laughably ironic because back in the day, Deke Clark was the most vocal opponent of the Charlie Hardie Ultimate Playbook. You just didn't do s.h.i.+t like that, Deke would complain to anyone who would listen. Hardie knew it, which is why the man would never become a real cop. He worked as a "police consultant," which was patently ridiculous. Either you're a cop or you're not. Either you follow the rules or you're a criminal.

So what was Deke doing now, after all that moral grandstanding?

Protecting his family, that's what he was doing now.

He'd gone off the reservation before. Just last year, in fact. The mistake he made then was tackling this thing alone. Like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned fool. Not again.

Deke had a list he kept in his back pocket. A list of guys who left the bureau-or the DEA or ATF or Secret Service or any other government job involving a gun. Good guys who were either bounced for bad reasons or pulled the plug for good reasons and who might be willing to help a brother out down the road.

Now all he needed was to find this Abrams. Without the geeks at Quantico working the computers, Deke knew it was going to be tedious and grueling. But what other choice did he have?

Then, like a car crash or a lightning strike, Deke Clark was blind-sided by his first real Charlie Hardie lead in over a year. It popped up on the Internet.

Deke had long ago set up a Google automatic search for all things Charlie Hardierelated, including the search terms: Hardie Lane Madden Accident People Truth Hunters Phil and Jane Kindred Along with a dozen other terms related to the Hunter Family/Lane Madden case from seven years ago. Those little seeds bore only random, useless fruit. Rehashes of the case, blog posts detailing amateur theories, conspiracy bulls.h.i.+t, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

Every day Deke Clark would skim through the dozens of Google search emails that would pop into his in-box on a regular basis.

But it was a random "news of the weird" report that caught his attention: POET CLAIMS s.p.a.cEMEN STOLE HIS CAR.

Deke almost didn't read it. He didn't dig poetry and he wasn't into science fiction or cars. Nothing about the headline spoke to him in any particular way. But the quote in the lede hooked him, and he ended up scrolling down far enough into the story to see a photo that punched him in the gut: Charlie Hardie standing on a beach, squinting in the sun, wearing what appeared to be a janitor's uniform.

At his feet: a guy whose face was wrapped in bandages.

What the what ...

Deke dragged the image to his desktop and embiggened it. (Yeah, Deke knew there was a proper term for that, but he didn't care right now.) As he made the JPEG larger, the quality suffered ... but G.o.d-d.a.m.n if that wasn't Charlie Hardie.

Again: What the whaaaaaaat?

So many questions raced through Deke's mind it was difficult to prioritize them. Where had Charlie Hardie been for the past year? Why was he wearing that uniform? Who was the guy with his face wrapped up in bandages? Why did he-according to the poet in the story-seem to walk directly out of the ocean and up onto the beach? Why did he steal the poet's car? Where was he now? Why the freakin' h.e.l.l hasn't he reached out in the past year-at the very least to check on his family?

Nothing Charlie Hardie did made sense.

But at least now Deke had a lead-the name of that beach town, and the name of a poet.

Now came the tough part.

The tough part: explaining to Ellie why he had to leave again, and not telling her where he was going.

17.

How come the bad guys always have the good cars?

-Gregory Hines, Running Scared.

THE SECRET CABAL storage depot turned out to be a mile down the road from a Nevada rest stop that featured the biggest c.o.c.kroach Charlie Hardie had ever seen.

Getting there was its own special brand of h.e.l.l. Don't get Hardie wrong. He was happy to finally cross the California state line after-what, seven, eight years of forcible detention? Sorry, the nine-month trip into s.p.a.ce didn't count. He had been launched from California, and, G.o.d help him, he'd splashed down just off the coast of California, so you could forgive Hardie for thinking there was truly no escape from the Golden State. So Hardie almost didn't believe it when the Other Him told him they had just blown past the infamous Donner Pa.s.s ("Hungry?" he'd asked) and were approaching Nevada. Which is when Hardie started to feel seriously nauseated.

Hardie acknowledged that it could have been the mention of the Donner Pa.s.s and its attendant thoughts of cannibalism; but more likely it was that d.a.m.ned pie. After the disappointing skyline of Reno came and went, the road was all four-lane blacktop with rocky desert, followed by plain old flat desert. Which went on for miles and miles and miles, broken up only by the occasional lane-s.h.i.+fting construction zones. Hardie tried closing his eyes and focusing on a pleasant memory, but that made him all the more sick. He tried the old trick of focusing on a point way off in the distance, but all he saw was desert, with no relief in sight. Finally, he asked his doppelganger to pull over.

"What? Here? We're just about to the depot."

"I don't care. I see a sign for a rest station. We need to go there."

"The depot is just a mile past it. Trust me, the facilities will be much nicer."

"Pull over here or I'm going to vomit all over you."

That seemed to convince the Other Him to hook a right and spin around. The rest station was a concrete pad, on top of which sat six metal outhouses situated in a half-circle. The backdrop: utter desolation. And in the vast distance, the ghostly afterimages of atomic test blasts from decades ago. Gee, the state of Nevada really knew how to roll out the welcome wagon.

Hardie didn't care anything about that. He fumbled at the handle of their stolen SUV for a few seconds before hurling himself out of it and crawling across the concrete to the closest door. Which was locked. Inside, a young voice-female-screamed. Hardie mumbled an apology and tried the next one. The door yielded. Hardie barely made it to the toiletlike metal fixture before his stomach exploded up and outward.

You watch your double scramble out of the car and marvel at his tenacity. You read the Project Viking reports and understand (some of) the science behind it, but nevertheless it astounds you. Something about mitochondria reprogrammed to create redundancies, rather than the single-point failures in most human beings. Super-sized white blood cells for rapid damage repair. The kinds of things that made sense on paper but quickly devolved into bulls.h.i.+t once you took your eyes from the page.

But here's the thing you really don't understand: You put enough knockout medicine in his slice of pie to fell a stallion. But all it did to this guy was make his tummy upset.

How?

Did the white blood cells mop up all of the drugs like floating tampons? Or was Hardie just naturally immune to this stuff?

Whatever, you tell yourself. Doesn't matter now. You just need to sedate your bargaining chip, then go and do some bargaining.

And to do that, you're just going to have to try harder.

Fortunately, the answer to your problems might just be in that storage depot a mile down the road.

Hardie's aim was okay. Not that you could tell in a place like this. The bodily emissions and expulsions of countless unlucky tourists were all over the walls and floor.

He ran a bandaged thumb across his chin and looked down. Well, that was stupid. He went to the sink and twisted the handle. A spurt of water gushed from the faucet before turning brown and then stopping. The metal tower dispenser, the only relatively new fixture in here, was predictably empty.

Whatever. His Friendly Neighborhood Double out there said there were clean bathrooms a mile up the road. He could wash up then.

Hardie was about to leave when something on the sink captured his attention.

Namely: the biggest c.o.c.kroach in the world.

Hardie had seen plenty of c.o.c.kroaches over the years. The c.o.c.kroach was the unofficial insect of Philadelphia, and Hardie had grown up among them. The only place a boy could hope for some privacy was in the bas.e.m.e.nt of his row house, and bas.e.m.e.nts were prime order Blattodea turf. He was forever swatting, crus.h.i.+ng, repelling, hating the little f.u.c.kers. None of whom seemed to give a s.h.i.+t about his presence. They were resilient, they refused to stay dead. The E. G. Marshall sequence in Stephen King's Creepshow had been a favorite of Hardie's because finally someone nailed the terror of the c.o.c.kroach.

This one, however, was not like the Philadelphia c.o.c.kroaches.

This was an atomic test-blast c.o.c.kroach: Roachzilla. Easily triple the size of an ordinary c.o.c.kroach (or, as his grandfather would call them, "wadderbugs") back east. The insect's legs were thick, supporting an even thicker body that resembled a miniature brown armored tank. You had to respect a creature this formidable.

"Hey," Hardie said.

The c.o.c.kroach said nothing. It merely held its ground.

"You look like a survivor," Hardie said. "Maybe you and I should team up. Go off and save my family, have adventures."

If the c.o.c.kroach was entertaining this proposal, it didn't let on.

"Then again, you've probably got your own thing going on out here in the desert, right? Well, don't let me get in the way. Good talking to you."

The c.o.c.kroach didn't return the sentiment.

As Hardie left the outhouse and harsh light blasted him, he felt a little stupid for having talked to an insect. Maybe it was further proof he had completely lost his mind. Then again, it was better than talking to yourself, right?

The top-secret Cabal facility was indeed a mile up the dusty road, exactly as promised. The squat two-story building was marked as property of the US Atomic Commission. If the legal jargon promising prosecution, prison, and quite possibly death by firing squad didn't dissuade you, then the faded yellow radioactive symbols might do the trick.

"Clever," Hardie said.

"Not really. This was just an abandoned government property the Cabal bought up. They left the signs alone."

"So how do you know about it?"

"I told you, we're at war with these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. When I wasn't in surgery, being cut to look like you, I was studying up on their methods and tactics. As well as how they've turned our own country's infrastructure against itself."

Hardie steeled himself for a lecture-he didn't give a s.h.i.+t about the Cabal, or the Industry, or whatever you chose to call them ... outside of how they could be stopped. Or forced to leave his family alone. Thankfully, the Other Him dropped the subject. He pulled the SUV up to the front gate, pressed a b.u.t.ton to open the driver's-side window, then tapped a few keys on a pad. There was a buzz. Then some clunks and a mechanical whine and the gates opened.

"No guards?"

"It's self-serve."

Sure enough, this secret facility was disturbingly close to a drive-in fast-food restaurant. Gates opened as the SUV piloted toward them, and closed behind them, seemingly unprompted. Maybe they were short-staffed, Hardie thought. What with all of their other employees being shot into s.p.a.ce and all.

Inside was a tightly organized garage with three identical black vehicles resting in bays in the center. Hardie recognized those cars. Same make, same color, slightly later model. The G.o.dd.a.m.ned Lincoln Town Cars. Or, as Hardie called them: "coma cars."

These were what the Industry or Secret America or the Cabal or whoever used to transport people around. The oversized trunk contained a full life support system for one average-sized adult human being. Breathing tubes, IV, catheter, the whole package. Stick a person in there and it's suspended animation-ville for at least a few days. You could even park the car, and a backup battery (and reserve supplies) would keep things humming along for a few days until you returned. Perfect for those weekend getaways!

Hardie had encountered these coma cars twice. Once, as a pa.s.senger in the trunk, the very thought of which made him break out in hives. The other time, he was a driver, which was much better, because he had someone he truly hated in the trunk. A man named Doyle.

You're going to leave me to die here, aren't you, you p.r.i.c.k!

Oh, Doyle.

Hardie tried to kill him, but he was still out there somewhere. Probably still p.i.s.sed off.

"Hey."

The Other Him was staring at him. This was still jarring to Hardie. So jarring, he wanted to punch his double in the face.

"There's a restroom across the way. Why don't you clean up while I gather some weapons and supplies? We've got a race ahead of us."

Even Hardie couldn't argue with that. He reeked of vomit, and he felt like he was going to throw up again. Funny how vomit did that to you. Vomit: All it wanted was more vomit. Anyway, better to do it in a clean bathroom.

You know there has to be one somewhere, in one of these lockboxes or containers.

You'd better start searching-there isn't much time.

You're looking for a device called a wasp's nest.

Back in the glory days of the Accident People it was a fundamental piece of gear, designed to be mounted on any surface-a door, a wall, a fixture. Set the trigger mechanism and you were good to go. Ultra-useful when you absolutely, positively had to kill someone in an instant.