“Heroes?”
“Six men—six people, I guess they don’t need to be men—willing to drive trucks loaded with death.”
“You don’t mean—?”
“It’s the only way it can work,” I said, watching my unsmoked cigarette burn in the glass ashtray. “Lothar ever tell you who was in charge?”
“No. He said it was a collective. Everyone equal.”
“I think it’s this guy Scott. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s got to be the way you figured it. Six of them drive the rigs, plant them around Federal Plaza. The last one, he’s in the van, waiting for the pickup. Only thing is, there isn’t going to
“So we have to interdict—”
“No. Sure, they’re going to have to convoy it—in case one of the rigs breaks down or something. And they have to
“But if the detonator man doesn’t hear anything, he’s going to wait a little bit and—”
“And blow it up. I know. That’s where your heroes come in. Some people say you’re a bounty hunter. A free- lancer working for cash. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. But you had enough juice to make the cops and the media play along with the Lothar thing. So I figure you’re something else.”
“Such as?”
“Such as a . . . I don’t know a name for it. But every government needs people who can work outside the law. And I figure, that’s you.”
He didn’t say anything. The muscle jumped in his face a couple of times, then went as quiet as he was.
“There’s only one thing that’ll absorb that much explosive without killing everyone around,” I told him. “Water. You need to clear a path. Right to the river. The Hudson’s the closest. It’s only a few blocks. You need to take out the drivers. No gunshots. No noise. And you need six people to drive the rigs right to the river. Right
“Six people to drive trucks loaded with explosive? Knowing that any second they could just vaporize?”
“That’s about it.”
“And what about the man in the van?”
“He’s the only one who we don’t know where he’ll be, right? He’ll be close, but that’s all we can count on. The way I figure it, he’ll probably wait until the first one of them comes back. That’s the only way he’ll know they’re all set up. Or maybe he’ll just have some time limit of his own.”
“It would have to be volunteers. . . .”
“Sure it would. You got that kind of people?”
“Yes,” he said, no inflection in his thin voice. Not saying anything about the hard part. Anyone who’s served in the military knows the U.S. government will let you die. They watch soldiers die all the time . . . for some general’s ego or some country’s oil. But there was only one way to stop all the Nazi drivers without making noise. And if that went wrong, it wouldn’t just be expendable soldiers who lost it all. Whoever gave
“I need something else,” I told him.
“More than . . . ?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
When I told him, he didn’t say anything.
“It’s time to lay them all out,” I said. “Face up. You got a handkerchief on you?”
He took a clean white one out of the side pocket of his suit jacket, not saying a word.
“Stand up,” I said. “Put your right foot on the chair over there.”
He did it. I took out the key to the ankle cuff and twisted it. The white patch was underneath, undisturbed. “Take the handkerchief,” I told him. “Peel that off. Carefully. Wrap it up tight. Don’t touch it.”
He did that too. At a gesture from me, he sat down again.
“When you get back to wherever you’re going, get that to a lab.”
“What will they find?”
“You know what a Nicoderm patch is?” I asked him.
“Yes, a time-release dose of—”
“That one is too. Only it’s not nicotine it was dispensing. You left that one on for thirty days, you’d be a dead man.”
He didn’t say anything, but the pupils of his eyes deepened.
“We’re all in now,” I said. “No more bargaining. No more threats. We’re a unit now. A hunter-killer team. I don’t know your game, but you know mine—I need Herk out of there. Alive.”
“But we can’t—”
I leaned forward and told him how he could.
And wished I had a god to pray to that I was right.
Fantasy haunts prison. At night, inside the cells, if you could see the pictures playing on the screens inside men’s heads, you’d see everything on this planet. Other planets too.
Some convict fantasies are sweet. Some are freakish. Some are beyond lunacy. But some are so common they’ve become classics. And if my old cellmates could see me . . .
Lying on my back on a king-sized bed in a luxo hotel suite, a beautiful naked woman on either side of me.
But they were holding hands across my chest, giving each other comfort in the presence of a man who had none for either of them.
Late Saturday afternoon.
Hard darkness outside. Soft darkness in the room.
When I tuned out the words, their girl-talk was soothing. My eyes were closed. I tried to drift into their mingled scent. Lose myself.
Time stood there, laughing at its joke.
Like when I was Inside.
Was my brother already gone? I was back in the foster home, waiting for my mother to come and take me away from the terror. Knowing inside me she never would and . . .
The phone rang.
Vyra sprang from the bed like a tigress, grabbing the receiver before the first ring was done.
“Hello?”
A split-second pause, then: “Oh, honey, am I glad to hear from you! When are you—?”
This time she listened a little longer before she said: “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to—”
He must have told her to shut up, because she went quiet for a long minute. Then she took a deep breath and said softly: “Hercules, will you do something for me? Some little thing, just ’cause I miss you so much?”
He must have said okay, because she came right back with: “My scarf? You know, my pretty pink scarf? The one you said smelled like me? Would you wear it?”
The next words out of her mouth were: “No, I mean, wear it
I don’t know what he said to that. Vyra replied, “Me too. I . . .” and put down the phone. “He hung up,” she said to me and Crystal Beth, her voice cracking around the edges.