Laundry Man

“More vehicles,” the same voice said. “Three. Coming up road.”

“What are they?”

“Four-wheel drives. Black ones.”

“How close?” Beth’s voice had an undertone of dread.

“Two minutes,” the guard replied.

On the monitor I saw Beth lower the radio and put her lips close to Barry’s ear. She spoke for a moment and Barry appeared to ask her a question, and when she nodded her head he suddenly broke into a run toward the half-open gates.

The senior uniform started after him, drawing his sidearm as he did, and the other uniforms spread out and covered the area with their guns. It didn’t look to me like anybody was actually firing yet, but I figured that was just a matter of time.

Beth moved to cut off the man in the officer’s uniform, which looked like it might give Barry time to make the gates. She reached for the man’s gun arm. The officer hardly glanced at her. He cleared the heavy-looking black automatic from his belt holster and kept coming. His gun swung up and out in a smooth arc.

I saw the barrel slam Beth on the side of the head, and I saw her go down.

Automatically, I pushed myself out of my chair.

So what are you going to do about it? You’re a college professor, not a tin-pot action hero.

I glanced over my shoulder at the rack of automatic rifles, but I felt a blanket of helplessness settling over me. There were six or eight heavily-armed and obviously well-trained men rushing the gates of Barry’s compound and my sole experience with combat weapons had been a half-hour at a SWAT range in Washington DC.

I glanced back at the monitor just in time to see the man in the police officer’s uniform level the muzzle of his handgun directly at me, pointing it straight into the lens of the camera. Reflexively, I ducked, and when I looked back up again the monitor’s picture had turned to static. If they were knocking out the surveillance systems, I knew what that meant. Barry was going down and they didn’t want any witnesses.

I had absolutely no intention of going down with him. I looked around the little room and for the first time noticed another door. Leaping up and grabbing the handle I twisted it.

Locked.

Then I saw the throw bolt just above the handle. It had been secured into a receiver on the doorjamb and I jerked it open and tried again.

This time the door swung open. A wave of heavy night air flooded in and the room’s lights jumped into the darkness. I banged the switch off with the heel of my hand before I attracted any unwanted attention. I started outside, but then I jumped back and grabbed one of the AKs out of the rack. I fumbled with the magazine in the glow of the security monitors until I remembered how to get it out. From the weight, I could tell it was full before I even looked.

I slapped the magazine back in and racked the cocking handle. If any of those bastards in the phony police uniforms came at me, I wanted something in my hands. I would decide later what to do with it.

I eased the door closed behind me and stood quietly, letting my eyes adjust to the faint blush of the moonlight. The compound’s wall was at least twenty yards away across open and exposed ground. From where I crouched, there appeared no more hope of climbing it from this side than there had been from the other.

Okay, they came up the main road and I had left the jeep behind a rise well away from it so they almost certainly hadn’t seen it and didn’t know Barry had a visitor. Maybe they wouldn’t even bother to search the compound after they finished rounding up Barry and his guards.

If they didn’t, I had one idea that might actually work.

One of the guesthouses was near a corner of the main house. If they didn’t know I was there, and if they’d already searched the guesthouse, and if I could get to it without being seen, maybe I could hide out there until this was all over.

A shit load of ifs and maybes, but it was all I had going for me.

Keeping low and pressing myself against the house I began to work my way toward the corner that I guessed was closest to the guesthouse. None of the windows I passed were lighted, but I stayed in a half crouch anyway and kept my body tight against the wall. When I reached the corner, I stopped and dropped flat to the ground. Wedging myself as close to the wall as I could and holding the AK against my chest, I turned my head to one side and inched forward in slow motion. I could feel grit against my cheek as my ear dredged up loose soil like a little backhoe.

When my left eye cleared the corner of the house, my heart sank. I could see four men standing twenty or thirty yards away, exactly halfway between the guesthouse and the main gate. Their backs were toward me, but it seemed hopeless to try and cross the open space without attracting their attention. Then I noticed a dozen or so people were lying facedown on the ground in a straight line just in front of the four men, their hands all cuffed behind them.

I was still trying to make sense of that when something else registered. None of the four men were wearing police uniforms. Instead they all wore loose-fitting blue windbreakers with big yellow letters across the back. The big yellow letters said FBI.

I was just wondering if these guys had gotten their jackets the same place I had gotten mine when a powerful beam of light hit me directly in the face. Momentarily blinded, I felt rather than saw a boot dig under my stomach. Before I could react, the boot flipped me over, then came down in the center of my chest and pinned me to the ground.

“Fuck a duck, Jack, why do you always have to do everything the hard way?”

I recognized the voice without any trouble at all.

“Get that damned light out of my face, Just John,” I said.

A big hand wrapped around my upper arm and jerked me to my feet, then relieved me of the AK.

“What the fuck is this, Jack?” Just John had himself a good chuckle while I spat the grit out of my mouth. “You actually know how to use one of these puppies?”

“Want to give it back and find out?”

Just John laughed some more and I looked him over. He was wearing black pants with a black T-shirt and had a heavy six-cell flashlight dangled at his side. Over his shoulder some kind of small submachine gun hung from a sling.

Standing quietly next to John was Jello. He was wearing a khaki uniform that had been stripped of insignia and carried only a service revolver, but it was out of the holster and pointed in my direction. Both men wore dark gray Kevlar vests and over them the same loose blue jackets the four guys around the corner had on.

“We’ve got him!” Just John called out to someone.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him.

“We’re just real interested in you, Jack,” Just John said. “We like to try and keep in touch with you whatever you’re doing. You’re a million laughs.”

“How did you find me?”

“I can’t tell you exactly. A bunch of top-secret shit’s involved. I’m sure you understand.” John’s voice made it clear that he didn’t give a damn whether I did or not. “Let’s just say that turning on your cell phone wasn’t real clever, Jacko.”

I heard the boots crunching in the dirt behind me and I glanced back over my shoulder. It was same the man I had found sitting in Dollar’s office the morning after Howard’s body had turned up swinging under the Taksin Bridge, the man who had claimed to be an FBI agent named Frank Morrissey.

“Where’d you find him?” Phony Frank asked Just John, hardly glancing at me.

“Sneaking around back here. The stupid shit-”

Phony Frank waved Just John into silence. “It doesn’t matter. Just bring him around front with the rest of them.”

Then the man turned on his heel and disappeared back the way he had come.

“Is one of you heroes going to tell me what the hell’s going on here?” I asked after he was gone.

“We’ve got ourselves a sort of situation, Jack,” Just John said.

“No shit.”