Mad Dogs (11 page)

23

Our New York hotel was nine stories of nickel-dime grim wedged into a block of million dollar condo buildings on 23
rd
Street far from where we'd ditched the Toyota. Walking into the hotel lobby put us in a smog of dust and tobacco smoke. Somehow I didn't think we were the first crew of desperate souls to come there looking for a fix.

As we climbed the stairs, Zane whispered: “Risky to go to ground as a group.”

“You're right,” I said. “But we don't do so well on our own.”

We turned one room into our Operations Center. Morning sun fought its way through the shade we pulled over the smudged window.

We rationed our buzz, inventoried our GODS, and built matricies.

Rationing our buzz
came first—
had
to come first.

We worked from memory: Zane and Hailey sorted the 79 pills into four categories—anti-depressants, stimulants, sedatives, unknown.

“Those three little white ones?” said Russell. “I'm pretty sure they're like Ritalin, some sort of new generic speed to calm kids' brains.”

“Teenagers,” said Zane: “The cutting edge of American culture.”

“The
cut
edge of American culture,” I said.

“There's none for my HIV cocktail,” said Hailey.

We didn't bust her delusion. The lies we live are our own business. Or our shrink's, and he was taped to chain link fence.

Guesswork gave us each doses akin to what we'd been pumped full of.

“How will this effect our countdown?” asked Hailey.

Zane shrugged. “All this home brew med mixing can do is smooth out our edges. Buy us a grace period where we're gone but don't realize it. Hell, maybe even mask how much we're really falling apart. Or kickstart some craziness we never had before.”

“So we still may have only three more days of truly functional madness left,” I said. “We have to run this thing as hard and as far as we can.”

Russell swallowed his rationed known pills with bottled water. Picked up one of the unknown tiny white pills. Popped the stranger. “Let's get it on.”

Inventorying our
GODS
took five minutes.

“We're down to $434,” said Hailey. “That's a lot of not much in Manhattan.”

“And you've still got the gun,” I told Zane.

“But not a full mag,” he answered. “We're a few bullets short.”

“No kidding,” I said.

Building matricies
: the heart of any spy investigation.

Matricies are the webs of data that make up a smart espionage investigation or operation. Intelligence analysts in a modern spy shop use computers to create visual “maps” of known facts and reasonable assumptions, maps that fill computer monitors or are projected onto screens to reveal connections, possible lines of cause and effect, characters who must be more than they seem because they are so interwoven in a matricie's web.

But we weren't in a modern spy shop like CIA headquarters. We were in a bottom of the barrel New York hotel. Dr. F's laptop was our only computer, and it had no software to let us build matricies. We had to do it the old fashioned way.

Russell passed out pens and colored construction paper from a drugstore that we scissored into index cards destined to bear the name of one person, place, or thing.

On purple matrice index cards, Russell listed Bosnia, Serbia, Col. Herzgl, his rock 'n' roll band and its members, even his Case Officer.

Zane used red paper. Listed Sgt. Major Jodrey. He made cards for Vietnam, Laos, Special Forces/special operations, Pathet Lao, Viet Cong.

Hailey had yellow. She listed Clare, Christophe, Ken, Janna, the Russians, Nigeria, Paris and Prague. She made one card for heroin, another for oil, a third for plutonium. We assumed that many of the names we knew were false—cover identities or work names. But the same lie told independently to two different people creates a truth.

Eric used green paper. Listed Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Major Aman, Eric's cover connections, Weapons of Mass Destruction. He had the skinniest pile of index cards.

“Come on, Victor,” Zane coached me. “You've got to write her name.”

Silver, my color was silver. Russell handed me a pen. They all watched. Waited.

The pen in my hand shook as it inked the letters for “
Derya
” on a silver card.

“Way to go, Victor,” said Hailey.

Eric got out: “Dr. Friedman proud.”

My silver index cards filled rapidly with other words: Malaysia. Al Qaeda. 9/11. Counter-Terrorism Center. Two cards for suicide.

We all worked on Dr. Leon Friedman's pink cards. Listed the CIA. His alma matters. National Security Council. The White House. Eric hacked into Dr. F's laptop and called out every noun, every name, every address.

“We need to know more about him,” said Hailey.

“That's why we came to Recon the big city,” said Russell. “Why we're here.”

“Stage One complete,” said Zane. “Stage 2… Coming up.”

Nurse Death got brown cards. Her Maryland driver's license gave her name as Nan Porter. Many of the entries in her palm pilot were initials and phone numbers without area codes or addresses. Her wallet had a photo I.D. that gave her “detached” status at the military's Walter Reed Hospital in Washington.

Our invisible target mastermind killer
Kyle Russo
scarred a white card.

“White is the color of sorrow in China,” I said.

“And purity here,” said Hailey. “Go figure.”

“Figure
Kyle Russo
will explain it all to us,” said Zane. “When we get him.”

“Wait!” I yelled. “We forgot somebody—somebody for all our colors!”

They all stared at me.

“Malcolm,” I said. “If nothing else, him helping us escape won him a card.”

We gave Malcolm a gray card, and on it wrote his codename
Condor
.

Zane and Eric Scotch-taped more than 200 color-clustered index cards on the hotel room's bare ivory wall. The drafty hotel room trembled the window shade and made waves of sunlight undulate on our rainbow chessboard.

“Wow,” said Hailey.

Russell shook his head. “Up against the wall, motherfucker.”

“That's us,” said Zane. “That's where we are.”

“No,” I said, “that's where we started. We're way down the road now.”

“What are the intersects on that wall?” asked Zane.

“We all got the Castle,” answered Russell. “And the CIA, though Hailey, Eric and I have Directorate of Operations, Zane's got it as a detached duty from the Army, and Victor's got it with both D.O. and the Counter-Terrorism Center.”

“Dr. F worked for the Agency,” I said, “plus he'd just been upped to the National Security Council. Remember the story he told about getting lost in the White House?”

Hailey said: “The key intersects are Dr. F, Nurse Death and Kyle Russo.”

“Use her real name or we'll forget it,” said Zane: “Porter, Nan Porter.”

“Outside of Maine,” I said, “the intersect zone is Washington.”

“So we've been going the right direction,” said Russell.

“Understanding geography doesn't mean you know where you are,” I said.

“Right now,” said Russell, “we're getting high in a shitty New York hotel room and hellhounds are on our trail.”

“But why?” asked Hailey.

“Because we're escaped lunatics,” I told her.

“Being escaped fugitives is enough reason for the good guys to chase us,” she said. “But why are the bad guys after us? That
why
is the same
why
kill Dr. F.”

“Murder is not just
who
and
how
,” agreed Zane. He nodded to the wall of colored cards. “There's no
why
up there.”

“Just
us
,” said Russell.

“Realistically,” said Zane, “it's—”

I interrupted him:
“‘Realistically
?' You sure we're capable of that?”

Zane continued: “Whatever, the hit on Dr. F was either an inside or an outside job. And since Nurse Death worked as a puppet, it's a team job, not a solo gig.”

Russell said: “So it's either an internal CIA coup or an external anti-CIA conspiracy.”

“Could it be something else?” I asked.

Zane answered: “Call me crazy—”

“You're crazy!” blurted Eric.

“—but I can't see what else it could be,” finished Zane.

“Me either,” I said. “But I feel like there's something more
or
less up there.”

“Makes my head hurt,” said Hailey.

“Already got 'nough pain,” said Eric.

“Copy that,” said Russell. “Anybody feel any better since we popped those pills?”

“No,” I said. “But I've stopped feeling worse.”

We stared at the wall. Found no more answers or questions that helped. Zane and Eric peeled our index cards off the wall in case someone came into our rooms while we were gone. We stayed in the hotel, waited for the sun to sink lower, waited for afternoon to crowd the streets.

When my watch said 4:37, I told them: “Now.”

24

We stood in the glowing center of a smudged ivory tunnel. Darkness loomed at each end. Our shoes crunched grit on the platform above steel tracks. Stale air trapped down there with us smelled of metal and cement. We were stones in a subterranean river of a thousand flowing strangers. We were
Low Profile
. We were
Not Being Noticed
. We were safe as long as no one realized we were fugitive imposters in the world of the sane.

Came a clatter, a roar, a woosh as a comet raced past us from the tunnel's black hole. Metal brakes squealed as the subway train screeched to a stop. Car doors jumped open and the five o'clock rush swept us on board.

Hailey and Eric scored a seat. Russell, Zane and I jostled for a place to stand.

New Yorkers crammed themselves everywhere. Construction workers. Computer jockeys. Sales girls with tumbles of curls and tired make-up. Two nuns. Businessmen in tie-loosened suits. A Brooklyn beauty wearing
fuck me
high heels and a
fuck you
glare. A shoe mashed my foot.
“Lo siento,”
said a Puerto Rican woman. A pale punk in a hooded sweatshirt practiced his
gangsta
stare as his earphones vibrated rap music. A transit cop slouched at the rear of our car, but his gaze floated over the crowd and he didn't reach for the radio mike clipped on his shoulder.

Subway car doors slammed shut. The train lunged forward.

Russell whispered in my ear: “Check Zane!”

That soldier who'd dangled in the inferno jungle now white-knuckle clung to a subway strap. Close-cropped snow hair melted above his slick forehead. The bootleg meds he'd taken were either useless or incendiary. Either way…

“Hang in there, man!” I whispered to him. “Stay invisible.”

“Hot! Victor—hot! Hell!”

“No, just a trip uptown.”

Swooping to a stop jostled everyone forward, snapped us back. Doors popped open. Eight million more people crammed into the car. Nobody got off. The doors banged shut. We jerked forward. Body heat swelled inside our rocketing train.

Last time Zane got this hot was when the Castle's boiler wouldn't shut off. He flashbacked to the jungle and trashed the Day Room before a Keeper grabbed a dart gun.

“You're OK,” I told him. His eyes glowed like pits of fire.
Lie
: “We're close.”

“Close, here, we're here. Can't stand it. Won't.”

“
Ah
, Zane,” I whispered: “Do you have the gun?”

The hurtling subway car bounced those eyes and gaped his mouth. “'Xactly.”

“Oh good,” I lied. “That's good. Keep it safe, keep it out of sight, keep it good.”

We clattered into a station. Screeched to a stop. More people got off than got on. The press of the crowd eased. Open doors let cool air into our car. For a minute. Doors clunked shut and sealed in the heat as we rocketed down the tunnel.

“Victor,” whispered Zane from a bad place.

“It's OK.”

“Not gonna take it. Can't take it. Won't make it. Got to do, do something.”

Innocent strangers/proximity casualties rode our car. So did a cop.

The train clattered. The train roared. Swayed from side to side as it hurtled forward into the darkness. And the suffocating heat… The heat swelled.

A cool human voice knifed through that sweltering air:

“Ttttr-rump pump pum. Ttttrr-rump pump pum…”

Russell, rock 'n' roll Russell, holding on to the steamy subway car's ceiling pole as he leaned toward where Zane clung to this universe. Russell hummed and buzzed his tongue like a snare drum:
“Ttttr-rump pump pum pum, pum pum pum pum.”

Mister Slick 20 feet further up aisle nudged his buddy: “
Yo
, what the Hell?”

The Puerto Rican woman saw nothing. Being blind was one of a hundred ways the train car of
witnesses
suddenly focused on Zane who clung to his subway strap in the sweltering jungle canopy, on Russell who filled the car with an oldie-goldie song about paratroopers falling from the sky.

Sitting ten feet from me was a gray-haired man who wore a leather jacket and a face that shone with camaraderie as on cue, he gave Russell's aria its bugle:
“Ta dah-dah da.”

Shake, rattle and roll, the subway train roared through the darkness carrying fill for body bags and one song. Opposite ends of the car, opposite ends of two decades from forty, two strangers to each other and to us all lifted their voices alongside Russell and the bugler went:
“Ta dah-dah da.”

Zane contorted with a soundless scream. Instead of hanging from a jungle tree, he was hanging on to a subway strap in suffocating heat. But he couldn't ignite to berserk without burning all of us. He refused to be such a traitor. He clung to the strap in that hot roaring train like he held on to his lifetime of pain. He held on and trembled as a subway choir sang
The Ballad Of The Green Berets
, swept him up in sentiment he'd sought when all he'd known was being young. The train hurtled through the dark tunnel and the song. He clung to the strap. Held on until the train blasted out of the dark to the next station stop as the tunnel angels sang of silver wings for America's best and
finally
he let go of his pain in a wash of sobbing tears that he'd never, no never before, cried.

'Xactly.