The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Boxed Set, page 90
part #1 of Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Series
I staggered down the hall, stopping at the bathroom as Ichi came out with Chan, who wore a baggy, black T-shirt. The Gridhound smelled a lot better—like the flowery-scented soap I recalled from before. Ichi was still combing out the long, black hair, but Chan otherwise seemed all cleaned up, including breath that could have come fresh from a toothpaste tube.
“It’s a good look on you,” I said.
Chan smiled—fragile, tired. “Ichi said you need me to run the Gridhound attack.”
“Yeah. We’re going to need the best. You can do it from here, right? You said the signal was strong out there. We can take Pitsamai with us, let her be your eyes and ears.”
Chan stumbled forward, pressed fingers against my chest. “I have my own eyes and ears.”
Ichi glared at me, but there was acceptance in her eyes.
I took Chan’s hands into mine. “We talked about this, right? Once you’re cleaned up, if this is what you want, then—”
“I am clean. Smell me.” Chan sniffed at a scarred wrist. “Like…magnolias. You like magnolias?”
“They smell nice. What I like even more is knowing you’re off the drugs.” I cupped Chan’s chin in my hand. “Clean. No more using. Remember?”
Chan’s tongue ran over lips that seemed so pale without black lipstick. “I—I try. I try hard. I don’t want it.”
The pain. Jacinto, Chan’s uncle…what had been his name? Pablo? Drugs couldn’t drive that out, only numb it. Therapy could help, but no one would take Chan on without getting clean first. “Don’t beat yourself up. We’re taking this a step at a time. You get us through this operation, that’s step one.”
Chan kissed me. “I want the final step. Synchronicity isn’t enough. I want you . For real. ”
Ichi looked hurt. Apparently, it was different when it was her privacy being invaded.
I helped her get Chan onto one of the mattresses we’d placed in the open living space. The smell of sour beer had diminished some with the windows open, and the sun setting was bringing the temperature down. I’d have an air conditioner delivered when the payment came in. Chan rolled around for a few seconds, then seemed to find a comfortable position and went still. I caught the steady rise and fall of the Gridhound’s chest beneath the T-shirt.
Pitsamai looked up from casually cleaning a pistol at the other end of the room, where her mattress rested against the wall near the front door. She had parts of the pistol spread on the mattress and on her long, silk nightshirt. She slowly reassembled the weapon, barely making any noise. “She seems troubled.”
Chan didn’t react.
I wandered over to Pitsamai’s mattress. Her feminine curves, while attractive, had already proven not really up to the sort of work I needed her for. Unfortunately, we were running out of options. I squatted at her feet, caught a minty scent coming off her. “Chan’s going to be running the Gridhound operations from here when we hit this SunCorps base. I’ll need someone I can trust in the field with me.”
She slapped the magazine back into the gun with practiced precision. “I can go.”
Ichi’s eyes bored into the back of my head. I didn’t have to look back to know it. “We’re not going to ask you to run or carry anything heavy or shoot people, Pitsamai, but if it comes to that, you’re going to have to do better than you did today.”
Pitsamai glanced over my shoulder, then back at me. There was a hungry, competitive look in her eyes, and I had the sense that under different circumstances, she would be giving me the same sort of come-on she’d given me in Colombia. “I was shaken by the crash. I’ll do better.”
“I knew I could count on you.” I held my hand out for her gun, and when she gave it to me, I ejected the magazine, checked that the system was cleared, then disassembled the weapon in a handful of rapid, sure moves that produced loud pops and clicks. I set the pieces back on the mattress. “Start by knowing your real weapons.”
She smiled at the gun and put it back together again, this time a little quicker, eyes drifting from me to the room behind me, then back to the gun. “How did you get Du-ri’s data device?” It was casual, off-handed. And soft enough that only I could hear it.
“He was showing me images of the compound before the missiles hit.”
“Did he tell you that he wasn’t allowed to let you complete the mission?”
“I figured that out on my own.”
“But he asked you for advice? Maybe asked you how you would handle the mission?” Her eyes were hypnotic, impossible to look away from.
“We shared tactical observations.”
She handed me the assembled gun and magazine. “He’s a very jealous man.”
“You sound like you think he’s still alive.”
“Did you see him die?” A devilish smile.
“No. But there’s nothing between you and me, so I have nothing to worry about, do I?” I checked the weapon, then set it on her mattress again. “What can you tell me about the foam ball?”
Her smile disappeared. She holstered the pistol. “It sounds like you already know what it is.”
“But was it your escape plan?”
A flash of uncertainty. “Yes. You’ve figured out the purpose. Why should I lie? The team would go in, take out the anti-aircraft battery, get the scientists over to the ball, and call the pickup in. What does that change?”
“Nothing. Thank you.”
I kept my pace slow as I walked to Ichi, trying to stare down the jealous fury in her eyes. She took my hand and pulled me to the back bedroom, then closed the door behind me and pushed me onto the bed. The last sunlight slipped past stained curtains that had been tied back from the open windows to allow the room to air out, taking away the quaint mixture of frat house and whorehouse smells.
She straddled me and kissed me. “You are mine, Stefan-san.”
“I know. I wasn’t flirting. I need to know that we can trust her.”
“You said earlier not to trust anyone.”
“I trust you.”
The anger in her eyes eased up. She smiled. “Good. I am the only one you should trust.”
We kissed, and my hands ran over her soft flesh, no longer worried that I was betraying my best friend’s trust. A friend who had cheated on his wife, a wife I had longed for but who had only ever cared about money and status and pushing her own kid through a replication of a brutal, childhood hell.
Like Ichi said, she was the only one I could trust now.
Chapter 27
I woke to an empty bed, left with only Ichi’s scent and tangled sheets. She would be out jogging, preparing. Feeling lonely and worried…I was being ridiculous. Pathetic. She was nineteen. Old enough to have a relationship with, old enough to take care of herself.
I dressed and stood in the kitchen, watching out the back window, listening to the cars speeding past far too closely.
And waiting.
She was back at first light, slick with sweat, breathing hard, smiling, satisfied. I crushed her against me and kissed her, then scolded myself again.
But she laughed. A sweet sound. A heartbreaking sound.
While she showered, I hired a car and had it drive me across the border to Yuma. We needed clothes and some other mundane items, and I wanted to talk to Lyndsey from inside the border. Just in case.
The superstore parking lot was packed at 7 a.m., full of desperate folks looking for deals. Unsurprising, really. There was no other option, a situation these people had created by favoring saving a few pennies here and there over keeping local stores open. Now the superstore mistreated and underpaid its employees, creating an abused dependency cycle that couldn’t be escaped.
I zigzagged through the menagerie of sunbaked vehicles, sniffling at the smell of heated asphalt while scanning for any potential tails navigating the cratered maze. English and Spanish mixed into a comfortable mélange as the consumer herd headed to the entry.
With sweat-stained jeans, a day of stubble, and tanned skin, I was just another consumer—unimportant, irrelevant.
The cool air was almost too much, so I treated myself to a big coffee with real sugar and prowled the aisles, searching for outfits like the folks around me wore. Before long, I had a cart full of cheap jeans, dull-colored T-shirts, and generic underwear. Food essentials went in on top of those, along with some more cleaning supplies. The chubby old geezer running the register smiled indulgently as he rang me up. His brows arched in surprise when my credit covered the bill.
I took my bags with a grin. “Workers comp.” That seemed to satisfy him.
I pulled on my new Mahindra cap, gave the car the next set of coordinates, and called Lyndsey.
Unlike Hong-sik, she answered immediately. “Look who’s all dressed for Sunday worship.”
“You’re looking good yourself. New outfit?”
She brushed her burgundy jacket and adjusted the black blouse beneath it. “One I could fit in again after cutting back my hours. Amazing where your life goes when you give all your time to the job.”
“Yeah. Well, you look nice. I thought you’d be tooling around in torn-up jeans and sweatshirts by now.”
“Still have a couple weeks to go, but I’ve got my eyes on possible wardrobe options. New offer might delay that, though.”
“Oh?”
“Seems the administration has its eye on shutting down some senior folks who couldn’t be cut. Troublemakers. The contract for that comes with some nice perks.”
“Like taking down some privileged folks who exploited their power? ”
A sour look. “That’s a pretty tired narrative. It shouldn’t be a crime to be hardworking and ambitious.”
“Sorry. I was just trying to sound informed.”
“More like a herd animal. These are legal professionals being targeted for doing their jobs.” She relaxed. “That’s not why you called, though, is it? Checking up on whether I was still planning to come down to Costa Rica?”
“Nope. I thought you might be able to explain how kidnapping works to me.”
“Kidnapping?” A cocked eyebrow. “I hope you know it starts with not killing everyone in sight?”
“Guess I wasn’t cut out for it.”
“You’re just asking for a friend?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“You’re a popular man.”
“Who knew?”
She nodded. “All right. To start with, it’s not a federal offense. We don’t get involved unless the crime crosses state lines or we’re asked to help.”
“Crossing international borders count?”
“That’s sort of implied, isn’t it?”
“My school struggled with things like what crops to rotate out, which chicks to breed for eggs, and how to select a bull. Deep stuff.”
“Uh-huh. So what’s your friend thinking of doing?”
“Friend of a friend. Let’s say it’s transporting human cargo from one point to another. Against the cargo’s will.”
“Sounds amazingly like something I read about happening in South Dakota recently.”
“Don’t you just love coincidence?”
“So where would this human cargo be going?”
“Can’t really say. I can guess where it might be passing through, though. And maybe I could tell you how it’s being moved.”
“You a psychic now? ”
“Feels like. You want this tip, Officer, or do I need to forget about being a good citizen?”
“Okay. What’s your friend’s friend’s mode of transport?”
“Watch for mail. Anonymous.”
“I see. And the where of it?”
The car came to a stop outside a sagging chain-link fence. A sign hung from a rusty spiral of metal: Warning: Stay out. Property of the United States Marine Corps.
Desert stretched beyond the fence, occasionally broken up by clumps of dry, brown grass. An RV sat on a runway in the distance, next to a charcoal gray military-looking jet. The runway was black and smooth, completely replaced recently. Someone was assembling something several feet from the RV. Metal poles, maybe. I couldn’t figure out what.
“You ever been to sunny Yuma, Lyndsey? I’ll send you a picture. Beautiful scenery.”
“I’ve got some vacation time coming up.”
“Don’t wait too long.” I transferred the image—timestamped, with GPS data—from my eyes to my data device and forwarded that on. “Gotta go. My friend’s friend can’t make bad decisions if someone else beats him to it, and I’ve got to pick up some toys for the kids before it gets too late.”
“Toys?”
“RC cars, drones…they like the craziest things.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re an odd one?”
“Only people who know me.”
I disconnected and sent the car on to a shop that dealt with dune buggies and motocross. It took a few hours and way too much money to get the vehicle I had in mind actually cobbled together, but when it was done, I had exactly what I’d been thinking of: matte black, low, negligible heat footprint, and an electric motor that could get us to the dunes I’d tagged earlier.
Getting the buggy delivered was even more painful.
I called Abhishek as we headed back across the border in a car stuffed full of plastic bags and boxes. He looked tired and gray, worse than normal. Shipping boxes were piled up behind him, and it actually looked like sunlight was leaking through the glass front of the shop. People moved around in the background—more than I had ever seen in his shop before.
It took a few seconds of him squinting to recognize me. “Stefan?”
“It is. What’s going on?”
“You look like a cowboy.”
“Finding my roots in the Wild West. I needed to check on something Chan said.”
“Sure, sure.” Rapid blinking. He was suddenly annoyed.
“What kind of modules were you sending for those headbands?”
“Modules?”
“The circuit upgrades you sent. Those are modules, right?”
“No, no. Not meant for use. I told her those are theoretical upgrades…” His mouth made an ‘O.’ “Chan did not…”
“Tell me you were sending hardware? No. But Chan did make a point of saying all the changes being done on the headbands was software. Every change to the system, even the ability to record detailed impressions. Chan’s sharp, sure, but that seems just a bit outside realistic, doesn’t it? Like engineering, systems design. I’m sure Chan could figure that stuff out with a clean system and some time, but with the drugs and all that’s going on? Not likely.”
Abhishek tugged a cigarette pack out, searched it, then crumpled it up. He patted his pockets. “The people I know at T-Corp, they are desperate. They will do anything to catch up with LoDu, the people you stole Synchronicity for.”
“Whoa. I didn’t steal anything for them. They told me I was rescuing Ichi, but I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who sent her in to begin with. These T-Corps people gave you these headbands, these prototypes?”
He stuck a cigarette in the stained groove of his lips and nodded. “They worked?”
“Sort of. I wouldn’t be alive without them. You mind telling me why you gave them to me?”
“You asked, remember? ”
“Of course I did. You set them up as a possible solution to this big problem we were facing with a skills deficit. What’s in this for T-Corp? A guinea pig? Blackmail?”
He blew smoke and licked his lips. Muscles twitched across his face, like he was hosting a gladiatorial match with his emotions for me to see. Finally, he said, “They transmit. Remember?”
They transmit . “Like Chatterbox?”
“Much more, but the same principle.”
So T-Corp knew where our plane had gone down. They knew people had flown out to kill us. That means they knew where Marshall was. “How much did they pay you?”
His lips twisted, and he stamped out the cigarette. “Not enough.”
“Enough to retire, though. You’re closing up shop?”
He waved at whatever was going on behind him. “Junk. A fire sale. I want a place in Florida. I’m sick of the snow.” He hunched. “It’s become too messy, Stefan. Selling out friends…”
“I know. You take care of yourself.” I killed the connection.
The schedule kept getting moved forward. An old contact—a friend—selling me out. Why? Money.
The temperature had changed from miserable to unbearable by the time I got back to the house. The windows were closed, but the beer smell hit me when I opened the front door. Pitsamai and Chan were still asleep in the living area. The air conditioner sat about midway between them, rattling to cool the place. I tiptoed back out and brought the vehicle to the back door, where I set the haul down. Ichi hurried out of our room and started putting food and cleaning supplies on the countertop.
Katy wandered in with the sort of lethargic grace of someone unused to injury. She leaned against the table, sour-faced, jeans hanging low enough to reveal one of the thongs hanging off her hips, bandages apparent beneath her tank top. “You two need some help? ’Cause I can’t do shit, but I can wake Danny’s ass up.”
I almost missed her sexual innuendos. “I think we’re good.”
“Should wake him up anyway.” She stewed as she stared out the kitchen window .
I set the last of the perishables in the wheezing refrigerator. “You two fighting?”
“Nuh-uh. Just…” She rubbed the bandage over her ribs. “Hurts like a mother.”
“Might’ve been better to let someone else drive yesterday.”
“Might’ve.” She winced. “You on for tonight?”
“I’ll know in a little bit.” I held up a six-pack of beer. “For you two lovebirds. To pass the time.”
She reached for a bottle, hissed. “What’s the holdup?”
I uncapped one and offered it to her, then glanced into the living area to be sure Pitsamai wasn’t awake. “I need to drive the escape route a couple times, be sure we won’t have any surprises.”
“Surprises? You mean like little old people running out in the street? ’Cause that’s all there is here: cheap-ass retirees come looking for cut-rate medical care. Makes you wish they’d bring back the crystals in the hands and the death panels. You had a good life, people, but it’s time to move on!”
