But as I was fumbling with the gun, a loud voice yelled “FBI! Don’t move!” and in the next instant the windows of the car seemed to vaporize, and several dozen men in black paramilitary gear burst into the car. They surrounded the Mafia guys and covered them with machine guns. There was dead silence for a moment as I lay there aiming up at Tom Sizemore. But Tom wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was glancing around, sizing up the new situation—a whole world of trouble. Yet he still had that grin on his face. “Freeze!” the FBI loudspeaker ordered. “Drop your guns!” But Tom wasn’t listening. He smiled even bigger and spun around on the SWAT team; but before he could get off a shot, he was blown back down the car by a spray of bullets. “Fuck!” one of his guys yelled, and the rest of them reached for their guns. “Freeze!” the bullhorn blared again, but in the next instant a hail of machine gun fire ripped into the Mafioso and they fell where they stood, riddled with bullet holes.
Like they say, don’t mess with the FBI.
The man in the suit helped me up—and I realized he was the guy who runs the control room in Mission Impossible, though I can never remember his name. Anyway, I got off the train with the SWAT team, and it turned out we were at the edge of a desert, a totally barren sea of sand and scrub brush leading off to a sheer cliff in the distance. A network of deep ravines flanked the tracks on both sides, with these deep blue rivers flowing at the bottom. Weird-looking place. And how was I supposed to get home now? The SWAT team was climbing into their helicopter and getting ready to head off, and the Mission Impossible guy had disappeared somewhere. Shit. The rest of the passengers were filing from the train and wandering off in every direction—and not even one of them was Japanese. I was beginning to feel totally desperate. I tried to get help, but no one seemed to understand me. A dark-skinned woman with lots of luggage was standing nearby, so I asked in my best English where I could find the station, but she just started babbling in a language I couldn’t even identify. Shit! Where was I? What was this? It almost looked like America. Had I somehow wound up in Mexico or someplace? If so, then I was really pretty screwed. More and more screwed every minute. The FBI? But why hadn’t they escorted me home? Pretty half-assed rescue, if you ask me. And now what? I didn’t even have any money. Or know anybody around here, wherever “here” was. Like I said, totally screwed. So finally, having nothing better to do, I fell in behind some other passengers as they wandered away from the train. After plodding along for a while, I came up to a stark-naked boy and girl standing in the middle of the dusty dirt path. Well maybe kids in this part of the world go around butt-naked all the time. But somehow I knew I shouldn’t stop too long, that if I did, somebody might come along and strip me too. Without any luggage, I was making better time than the other passengers in the line, so I scrambled off through the cactus or baobab or whatever the hell it was. Then in the distance I saw a man in a suit with white hair. Steve Martin? Gray suit, jacket tucked under his arm. And next to Steve, a fat man in a puffy blue down jacket. Hell no! John Candy too? What luck! This was just like the moment in Planes, Trains & Automobiles when they were headed back to Steve Martin’s house, so if I just followed them, I would at least end up somewhere in the States, which would be better than this hellhole. I started running, but for some reason I couldn’t catch up with them, even though they were walking and I was running. Really fast. I started sweating like a pig, and since I never really get any exercise, I pooped out pretty quick. I was telling my legs to run, but they just didn’t seem to be listening, and by now Steve Martin and John Candy were off in the distance on top of a cliff on the other side of a river with no way across. Pretty much just like the climax of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom—except no rope bridge. You’re kidding me! But as
