Flashback

“I don’t have the money anyway,” said Val. They were passing the Hungarian Freedom Park with its Bonus Army of single homeless guys. There were police cars and vans parked along the curb and a lot of uniformed cops in riot gear. It all seemed a million miles away to Val. “I’d need two hundred bucks for the new card… old bucks.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have it to give to you,” said Nick. “A few days ago I did. But I blew it on bribes and on paying a pilot to fly me from Las Vegas to L.A.”

Val stared. “L.A.? Why did you go there?”

“To find you.”

“Bullshit,” barked Val.

“All right, it’s bullshit,” said Nick. “I blew it all on gambling in Las Vegas. I don’t care what you think. But I couldn’t give you the two hundred now even if I had it.”

“Why not?”

“I’d use it as a down payment in getting Leonard this valve replacement surgery. He needs it to live and Medicare won’t get around to paying for it until he’s been dead for a decade or two.”

As if hearing his name, Leonard stirred and groaned in the backseat.

Val looked at his grandfather and his own chest hurt.

“In a dream I had last night,” said Nick, “the three of us were hightailing it to Texhoma, Oklahoma, in an old Chevy Camaro SS with a supercharged V-8.”

“What the fuck is in Texhoma, Oklahoma?”

“A border-station crossing into the Republic of Texas.”

“They’d pay for Leonard’s surgery in Texas?”

Nick shot a glance at the boy. “No, but they’d have it available if we could pay for it. And I’d find a way to.”

“I hear that Texas doesn’t let in useless people,” said Val. “Especially useless people who are flashback addicts.”

Nick didn’t respond to that.

After a moment, Val said, “So the car that your friend… K.T… is leaving for us at Six Flags is an old gas- burning V-8 Camaro?”

“Probably not,” said Nick. “I just wanted the fastest car in the DPD impound lot. Remember Mad Max’s Last of the V-8 Interceptors?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” lied Val.

Nick shrugged. They were approaching the overpass crossing I-25 and he turned left toward the abandoned towers and roller-coaster steel of the old Elitch Gardens. The gelding told him that it had 3? miles of charge left in it.

There was one vehicle parked away from the others, facing the wrong way, in the parking lot. Nick stopped near it and whispered, “Ah, Jesus Christ, no.”

He checked on Leonard and got out of the gelding. A moment later, Val did the same, still carrying his pistol.

Nick pulled a little box from the left rear wheel well. Folded around the ignition key fob was a note in K.T.’s handwriting—The impound lot’s almost empty and I could never get anything out of it today. This is my personal vehicle. Good luck.”

Nick and Val stood looking at the blue Menlo Park all-battery mini-van. On a good day, these things had a range of around 100 miles.

“At least it’s a lighter blue,” muttered Nick. Val had no idea what the Old Man was talking about.

Nick had just offered the keys to Val and was about to say something when four desert-camouflage tan M- ATVs roared across the parking lot and screeched to a stop around them. A dozen Japanese men in black ballistic cloth SWAT armor, all carrying automatic weapons, boiled out of the big vehicles and aimed their weapons at Val and Nick.

Val started to bring his Beretta up and the Old Man grabbed his wrist, squeezing hard until he dropped the gun. Nick himself made no motion toward a weapon.

A bulky Jap also in ballistic black came down the rear ramp of the closest Oshkosh M-ATV and looked silently as one of the younger men frisked Nick and took a 9mm Glock from his belt and a .32-caliber pistol from an ankle holster. Another ninja, who’d picked up the Beretta, now frisked Val and relieved him of all the pistol magazines and loose rounds. Two other men in black were easily lifting Leonard—still sleeping—out of the back of the gelding. A third man held the IV bottle.

The two ninjas who’d frisked Val and Nick nodded to the big man as other men with automatic weapons began herding the father and son into the back of the big M-ATV.

“Bottom-san,” said the man in black, “it is time.”

1.18 Denver—Saturday, Sept. 25

Nick had done everything possible to avoid this final meeting with Hiroshi Nakamura, but he’d always known it would have to happen.

In his mental rehearsals of this final encounter, the meeting was always set in Mr. Nakamura’s office in his mountaintop compound up in Evergreen where Nick had first met the billionaire. However, when Nick and Val were led out of the back of the Oshkosh M-ATV—both blinking in the low but bright early-evening light—Nick saw that they were in LoDo, on Wazee Street, in front of Keigo Nakamura’s bachelor-pad building. The murder scene.

Now this street in Lower Downtown reminded Nick of scenes from the countless urban-war videos on the TV each night showing American troops in some city in Pakistan or in Brazil or in China, with several big M-ATVs parked front to rear across the street at both ends of the city block being used as roadblocks, two helicopters landed in the middle of the street, and soldiers on the street and rooftops of evacuated buildings.

But this was an American city and these soldiers weren’t tired American troops in their bulky body armor and scuffed kneepads, but scores of Nakamura’s—or perhaps Sato’s (did it make any difference? wondered Nick)—ninjas in jump boots and ballistic black and carrying automatic weapons, all wearing identical tactical sunglasses and tiny bead earphones and microphones beneath their black ball caps.

Nick and Val had both been flex-cuffed, but with their wrists tied in front of their bodies. This gave Nick the slightest flicker of hope. Every cop and prisoner-taking grunt in the world knew you flex-cuffed dangerous prisoners—and anyone worthy of being taken prisoner should be considered dangerous—behind their backs. Arms, wrists, and fists tied in front could be, far too easily, used as weapons.

Either they weren’t in serious captivity (which Nick didn’t believe for an instant) or Sato’s men did not consider Nick and his son to be serious threats. Or, more likely, Sato’s people considered Nick and the boy dangerous but were certain that their numbers and firepower eliminated any real threat in the few minutes their prisoners would be allowed to live.

Given the number of ninjas illegally deployed along Wazee Street here in Lower Downtown Denver and the number that came with them as they entered Keigo’s building, Nick tended to agree with this last assessment.

“Careful there!” shouted Nick as three ninjas carried the still-unconscious Dr. George Leonard Fox down the ramp of the M-ATV, two using their arms as a sort of upright litter, the third man carrying the attached IV bottle.

The ninjas ignored him as the stream of men entered the building and made straight for the stairway. Nick remembered that Keigo’s old converted warehouse had no elevator. More work for the two men carrying Leonard, although Nick’s father-in-law looked as disturbingly thin and light as a professorially dressed scarecrow.

Sato led the way up to the third floor and, once there, did not turn right into the private quarters and bedroom where the murder took place, but left from the foyer to the fancy library where Nick had first seen the video recording of Dara standing down the darkened street. Today, for the first time in the two weeks since he’d