Chemical Burn (35 page)

Fish in a Barrel

I was waiting in the kitchen again when Marsha walked out of the bedroom. I’d already poured a cup of coffee for her, black the way she liked it, and in a travel cup.

“How’s Abby doing these days?” I handed her the coffee.

“So-so, I guess. She told me she almost lost her other job last week because she had been late twice. Her boss sounds like a real asshole, but she says she’s kind of stuck there. She never has time to go look for work, and he won’t budge on her schedule. Her Bronco is on its last legs, too. Kenny’s been late a few times, but I’m not sweating it.”

“I figure that thing is about ready for the scrap heap if it doesn’t get some love and attention,” I said.

“She says they’ll just have to start taking the bus when it dies, but I know that will mean she gets even less sleep than she does now. Frankly, I don’t know how she does it. She works harder than I ever did.”

“Is Kenny scheduled for Saturday morning?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Because he’s going to be late,” I predicted.

Marsha raised her eyebrow and gave me a
What-have-you-got-planned
look.

“Someone is going to steal her Bronco early Saturday morning … around two a.m.” Marsha got a very confused look on her face. “Do they live in an apartment or house?” I asked.

Looking concerned, she finally answered me. “It’s a condo. It’s the only thing that her mother left her before she died, and with a hefty mortgage, apparently.”

“Does it have a garage?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely. I’ve dropped Kenny off a few times. Look, whatever you’re planning, those kids have it hard enough already. They don’t need any more challenges.”

“I know. That’s part of what this is all about. I’m not stealing the truck. I’m actually buying it. There’s going to be a surprise for Abby waiting for her in the garage. It’ll be a stack larger than the one you found on your desk.”

Marsha smiled and got a little teary eyed. She came around the kitchen counter, grabbed me and hugged me hard, holding it for a long time. She released me finally and looked at me with damp cheeks. “You’re a rare breed, Justin Case. I wish there were more men like you. And I wish you were a
woman
. I’d steal you away from Rachel in a heartbeat.”

I gasped, feigning shock and surprise. “Oh my god? You’re a lesbian? But what about that night we had in Vegas all those years ago?” I sounded hurt.

“You know damn well that I bat for both teams … and that’s not what I’m talking about. Stop changing the subject, or I’ll kick you in the balls.” She was suddenly both serious and sentimental. “You’re like Santa Claus, Justin … just tougher and better looking … and
this
world would be a worse place without you in it.” She kissed me and headed for the front door. “Don’t ever change, Mister
Claus
. Don’t you dare.”

I smiled, added another tablespoon of sugar to my coffee, a little more cream, and then went to the patio. I sat down in a lounge chair and enjoyed the sunrise, a gentle smile stuck on my face brought about by the absence of secrets.

O O O

“Hi there,” Rachel said as she bent over and kissed me. Xen was still at the laptop in the living room while I sat on the porch with a large piece of paper and a hand-drawn and fairly detailed map of an industrial plant.

“VeniCorp?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, squeezing her. “Laying everything out. It’s like a chessboard. It lets me work through all the permutations.”

“You’re the man with the plan, aren’t you?”

“Always.”

“Did I hear you talking with Marsha this morning?”

“Yes. I had to let her know that Abby would be having vehicle problems Saturday morning, and that Kenny would be late.” Rachel gave me a questioning look, so I told her all the details about what I intended to do. Her reaction was identical to Marsha’s, except for the embarrassing correlation to old Saint Nick.

When she released me, she looked at me with a serious face. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you … for a long time now. I never did before, because I figured it wasn’t my business and my paychecks always cleared.” I gave her a sly look as she sat down next to me, having a pretty good idea of what she wanted to ask. “Justin, where the hell do you get all your money?”

“I’ll answer this one because it’s you, and I won’t be holding anything back. But, like everything else, you have to keep this one under your hat. I’ll bribe you to silence with a shopping spree. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” her grin indicated I was in for another big bill.

I looked her square in the eye and spoke very clearly. “I make it,” I said simply.

“Uhh … come again?” She gave me a blank stare.

“I make it,” I repeated slowly.

“You’re a … counterfeiter?” She looked shocked, almost appalled.

“They’re not counterfeit,” I said, easily. “They’re as real as … well, as real as the real thing. And counterfeiting is such an
ugly
word.” Her jaw dropped as she stared at me. “I do have to launder it, though,” I added, as if I was talking about business suits. “It helps knowing the people I know … Yvgenny being one of them. Casinos help, too. But I’m quite diversified … well, not me actually, a bunch of people. I have seven different identities I use for banking, houses, insurance, vehicles, that sort of stuff. I’ll show you all that later. We’re going to have to get you some new IDs as well.”

“But how?”

“It’s a small e-mat translator. Takes non-living matter and duplicates it exactly. Doesn’t work so well with live things, though.”

“That’s incredible! Does everyone have those where you come from?”

“Oh, hell no. They take incredible amounts of energy.”

“Where do you get the power?”

I smiled and winked at her. “I’ll show you that, too … but later. Let’s take care of DiMarco first.”

“You know I hate to wait.”

“Yes, I do.” I gave her a wink. “One day at a time, gorgeous,” I added, chuckling.

“Hey!” she blurted and slapped my arm. “I think you enjoy making me wait just a bit too much.” She stood up and glared down at me with a half-angry, half-joking face.

“I’ll work on it.”

O O O

“Justin?” Marsha called.

Engrossed in my planning, I sort of heard her, but not really.

“Justin!” she repeated more loudly as she stepped up behind me.

Jolted from my thoughts, I turned around. “Oh, hey.” I checked my internal clock. “You’re early.”

“I decided to take the rest of the afternoon off. Light day, and they’ve got everything covered at the diner.”

“That works out perfectly. Have a seat.” She did. I’d been meaning to talk to her about something. “There was stuff your dad never told you about, right?” I asked.

“Of course. As a girl, I used to press him on his work, but he’d always brush me off. He finally explained something that I’ll never forget. He’d just returned from a mission overseas, and he’d taken a bullet. He had his arm in a sling, and a pretty severe limp. I desperately wanted to know what happened.”

“So, what did he say?”

“He said, ‘When people need to know, they
need
to know. And when they don’t, they
don’t
.’ He hugged me for a while with his good arm. Then he told me I didn’t
need
to know. I never asked him about his work with the Seals again.”

“Eloquent as always, your father. I miss him,” I said.

“Me too,” she replied with a distant, long-healed sadness.

“Well, it’s time I show you some things, because you
need
to know. But like your father, this is stuff you can’t ever talk about to anyone. If certain people ever got wind of who and what I am, they’d make it … difficult for me.”

“I’d never put you in danger, Justin. I hope you believe that.”

“I do. It’s why you’re here and why we’re talking. Come on,” I said and stood up, heading for the front door. “Mag! We’re going home for a while. Come on, girl!” Marsha followed me, and I felt Mag come quietly up behind us from the bushes someplace. “So, what did Rachel tell you about me,” I asked.

“She said that we would be using some special technology with the doors to get into VeniCorp and that it came—along with you and that cat of yours—from another world.”

“You handled it well, I must say. And you didn’t press me for more.”

“I spent ten years in Vegas. I’ve seen it all … well, almost. And I figured you would show me when you were ready. Hell, I always suspected there was something
very
different about you.”

I placed my hand on the panel, ran through the combination and looked at her as I pushed on the door. It swung wide, opening on my loft rather than the front yard, and Mag darted between us and ran for the closet.

Marsha stood there shell shocked. Hearing about it and seeing it were two entirely different things. I put my arm behind her and pushed her through. She stepped in and stared around the loft. She’d been there a few times before, but we’d always gone in through the garage.

“Want something to drink,” I offered casually. She shook her head with her mouth still open. “Okay … now comes the fun part. Turn around.”

She did. I put my hand on the panel, ran through a different combination and pushed it open. She expected to see the house again, but instead, she saw an entirely different living room.

“Go on,” I suggested, encouraging her to move on her own.

She stepped through into a room she didn’t recognize and, turning around, noticed windows on either side of the door. The windows looked out on a lush, green yard surrounded by a tall hedge covered with orange blossoms. She looked back through the door as I stepped in, still not believing the loft was … and
wasn’t
 … there.

The door closed, and I led her out back onto the patio where Mag sat in the shade, waiting for us in her green and gray stripes.

“Welcome to Costa Rica,” I said and spent the next hour telling a still stunned Marsha most of what I’d already told the other two.

O O O

Tuesday night was almost identical to Monday. We went through the forms, some three-on-one training, and a long session of two-on-one amongst the three students. After that I checked in with O’Neil to make sure that the cops were on track with bagging the dry cleaners and shutting down that part of DiMarco’s operation. So far, the bugs they had on DiMarco’s people, including DiMarco himself, were quiet. No one in DiMarco’s organization seemed to know that anything was coming down the pike.

At two-thirty a.m. I checked the logs at VeniCorp and woke up Xen. We went on our nightly sneak, but this time we waited on the first level for fifteen minutes to see if the guards from the post came. No one left the building.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs.” I strolled over to the stairwell, opened the door and went up to the second floor door with Xen close behind.

“Wait here,” I told him and then ran up the last flight. I checked the door to the roof, and as I hoped, no one had locked it. I went back down, opened the second floor door, and we walked in. I showed him Xen’s workstation.

“Why don’t we dig through the data now?” Xen asked.

“Not part of the plan,” I said, smiling. Xen gave me a bored look, not believing it for a second. “Okay, okay. Because we don’t need to, I’ll still need you here on Sunday, and because you never know when someone might get tired of the alarm.”

Xen spotted something outside. “Here comes one of them.” He pointed at a man stepping out of the guard post and heading towards the truck parked outside.

“See?” I said, grinning. “Run!”

We bolted down the aisle, slammed through the door to the stairwell, blasted out through the first floor door and ran through my front door as the truck pulled away from the guard post.

“Can I go back to bed, now,” Xen said breathing heavily and laughing as he spoke.

“Yeah. And we’re taking tomorrow night off.”

“Good. All this REM deprivation is going to give me a psychotic episode.”

“We can’t have that,” I reassured him.

“No, we can’t,” he agreed.

O O O

We all slept in Wednesday morning, except Marsha who left extra early for reasons of her own. It turned into a lazy day for Xen and me. We simply enjoyed the sunshine.

Later, Rachel and I were in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on homemade lasagna, when Marsha walked through the front door with her backpack and a long gun case. Rachel slipped the foil covered pan into the oven as Marsha set the case down on the kitchen counter and dropped her pack on the floor. She flipped open the three latches of the case, and Rachel and I stepped around to take a look. Xen came in from the patio to see what was going on.

“I’d like you all to meet Whisper.” An immaculate XM 110 sniper rifle with bi-pod attachment and night-vision scope lay inside, the whole unit set perfectly into a declivity in the foam. Also set into the foam rested a Beretta pistol with a military insignia on the grip. Marsha lifted up a corner of the foam and exposed not one, but two silencers. The first was more slender than the other, and it looked as if the foam had been hand cut to fit the much bigger cylinder.

“Is that the 93R?” I asked, referring to the pistol.

“Yep. My father’s … a gift from an appreciative general. The extended clip holds thirty-nine plus one in chamber. It has single-shot, triple-burst, and full-auto. It weighs a ton, but the triple hits like a freight train. The full auto is really just for scaring people and wasting ammo, though.”

“Do you need to sight in the rifle?” I asked, running my finger across the larger silencer.

“No. I went down to the range this morning and dialed it in … I did it in the dark, too.”

“They let you on the range with those silencers?” I knew damn well the silencers were uber-illegal, and most shops would call the cops the moment they saw one.

“I worked out something with the owner’s daughter when I joined the shooting club. She’s my age. She’s a …
friend
of mine,” Marsha added with a naughty grin. “She let me in early this morning before they opened so I could sight it in with the big cylinder.”