tremendous pain in the ass. Oh, you played along enough to actually bring your body back online, to some degree. But our staff knew you were up to something. And as soon as you deemed yourself physically fit, you tried to escape.”
“Guess I didn’t pull it off.”
“You came close. Killed quite a few people, too.”
This was a lot like hearing about all the great fun you had while stinking drunk just before you passed out on the lawn. All the pain, none of the satisfaction.
“So,” Abrams continued, “we decided that you weren’t the right man for the project we had in mind at the time. Still, you were a potential asset, and we never just throw away our assets. You were sent to site seven seven three four with a group of other potential assets. Your memory loss is normal. We wipe out about a year’s worth before sending anyone down there. Keeps the place secret.”
“Right.”
“Of course, site seven seven three four is useless to us now. Not long after you did away with Mr. Gedney, we sent a team down there and found it abandoned. Not a single living being. Not a single corpse.”
“Whoopsie.”
“No matter. That’s another issue entirely. I’m just trying to impress upon you that this claim that we stole five years of your life is really kind of silly. Not sure what we’re guilty of, other than trying to save your life and protecting our interests.”
“Gee, if only your pals had explained it to me that way,” Hardie said.
Abrams smiled. “The fact that you escaped…that’s truly remarkable. Makes me see your potential in a whole new light.”
“Not interested. Let’s talk terms, or you can join your pals Gedney and Doyle right now.”
“Just Gedney.”
“Huh?”
“If you shoot me, I’ll only be seeing Gedney. That is, if you believe in life after death. Which I do not. But whatever.”
“Doyle’s dead.”
“Mr. Doyle is alive and on his way to the hospital. We were talking to him from the back of the vehicle— there’s a wireless communications system back there. It cut out a little on the Pacific Coast Highway, but we were able to tell him how long to hold out, what to say to bring you here.”
“Why? Why not just kill me on the open road? You could probably have blown up the car by remote.”
Abrams sighed. “You’re not listening to me, Mr. Hardie. You’re still an asset. Blowing you up would get us what, exactly? A warm, tingly feeling inside? Grow up.”
Oh, how Hardie’s trigger finger twitched. One little squeeze, a spray of skin and bone and blood…
“I see you’re impatient. So here’s our offer. We still want you for this project. Gedney wasn’t sure, but Gedney’s dead. And unlike your stint in site seven seven three four, this project is aboveboard. We’ll tell you everything. Exactly what’s expected of you. In short, one year of service, doing what you do best.”
“What’s that?”
“Guarding something.”
Hardie thought about it, then shot Abrams in the face.
Okay, he didn’t.
He badly wanted to, and the fantasy sequence that ran through his mind was so, so tempting. But instead Hardie asked,
“What do you want me to guard?”
“Agree and we’ll tell you everything.”
“What do I get in return?”
“A clean slate. Do this job for us and in one year you can walk away. Go back to your life, if you want.”
“And if I refuse?”
Abrams shrugged and showed him her palms. “Look, I don’t have to sell you on our capabilities. Your wife and son have been left unmolested. If you decide to kill me and continue on with this rampage of yours, it won’t end well. For any of us.”
Hardie thought about it, then shot Abrams in the face.
Wanted to.
But for years now Hardie had been doing just what he wanted, and where had that gotten him?
Sometimes your guts know it before you do. You’re about to take a step off a curb and your guts are screaming
Hardie placed the gun on the desktop, nodded, took a step back, balancing himself on his cane.
Abrams allowed herself a polite smile, then settled back into her chair.
Almost immediately armed gunmen poured into the room, automatic weapons in their hands. They were trained; they’d clearly practiced this move a hundred times before. They surrounded Hardie in such a way that if he went for his gun on the desk his arm would be separated from the rest of his body by a flurry of bullets.
That didn’t mean he didn’t think about it, though.
One second to fall forward…
Another second to grab the gun…
One last second to pull the trigger and destroy her face.
Surely he could endure the agony of a hundred bullets blasting through his body, severing veins and shattering bone and spraying gray matter for three seconds?
Yeah. Right.
“That was a wise choice,” Abrams said. “You probably could have killed me, but you wouldn’t have made it out of this room alive. Your family would have died within the hour, too. We have Mann and her team assembled in Philadelphia right now. And while it may have felt good to take my life, that would not have done a thing to change our operations. I am not the be-all and end-all of the Industry. I’m just an employee. Just like you.”
Hardie looked around the room, all those guns pointed at him, the utter hopelessness of it all.
He laughed. “I should have just run.”
“We would have found you.”
“I should have pulled the trigger,” Hardie said. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”
Abrams smiled and leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on the desk. She wore boots with heels tall and sharp enough to lobotomize a man through his eye sockets.
“Oh, Mr. Hardie,” she said. “It’s much worse than that.”
—Roberto Benigni,
PEOPLE ALL OVER Southern California heard the explosion—a kind of end-of-the-world roar that brought certain Santa Barbara residents to their windows, fearing the worst. When you looked up into the pale blue sky you saw the missile and the trail of fire almost as long as the missile itself and your heart seized—but for just a moment. Because this missile—a rocket, actually, 235 feet tall—was zooming away from Southern California at 17,500 miles per hour, not screaming toward it.
Older residents, though, were used to such launches. Vandenberg Air Force Base was nearby, and ever since the 1960s the government had been launching all kinds of space shit up from Slick Six—the nickname for Space Launch Complex-6.
