Point And Shoot Part 14

"Yeah, I see it."

"We going to do anything about it?"

"Hang on."

The clone hammered the accelerator and Hardie felt himself pressed up against the seat. The needle jumped to 70, 80, 90... then 100. Which closed the gap between them and the friendly neighborhood Utah state trooper within seconds. Hardie knew the car was bulletproof. But he was pretty sure it wouldn't survive a head-on creepy David Cronenbergstyle collision.

"You sure you can see?" Hardie asked.

At pretty much the moment Hardie thought he'd be inhaling shattered gla.s.s, his double careened off to the right, and the state trooper to the left, and both vehicles slammed through mini-asteroid belts of flying salt. Behind them, the trooper's siren screamed. The clone behind the wheel apparently didn't give a f.u.c.k. The accelerator needle wilted back down to 90, 80, 70...

"You're slowing down?" Hardie gasped.

"Just giving him a look at my a.s.s."

And as the needle slid back up the impossible happened: The trooper gave up. Sirens off, cherries off. He resumed normal speed and faded into the rear distance as they found Route 80 again, slowed down enough to merge safely, then peeled down the asphalt.

"What just happened?"

"I told you," said his double, "we're cop-proof. Once he saw my license plate and started to call it in, he had to let me go. Whatever incident he may have reported is now being erased from the police data banks. We're invisible. We could drive over the bodies of nuns and toddlers from here all the way to the Hamptons and no cop would be allowed to touch us."

Hardie shook his head. "I used to be a cop. Work for them, anyway. How did this happen? How did you get every cop from coast to coast to go along with this?"

"Things have changed a lot since you worked for the cops."

"The FBI, too?"

His double made a grim, laughlike sound. "The Feds, the CIA, the Secret Service, the Boy Scouts, whoever. The Cabal claims to be this country's greatest protector, and in exchange, they enjoy limitless immunity. But the information we brought down could end it all."

Hardie thought about Deke Clark and wondered where he was at this moment. Hopefully somewhere hiding out with Ellie and the girls. Not caught up in all of this stuff. Yeah, he felt bad about shocking the poor guy in that garage, but there was no time to rationally discuss things. And now Hardie was especially glad he hadn't bothered. That route, the calm, rational, white-hat cowboy route, would have landed them in graves immediately.

Meanwhile his double continued to speechify.

"Here's the real insidious part," he said. "The public has the idea that there's something seriously wrong, but they can't quite put their finger on it. They blame the usual suspects: the banks, the politicians, even the media. But they're missing the real culprit. They can't see the control room; they're too focused on the stage."

"You sound like you just walked off the set of The X-Files."

"The X-Files? Is that the best pop culture reference you can dig up?"

"Blow me. I've been in prison, I've been in s.p.a.ce. Before that, I just watched old movies. Buy me a copy of Entertainment Weekly and I'll catch up. Anyway, you said we're all focused on the stage. What are these a.s.sholes doing behind the stage? What do they want, besides more power?"

"Are you asking me about their endgame? Here's my take on it: The Cabal knows the end of the world is coming. I don't mean rapture, or a giant asteroid, or a new ice age, or any of that Roland Emmerich s.h.i.t. I'm talking about the fall of civilization. The explosives were planted during World War II, and everything's about to go up. The Cabal exists for one purpose only: to be the winners. That means having every available resource at their disposal, no matter what. They don't care if the public doesn't like it, or revolts, or camps out on their front lawn singing k.u.m-ba-f.u.c.king-yah. It doesn't matter. They are ants scrambling up to the boot of a soldier."

Hardie saw the fringes of Salt Lake City on the horizon.

"You must be great fun at parties."

You like Hardie. In spite of everything, all of the studying and surgeries and the bad blood between the two of you, there was still something admirable about the broken-down old f.u.c.ker. A tough, flickering spirit that only burned hotter and brighter when the wind picked up.

You'll almost be sad to see it snuffed out.

20.

Don't eat the car! Not the car! Oh, what am I yelling at you for? You're a dog!

-Tom Hanks, Turner & Hooch.

THEY MADE IT as far as halfway through Nebraska before Charlie Hardie was shot and killed.

After his doppelganger's big apocalyptic speech on the outskirts of SLC, they settled into a serious driving groove. n.o.body said a word. The sun went down, the terrain went from flats to mountains. Hardie tried to nod off but couldn't. Every so often an ambitious trooper would show an interest in their vehicle traveling at insane speeds, initiate pursuit, then drop off once the license plate was called in. What once was kind of a sick thrill became routine, especially when the troopers apparently called ahead with the word to let this black sedan pa.s.s. By the time they entered Wyoming, the pursuits had stopped entirely.

At some point Hardie did fall semi-unconscious, but it wasn't true sleep. Instead his brain had downshifted a gear or two, leaving one hemisphere in the real world and the other in a phantom zone of his own mistakes. He was at once aware of the hum of the engine and the sound of the tires on asphalt, but he also heard gunshot and cries and screams. His fingers curled his hands into loose fists.

Feels good, doesn't it, Charlie? Choke that b.i.t.c.h out. Go on. Break her little scrawny neck.

If his clone was looking over at him he would have seen Hardie's fingers twitch.

We want an actress who was cut down in her prime. Choked to death by a man who l.u.s.ted after her. Murdered by you.

Would have seen his torso jolt.

And before you do open your mouth, I'd keep Kendra and Charlie Jr. in mind.

All at once he was looking down at Kendra and Seej. Both were lying on the cold concrete floor of a bas.e.m.e.nt, eyes open. The strange thing was that this wasn't one of the surveillance-style shots Hardie had watched over the past nine months. He didn't recognize the bas.e.m.e.nt or anything in it. And even though what he saw was a high corner of this mysterious bas.e.m.e.nt, it didn't feel like he was watching the image on a screen. It felt like he was in the room with them, floating above them. And Kendra's eyes were blazing with the same kind of familiar hate. Staring right at him, as if she could see him. Could she? Was she wishing him dead right this minute?

Hardie couldn't look away. He was frozen in place, too, looking down at his family in torment for what seemed like a couple of forevers when he heard his own voice pleading with him- wakeup wake up "Hardie, I think you'd better wake up."

Hardie sat up with a jolt. "What? What is it?" The car had stopped moving. Hardie squinted through the bandages, looking first out the windshield and then the back window.

The sun was hours away from coming up, but even in the pre-dawn gloom Hardie would have seen them. An unmarked sedan in front; the other sedan in back. Cherries flashing in both, cutting through the dark night. A cla.s.sic two-car trap.

"I thought this car was supposed to be unpulloverable?" Hardie asked. "Remember. ... limitless immunity? Or was that something you just made up on the spot?"

"Yeah, I thought so, too. Guess somebody didn't get the memo."

"I saw guns in that bag of yours," Hardie said.

"Yeah. But are you comfortable killing cops, if that's who these guys turn out to be?"

"Who else would they be?"

"If they're stopping us, there's a good chance they're not cops."

"Cabal?" Hardie asked. "Could they have made us, even inside one of their cars?"

"Anything's possible."

The two Charlie Hardies quickly discussed their battle plan, which was simple: point and shoot. Spray bullets at anything that moved. Make sure that the chunks of meat on the asphalt stopped twitching. Then haul a.s.s out of the area and hope the Cabal didn't send any other mobile death squads after them.

Among the handguns the fake Charlie Hardie had shoved into the black canvas bag back at the way station in northern Nevada: Glock .23 semiautos, .40 S&W cartridge, plenty of loaded magazines. Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum and .38 Special revolvers, double action only.

The real Charlie Hardie took a .38 Special, stuffed it in a pocket of his s.p.a.cesuit, then grabbed a .44. Outside, car doors snicked open. The noise echoed across the quiet Nebraska pre-dawn.

"This is it," the fake Charlie Hardie said, s.n.a.t.c.hing up two Glocks for himself.

"I'll take the front, you take the back," the real Charlie Hardie said.

"Works for me."

A proper team-up.

Which of course was shattered when a familiar voice cried out, "Charlie Hardie! It's me, Deke!"

Deke Clark had called in four favors. These favors would soon become blood debts, held by four of the toughest gunmen on the planet.

The kind of people Deke Clark-in his former life as a federal agent-used to investigate, arrest, and remove from the general population.

But these rules had long broken down for Deke. He was tired of living with a gun to his family's heads.

So instead of cultivating a list of snitches, Deke had spent the past year cultivating a short list of hired muscle who could be called upon in a pinch to deal with a crisis. Of course, the crisis Deke had in mind was protecting his family against an onslaught of Accident People, or whatever the h.e.l.l they were called.

This favor was different. This was about cornering a man speeding down a highway and taking him into private custody without anyone getting killed.

Only Charlie Hardie could answer certain questions about the people who had threatened Deke's family. And so G.o.d help him, if Hardie decided to do the stoic thing or try to escape ...

Well, then, that's where his four favors came in.

By the time Deke's team was a.s.sembled-which didn't take long at all, since these men were prepared to travel at a moment's notice-Hardie and his mysterious black sedan were crossing the Colorado state line. Deke calculated the time and agreed to rendezvous in Grand Island, Nebraska, and set up a two-car trap along Route 80. Nothing fancy. Just stop him. Pull him out of that car. Have one of the other men take control of the car (who knew what secrets it might yield) and go to somewhere neutral for some answers.

Deke kept tabs on the sedan thanks to favors called in to the Colorado, and then Nebraska, Departments of Transportation. Hardie was still headed east on 80, predictable as h.e.l.l. The one strange thing that Deke didn't understand was the speeding. Hardie should have been pulled over a couple dozen times in Colorado alone. And Nebraska? h.e.l.l, the entire state was one big 104,111-square-mile speed trap.

Again, the steely voice called out on the lonely highway: "Charlie, man, it's me. Deke! Come on out of there!"

Inside the coma car, Hardie's bandaged jaw dropped. "No. Way."

"Is that-" His double lapsed into a brief dumbstruck silence. "Is that Deacon Clark? How did he find us?"

"No idea. But you know, Deke was always the best at the whole cop game."

"There's no f.u.c.king way he could have found us. We're invisible."

"Well, he's out there asking for me right now. I guess I should go talk to him."

"I don't like it."

"I don't like any of this. But listen to me-whatever you do, do not shoot him. He's taken care of Kendra and the boy all this time, and-"

"You don't have to tell me. I know all about Deke."

"So none of that s.h.i.t about pointing and shooting and spraying, okay?"

The Other Hardie nodded quickly. "But wait ... you can't step outside. Remember, your face?"

Wrapped in bandages. Right. Deke wasn't X, the man with X-ray vision. He could be forgiven for thinking that a mummy had kidnapped his old pal Charlie, and would shoot first, check under the wrapping later.

"Let me go," his double said.

"No. What if he spots you for a fake right away?"

"I fooled all of those machines in the satellite. They thought I was a dead ringer for you."

Outside the car: "Final warning, Charlie! Don't make me do this!"

"Deke's not a machine," Hardie said. "I have to go. Cover me in case it gets weird, okay?"

Hardie expected another fight, but instead his double just nodded again.

"Deke," the man in the bandages cried out, lifting his hands above his head. Deke could tell he had guns in the pockets of his uniform. Now that he saw it up close, it did look like some kind of s.p.a.cesuit. "It's me! Don't shoot!"

"Show me your hands! Is Charlie Hardie in that vehicle with you?"

Hardie complied, lifting his bandaged hands up in the cool night air. "Deke, it's me. It's Charlie."

"Step away from the car. Come all the way around."

"Deke, seriously, man. Listen to my voice."

"No. I don't know who you are, but I know you're not Hardie. Tell Hardie to step out of the car now or there will be serious trouble."

"The last time we met, you told me other people would finish this. That I didn't have to do this anymore. All I needed was to stop and come home. Well, Deke, you were partly right. All this time, I needed to come home. But I can't depend on anybody else. I put my family in this mess, and I'm the only one who can get them out of it. I hope you'll understand that."

Deke squinted, as if he could see past the bandages. G.o.dd.a.m.n. Was this him? That was a conversation they had a year ago, alone, in a garage. That lawyer Doyle was there, but he was unconscious. The only other occupants of the garage were dead. Had to be him.

"Charlie?" he asked.

And then shots blasted out into the airs.p.a.ce behind Deke's head.

Abrams knew that Deacon "Deke" Clark would be useful one of these days. His weathered mug was the only face that Charlie Hardie trusted. Which was why Abrams didn't bother having an Accident team dispatched immediately to erase Clark and his family.

Instead, Abrams had his home-his supposedly "protected" home-bugged, right down to the wood under the carpet tacking. She steered Cabal-friendly gunmen and mercenaries in his direction, making Clark feel like he'd recruited them.