Resurrection Express (12 page)

“They added the strap-on,” she says, peeling the Velcro.

If she was making a joke, I let it bounce off my head.

I reach for the nightvision goggles, whistling as I turn the array over in my hands. “Now this is something I haven’t seen yet. I had a pair like this, but there’s more bells and whistles here.”

She aims her finger at the switches and toggles on the side. “It has infrared in three spectrums. So those lasers don’t surprise you as much.”

“There’s easier ways to check for lasers.”

“I know. But it never hurts to be fully loaded. The nightvision is Tech Noir.”

Wow.

The marines don’t even have this yet.

I slip the goggle array quickly over my eyes as she turns off the lights, and I hit the switch that bathes the whole room in neon blue. She reappears instantly out of pitch blackness, the UV spectrum redefining her in shocking detail. It’s not like a white ghost
in a sea of Day-Glo green, the way most military X-ray specs are. This is high definition. I can see the pores in her skin.

“Mission goddamn Impossible,” I say.

“These are new also,” she says, and her Tech Noir outline reaches for the case again. I pull the goggle array off my head and fumble blindly for the light switch. She gets to it first. When the room looks normal again, she’s opening a metal box, which is full of white plastic strips, about a foot and a half long. Holds one up for me to inspect.

“Look like wrist cuffs,” I say. “Your standard Hefty-bag cinchers.”

“Not these,” she smiles. “They’re lined with a chemically treated titanium alloy compound. Impossible to escape from.”

“How do you get them off? Usually you cut the plastic with a knife.”

“You
don’t
cut them. These little buddies are time-release.”

“What?”

“You break the seal when they go on, and the compound begins to mix inside the lining. It’s on a six-hour reaction delay. So when your time is up, the lining gives and the alloy dissolves.”

“Pretty slick, Slick.”

She curls one part of her mouth into something halfway smiley. “That’s an old one, Elroy. Haven’t heard anyone say that since the eighties.”

“Wisdom of the ages, young Alex.”

She lowers her head, placing the cuffs back in the box. “Just don’t call me Alex, okay?”

“Sorry.”

Something bad there, something in her childhood. A woman never tells you twice unless it’s serious business. I find myself wanting to ask her why she hates her name, thinking about Axl again. But I think better of it.

“Okay,” I tell her. “You keep the MI6 gadgets handy for the run
inside. You’re up on all the latest wrinkles, so it’ll go smoother that way. But once we’re in the vault, you follow my lead, understand? You jump when I tell you to jump.”

“I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.”

We run a few final drills. We’ve plotted the attack run carefully, but I make her go over it again, and then one more time after that. You have to know it by feel. Play it on instinct. Like fists on a ladder. She is tense and quick and efficient. She is a haunted creature, like all the rest.

I decide that I like her.

•  •  •

T
he truck and the chopper show up the night before we go in—the big flying machine buzzing like a loud metal beast, hovering over the concrete landing platform that looks like a basketball court. The truck just parks.

I watch the beast, thinking about the monster.

•  •  •

I
sit in the living room by myself and keep an eye on the cable and local news channels that night. No more murders in the street. Nothing public anyway. If Hartman’s killed anyone, he’s not gloating about it.

I use the satellite Internet uplink in my rig and try the Fixer through secure channels. Silence. He’s either dead or underground. One way or another, my life’s savings from being a crook could be long gone. Have to rely on the moment for now. Concerned citizen Jenison and her crazy plan. That scares the holy shit out of me.

Two million for a job that could kill us all.

Tomorrow morning we’ll do the final escape drills in the chopper. Then, at midnight, the monster. And after that . . .

I look at the photo of my wife again, the digital version on the machine.

I run it through some pretty sophisticated programs, but come up with nothing new. This ain’t no
Blade Runner
future yet, where you can see anything in a blurry picture of not much. I try hard and all I get is an enhanced blur. I turn off the machine and force myself not to think about it. Head to the kitchen for something to drink.

•  •  •

A
gent Franklin is standing at the foot of the porch stairs, guarding the perimeter. It’s just now dark, eight thirty. Chilly. I push through the squeaky screen door, walk down and offer him a beer. He politely says no thanks and I just stand there for a few minutes. Crack open the Lone Star I was gonna give him and sip absently at the foam.

“I’m sorry I aimed a gun at you,” I finally say.

He almost smiles, looking off into the distance. “No worries. It was kind of a tense moment.”

“I like to be square with people. Just wanted you to know.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome.”

Another long silence before I speak again. I pull a slug off the beer through a mouthful of suds. “So . . . was Washington a friend of yours? Or just another grunt?”

“Little of both, I guess. I’m not exactly broken up about him getting killed, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Why not?”

“I was in Special Forces. Gulf War.”

That explains a lot. Those guys get so jaded. They pull a trigger and nine hundred human beings disintegrate. You don’t get friendly on the front lines like that, it’s the death of you. Just ask Alex Bennett.

“Well,” I say. “I’m sorry he got killed. Seemed like a nice guy.”

“Not really.” And he laughs. Softly.

I can see this guy’s life now. Really damn clearly. Boot camp as a teenager, a couple of tours, discharged into the Texas underworld as a freelancer. Probably in the early nineties. Bennett had it a lot easier. Her hands are softer.

It’s just like I figured: Jenison got all her hired guns out of
Soldier of Fortune,
or something like that. Has them on constant rotation like mall security. I ask Franklin about it, and he senses my agenda right off, knows I’m trying to figure out who these people really are. Then he surprises me. Pulls out a cigarette and tells me he lives in a house downtown with a few other ex-grunts. One of them is a woman. They pool their money, live however they can. Franklin is leaving the compound when we go in tomorrow. They’re cutting half the people here loose, and he’s got another job lined up that he’s late for. He says it like a guy getting ready to go wash dishes.

“What kind of job?” I let the question hang in the air a few seconds before I realize how pointless it is. Why should he answer? What does he care?

He surprises me again with a jerk of his shoulder, lighting the smoke. “You know Jenny Rose’s Body Shop downtown?”

“Yeah, but I never went there. Don’t like strip clubs.”

“I’m supposed to be the doorman for the next six months.”

“Get out. Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“Doorman at a club can’t pay as well as this.”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve hired out on a lot of private security gigs, and one of them didn’t even pick up my hospital tab when I got shot.”

I have no idea what to say now. The guy who saved my life with a gun the other day is gonna be tossing drunks out the front gate of a titty bar with his bare hands tomorrow. That just seems wrong.

“Well, good luck, man.”

I kill the rest of the beer and turn to leave him, but he stops me with a strange smile. “Hang on a second. I got a question for you.”

“Yeah?”

He drags on the smoke. I notice for the first time that’s it’s a Lucky Strike, unfiltered. Didn’t know they still made unfiltered cigarettes.

“You said something when we first met that I never understood,” he says. “You said our names reminded you of a law office, then you said something about a California roll. What was that all about?”

“You know, Washington and Franklin. Like when you put a hundred dollar bill over a roll of ones so you look rich.”

“They call that a nigger roll, man.”

Ouch.

I give him a weak grin. “My wife called it a California roll. Then again, she was kind of big on sushi. She was probably hungry that day and short on cash.”

That happened a lot back then.

When we were younger.

He almost laughs again. “That’s good. For you, I mean. Washington wouldn’t have liked the other version at all.”

He goes into his jacket pocket and pulls out a card, hands it to me.

The card has his name and a number on it.

He gives me a high nod and says: “Get in touch if you need any legal advice.”

I know that nod. It’s the one they give you in prison, when you earn respect. I memorize the number and forget about it quickly.

That was another trick Axl Gange taught me.

Memorizing and forgetting.

•  •  •

I
go upstairs to my bedroom. Dad is sitting on the tiny single mattress, staring straight into darkness. He has a flask in one hand. I ask him if he’s okay and he doesn’t say a word. So I ask him again.

“Son,” he whispers. “This is an important thing, what we are doing tomorrow. Important for our family.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. This is
important
.”

I smell the whiskey on his breath. He always scared me when I was a kid, when he did this. That half-wasted fifty-yard zombie stare, the night before a job.

Before I grew up.

“You need to get some sleep, Dad. And don’t drink so much.”

“The medicine is cheap. I’m an old man at the end of his life. You’re still young.”

“I’m into my thirties, Dad.”

He laughs. “
Forty
is just when you start to live. Try pushing seventy, son. Try waking up every morning with aches you have no idea what to do with. Or not being able to eat a slice of bread because your guts are on strike and it hurts to take a shit.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I just feel old sometimes. Even now.”

“This business
makes
us feel old. But there’s a lot more living to do.”

I flash on a memory of my mother for a long second.

She has black hair and gray eyes, a lazy chin that droops to her skinny neck, a face filled with resignation to the inevitable—she is beautiful in the way plain women are beautiful. In the way hard women are beautiful. I usually don’t like to think about her for long. It makes me angry.

I stare at my father, my upper lip trembling. “Do you still think about Louise?”

“I think about her every day. If she were still alive, we’d never be in this mess. I might not have gone to prison, and you might
have gone to school like a normal kid. But she’s gone and that’s that. We just have to roll with the weirdness.”

I remember looking right into the eyes of the man who killed my mother, in a courthouse, when I was just five years old. He was driving a car drunk. She was crossing the road with a sack of groceries. The guy was let out of prison after serving three years of a life sentence.

Yeah, man.

Roll with the weirdness.

“When this is over, I’m done,” I tell him. “I’m taking my money and if we find Toni, we’re gonna live happily ever after. Like normal kids.”

“You can’t. It’s in our blood, Elroy. It’s all we know how to do.”

“I’ll learn to do something else.”

“Like what? What would you do with a normal life? Would you even know
how
to live it? That’s my fault. For putting you here, in this world. We can retire, but it’ll always be in our blood, forever.”

“That’s not just your cross to bear.”

Dad takes a hit off the flask. Then:

“I never trusted Toni, you know that. I thought she was bad for you. The way she would take over the show. But I was wrong. She was bad for
me
. I think I might’ve even hated her a little, because she was a reminder of what I did that was wrong. Toni was your
lifeline
when I went away, when I failed you as a father. She taught you things I never even bothered with.”

“I taught her, too.”

“I know.” He almost laughs. “You turned out to be a real smart kid. She was behind you all the way. I never was.”

“Sure you were. Nothing was normal, but I always knew you were behind me.”

“Thanks.” He hangs his head and says it like he’s ashamed, like
it’s something I have to give him, just to make him feel better. He looks off into space again.

Then, almost like he’s speaking in a dream:

“You’ll see Toni again. I promise. What we are doing is
important
.”

“I know.”

He gives me an absent stare, looking into the past. “Mollie Baker knows, too. That’s why he’s not with us.”

“Mollie Baker’s not with us because he can’t get over the past, Dad. That’s nobody’s fault. Just the way things worked out.”

He smiles again, and this time it’s really enigmatic. Like he knows a secret and won’t tell me what it is. Instead, he gets up and puts his arms around me. Says he loves me.

He doesn’t say good-bye.

•  •  •

T
hat night, I only sleep four hours, and they come hard. The worst part is a dream about Toni, of course. She still has no face. She mocks me without a voice. A ghost with black glass for hair, a demon in a red dress. Roses and rusty metal. The sting in my head, punishing me. The little blonde girl in the photograph holds her hand and tells me I am a sinner. I tell her I am coming to save her. She doesn’t care. I am a fool to wish her back.

Let me see your face.

Please.

I wake up in a room I almost don’t recognize. I get up and sit on the floor, looking at the photograph.

Trying to bring her back.

Trying to resurrect her.

So I don’t have to do this important thing.