The Stringers, page 19
The other Coupe drove up alongside us and then fell back as the highway degraded into a single lane due to the potholes and craters. I looked back and a long row of Tomcats pursued us, but their heavy weight caused them to drag along like slugs while they diminished in the background. Additional Bellevue police cars joined by King County Sheriff’s vehicles wailed like banshees with their brilliant flashing lights, but when they reached I-90 they immediately slowed down and proceeded across the landscape with extreme caution after the first two drivers trapped themselves in a hole.
On the bridge, Marko looked up at the sky and scanned it with narrowed eyes and then at Mercer Island as we drove through it. He then stood up on the seat and leaned out the window. He plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it away before he settled back into the car and spoke privately to Danny.
Meanwhile, I sat in awe of the scene in front of us on the road. Around us were abandoned trucks and vans stripped of their tires and car frames lined with rust and litter and filth that created a mechanical graveyard for vehicles that had died ages ago and been left to corrode into their graves. The Coupe’s headlights swept over a semi-truck and in a fleeting moment we saw a man with a long beard and tattered clothes standing near the door with a skinny dog by his side. I looked at Marko for an answer but all he did was shrug it off and say it was what it was and nothing else.
At the other end of the island we drove down and there before us lay the old Lacey Murrow Memorial Bridge sitting in the water like a dead carcass.
“One last hurdle,” Danny said.
“Wait,” I said. “We’re taking the tunnel, right?”
“Not in this lifetime, son. Not if ya want to live through tonight.”
“But…but the bridge isn’t safe!”
“Ha! Get a load of this kid, Marko! He thinks he knows our business. And to think we went to all that trouble to save his ass!”
Marko grinned at me as he fumbled through his coat for another cigarette. He stuck in his mouth and nodded at me as he looked at Danny and flicked open a silver-plated Zippo and lit the cigarette.
“Ah, come on. He ain’t too bad. Just a bit ruffled up.”
“You gettin’ soft or what, Marko?”
“Not soft enough to not wanna punch ya lights out if ya keep talking like that.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” Marko said to me. “The bridge ain’t half as bad as they say. It still floats. Not by much. But we don’t ask for more than that.”
The Coupe bobbed up and down as the suspension system expanded and contracted and the wheels pressed against the rough asphalt and a constant vibration crept up through the floor. My teeth chattered as my body shook across the seat. It fell quiet and the two men looked ahead solemnly as though expecting something to appear in front of them. At the halfway point on the bridge Danny turned the headlights off, as did the other Coupe, leaving us in a thick blackness while the engines rattled and hummed.
“Where are they?” Marko asked.
“Not sure,” Danny said. “They’re always hiding.”
We drove around another missing section of the road that led to a sharp plunge into Lake Washington’s dark, murky waters, and then made a slow turn to dodge a tanker lying there like a whale’s carcass, the underbelly corded by rust and rain and time.
“How come nobody has ever cleaned this up?” I asked.
“Like who?” Marko asked.
“I don’t know…whoever owns it.”
“It’s run by the state, and the state decided to let it go after they built the tunnel. So the bridge’s been sitting here for years. They’re not getting anymore more votes by clearin’ this out.”
“Hmmm…that would make a good story.”
Marko bellowed a laugh. “It did make a good story!”
“What? What story?”
He treated me to a cryptic smile, similar to the one my father used on me. The same friendliness, but I could read my father to an extent. Marko’s demeanor was indiscernible behind the thick whiskers that covered his features like a bandanna.
As we approached the tunnel, it was half-blocked by sections of the rock façade that had fallen. Then, three objects rose above the darkened horizon, glinting like stars as they moved slowly toward the bridge.
“They’ve got us zeroed,” Danny said. He grabbed the radio and spoke in a code I couldn’t understand.
“What are you going to do?” I asked quietly.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Marko said.
“I’m worrying.”
“Well, don’t.”
Someone replied to Danny on the radio in a distraught tone and he jerked his head back over the seat. I looked with him and spotted a fleet of drones flying silently over Mercer Island like a flock of seagulls.
“Hit the pedal, Danny boy!” Marko said.
Danny kicked his foot down and the engine roared and we passed underneath through the hanging grass and foliage covering it like the entrance to a forbidden cave. There were no lights inside so Danny turned the headlights back on and the Coupe behind us copied.
“Base, have we got the three ravens ID’d yet?” he asked.
“Affirmative,” the voice on the radio replied. “Ravens have been identified and their owners contacted for retrieval.”
“Just as the doctor ordered,” Danny laughed.
Marko looked at me and observed my chest rising and falling. He nudged me with his elbow.
“Wouldn’t breathe too much. No fans work here. If we get caught down here, we’ve only got a few minutes of air before we run out?”
Overreacting, I held my breath until we drove out of the tunnel and gazed out as the city of Seattle gradually revealed itself to us. I looked up at the abandoned Pacific Medical Center standing atop Beacon Hill, where it stood like a medieval castle, its orange exterior blackened by dirt and decay and crumbled due to the 7.7 magnitude earthquake decades ago that had left the upper walls damaged beyond repair.
The earthquake had been the worst in Seattle’s history, and its effects could still be seen on the houses on the hillside leaning on one side or collapsed in. On the right, the historic downtown buildings were bare and dismal looking, dead redwoods partially lit by the limited human activity that took place down on the streets at Madison and Stewart. We passed dilapidated buildings and a makeshift junkyard off the side of the road, where a line of pickup trucks sat in various stages of disrepair.
I looked up and saw the three drones flying over us in a triangular formation but their presence didn’t appear to frighten or concern Danny or Marko. Their disregard didn’t put me at ease.
“Aren’t you going to do something about them?” I asked.
“Don’t bark orders to me, kid.” Danny asked. “Mind your business.”
“You do know what they can do, right?”
“Kid, I’ve been dealin’ with this shit for ten damn years. Ravens have been around for a long time. And every year they come out with a new model and new gadgets and new weapons and brag about how awesome they are and how they’re the big shit. But we always find a way to get around the bastards.”
“What?”
Danny either didn’t have an answer or didn’t think it was important enough to answer. I refused to take my eyes off the drones as we drove left off I-90 and the bridge dipped down and brought us to an area with no large buildings. Instead, it was dotted with decaying warehouses and corroded railroad tracks with grass and plants sprouting between individual railroad cars crisscrossed with downed electrical poles. Shipping containers stacked ten high stood in the gravel and broken machinery lay near barbed wire fences dangling sideways.
We drove off the bridge and as I looked around I noticed a particular warehouse three stories high with a sign that had broken off and the bright red letters chipped and faded but still readable even in the night.
SoDo.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You always ask this many questions?” Danny asked.
“Sure. It’s part of my job, or I was hoping for it to be.”
“What’s that?”
“A journalist.”
Danny almost stopped the car as he looked over his shoulder at me and studied me for a while and then glanced at Marko, who raised one eyebrow before he blew out a cloud of smoke that left the air hazy and stifling. Danny then laughed so hard he started coughing, and Marko suppressed a smirk.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“You’re a journalist?”
“An apprentice.”
“So you write stories for those news sites?”
“…I suppose you could say that.”
Danny laughed again and gave Marko a light jab to the arm. “That’s irony for you!”
“How so?” I asked.
He was about to reply but Marko tapped him on the arm and whispered in his ear and Danny looked away from me.
“Sorry, kid. Not my department. Someone else’s job.”
I kept looking back at the trio of drones as they hovered over us from afar, visible no matter where we went. I was certain that police would come screaming around the corner and surround us, or a helicopter full of sharpshooters would take out the engine with their high-powered rifles. There was no way we could escape.
We came to a street with a row of three-story buildings tightly packed together, and when we turned the corner we arrived at a one-story structure with a vertical sign that read Goss Parking Garage in unlit multi-colored light bulbs. Danny slowed down as we approached it. The gate creaked and groaned as it rose and folded up, revealing a ramp that led underground.
A man appeared at the entrance with one hand in his coat pocket. He approached us in the car and looked at Danny with an industrial flashlight. He then peered at Marko, who grinned back, and then at me suspiciously.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“A friend,” Danny said. “Don’t worry ’bout it.”
“That’s my job to worry. Who is he? I don’t like the looks of him.”
“We just nabbed him out from the ISA. Boss told us to. He’s the package.”
The man nodded and stepped back, waving us through the entrance. We descended through the ramp and went down several floors until we came to the bottom floor. There, cars were parked in the spots. Though many of them were old models they sparkled with glossy sheens and their exteriors had obvious signs of attentive car. Though the concrete was a drab gray color, the area was swept clear of debris, filth, and garbage, and the walls were wiped.
We pulled out in front of the parked cars, where a congregation of men had gathered in a semi-circle in the center of the floor. Danny stopped the car and Marko opened the door for me. I stepped out, unsure of what I was supposed to do. Marko tapped me on the shoulder and gestured toward the men. Uncertain of what was happening, I walked toward them but gradually stopped when I got a better look at them.
There were about a dozen of them, all armed with pistols or the long-barreled submachine gun they had employed rather effectively during our escape from the ISA. They held the guns at their sides, the submachine guns placed against their hips as they smoked on cigarettes and stared at me. They were sharply dressed in an assortment of formal wear of single-breasted suits, black vests and striped waistcoats and flat caps and fedoras.
Most striking were their sneers, but as I studied them I realized it had nothing to do with me. It was a natural expression, as even Marko sneered before he smiled at me when I looked over at him.
One of the men made a gurgling sound and then spat into a small can he took out from his coat pocket.
“Is this the package we went through all the trouble for?” he asked.
“You notice anything else around here?” Danny replied.
They all looked at me like farmers would the first-prize pig at a county fair that they didn’t think deserved the award.
“So what now?” someone asked.
“We wait for the boss,” Marko answered. “You know the drill.”
“Great. How long’s that going take?”
“As long as the boss takes.”
We stood silently for several minutes. Then a heavy metal door at the end of the garage opened and a man walked through it, flanked by men with long overcoats covering their legs down to their feet and their hands stuffed in their pockets. When they approached us, everyone around me stiffened their posture and stepped back to create a large empty space for him and his apparent guards to fill.
The man stopped and took a small cigar out of his mouth, looking me over with curved lips and oak-brown eyes. He was well over six feet tall, thanks to unusually long legs and torso, though he had a large long neck and long arms as well. He wore a double-breasted brown-and-black striped suit with a platinum tie and gold cufflinks glistening near his wrists, his fingers wrapped in gold rings. He had a narrow face and a wide forehead with a widow’s peak, and his hair was long and slicked back. His features sparkled from a strong aftershave that was evident in the air.
The man puffed on his cigar and tapped off the ash that had accumulated at the tip in a container rather than let it fall to the ground. He blew out a cloud of smoke that formed a specter-like shape in front of me before it vanished.
“Roy Farrington,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“You are Roy Farrington, aren’t you?”
No reply. After my last interrogation, I had learned to keep my mouth shut. I was also barely able to stand. On top of a sleepless night, I had yet to recover from the crash. Every joint ached, and the repeated gunfire next to my ears made it difficult to hear anything,
He chuckled quietly and blew out another cloud of cigar smoke, smiling.
“You know when to talk and when not to talk. Good. I like that.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
He walked over to me and pointed at himself with his thumb. “The name’s McCullen. Geoffrey McCullen. Ever heard of me?”
“Afraid not.”
The man laughed, but McCullen cut them off with a glare.
“Nobody said anything about me? Not once?”
“Nope.”
“The ISA?”
“Not a word. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“May I ask what I’m doing here and what you want?” I asked.
McCullen finished his cigar with a final puff and then put the remaining stub away in a plastic bag from his coat. He paced across a limited invisible track on the floor.
“I read that column you wrote about the ISA waiting rooms. You got guts, kid.”
“You read that?”
“Not myself. I’ve got better things to do and bigger fish to fry than you. But someone got a hold of it before they took it down, and they got a copy of it off to me. I was impressed.”
“You were?”
“Not with the writing, mind you. You’ve got work ahead of you, kid. What got me interested in you was your guts. You figured out how to sneak around the ISA officer and get the story published. You also took the risk. I don’t know much about you, but I’ll bet you knew what was going to happen, especially after what they did to your old man.”
“Old man?”
“Yeah, your father, Carl.”
“Not much good it did him, did it?”
“No, but maybe that can change.”
“How so?”
McCullen approached me. He took one hand out of his pocket and pointed at me. “Here’s the gist, kid. You’ve got guts, but I don’t usually help out a guy who doesn’t have the brains to go with the guts. It’s not just about breaking the law or knowing a good story when you see it and not giving up when they tell you to get lost. It’s about not getting caught. You don’t know that yet. Don’t think you’re the first one to get an idea like yours. You think you can change the world. So does every other kid. There’s nothing special about you there. But you’ve got something else besides guts. You stood up under torture. That’s where it gets most of the wise guys like you. When it came down to it, you didn’t sell your old man and your soul for your freedom. That kind of guy is dependable.”
“He is my father. Did you expect me to do anything else?”
“You wouldn’t have been the first to sell out a family member to avoid their detention camps. Hell, most people have no loyalty left in them. They’re all out for themselves. Or, by your age, they’ve been taught that the government is to be obeyed above all other authorities. Your father must be a hell of a guy.”
I suddenly remembered the drones that had followed us into SoDo. We had never lost sight of them until we entered the parking garage, yet no one else appeared apprehensive about a possible ISA raid.
“Is it safe to be here?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried about the police?”
“Shouldn’t you let us worry about that?” McCullen replied.
“Well, we had some drones following us, and―”
“Oh, yeah, the ravens. What about them?”
“They will know we’re here, won’t they?”
McCullen shrugged, clearly pleased with himself. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they have no clue where we are. Or maybe those drones didn’t work quite as well as they should have. Maintenance trouble. Happens all the time with those things. They’ve got too many upgrades and too many changes and not enough men with brains working on them.”
I didn’t understand what he was implying, so I waited until he rolled his eyes impatiently.
“You don’t need to know why we don’t got to worry about those drones. What I can tell you is something you’ll figure out pretty quick after a few months working for me. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated or how advanced your equipment is, or how well you safeguard something. Nothing is totally secure. And a safe is only as secure as the guy who holds the key or the combination. In our case, it’s the fellow who controls the drones that were flying over you. We can’t control them, sure. We don’t have to. All we got to do is control the man behind the stick. Anyways, that isn’t the point. The point is you’ve piqued my interest, kid. Piqued. I like that word. It’s a good word to describe how I feel. Yes, you piqued my interest so much I liberated you from the ISA. Also, because I think you might be useful for me.”
