Last Days of the Condor (20 page)

Whoosh of silver streaks into the subway station.

Time slows down if you survive enough fights, boxing or martial arts encounters. Doctors claim that's merely the relaxation/suppression of fear instincts and the startle impulse allowing you to be aware of, process and react to the accelerated flood of data generating from the person in front of you trying to rip your head off. Science favors the experienced who know about leverage and coverage and counters, who possess strength and speed and stamina. From the moment Monkey Man touched her, Faye knew she'd need more than science to survive on that subway platform. As she swooped her guard up, she prayed for the deliverance of poetry, of art.

She launched a snap kick, mostly feint, and Monkey Man didn't buy it, flowed back to suck her charge in further and then launched forward to blast through her guard with one of his long-ass punching arms but she dodged sideways, changed her angle of attack, came at him with a three-punch/one-kick combination—

“DOORS OPENING!”

Felt herself flipped over Monkey Man, aikido or judo
who cared
as he powered her head straight down to the red tiles, but she twisted tucked curled landed on the soles of her shoes. Shocked, still held by him, her counter-leveraging his arm only
kind of
worked as she dropped onto her butt. He staggered backward, got his balance—

BANG!

Monkey Man bounced back toward the subway train behind him.

Backlit by that silver snake with its yellow glow of empty windows, Faye saw Monkey Man staggering on his shoes, hand raising to his chest
no blood
and she saw his short-cropped dirty blond hair and scraggy goatee—
Special Ops guys stay bearded in case
—saw him in her mind's eye over her gun sights as he wears a blue nylon Homeland Security jacket and claims
protocol
.

BANG!

Condor, sprawled on the red tiles firing another round from the 1911 .45 created to stop fanatic Muslim Moro warriors from overwhelming American soldiers with a screaming sword-swinging charge.

Monkey Man staggered spun backwards hit in his ballistic-vested chest—

And hurtles through the open doors of the subway train, falls to the orange carpet.

“DOORS CLOSING!”

BANG! Condor blasted a third .45 slug through the train's closed metal doors toward the bottom of fallen Monkey Man's feet.

Whoosh
and that train rocketed out of the station.

A man and a woman sprawled alone on a red-tiled subway platform.

Faye got to her feet first. Drew her second gun, scanned the upper platform—
No visible threats!
—quick-stepped over to help Condor stand.

Said: “I hope your last shot tore him a new asshole.”

“Elevator,” gasped Condor.

She saw those doors had slid closed, pushed the button.

The orange doors slid open.

Condor said: “Sometimes all you can choose is where you're trapped.”

Faye helped him into the cage.

Pressed the button labeled
STREET
.

Zeroed her pistol out the cage's entrance until that gray cavernous void disappeared beyond sliding-closed doors, orange on the outside, but in here, in the cage, steel walls of smudged silver mirrors showing Faye's crazed reflection, showing Condor's panting grotesqueness.

Lurch,
and the elevator lifted them up.

“At least one more hostile posted by top of the escalators,” said Faye, her gun at her side, her heart slamming against the ballistic vest.

“You think nobody called the cavalry?” said Condor.

“Whose cavalry?” muttered Faye.

Lurch. Bounce. Stopped.

Faye posted to one side of the elevator doors.

Condor to the other.

Second date
in the cool blue D.C. night, Heather and Marcus as savvy as all twenty-four-year-olds stand on the street near a Metro stop, by the elevator that's sixty feet from the escalators, a perfect site for D.C.'s eco-friendly Bike Share program, lock-up racks all over the city with stand-up-handles orange bicycles to rent & ride & return, Marcus's idea that Heather hoped he,
like,
hadn't needed to get from some magazine or a Perfect Dates
dot com
, meet at the bike stand between their starter jobs downtown, work clothes but
never mind,
they're young and thus in enough shape to not sweat out the ride to the Potomac waterfront, let him buy her a fish sandwich off one of the boat/restaurants floating tied up to the wooden wharf, shame that soft-shell crabs aren't in season, white bread and tartar sauce and
so good,
sitting on benches watching moored yachts rock back and forth in the wide gray river as the sun sets, seagulls screeing, and
hey,
Marcus listens to everything Heather prattles on about and only says one or two not-smart things, then they pedal back close to where she lives and now they're standing there,
aw-kward,
each trying to figure out the next move because even though it's only the second date,
well, you know,
except they don't have much in common even if they're in each other's cute zone, so instead of locking the bikes into the steel rack, they're dawdling, watching something weird going on over by the top of the escalators where maybe two dozen people stand talking about
like
going down or not going down,
what's that
near the bottom of the escalator stairs and
did you see those flashes, did you hear bangs,
people have their cell phones out filming,
like,
nothing Heather and Marcus can see, check out that especially agitated bearded guy in a trench coat by the escalators and—

DING!

Orange metal doors on the Metro elevator beside Heather and Marcus …

… slide open.

Out of the elevator darts,
like,
somebody's kind of cool, way-intense older sister.

And
OMG!
right after her stumbles some Friday-night slasher-movie monster all silver-haired and shit-brown-smeared-faced with a weird body and maroon nylon jacket.

The older sister spots the bearded guy over by the subway escalators.

But bearded guy stares down the tunnel toward
whatever,
doesn't see her see him.

Older sister zooms right up to Heather and Marcus and
OMG!
that's
like a fucking real gun
as she says: “Give us the bikes, hold hands, keep your other ones where we can see them and walk
don't run
down the street that way.”

Sister Gun
nods the opposite direction of the subway entrance.

“Don't scream, don't cell phone, don't do anything but hold hands
fucking move
!”

Heather and Marcus remember that second date for,
like,
the rest of their lives.

Faye swung onto the orange bike, turned to see Condor struggling onto his bike.

Darted her eyes back toward the subway escalators, through the gathered crowd—

The bearded guy in a trench coat met her stare.

“Go!” she yelled to Condor, gambling that the posted rear guard gunner wouldn't cut loose on a city street for a
less than sure
shot through this small crowd.

Faye powered the bicycle into the street.
No cars
as she pedaled away from the subway, glanced back and saw the weird image that was Condor trying to keep up.

Lumbering across and down the street from Faye comes a Metro bus.

She glanced over her shoulder to check on Condor …

Saw a dark sedan skid around the corner behind them.

The sedan fishtailed, locked its headlights on the two bicyclists like a yellow-eyed dragon on rabbits. The sedan gunned its engine.

Faye whipped around, saw the giant Metro bus looming now
four
car lengths away,
three,
and yelled: “Condor!”

The woman biker zoomed straight into the path of a rushing-closer bus.

Whoosh
and she's across that traffic lane, standing hard on the pedals, cranking the steering handles to the left—
Bike's wobbling skidding gonna spill!

But she bounced off a parked car, pedaled back the way she came.

Condor wheeled his bike behind the bus as a dragon-eyed sedan shuddered past him, brake lights burning the night red. Condor pumped pedals to follow Faye.

Car horns blared behind them as the sedan almost slammed into oncoming traffic while trying to make a U-turn to chase the bicycles.

Spinning red & blue lights on city cop cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck illuminated the entrance to the subway. Faye biked away from that chaos, powered down an alley, heard gravel crunch and Condor curse as he biked after her.

Yellow dragon eyes and a growling engine filled the alley a block behind them.

Two cyclists shot out of the alley and across the side street then into the opposite alley half a block ahead of a yellow-eyed monster roaring in their wake.

There! Off to the right: yellow glowing open door!

A Hispanic man in a kitchen worker's white uniform spotted two bikers charging toward where he stood in an open doorway. His eyes went wide, his jaw dropped. Black plastic trash bags jumped out of his hands as he leapt out of the way. Two bikers shot past him through the open back door under the blue neon back door sign:

Nine Nirvana Noodles

The
Washington Post
review called Nine Nirvana Noodles “a twenty-first-century culinary revelation” with its menu of peanut sauce
Pad Thai
, Lasagna,
Lo Mein
, Macaroni & Cheese,
Udon,
plus three daily specials, but the restaurant critic had no clue about who really owned this
fabbed-up
former hole-in-the-wall destined for hipness.

Faye ducked her head/braked her bike as she blew into the shiny metal kitchen.

Veer around that chopping table—knife worker leaping out of the way!

The wobbling woman biker pushed her foot off the grill.

Black rubber smoke from the scorched sole of her shoe polluted food aromas.

A redheaded waitress dropped her tray of steaming yellow noodles.

BAM! Faye's front tire banged open twin doors to the dining room, a long box of white-clothed tables below wall-mounted computer monitors that streamed Facebook and YouTube mixed with muted clips from old TV shows, the moon landing, presidential addresses, movies like
Blade Runner
and
Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove
.

A waiter jumped out of Faye's way/fell onto a table of divorced daters.

Exploding dropped plates. Screams from splashed hot tea. Behind her, Faye heard Condor's bike crash into this dining room.

A waiter and a customer crouched to grab the crazy biker woman.

“Police emergency!” Faye threw her GPS-hacked cell phone at the two citizens.

“Open the fucking doors to the hospital!” Faye yelled to the hostess in the white blouse and black leather skirt, hoping “hospital” would inspire the clearing of an exit.

Whatever worked,
worked
: the front door opened.

Faye shot through it, skidded to a stop outside the restaurant, looked back for—

Crashing tables busting glass screams—
“Don't touch him he's sick!”

Condor pushed his bike out the restaurant's front door, swung onto it, yelled: “One's chasing us on foot!”

They sped away from Nirvana, pedaled two more blocks, a zig, a zag, an alley.

Faye heard Condor's bike skid, stop.

Turned in time to see him wave his hand at her, slouch, wheezing,
spent
.

Two bikers staggered in the garbage can alley behind slouching houses where American citizens lived. Near Faye, a gate on a peeling wooden fence as high as her shoulder hung broken in its frame. She swung off her bike, eased inside the gate …

Somebody's backyard.
What started its existence as a modest middle-class 1950s house was now sixty-some years later probably worth more money than it and all its companions on this block sold for when new. A watch light glowed over the back door, and through rear windows, she saw that a lamp shone deeper into the first floor. No lights on the second floor. Nothing that made her believe anyone was home.

She dropped her bike on the lawn, went back to the alley, muscled Condor and his bike into the backyard, dumped them on the night's spring grass.

Still wearing my backpack!

Faye dropped that gear bag on the lawn.

Stared at the nylon-jacketed mess sprawled in front of her.

A garden hose snake lay in the grass near Condor. She unscrewed its sprinkler, walked to the faucet and turned it on. The hose in her hand gushed cool water.

Faye drank hose water, drank again. Splashed cool wet on her face.

Water tumbled from the hose as she shuffled toward the man sprawled on his back on the grass. Faye sprayed his face: “Get up! You don't get to die yet.”

Choking, gasping, flopping …
Sitting,
Condor sitting on the grass.

She turned the hose away from him.

He said: “I'm too old for this shit.”

“Shit doesn't care how old you are.”

Pale light from nearby houses and streetlights let them see each other.

He said: “How much makeup is still on my face?”

“You're a disgusting smear.”

“Squirt it all off.”

And she did as he sat there, raising his hands to clean them, too.

“Enough,” she said.

He rolled onto his hands and knees, pushed and staggered to his feet.

Like Faye, drank and drank again.

She turned off the hose.

Came back to him as he took off the maroon nylon jacket, the baby carrier. From the infant pouch came a black leather jacket, drier than his black jeans or blue shirt.