Made Men (23 page)

H
enna felt lost.

Stephan
stumbled along behind her, his blind eye fooling his feet in the poor light.

They
were ushered from the brick archways and tunnels of the sewer to a train
tunnel. The mercenaries cut locks and pried and kicked their way through.

Sounds
of the city filtered down as they passed gnarled rocks and rusted girders. They
hiked past people sleeping, eating, and defecating beneath the city.
Graffiti for art, grit and rubble for company.

Shupp
paused, pointing his light at a movement. On an elegant fainting couch, eerily
out of place with its swirling gold-colored legs, a bony and balding woman
lounged. She wore a dusty tuxedo and smoked a carved ivory pipe. Beside her sat
a collection of breakfast cereals, boxes neatly arranged like books on a shelf.
A metal milk crate served as her coffee table, on which she’d propped her feet.
Bright red, her ornate cowboy boots parted in a startled
V
to regard them. She gripped a rusty carpenter’s saw, but relaxed
when Shupp spoke.

“Easy
now. Just passing through. Good evening to you.”

“Very
good…” she sat the tool down next to her archived wheat-trinkets “…very good
evening to you all,” she answered.

Lead
(pronounced like the metal) swiveled his head to monitor the woman until they
were well past her spot.

“Just
up here.” A bald soldier rubbed a callused fingertip on a map. “An access door.”
Shupp cut the lock.

Inside,
the domed room—an abandoned station—was bricked off to street
access, yet still lit. The tiles were yellowed with mildew for grout.
Consulting the map once more, Shupp’s little army pulled pins and magazines and
unbuckled straps. In less than a minute their rifles were concealed in rucks,
their
other tools and gear beneath their oversized clothes.
A train shrieked past in the adjoining tunnel.

Shupp
herded Henna and Stephan along a wall, though the train was going too fast for
anyone to see them clearly.

At the speed the subway went, the flash
of their faces would be meaningless
.

O
n the move again,
they loped along the tracks. The vacuum of the train pulled at her eardrums.

“Don’t
even graze that one. It’ll fry you,” Shupp promised, pointing out the third
rail.

The
tunnel widened after a few hundred meters.

They neared a station.

Climbing
onto a thin walkway, Henna stayed in the middle of the pack. From within the
meat parade, Henna couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, the men in front of her
grabbed someone. “Hey! Where were you—” She stepped over his body.

A tunnel worker.

He
appeared asleep, but suspected otherwise, head resting lightly on his arm.

“He’s
alright,” Shupp hissed. “Keep moving.
WALK
.”
Henna remembered Ryker’s parting words.

Just stay alive.
What made her so special?

“No
more. Don’t hurt anyone else,” Henna whispered at Shupp.

“You
are it, Ms. Maxwell,” the hardboiled operator said with finality. “Everyone
else is expendable.”

They
strode to a platform just as the next train stopped. Boarding, they rode for a
few minutes then disembarked, waiting in formation for the next subway,
watching faces. Listening for the squeaky pivot of a shoe.

Shupp
made small hand motions that his squad understood, and they stepped onto the
next train. The soldiers kept Henna between them, always scanning the crowd,
looking for the hand in the pocket, studying shoes and luggage, anything out of
the ordinary.

It was New York. Everything was out of
the ordinary.

She
tried to hold Stephan’s hand, but was jostled away, made to let go of it as
they emerged from the tunnel and stepped onto a bus. Wedged between Shupp and
Lead, Henna felt like livestock in a chute. Stephan, a row up and across the
aisle, glanced back, bewildered. The bald men flanked him, taking in their
surroundings with subtle head movements.

I
n Newark they stole a
minivan and drove north—then west—for hours.

Somewhere—Pennsylvania,
Henna guessed—they veered onto a country road that led to an airstrip
behind a farmhouse and soon boarded a prop plane. Strapped in, Henna slept,
head heavy and bobbing. Stephan turned to check on her each minute, his own
chaperone taking advantage of the flight to sleep as well. She awakened to a
bumpy landing in a gravel-patch runway cut into a sea of sagebrush.

Instead
of refueling, they climbed out, trotting as
a group to a
small jet with tip
tanks.
The pilots who had awaited
them avoiding both radio traffic and eye contact.

Each leg of the escape had been coordinated.

Henna
wondered about the pilots.

Where were they from? How long had they
been waiting there on the plains?

Food
was passed around.
She fidgeted, sore and thirsty, water in
her hand.
Nowhere private to relieve
herself
, Henna’s
bladder was so full it ached, as did her head.

It seemed they would never land
.

The
soldiers seemed to keep Stephan separated from her, perhaps so they wouldn’t
conspire to resist.

Divide and conquer.

Fitfully,
she dozed, nausea coming in waves, jet fumes everywhere, trying to prevent her
bladder from voiding itself.

The
shriek of rubber on tarmac jolted her. “Where are we?” she asked Shupp at her
elbow. The jet tore down an incredibly long runway, somewhere, Henna imagined,
in the Aleutian chain.

“More
than halfway there.” His eyes were never still. “Better you don’t know where.”

Henna
hoped they’d all turned their backs as she relieved herself along the windswept
runway. Shupp stood to block the wind, though she had asked Stephan to.

At least the soldier’s back faced her.

Hurried
back inside the aircraft, Henna’s face pressed to the small round window. The
team circled the jet. Lead’s eyes were glued to an old man pumping fuel into
the wings from a stepladder: face neutral, goggles hiding his eyes; though
upright, the operator’s hunched shoulders and solid neck reminded her of a
hyena eyeing a smaller predator, perhaps a hapless jackal.

With
a buzzing whine, they zipped back to altitude. Stephan’s soft snoring was
barely audible, and Henna kept trying to pop her ears.

“Gum?”
Shupp offered her a pack. “It helps with the pressure.” Reflexively, she smiled
and shook her head, marveling at how closely the guard was watching her.

A kind gesture
, she thought.

He’s a killer
—came next.

Henna
looked out the window at the blinking light on the end of the wing.

And so am I.

Groping
in her satchel to identify familiar things, Henna rubbed her weary eyes with
the other hand and stole glances at Shupp. The mercenary had a wrinkled photo
of a little girl pressed close to his nose, the edges worn and rounded.

“Your
daughter?” Henna said before she could stop. He nodded.

“Used
to be.”
His voice uncharacteristically soft.

He
turned to the window and didn’t look back. “Years and years ago.”

T
hey landed in
Kamchatka and switched airplanes again. A much older dual engine propeller
plane vibrated and shook violently, metal parts banging and singing, as it
carried them from muddy strip to a grassy field with scattered rocky
outcroppings.

“Last
refuel,” Shupp offered.

The
hirsute rogue was strapping on a large rig in the plane as the bald duo outside
monitored the man pumping fuel from a small truck.

A parachute?

Lead
did the same. “Do we all need those?” Stephan sat with her, taking advantage of
the momentarily free seat next to her. He reached for her hand, but she felt
hyper-vigilant and on edge as though she might need to run. She rested her hand
on top of his leg instead and kept an eye on the door. She gave Stephan a look.

Stay close.

“Just
Lead and me.” Shupp gave Stephan a nod. “You’ll be strapped to
Lead
.”

Even Shupp’s hands had been burned
.

Then at her.
“Henna, to me.” Ascending again, they
flew until a thick canopy of clouds hovered overhead. The drone of the plane
made her sluggish.

The loose parts had seemed to fall off.

The
terrain changed, and they flew in and out of
cloud banks
.
She sipped water, hoping they’d be on the ground soon, but not looking forward
to the parachute. Not well pressurized, the ancient plane felt like a tugboat
chugging along. They all seemed oxygen deprived. One of the slick-headed
soldiers peered about. He’d been asleep, hat low, shemagh pulled over his face.
He rubbed his eyes, glanced out the window,
then
settled back in.

These guys could sleep anywhere.

Shupp
stirred next, checked something strapped to his arm. He nudged Lead and tapped
the device. Lead nodded.

Soon, she guessed.

Henna
fastened the latches on her satchel tightly and looked behind her to see that
Stephan, too, was awake. He offered her a sheepish, weary smile.

“Arms
and legs out. Arch your backs,” Shupp barked. “We are going to fall for a long
while. Put these on.” He handed Henna goggles, gloves, and more.

Dressed up like an adventure doll
.

Helmets,
special jackets and pants, Stephan looked similarly ridiculous. Henna’s jacket
was so big, her satchel fit beneath.

“We’ll
open low,” the charred veteran yelled over the propellers. “Relax when we do.
Stick your legs out in front of you. Knees bent, OK?” Shupp’s eyes were on her.

She nodded, repeating
,
“Open
low.
Legs in front. Relax.” She was exhausted, also.

Shupp
put his hand on her elbow, leaning closer. “You’ll think we’re gonna bounce,
but we’re NOT … feel yourself stiffen up? Close your eyes. Trust me.”

The
pilot turned, shouting, “Ninety minutes.”

Henna
yelled too, into Shupp’s ear. “We’re not jumping for an hour and a half?”

“No—”
Shupp frowned. “Ninety minutes to get…” he squinted, twitching “…to get
underground.”

“Underground?”
Henna barked. “Why?”

Shupp
and Lead grimaced in different directions, but she jutted her chin out,
determined and expectant. Shupp glanced at her with a small shake of his head
and set his jaw. He beckoned Stephan with a finger wag to tell them both as if
he only wanted to say it once. “You know those movies where the good guy saves
humanity from a catastrophe, and all Earth’s people just keep on truckin’, not
aware of their good fortunes?” Henna felt a pit in her stomach. “Well, this
ain’t a goddamned movie. Droves of people are fixing to die—” A nervous
twang shone through.

Her savior was from the south.

“Your
crocodilian benefactors are gonna light it up to keep you safe. When we crawl
out, of the hole, it’ll be a different world. Don’t ask me any more. I can’t
stop it, and you can’t stop it.”

L
ead had strapped
Stephan to him.

They
shuffled nearer the door. Stephan looked dazed and resigned. Henna felt like a
child as Shupp strapped her much smaller body to his. “Why are we jumping out
in the clouds?” She had continued to barrage the pirate-bearded man with
questions, despite his command not to. “And what did you mean by ‘it?’ Light
WHAT up?”

“So
the satellites can’t see us—” The scarred giant paused, his beard
twitching as he adjusted his tobacco. “And the planet. They’re gonna light up
the whole damned globe for you.” Shupp pulled straps tighter. She felt her body
draped intimately against the mercenary’s chest and crotch. They faced the same
way now, her heart jumping through her backbone, against the man’s mass.

The time for questions had passed
.

Leaning
back, Shupp hoisted them—her legs dangling—toward the door. Henna
felt the steel wool of his beard on her cheek. “I don’t know what magic you’ve
got,” Shupp spat, “and I don’t want to. Try to relax.”

Wind
slammed into the cockpit as Lead toggled
open
the
door. Lead and Stephan leaned then were gone. Henna felt her hands go numb and
a flushing feeling in her stomach. A moment later, Shupp leaned, her cheek
flapped, and they fell.