The Stickmen (2 page)

“Shut up,” Young quietly replied. “You’re a
fuckin’ soldier, start acting like it.”

“To hell with that shit! I’m short; I’m
discharged in a month!”

Young spared his underling the thinnest of
grins. “Better to go out with a bang, huh?”

“To hell with that shit, Sarge!”

Young chuckled. Sure, the kid was
shit-scared, but maybe that would keep him on his toes, where he
needed to be. “Eyes open, mouth shut. This ain’t the Navy, boy.
This isn’t a rig-job—”

“How do you know?”

“Because we’re still alive. Whoever busted
into the vault had some serious know-how. If they’d rigged charges,
this quad would be a crater by now, and there wouldn’t be enough
left of you or me to fill a bottle cap.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel
secure, Sarge,” Emery muttered.

“My guess is a material theft. Some
whacked-out Bin Laden terrorist, or one of those asshole white
militias. Keep your eyes peeled for opened crates.”

Emery dragged his feet. “Opened crates,” he
muttered to himself. Then something hooked his vision off to the
right. “Hey, Sarge? Is that a—”

“What?”

“Is that an opened crate? Right there? Two
o’clock?”

Young slowly roved his gaze, the bead of his
pistol-sight following it. After a moment of comprehension, then,
he stood upright and slumped. His pistol slipped out of his hand
and clattered to the cement floor.

“Holy mother of God,” Young whispered.

“What!” Emery cracked. “What is it?”

Indeed, there before them sat an empty
wooden crate, it’s nailed lid pried off into splinters.

“What is it?” Emery repeated, his lower lip
trembling.

“A world of hurt,” SSG Young answered in
drained monotone.

Only then did Emery see what his superior
non-com meant. He was close enough now to read the stenciled
markings on the side of the empty crate:

PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS

LOT 2244-63, M-129/W-54 - YIELD, SELECTABLE:
0.5-1.5KT

NET WEIGHT: 298 LBS.

Emery’s mouth fell open when he read the
rest.

CONTENTS: ONE (1) (S-)A-D-M:

(SMALL) ATOMIC DEMOLITION MUNITION.

CHAPTER ONE

A dark, musty room, one light.

Locked door.

A two-way mirror and two shadows for
company.

But for a police interrogation room…Harlan
Garrett had seen worse. This was Washington, D.C., and they
probably wouldn’t beat him up here, not like they’d beat him up in
De Smet, South Dakota, and Calera, Alabama. Yes, those redneck cops
had whupped Garrett’s tail-end in a big way, and in Tonopah,
Nevada, the feds had confiscated Garrett’s rental car and left him
to hitchhike several hundred miles down the Shoshone utility road
where he could’ve died from heat-stroke and dehydration.

No,
Garrett thought,
they won’t
pull any of that here. Not in D.C. Christ, it’s the nation’s
Capitol.

“Garrett,” one of the shadows spake. “I
ought to have a goon squad drag you out back and kick your ass.
We’d make Rodney King look like paddycakes. This is D.C., pal. We
do things right out here.”

Then again,
Garrett thought,
I
could be wrong about that.

“So when do you break out the billy clubs
and rubbers hoses?”

“Aw, we don’t use candyass stuff like that.
We use Tasers and shock-sticks. They don’t leave any identifiable
marks. Plus they’re…a
lot
more fun.”

Harlan Garrett was lean, scruffy, handsome
in a roguish sort of way. Maybe a Brad Pitt type—that is, Brad Pitt
on some serious skids. Brad didn’t wear rotten tennis shoes nor did
he drive a ‘76 Malibu with a flat finish and 200,000 miles on the
odometer. His longish brown hair was mussed, dark circles under his
eyes, clothes crumpled. Two men in suits stood before him—the two
shadows. One was Demeter, a balding big-gun District Six police
detective and the self-same gentleman who’d made the amicable
remark about the goon squad and the Tasers. The second was Roderick
Calabrice, a…balding, big-gun litigation attorney for Gilbert,
Barbick, Pearson, & Calabrice, only the biggest power-pack law
firm in the city. They’d turned down Paula Jones and the Starbucks
suit because they deemed any potential settlement of five million
dollars or less wasn’t worth their time. But here, today, Calabrice
was on retainer, one of the firm’s clients: Nevatek, the most
successful fiber and composite manufacturer on the eastern
seaboard.

“Yeah, this looks fair,” Garrett pointed out
at once, rubbing his stubble. “Nevatek’s lawyer is here but mine’s
not. I thought I get a public defender or something, or did I wake
up in Serbia this morning?”

“Don’t ask me why, Garrett,” Demeter said
through a smirk, “but—”

Calabrice cut in, hoisting his medicine-ball
gut beneath the $1500 Xanadrini suit.

“Mr. Garrett, we’re here simply to advise
you that my client, Nevatek Industries, is dropping all charges
against you.”

Garrett cast a knowing smile. “Of course you
are. You’re one of the best law firms in the country, and what’s
Nevatek’s retainer? About a quarter-mil per month? You guys don’t
want any publicity on this. If I published my findings, the whole
country would know that Nevetek is double-subcontracting for the
CIA.”

Now Calabrice’s Steak-Diane-and-lobster-flan
gut actually jiggled at a titter. Lawyers, after all, were just
actors in nice suits. They were good. They made Sir Laurence
Olivier look like high school casting call.

“Really, Mr. Garrett,” Calabrice assured,
“that’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard, not to mention
its clear potential for several crimes that you may have heard of
called libel and character defamation, and doubly not to mention
that any, um…
findings
you might publish would hardly have
any credibility amongst what our founding fathers described as the
public trust.”

Detective Demeter laughed through a hoarse
smoker’s cough that sounded like someone trying to start a faulty
gas-powered weed-whacker. “How do you like this busted loser?
Bet’choo gotta couple of Pulitzers for that fine respectable
journalism of yours, huh? Bet’choo hang out with Woodward and
Bernstein at the friggin’ Capital Hill cocktail parties. Shit,
Garrett, you act like the
National Enquirer
is the same as
the friggin’
Washington Post
. “

“That’s real funny, Dirty Harry,” Garrett
came back. “And for one thing, half the writers on the
Post
are on the White House pad, and for another, I don’t write for the
Enquirer
. I write for legitimate—”

Calabrice subtly burped; the burped smelled
like Merlot and Duck Confit. “Yes, Mr. Garrett, as you’ve already
been kind enough to enlighten us, you write only for legitimate
alternate investigative journals,
seven of which you’ve been
fired from for the same infractions that have landed you here.
Nevertheless, the fact remains: you illegally impersonated a
Nevatek employee, you unlawfully entered secured and sensitive
private property, you infiltrated a Nevetek data processing unit,
and you stole confidential corporate files.”

Demeter stepped closer, blooming his shadow
more broadly across Garrett’s face. “Garrett, these guys have every
right to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, and I wish
they would. They’d bury you so deep you’d need a mile-long snorkel
just to suck air. Why they’re not going to do that is beyond
me.”

“I’ll tell you why, Dick Tracy,” Garrett
explained. “They don’t want the public to know they’re testing
electro-magnetic pulse weapons on unsuspecting citizens in Northern
Virginia , and that U.S. tax dollars are paying for it. It’s called
a ‘triple-cloak-scheme,’ same as the pyramid shams that
multi-millionaires use to shelter money in off-shore accounts. The
National Security Counsel uses its own CIA operatives to hire phony
subcontractors who in turn hire high-tech companies like Nevatek to
start up field labs for clandestine research. This stuffed-shirt
here will tell you that all Nevatek does is manufacture plastic and
fiberglass at their well-known production facility in Arlington,
Virginia. But what he won’t tell you is that the Nevatek created a
second production facility in Bowensville, Maryland, where they’ve
got an operational atomic clock, an operational tri-rack cyclotron,
and a dozen one-gigawatt EM-pulse generators. Tell me that, Mr.
Hot-Shot Lawyer? What business does a fucking
plastic
factory
 have with a billion-dollar
cyclotron?
”

“Do you take narcotics, Mr. Garrett? Are you
delusional?” Calabrice suggested.

Garrett sniffed. “What’s the smell you keep
burping? I like it. You have lunch at The Occidental or was it
Ruth’s Chris? I’ll bet you were billing your client five hundred
bucks an hour for the whole time you were stuffing your face with a
meal that cost more than most Americans make in a week. Oh, and
then I’ll bet you billed your client for the meal too, huh?”

Calabrice’s jaw set. “I’d think you’d be a
little more cordial, considering my client’s generosity. Your fine
tally adds up to a minimum of fifteen years in prison. We don’t
have
to drop charges but have elected to simply in the
interests of saving unnecessary legal costs.”

Garrett nodded briskly, in hilarity. “Okay,
okay, I get it. You drop charges if keep my mouth shut. Fine. It’s
shut.”

“That’s not what I meant at all, Mr.
Garrett,” Calabrice bid, “but that’s a moot point now. Have a good
day.”

Calabrice took his finely suited bulk out of
the dim interrogation room. This left Garrett alone with the
Detective Demeter.

Garrett shrugged at the policeman. “Hell, I
can’t afford to go to jail again, and everybody knows his firm pays
off the public defenders to deliberately blow the case.”

“You’re something, Garrett, a real pride to
humanity.”

“I agree. And I can leave now, right?”
Garrett said. “He’s dropping charges.”

“
He
is, but
we
aren’t,”
Demeter was happy to say. “You’ll still be charged criminally by
the District of Columbia for—”

Garrett vocally exploded. “For what! If
they’re not going to prosecute, the Nevatek files aren’t admissible
as evidence!”

Demeter nodded with a long smile. “When you
were on your way home from your little caper the other night, you
were observed failing to stop at the traffic signal at 14th and U
Streets, exceeding the speed limit, negligent driving—oh, and for
operating an unsafe vehicle. The tag light was out on that boat
anchor you call a car.”

“And you’re
incarcerating
me for that
nickel-dime crap!”

“Under the law, it’s our right to refuse to
release you pending court summons.””You’re just doing that to jerk
me around!” Garrett stared fiercely at the detective. “I’ll bet
Perry Mason out there is padding you, just to warn me off! His
firm’s got more money than Bill Gates!”

Demeter’s rock face stared right back. “Just
get out of here, asshole. Your girlfriend posted your bail. See you
in court.”

Disgusted, Garrett got up, was about to
leave, but then he stopped short and twirled around at the door.
“All right, Dick, I admit it. I broke into Nevatek and stole some
of their R&D files. But no one, and I mean
no one
, knew
that I was going to make the heist, but you guys were
waiting
for me at my apartment. How did you know? Come on. I
won’t tell, and who’d believe me anyway?”

“The good fairies tipped us off,” Demeter’s
voice grated. “Now get out of here before I misplace your bail
release and put you back in the tank. Shit, I’ll over-night you to
the city general-pop. A skinny, good-looking guy like you? You’d be
considered prime relationship material.” Demeter winked. “And those
guys in there? They’ll change your name to Mary Jean in less time
than it takes you to bend over. Shit, Garrett, they’ll be trading
you back and forth for cigarettes and cell-block cookies every
night.”

Garrett’s stomach turned at the thought. It
was no joke. He got up from the table and left the smoky room as
fast as his rotten sneakers could propel him.

“See ya later…Mary Jean…”

««—»»

Jessica was radiant, kind, considerate,
and—moreover—beautiful. In all the bad things about Garrett’s life,
there was always Jessica, to add something good. She was always
there for him.

She’ll understand,
Garrett felt
sure.

“Goddamn you, Harlan, you goddamn bastard!”
Jessica shouted at him the minute custody sergeant let him out of
the tank and into the exit corridor.

Garrett, in his inept misinterpretation of
her reaction, almost wanted to turn right around and go back to
jail.

“Honey, I’m sorry,” he pleaded.

“Oh? Whose fault was it then?” she bellowed
back, more irate than he’d ever seen her. “What, you’re possessed
by some
devil
that makes you get arrested every time?”

Garrett ground his teeth. “They’re tapping
my phones again, I
know
it,” he explained. “And I’ll bet
DARPA or NSA is intercepting my e-mail. That’s the
only way
anyone could’ve known in advance that I was going to pull the
Nevatek job.”

It was all Jessica could do to walk next to
him toward the exit doors. She didn’t say a word for the entire
trek.

“So what is this?” Garrett said, glancing at
her. “The silent treatment?”

“Don’t talk to me, Harlan. Don’t say
anything,
” she hissed back. “I’m just too pissed off at you
right now.”

“I just spent a day and a night in that
medieval penal colony. The last thing I need is a stiff upper
lip.”

“What you need is a
busted
lip, and a
head to go with it!”