The Austin Job (16 page)

Hooking him in mid-air, strong arms clasped around his chest. With a whipping motion the arms jerked him sideways. Transferring his momentum, they slung him spinning into the street on his back. Bouncing his head along the pavement, he skidded to a stop and rolled onto his stomach. Footsteps approached.

“Middlegame, Mr. Starr, has just begun.” A blurry Oleg danced out of sight, laughing as he went.

Starr collapsed, his face pressed against the cold steel of the streetcar railing buried in the road. Vibrations in the railing registered in his subconscious before trickling into his larger awareness. Over the screams of people exiting the Grandview Building, he heard the chugging rhythm of a diesel engine, then the squeal of brakes.

Popping his crusty eyes open, a massive blur swelled in his vision too quickly for comfort.

“Get the hell out of the way!”

He grunted. Heaving upward and kicking with his legs, he somersaulted clear as the thundering vehicle ground to a halt directly over the spot he’d just been.

“Daisy, where’s Daisy?” Lickter jumped down from the streetcar and tugged Starr over his shoulder like a sack of feed.

“Safe. I sent her, to find you.” Starr wheezed, his body jarring with each of Lickter’s long strides.

“In that case, come on. He’s getting away.” Lickter deposited him onto a padded bench and jerked the streetcar into motion. Starr focused his eyes one at time, gradually regaining his vision. “Damn boy, you know how to make an exit. Best fireball swan dive I’ve seen.”

“Where did you—”

“Still you would have cracked your melon if it hadn’t a been for Oleg. He must like you.” Lickter stomped down on the gas.

“But what about everyone—”

“Ms. Lloyd’ll take care of it.”

“The building blew up!”

“Calm down, Chicken Little. The ballroom blew up, not the building.” Lickter maintained his glassy demeanor.

“People died!”
 

“And Ms. Lloyd has people taking care of it. Oleg’s our responsibility.”

“Oleg? So it isn’t about the weapons.” Starr pulled himself up by a pole and looked out the front window where he saw Oleg sprinting down the sidewalk.

“What makes you say that?” Lickter let up on the gas as if trying to keep pace and not overtake.

“The auction’s over.”

“The auction for proprietary technology, the proprietor of which is a wanted criminal. The money’ll probably be frozen and the technology seized as part of a criminal investigation.”

“What?” Starr’s moorings were shifting again. Was that how Ms. Lloyd planned on attacking the competition?

“Unless we find his lab first.” Lickter snatched a canteen from the dash while Starr struggled to grasp something concrete, anything.

“Is this a diesel? And where—”
 

“Yep. Long story. Here, you look a mite flush.” Lickter tossed him the canteen.

Starr kept his gritty eyes glued to Oleg as he unscrewed the cap. “He just ducked into that building. He’s headed for the tunnels.”

“No problem.” Lickter leaned on the hydraulic brakes while slamming the heel of his hand into another lever, bucking the car onto a side rail and accelerating again. “That’s where I found this thing.”

“You’re headed for that building!”

“Did I forget to tell you it’s armored?”

“What?”

“Yeehaw!” Lickter barreled down a dead-end spur toward a brick wall.

“But—” Starr gripped the pole with both hands as the car smashed into the wall, shattering the brick with barely a shudder. Amidst skittering fragments Lickter applied the brakes. “The windshield?” Starr had expected the bricks to crash through the glass, but it hadn’t been scratched.

“I know. Wild, ain’t it? Hold on.” He leapt from the car while it was still moving. Suddenly the ground quaked as the streetcar dipped nose down. Lickter jumped back onboard and took the controls. He gave Starr a serious look. “You ready for this?” Starr swallowed. He had hoped to never see the inside of a tunnel again. “I need to know if you’re with me, boy. This is a two man operation.”

“I’ve got questions.”

“I might have answers. We’ll talk on the way. Are you in?” Lickter demanded. Starr nodded. He couldn’t stop now. As they crept underground darkness engulfed them until Lickter ignited two powerful headlights. “Check the map.” He handed him the tattered schematic. “The solid lines combined with the dash are the routes with rails.” He stabbed his finger onto the paper. “We’re right here. I’ll bet Oleg’s gonna head for campus.”

Cutting to the chase, Starr boiled all his loose ends into one question. ”How would it have effected the plan if I had killed Oleg in the ballroom?”

“Which plan?”

“Daisy figured it first—the plan to unburden the competition using Oleg. I mean, are we even chasing him, or just pretending.”

Lickter nodded while watching the headlights glint off the rails in front of them. “That plan. Look, boy—” Starr cleared his throat loudly. “Look, Senator. Off the record, the plan works just as well with Oleg’s dead body, and honestly would be a bit cleaner as far as I’m concerned.”

He’d gone fishing with Daisy’s idea and set the hook, but he still needed to land the fish. G.W. wanted Oleg to destroy the money, but why? She’d just have to replace it. “And on the record?”

“An out of jurisdiction lawman and a sophomore senator, two concerned citizens, saw a need to stop a madman and took it.”

Starr pondered the sheriff’s words as the streetcar shimmied through the darkness at 20mph. For the time being, stopping Oleg was the obvious path. “One more thing. What did you whisper in Oleg’s ear yesterday morning at the riot?”

“A little something between me and him.”

“Fair enough.” Starr sat back in his seat and took a deep breath. “Before he leapt from the window he said the rules had changed. That he’s not trying to protect a king. He called this the middlegame. I’ve played a little chess, and the middlegame is when most of the pieces are spent.”

The low rumble of the diesel engine filled the cabin with white noise and fumes. Lickter switched on a large fan in the roof above them, drawing away the bulk of the noxious gases. “Well we still have most of our pieces.” He thumped the dash. “Plus we got this baby, and I haven’t even shown you the best part.”

~~~

As they entered a straight away, a flash of color darted across the tunnel and disappeared around the corner a hundred yards in front of them. “Did you see that?”

“We got him.” Lickter accelerated.

“But it was moving too fast. You think there are two of these cars down here?”

“Hell, there’s a whole fleet.” Lickter whistled. “That could make things interesting.” They hit the turn without slowing down, causing the car to rock on its rails. The armored sides clipped the stone walls, shooting sparks across the windshield.

“There.” The same colored flash disappeared again as the tunnel dipped downhill. They were gaining.

“Tutorial time. Listen up.” The streetcar bucked as they crested a rise before following the rails down a steep grade. “This thing is armed.”

“Armed?”

Lickter grinned, slamming his fist into the dash. Starr jumped back as the dash unfolded in front of him. A metal bucket seat swung out over the stairs, blocking the front entrance. Inside the cavity of the dash were two handles, each with triggers. “I only found it on accident, but those triggers operate machine guns. And trust me, they’re loaded. But I don’t know with how much, so go easy.” Starr’s eyes grew wide, causing Lickter to chuckle.

Jerking suddenly, the streetcar plunged into standing water. Starr caught the bucket seat in his gut as Lickter bounced off the control box. “Sorry about that.” The car chugged steadily through the two feet of water. “Right. Eyes forward. You good?”

Starr crawled onto the seat, struggling to catch his breath. “Where did he go?” Finally the front end of the car pointed back uphill.
 
As the lights stretched into the distance they caught him. “A hand car?”

Lickter slowed to a stop. Oleg and two other students were struggling to move the car further. “Fast down hill, not so much up.” Lickter flicked the spent toothpick from his teeth. “Man the guns. Dead or alive, I don’t much care.”

Starr gripped the handles and felt bloodlust surge into his body. But something stopped him—a nagging sensation, a taste in his mouth. “What’s that smell?”

“Crap on a crust, boy. Get back!” Shoving the accelerator handle forward, Lickter swung out his arm catching Starr in the chest. Hurdling down the center aisle of the car Starr glimpsed oily flames closing the gap between them and Oleg. He struck the floor at the same time the flames struck the windshield, engulfing the car with thick smoke.

With a violent
whoof
the rear end of the streetcar bucked against the roof of the tunnel, a second fireball erupting beneath them. The grating of steel on rock pierced through the roar of the explosion as the car surged cattywampus up the grade.

Black fire curled around the front entrance. It licked the dash, bubbled the paint and filled the cabin with a choking smoke that reduced breathing to a matter of drinking rubber.

“Ideas!” Lickter screamed from beneath his hat, shielding his face from the heat. Starr climbed to his knees, the floor beneath him getting hot. Clutched in a burning vice, there seemed to be little choice. He tore his jacket off. Holding his breath and with his eyes closed against the smoke, he lunged for the machine guns. “They’ll cook off!”
Maybe so, maybe not
. He pulled the triggers. A thumping emanated from the roof of the car, both guns working, but firing blindly.

Then the right handle shuttered, a premature explosion killing the gun. “Dammit!” He tried to hold the other trigger down, but the heat overwhelmed him. Before crumpling to the floor he slammed his fist into the dash. As he did, gears rattled and shook beneath him. He winced, expecting the engine to blow. Instead, a muffled pop reverberated upward into the cabin. Suddenly the firestorm engulfing them withdrew as if seized by a funnel cloud, and with a few final snaps the flames went out.

Coughing violently, the two men tried to expel the molten air from their lungs as the smoking hot metal frame of the car creaked all around them. Starr staggered to his feet, clutching his chest. Unable to draw a breath, he gaped like a fish out of water. Through the soot smeared windshield he watched a struggling Oleg crank an engine to life on the handcart and putter slowly away, out of the range of their headlights and once again into the shadows.

Lickter continued to engage the streetcar’s engine the entire time. But like them, it sputtered for life. Starr’s vision popped and spun. He pulled air into his lungs like honey through a strainer, but nothing helped. He was suffocating. They continued to inch forward and up the hill, the car off its tracks and at a diagonal. He collapsed back onto the floor, staring up at the ceiling. The fan blades spun amidst the black smoke, blurring in and out of focus. He closed his eyes.

Somewhere between unconsciousness and death, his autonomic responses began to pump oxygen into his body. In spastic gulps he came to, seizing oxygen into his lungs and scrambling to his feet. “Sheriff.” He coughed out the word as he shook the man’s shoulder.

Slowly Lickter raised his head. “I’m here.” He looked through the windshield. “Damned if Oleg is.” He flopped back against his seat, one hand still on the controls. He jammed the same handle as before, attempting to straighten them out.

“What happened?”

Lickter shook his head. “Don’t know. Fire grenade maybe.” The car lurched free from the wall and gradually corrected course until the front wheels grabbed the rails and pulled the back ones in line.

“And that is?” Starr tested the surface of the tractor seat, finding it too hot to touch.

“Carbon tetrachloride.” Lickter pressed his hand to the side of his head, trying to shake out the cobwebs. “Suppresses fire by removing oxygen from the air.”

“And you know about—”

“Don’t ask. How did you—”

“One of these buttons.” Starr pointed at the dash, not daring to touch anything. “I wonder if this contraption was meant for fighting fires. It sure held up back there.” They regained a cruising speed of around 15mph.

“And the machine guns?” Lickter coughed.

“For dealing with the bad guys who start the fires?” Starr shrugged. “What now?”

~~~

Oleg removed the twin tanks from his back and laid them on the platform next the nozzle of the flamethrower. “Well done, Rasputin. Carbon tetrachloride,” he nodded. “We have found worthy foes.” He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. Having shut off the diesel engine again, he listened to Pilot and Ulysses rhythmically working the handcar. Darkness encased him.

Deeper into the darkness he swam, until all evidence of the outside world extinguished. Floating to the surface on the other side he found himself at his work station in the bowels of Mendeleev Hall, Saint Petersburg State University.
The door at the far end of the lab swung open. He jolted, nearly dropping his instruments. Frantically he swept the scattered parts from his workbench into a toolbox. He clutched the nozzle he’d been working on, flashing his eyes madly about the room.

Finally he shoved the metal object into his pants, tucked into the cleft of his cheeks.
Evidence. Evidence!
The footsteps drew closer as he straightened his space, his mind
clutching for a cover story. He kicked the toolbox further underneath the bench and yanked open a drawer. He pulled papers and a compass from it as the steps rounded the corner.

“My friends.” He looked up with a nervous smile on his face. “To what do I owe this honor?”

The two stonewall foot soldiers stepped aside as an officer of the imperial guard split the gap between them. “To your treason against Mother Russia.” With a gulp he clutched his cheeks tighter around Rasputin’s nozzle.

“Professor, which way?”

Oleg snapped instantly into the present. The hand car had stopped at a three way juncture. He tasted the spongy moss trailing down the walls, the moisture seeping from above. He breathed deep, hocked a loogie and let it slide down his throat. Tinged with both copper and salt, the mucous spoke to him. “Left. No, wait.” He turned his head and held his breath. An engine chugging in the distance disturbed the air and vibrated the floor. “They survived.”