Made Men (25 page)

Read aloud:

Where is she?

Back there? Let me see her.

“Where
is she? Back there? Let me see her.”

Not a believable performance.

Ryker
scowled his answer. “In the back.” Ryker chewed the note that Vai handed him,
regarding her with new respect, adding, “Asleep. Stephan’s been tending to
her.”

Mousetrap.

Ryker’s
cellphone vibrated, and he pressed it to his ear in a flash. Nodding, he turned
to the laptop, and pressed some buttons. His throat puffed out and with his
mouth open, he seemed to be moaning something into the receiver, but Bonn
couldn’t hear anything. Disconnecting the call, he looked skyward again,
walking backwards toward the open blast door, his eyes on Vai. She’d found a
scarf—an item with Henna’s scent that Ryker had carried to the
tunnel—a vaunted fabric totem. Bonn glanced at her too.

Now everyone’s eyes looked strange.

“Leave
it open,” Vai said, her voice oily, entranced. The German froze, confused.

“We’re
leaving,” she added, sadly, offering the scarf to Bonn.

She knew something
.

“He’s
got her.”

H
enna gasped. Her
throat felt swollen and ached like nothing she had ever felt before. Blinking
at her surroundings, she explored her bruised neck with her fingertips.
Everything the brilliant toxicologist touched, including her neck, felt like
fur. Holding a hand to her face, she watched her fingers go in and out of
focus.

She was inside, but where?

Concrete
everywhere. Elegant lights hung from the cement ceiling, softly illuminating.
Henna rolled to her side. The polished floors were concrete too. A wooden door
looked frail and out of place, as did the bed she was on—a hand carved
affair, likely mahogany.

Indian perhaps?

Swirls
of greens and blues, reds and yellows, painted by hand, complemented the
design.

Balinese
.

A poster bed with white linens, soft and
expensive.

Things
spun for a minute—or rather—Henna perceived them to.

She’d been drugged
.

The
ketamine was beginning to wear off. Her trippy carousel slowed, and Henna
risked swinging a leg off of the bed, wincing with the effort.

A pain in her abdomen
.

Instinctively,
her hand touched the place. A bit of gauze was taped there. She felt lower.

Some sort of pajamas?

Henna
eased her other leg off the high platform and sat up slowly. Neatly folded, her
clothes sat on a bedside table: shirt on top, freshly laundered.

The last thing she remembered was
falling.

Her
tongue felt like rubber.
Dry and spongy.

There was something else. What had
happened?

A
glass of water sat on a coaster by her clothes, taunting and suspicious. Her
satchel hung on a hook by the door.

“Stephan?”
Her throat felt raw.
Bee-stung
and tinny.
She stood, but swooned, tipping back against the mattress as
tiny dots swirled everything gray.

“Stephan?”
A shadow fell on the sliver of light beneath the door. A bilge for a throat,
she worked hard to breathe, sucking and blowing air through her edematous
throat, raspy and buzzing. The pinwheels lightened. Something hung on one wall.
An oil painting, perhaps five feet across.
A
storm-tossed ship that looked familiar. Rembrandt?

Couldn’t be. No one would hang a
Rembrandt in a guest room.

“Stephan?”
she called louder, still a whisper, and coughed. “Shupp?” Her heart thrummed
faster to provide her brain the blood it craved. The concrete floor felt warm
and furry beneath her feet. Swallowing, her throat felt like a kiln full of
burning glass and sand. She peered at the water glass. Beaded, cold drops
beckoned, a sliver of lime beneath perfect round cubes.

A lime slice.
The type of thing Stephen would do.

“Stephan?”
She listened. If he answered, she would drink. Why didn’t she want to? What did
she know?

Nothing.

She
heard nothing. Even the antique door was artwork—solid panels of wood. A
biblical scene (Russian Orthodox?) carved into each.

The
ornate knob turned slowly. Henna watched with blunted motions as the cheerful
face of a lady—perhaps seventy-five—peeped in. She had white hair
twisted in a bun on top of her head and European-looking glasses. She was
thin-framed and elegant.

“You
are waking up a little?”

“Yes,
but I am out of sorts.” The lady came in. She had a presence
;
her back straight and proud—almost royal.

She had a German accent.

“Have
we met?” Henna asked. The woman shook her head, a small smile on her face.

“There
were men with me. Three others…” catching her breath “…one is named Stephan. Is
Stephan here?”

Even
frowning, she was beautiful. “Just one man here, now, dear. The man who carried
you in.” She walked nearer. With a long, gray wool sweater tied at the waist
and black wool pants with a crisp seam, she looked like an aristocrat in for
the night.

A lilt in her voice.
Her eyes were smart.

“It
would seem you took a conk to the head when you landed. I’m Frau Gitte.”

Landed
.
Shupp
had said they wouldn’t bounce. Guess we did. Shupp! Where was Shupp?

Henna
ran her fingers through her hair; she was dizzy, but her head felt fine.

“Where
is he?” Henna asked, keeping her sentences short. “The man?”

The
woman smiled. “Asleep in the next room.” She offered her hands, helping Henna
up. “Come with me. I’ve made tea.” Henna felt unsteady. The whole building felt
cast at an odd angle.

Come with me. I’ve made tea.

Her
hostess was steady, however, and led her with dignified, quiet, purposeful
steps.

She didn’t like the rhyme it made. Come
with ME. I’ve made TEA. It seemed like the perfect glass of water: a thin candy
shell over rat poison.

It
seemed they’d embarked on a longer journey than just to share tea.

Concrete. Each surface. Stained in earth
tones.

There
were windows, however. Henna veered, pulling her stately guide toward one.

It didn’t appear to open
.

She
clung to the sill, and the lady held her hands up to steady her, like Henna was
an expensive camera on a tripod.

“Are
you steady now?” Though she felt anything but, Henna nodded.

Polycarbonate.
Several
inches thick
.

There
was a row of the tiny windows, but no door. A monolithic rock overhang served
as a roof outside and provided at least fifty feet of stone to shelter them. Smoky
streaks plummeted through the atmosphere in the sliver of visible sky—a
large body of water beneath. “The ocean?” Henna asked. Water made sense, but
the junkyard meteors did not.

At least the furry world was gone. She’d
definitely been drugged.

Frau
Gitte busied herself at a warm wooden table beside a huge soapstone hearth that
went to the ceiling. Old, expensive-looking paintings were hung at intervals
around the room.

“A
lake, dear. Largest in the world, I’ve been told.”

Henna
watched her feet as she plodded to the table, arms out as though on a
tightrope. She reviewed her growing list of questions.

Meteors. Why meteors. Where
is
Stephan and where is Shupp and why are there meteors.

It
was not just tea. There were plates of food. Smoked fish, little bowls of
pickled and salted things.
A loaf of fresh bread.
Enough to feed half a dozen people.
Too
much.

It didn’t make sense. Add that to the
list.

“I
need to see Stephan. Is he—
”

“Sit
for tea first, dear.” The tone of the lady’s voice had changed. “It will do you
some good.” She looked frightened and insistent. Pulling a chair out for Henna,
next Frau Gitte slid one very close for herself. She smelled of gardenia and
carrot greens and sun-warmed honey. Henna obeyed, but looked about hopefully
for Stephan.

“Sugar?”
Frau Gitte held a square white lump in silver tongs above Henna’s cup.

“No,
thank you,” Henna whispered, still hoarse.

Frau
Gitte dropped the lump anyway. It landed on a paper napkin on which something
had been written:

KILLER IS HERE. BE STRONG
.

Eyes
stinging as she read, Henna gripped the edge of the table, swallowing against
the caked, angry flesh in her throat. “Is Stephan …”

Flashing
a warning, wagging a thin finger, the German lady—still quite
beautiful—plucked up the napkin, palming it.

Then
stood to pile logs into the crook of her arm, squatting with her knees together
to feed the napkin and wood into the huge hearth.

“D
ead?” A man’s voice
finished her sentence, like bearings polished in syrup.

“If
Stephan was a part of your tiny ineffective army, then yes—I killed him.
He’s face-down in the field outside.” He leaned, a broad-shouldered nutcracker
dressed to the nines, the arms of his thin sweater pushed jauntily to the
elbows, arms crossed without a care, thickly veined and muscular.
A genetic god.

“He
loudly professed his love for you, however, Henna. You should know that.”

Gitte
stirred her tea, spoon chittering against the thin china cup. She glanced,
sidelong, eyes wide, to give another warning—a promise—but Henna
didn’t see. She was on her feet, charging, rasping a roar as her arms flailed.

Kill him
.

Towering,
athletic, the monster accepted her kitten-like blows and swept her up like a
child to embrace her. Henna flung her head about, wheezing as she twisted,
trying to hurt him—to bite him—but he was in control. Sobbing,
racked with shakes, she went limp. Dizzy with rage and sorrow, her heart
drumming so fast her blood pressure dropped, Henna became syncopal. Dead
weight.

Osgar
eased her onto the soft cushions of an overstuffed couch and perched himself on
the edge of it like a concerned physician making a house call to a stricken,
daft, ex-lover.

“Take
some time to process things.” He laid an immense hand, Rachmaninoff’s paw,
easily—with familiarity—on her stomach. “We’ve a while to become
acquainted.”

Stephan.

Brushing
Henna’s hair from her eyes, the elegant butcher arose and joined the old woman
at the table. “I do take sugar, Frau Gitte. You may put mine in my cup. Thank
you.”

Henna
buried her head in her arms and sobbed, mouth dry and open, her eyes screwed
tight against the world.

Stephan. Stephan. Stephan.

I
t took an hour to
secure a pilot.

Vai
watched him toss seats from the old Learjet onto the tarmac as they neared.
From ten paces, she could tell he’d been drinking.

“Three
seats left in the back.” He rubbed a grubby finger along the side of his veiny
nose, looking at her chest. She felt the knife in her pocket. “One of you rides
up front with me. Biggest problem we have? I’ve got no idea who will refuel us
considering current events.”

He had a point.

Every
few seconds a bit of space detritus lit up the sky.

Donald
J. Kessler had been right, and his namesake effect was happening. The missiles
Ryker had launched had a 75% hit ratio. Hurtling debris—space junk and
functional items alike—collided faster and faster, sending much of the
detritus hurtling to burn up as it re-entered earth’s dense atmosphere;
although the larger pieces thudded on through, hot misshapen ingots angry with
fresh friction.

They
boarded quickly.

Ogling
her shamelessly, the pilot finally met Vai’s gaze and bared his long, yellowed
teeth in a simian flirtation. After final preparations, he taxied them,
drunkenly—uttering a barrage of bad language and arguing with the tower.
Finally, he just turned off the headset.

“Go
figure. Tower says we can’t fly.”

Airport
police vehicles screamed toward the runway, but the inebriate, half liver by
volume, punched it and the acceleration of the scalded tube threw them each
back in their seats. They were aloft, turbines buzzing, in seconds.

“Silly
question,” the man shouted from the cockpit, his nose as red and pitted as a
hothouse strawberry, “but where are we headed?” An explosion sounded.

Ryker
pointed. Something large had broken up when it hit the atmosphere, smoky
tendrils straying in lazy arcs like the legs of an apocalyptic spider. “Lake
Baikal, Soviet Union.” Vai saw that the German had pulled on the copilot’s
headset, though the pilot had wanted her to sit next to him and share his
rancid hepatic breath.

Ryker
logged GPS coordinates on a piece of paper (which would be useful for perhaps
another two hours) and made a list of small municipalities where they could
refuel—no questions asked—with cash. “What is our safe operating
range?” Ryker asked.

“Kidding, right?” the
pilot’s breath was truly rank; Vai could smell him from a dozen feet away.

Fetor hepaticus. His liver was dying
.
Vai had
volunteered at a VA. She knew the smell all too well.

Shouting his snarky
answer, the pilot seemed as though his ears were full of gauze.

Probably hoping she would hear him and take off her pants since he
was so clever.

“Zero
miles, asshole. Try again.” Ryker appeared immune to the tirade, but the pickled
flyboy kept on. “Have you noticed that it’s hailing big fucking chunks of
metal?”

Ryker
nodded. “Yes.” Calmly, the logistician continued to write. “I will be more
literal. At 51,000 feet, considering our onboard fuel and the reduced weight of
the seats left behind, what is our maximum range?”

“Well…”
the yellow-orange man studied the instrument panel and squinted, tapping dusky
fingertips in the air “…the tip tanks are full…” he glanced at the German
appraisingly and wrenched his neck to stare, again, at her chest. “…
and
none of you are fat-asses, so we’ve got about 2,100
miles.” The German nodded and unclipped himself from the seat, stepping over
the armrest to sit in the back.

Bonn
and Ryker whispered, then her lover nodded. With a squeeze of her hand, Bonn
climbed into the front to balance the plane. Vai watched as the slim Teutonic
wraith pulled up a flight-training video on his laptop, scrolled through the
program in moments, then removed a small toolkit from a panel near the door,
loosening the bolts on the rest of the seats.

Soon
he’d settled down to trace a delicate finger over the pages of a tattered road
atlas. He tore one out, made marks with a pen along the edge of a separate page
to make a gauge, then ran the tool over the map. At altitude now, the captain’s
head lolled to one side; he’d taped the pages of a newspaper over the
windshield to block out the sun and slept, letting the auto pilot work.

Bonn
joined them in the back. Bemused, she nodded at Ryker. “What’s he doing?”
He b
rushed her ear with his lips as he answered,
sending a hungry feeling to Vai’s knees, stomach, and lower back.

“When
we land, he’s going to jettison the rest of the seats and the pilot and fly
this thing himself.”

Ryker’s
hearing was exceptional; Vai swore his ears pricked. The German glanced their
way, nodding, and she felt a shiver.
Bonn
intertwined his fingers with hers, and she warmed up again. Tickling her ear
again, Bonn said,
“Told you.”

T
hey
landed—unannounced—somewhere in Alberta, on a thin gravel airstrip
with a low wooden building at one end.

Oblivious,
the pilot taxied the plane to within inches of an unattended fuel truck. Ryker
swung down the steps, disembarked, and without breaking stride, broke the
truck’s side window. Hot-wiring the truck, he started the fuel pump. The pilot
wobbled uncertainly toward the wooden building, Ryker at his heels.

Emerging
alone, each movement graceful, Ryker brought back several empty jugs. “For
fuel,” he explained, meeting her eyes.

He
didn’t explain the pilot’s absence, and she wasn’t clamoring to see a corpse,
so Vai trotted behind the wooden building to relieve herself then returned to
help them toss the remaining seats and other non-essentials from the airplane.
Bonn had found some ratchet straps, and Ryker passed in the cans of jet fuel.
With the wings full to overflowing, tip tanks heavy with fuel, one less body
and only one seat, they’d go farther this time and could land to refuel from
the cans if they got down to fumes.

Ryker
slid into the cockpit. Bonn pulled up the stairs, swung the door down, and
engaged the latch. The sky was streaked with shrapnel and
a
piece
of metal the size of a DVD disk smacked into the gravel nearby
then bounced off of the fuselage.

Ryker
flicked switches and called instructions calmly over his shoulder. “Lie down on
the floor. Hold on to the bulkhead—just until we level off.” The buzz of
the turbines hummed.

A smoother takeoff
than their first.

“Next
stop, King Cove.”