Resurrection Express (16 page)

Bennett slumps against the open door of the vault, the shotgun smoking.

I almost smile at her.

She lets the gun fall to the floor and clutches her shoulder, which is perforated and soaked through with arterial red now. Starts pulling a field pack off her back, racing to stop the bleeding.

“Fuck,” she says, huffing through the pain, her voice fast and desperate. “God
damn fuck . . .”

•  •  •

I
can’t think of a thing to say. She looks at the two men she just shot in a sort of detached shock, unwrapping bandages from the kit.

She’s never killed anyone.

She’s never caught a bullet before.

I can feel it, like electricity in the blasted room.

Three tours on the front lines, death surrounding her from all sides, and she’s never had to pull the trigger herself. The horror of it is scrawled on her face, red disbelief glowing bad in a galaxy of freckles. Like a jaded kid who finally just grew up, real fast. I don’t envy her that. I’m forcing myself not to think about it. We have bigger fish to fry.

I switch my headset to an outside frequency and start yelling at our ride:

“Mission scrubbed. We’re coming out.”

The pilot crackles back and he sounds really nervous.

•  •  •

W
e come out of the building exactly twenty minutes late. Bennett’s right arm is useless, trussed up in a sling. The chopper is still waiting. I’m hauling the package from the suitcase in the Gold’s Gym bag and part of my rig is on my back, the most important part. The part we’ll need later. The pilot looks worried behind the stick. He turns to us as we board the big machine, his
words all slurring together in a panic: “You okay? Where’s the rest of the guys?”

I pull the pistol off my right hip just as Bennett closes on him from behind, shoving steel against the side of his head.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she whispers in his ear. “I know how to fly one of these, too.”

He freezes. “What the hell are you doing?”

I get closer to him. “Hedging my bets.”

8

00000-8

GO TO ZERO

T
en miles from the Texas Data Concepts building, we force the pilot to set us down in an open field just off a winding country back road. The sun still isn’t up. I tell the man flying the ship to bail and Bennett holds him in her sights while I lash his right arm to a thick tree limb with the titanium plasti-cuffs and pat him down. I take two LG Rumor Touch smartphones and a pistol. He was loaded. I pull the batteries out of the phones and shove them in my bag. It’ll be hours before the cuffs dissolve, and hours on top of that before this guy reaches anything that looks like civilization. By then we’re long gone, me and Bennett. I’ve already phoned in our ride to the underground.

It takes us thirty minutes to get to it.

Bennett flies the machine like a one-armed bandit.

•  •  •

I
know a few crooks in Houston. Some of them still owe me favors. I have all their phone numbers memorized.

Kim Hammer is a gangbanger who used to be a man—she was a weird piece of work before the operation, but now she’s an even stranger lady who still gets respect from the homies and the white-collar mob guys in this town. That’s mostly because of her connections inside the Treasury Department that allow her to get
unregistered machine guns and other army goodies—plus drugs, fake papers, all the usual gangster business. When I text her that I have a slightly used helicopter for sale, she tells me where to land that bitch and I name my price. She only haggles a few minutes.

After I use the pilot’s cell, I pull the batteries again, smash it and toss what’s left out the window. Do the same with his backup phone. Even destroyed, those things can lead the bad guys right to you, if they know what to look for and where. I once pulled a trace from an Apple satellite off a ghost signal hovering above the remains of a gutted iPhone that had been snapped in half and tossed in a gutter. It’s hard to kill one of those. Better to leave them behind and stay off the grid. LG technology isn’t as advanced as the Mac people, but you never can tell. Wireheads get smarter every day. Anyway, I can get new phones at Walmart. They’ll be a lot less dangerous to use, too.

As the first rays of morning begin to haunt the horizon, we hover over a concrete landing strip at a compound near the woods just outside of Sharpstown.

I look at my watch and note the date and time:

7:30
A.M
.

October 23.

Damn.

Bennett’s shoulder is killing her—literally—but she lands us smooth and easy. There’s a Cyclone fence hanging in gnarled tatters on all sides of the tarmac, an abandoned building that looks like the remains of an old factory in the center of everything. Kim’s people will meet us here soon. She said it would be an hour. She said this place was secure.

But first things first.

I get out of the chopper and start screaming.

•  •  •

T
he rage rises to the surface and consumes me under the terrible blowback of the whirling helicopter blades, so loud and raw and primal that my heart threatens to blow and my throat skins itself, like paper peeling from the walls. I fall to my knees and pound the cement with my fists. Red heat rises from my body in the maelstrom. And then everything else explodes, too . . . all the years I worked for Dad, all the years he tried to pay me back however he could, for rolling with the weirdness, the jobs where I watched dozens of men die at his command, die because it was necessary, die because he was a killer, die because he was protecting me, and I hate what I see in those memories, I hate him for being that way, for pulling me down with him, for putting me in that vault with him, for standing there and letting himself die while I lived.

A voice . . . breaking over everything:

Come back.

Back away from this.

It will be the death of everything you love to give in now.

“
Goddammit, snap out of it, Elroy!
”

The voice breaks over everything, and I realize it’s not in my head.

It’s not the voice of my masters.

It’s not the better angels.

It’s the woman.

Bennett.

The storm that surrounded us is gone, and the air is still, the prop wash vanished in the cool Texas breeze. I’m on my knees and my knuckles are shredded and bleeding. The helicopter has stopped rumbling, the blades still and silent. And the woman’s voice is ringing over mine as her hand grips my shoulder . . .

. . . and . . .

. . . just a little at first . . .

. . . I back the rage off.

I listen to my own heart, which wanted to explode just a few seconds ago. I use that sound to pull myself to shore, the slime and the fire still clinging to me. It hurts. But I make it back. Just a little at first. Then a little more . . .

I look up and I see Bennett. She is kneeling next to me, terrified and bleeding. There are tears on her face. There are tears on my face, too.

For my father.

Dad . . .

I close my eyes and I see him one last time. I see him spinning with the butt of his gun, to club my lights out. I see the look on his face behind the blow. The look that begs me to forgive him.

The look that redefines everything . . .

I see him when I am five years old, sitting in that courtroom—a terrible place that smells like chalk and looseleaf notebook paper and the lies of men. I see his face when they sentence the redneck trash who killed my mother. The face of defeat.

I failed you, son.

I see him when I am eight years old, my heart much colder now, filled with hard realities that only come when you live on the street and eat garbage—we’ve lived on the street for six months now, moving from place to place, and now he’s telling me he has to go away again, for a long time, that he might even be killed on the inside. I have to be a man now and take care of myself. I see his face when he tells me it’s all his fault.

I failed you, son.

I see him when I am twenty-eight years old, and he’s telling me he’s proud of what I’ve become, that we are a family at last, but none of it is normal and none of it ever will be, no matter how much denial we choose to live in. I steal things and Dad kills people and we bank millions of dollars, but we don’t live like kings because that brings the IRS and the FBI running. We live in tiny
one-story houses on the edge of Austin. I live with my wife and he lives alone. But we never really live, do we? We are always working. Always moving. All over the world. No rest for the wicked—not now, not ever. And his face is full of defeat.

I failed you, son . . .

His face never changes through any of these memories. He sees the rage that lives in me and is terrified of it. The rage that must be quelled by a life of always working. The only life we know how to live.

I failed you, son . . .

I pull away from it one last time. I realize I’m not screaming anymore. Bennett’s voice comes again, telling me to just calm down.

•  •  •

I
t takes a few minutes, but I manage to get my shit together. I get to my knees and look her in the eye. Try to make my voice as strong as possible.

“Sorry about that,” I tell her.

“You scared the hell out of me. I thought you’d lost it for sure.”

“I . . . I have a lot on my mind.”

“Me too.”

She moves her shoulder slightly and winces. The field dressing she threw together in the vault is soaked through with blood.

I let out a sharp breath, and almost smell roses again. “How bad is it?”

“I think the bullet scraped the muscle. Missed the brachial and axillary arteries. That’s why I haven’t bled more.”

“We’ll get you a doctor.”

“How? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“I have it covered. The cavalry is on the way. Try to relax.”

As the words leave my mouth, the absurdity of a dog giving a cat advice hits me like a sledge to the face. I expect her to roll her eyes and say something all smartass about the man screaming for his
daddy telling the wounded soldier to calm down, but she doesn’t say anything. Just shivers there, on her knees, looking real scared.

“I didn’t sign up for this,” she says. “I was supposed to make a million bucks and retire to goddamn Florida. What the hell am I
doing here
?”

“They were gonna kill us both.”

“And whose fault is that, Elroy? I told you to shut it down and run. If you had
listened to me
—”

“If I’d listened to you, we’d be just as dead. They planned on killing us right from the start.”

“That don’t make any sense!” Her face contorts, the bad shoulder twitching. “
Fuck
 . . .”

“Are you okay?”

“No, I ain’t okay. Somebody fuckin’
shot me
. And filling my head with bogeymen don’t help, either.”

“Didn’t you hear what that asshole said back there? There weren’t enough seats for us on the express, remember?”

“That could have meant anything, Elroy.”

“Look, just
think
a minute. We went in there for a suitcase full of hard drives. Whatever we were really stealing, they were lying through their teeth about it. And they didn’t need us to recover any encrypted data, either—they just wanted me to bust the lock on it. We were all expendable as soon as that vault door opened.”

The pain hits her again, and she hangs her head, sucking back hard air. “Maybe you’re right, Elroy.
Maybe
. But you still should have listened to me.”

“That guy was going to kill you. He would have put that big knife in your eye and bragged about it over beers.”

“So I’m supposed to say thank you? You got me into this goddamn mess, Elroy—
it’s your fault
!”

“Then just try to remember, I’m the only guy who can get you out of it.”

“Fuck you! Just
fuck you,
Elroy!”

I back off and calm myself another degree. “I’ll get you to a doctor. I’ll even get you to Florida with some cash in your pocket. But we have to stick together. I’m sorry and it sucks, but we’re runners now. And those people who hired us—they’re dangerous and well funded. Jayne Jenison will come after us, she’ll find us, and she will
kill us
. Do you read me?”

Her face is red and wet, the pain stabbing through her body. She sits there next to me for a few seconds, letting the silence speak volumes.

Then she sighs again. “Who do you think she really is?”

“She’s no private citizen, that’s for sure. Private citizens don’t kill their techies after they do the job. That’s more like third-world black ops.”

“You think she’s CIA or something?”

“Or something.”

“Goddammit, Elroy . . .”

“There’s only one way to know for sure. I have to find out what they had us going after. Hack the discs. Figure out what she really wanted from Hartman.”

“And I get to bleed to death.”

“I said I was gonna take care of you. Just try to stay calm.”

Now she rolls her eyes. “You should take your own advice.”

“Look, I’m sorry about that, but I’m okay now. I’m thinking clearly. You’ll have to trust me.”

She pauses again.

I read the pain clear and terrible as it slashes across her bloodshot eyes.

“I’ve heard about people like you,” she says. “Ragers. That’s what it’s called, right? One minute you’re okay, the next minute you see red and everything goes to hell.”

“What can I tell you? It’s gotten me in some pretty hot water.”

“Why should I trust someone like that?”

“Because you don’t have any choice.”

She shakes her head and gets to her feet, muttering something nasty. I watch her head back to the chopper and re-dress her shoulder from the field pack. She’s a tough one all right—tougher than I would have thought. For a second I think about offering to help her, and then I think again. Lady hates my guts right now—best to leave her alone.