American Apocalypse (15 page)

I rolled down my window, as Max did his. From the house I could faintly hear a radio playing country music. Far off in the distance I could hear automatic weapons fire, coming in short, staccato riffs.

Max smiled at the guard. “Hey, what’s up? Got a delivery here for Thermopylae Incorporated. This the right place?”

“Yes, sir, it is. I need both of you to step out of the vehicle. Please bring your personal belongings and any weapons you might have.”

“Okay, buddy. Not a problem. Leave the truck here? Or move it and park it?”

“No, sir. Exit the vehicle, bring your gear, and report inside the building.”

Why do these guys always sound like robots?
I wondered.
Was it the movies? The military? Or did the movies just copy the military’s strange little reality?
I swung out of the cab and dropped to the ground. I could hear the thud of Max’s boots as he dropped to the ground on the other side. I grabbed the gym bag I was using as luggage and
waited for Max to come around the front of the truck. We filed into the house—someone had turned the music off.

We entered what would have been the living room. It had a long counter built across it, about two-thirds of the way back. Behind that and taking up one-third of the wall space were a number of steel lockers. An American flag was hung on another wall, and a couple folding chairs were on our side of the counter. Everything was spotlessly clean. I liked that. I had to take a dump and had been putting it off. I liked a clean bathroom, and I had not seen any indications that there were any in West Virginia.

We walked up to the counter. I was watching Max out of the corner of my eye. He swung his bag up onto the counter, and I followed a heartbeat behind him, not that it was all that heavy. A box of ammo, my cleaning kit, a set of clothes, shave kit, and volume one of Gibbon’s
Fall of Rome
series. The ammo and the book were the only things giving it any weight.

“I need all your weapons on the counter, gentlemen.”

The counterman was somebody different. He was a black male, past middle age, yet he still had the bearing of a soldier. I was a bit taken aback by him being black. After the chief’s comments, I had expected an all-white crew here. The guard who had stopped us at the chain had come in with us, but he was now standing in a corner of the room watching us. I took off my gun belt and put on the counter. Max followed by pulling his Colt from its holster in the small of his back and setting it next to my gun belt. You could feel much of the tension leave the room.

“One more time: I want all your weapons, including knives; anything found on your person outside this room will be confiscated, and I know you don’t want that.”

All right
. . . I waited to see if Max was going to pull out his backup. When I saw him bend over to pull off his ankle holster, I sighed and joined him.
Damn
, I did hate giving up the sheath knife I had on my belt. Strange how naked I felt when all my hardware was stacked in front of me.

Counterman said, “Let’s see what we got here. He had pulled out a clipboard from under the counter. “This is how it works. I will sign your weapons in, and then I will store them in one of those lockers behind me. I will give you each a key. When you return, you give whoever is on duty your key; they will then give you back your weapons. Now, I need a name, starting with you.”

“Max.”

“And you?”

“Gardener.”

“All right, let’s see what we have here. One Colt 1911, series 80, with custom Pachmayr grips, very nice, and a Colt Detective Special—I see you like Mr. Colt’s products.” Max didn’t even reply. He just stared at him. I don’t think he was too thrilled about giving up his weapons, either.

“And one Buck knife. Okay, what do we have here?” He slid my Ruger out of the leather holster and held it up to the light to read the serial number better. “My God, you men do like the old-school iron. I haven’t held a single action in years. You sure aren’t going to throw a lot of lead downstream with this.”

“You don’t need to if you can hit what you’re aiming at,” I said. “Spray and pray only works online.” I regretted it as soon as I said it—especially the online part. I heard the guy behind us laugh. When I heard the laugh I felt the cold rage sweep through me. I really hated being laughed at.

I looked at my holster, did the trigonometry in my head, knew it was not going to work, and felt that old
Fuck it
feeling picking up speed. I could feel Max shift his weight, and the counterman opened his mouth. This was it. “They are beautiful weapons, aren’t they? They certainly killed enough men in their day. Perhaps we are returning to the day of the gunfighter.” He slid it back into the holster. I relaxed. Counterman was oblivious.

He added the Charter Arms Off-Duty model .38 I carried to the sheet. “One more thing, gentlemen, and you will be free to go. He dumped the contents of our bags one at a time on the counter. He went through them quickly and attempted to put everything back neatly. “Thank you very much. If I don’t see you on the way out, have a wonderful stay.” He handed us our keys and began packing our weapons into the lockers.

“All right, guys, back to the truck.” This was said by the guard who was standing in the corner.

We lifted our bags off the counter and followed him back out to the truck.

“Just head up the road, make a left, and pull in at the second house,” he said, talking to Max. “People will be waiting for you there.” We mounted up, he dropped the chain, and we rolled over it and headed up the road.

Max looked over at me, shook his head. “Remember what I told you that day about the Fairfax City police,
you know, outside?” It took me a few seconds, and then I realized he meant the hidden monitoring.

“Yeah, I got it.”

We headed up the road, literally climbing. After a couple of switchbacks, the engine started to strain a bit, then we saw the left turn. The second house number was less than three hundred yards down, and Max turned the truck up the sharply inclined driveway. I could see other houses dotted here and there on the hill; I wouldn’t call it a mountain. Some A-frames, some one-level houses with big decks—it looked like a vacation home development. All were painted some variation of brown. They blended into the landscape rather nicely, I thought.

The house we pulled up to had a two-door attached garage. There were two men in T-shirts and fatigue pants waiting on the lawn. A Hispanic female was standing with them, dressed the same way, but she still managed to look like she was not a part of them. Her T-shirt was much nicer. She was also the only person happy to see us.

“Hi, guys!” she hollered at Max. “I need you to back it up, but leave me about six feet of space between that garage door and the gate. Got it?”

Max gave her a “thumbs up” and maneuvered the truck into place, set the emergency brake, and we jumped down to say hello. After a brief exchange of names that I quickly forgot—well, I remembered hers, it was Martina—we walked back to unlock the truck so they could start unloading.

That’s when I noticed the thin wire strip that had been threaded through the same opening as the lock: It had been soldered at one end. Martina broke it with ease. “I see you didn’t have any problems.”

Max answered her: “No, it was an easy run.” He put his key into the lock, and she swung the doors open. I peered in, curious to see what we had been hauling. All I saw was furniture.
No, this couldn’t be everything
. The weirdness level had been far too high for us to have been hired just to move furniture.

She told the guys who were standing behind her patiently and silently, “Move the furniture out onto the lawn.” She turned to Max. “Once the furniture is out, I need you to back the truck up so it is flush with the garage door, okay?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

She must have seen the puzzled look on my face, so she glanced up at the sky. “Theater for anyone up there watching.”

“Oh, okay.” Pieces started falling into place: The gate that didn’t look like a gate, the guard dressed like a park ranger rather than a combat trooper, the houses, the entire vacation home feel to everything—whatever was going on here was being camouflaged.
Not bad
, I thought.

A couple of sofas and a chest were on the lawn in a matter of minutes, and Max was backing the truck up. I stood next to Martina, trying not to ogle her T-shirted assets while she made a cell phone call, apparently not successfully. I looked up in time to catch the eyes of one of the movers, who was also checking her out. Just a fast trace of a smile, and then he was pulling on one end of a large wooden box that looked like a coffin.

Martina snapped the phone shut. “Someone will be here in a few minutes to pick you up. The colonel has extended an invitation to dinner to you both. Plus, you’re welcome to spend the night and take the truck back tomorrow.
Now please excuse me. I need to start inventorying what you delivered.”

Leaving behind the glow from her radiant smile, she disappeared into the house. We both waited until she was out of sight. I was the first: “Now that was nice.”

Max laughed, “Yes, they were. I saw how overcome she was by your charm. She probably had to go change. Your laser vision probably scorched her T-shirt.”

We stood there and talked about nothing while we waited to be picked up. It wasn’t long. In less than five minutes a golf cart pulled up in front of us.

“You Max and Gardener?”

“Yep.”

“All right, hop in.”

We climbed in and took off. The cart was not fast, but we were headed toward the bottom of the hill, just on the other side. It also looked good to any surveillance satellites flying overhead: no Humvees, just golf carts. Our driver wasn’t talkative, nor was Max. I was fine with that; I just looked around. While I did, I realized what an idiot I had been. I had just ridden in here with Max. Did I do any research? No. I could have found out where we were going and pulled it up on Google, looked at a map and a satellite view of the area. I hadn’t realized how far I had sunk into not caring.

We passed a couple of joggers who gave us a nod as they passed. One of them was running with a full pack on his back, and he was not looking good, either. I thought he was in his twenties at first. Only when he passed us did I realize he was probably double that. Our driver called out to him as he went past, “Suck it up, Jimbo, you got it!” Jimbo barely got a nod off as he went past.

I suddenly remembered why I had decided that the military was not a good idea for me. As we came around one corner I saw the complex. It didn’t look like a complex in the military sense, but that was undoubtedly what it was. There was a ski lift, a lodge or clubhouse, a restaurant, and a couple of buildings for supporting the lift. Farther down was a metal building the size of a Boeing 777 aircraft hangar with a corral attached. From the windsock and a few smaller hangars, it looked as if they were flying light planes in and out of here. All in all, a pretty nice place.

We were dropped at the restaurant and lodge building. I wondered if they had a gift shop. Maybe I could pick up some T-shirts for Night and the ninja twins—something in camo with a catchy logo like “Camp Death” with a skiing skeleton below it would be cool. I was standing there, working on T-shirt designs, when a guy came out the door roaring:

“Max!”

“Goddamn! Murphy!”

They went to pounding and gripping each other—it was a regular love fest. I felt like telling them to get a room, damn. When they got finished groping each other, Max beckoned me over.

“Gardner, this is Murphy. Me and him did two deployments together. Damn, dude, when did you make it back?”

“Oh, about eight months ago. I was going to give you a call. You know—shit kept getting in the way.”

“Well, this is Gardner. He’s my partner,” he slapped me on the shoulder, “and a damn good one. We’re doing a bit of law enforcement in Virginia.”

He stuck out his hand; we shook. He went for the grip of death, but I just blanked out the pain. I saw a bit of uncertainty in his eyes when he let go. He may have been real good at dishing out pain, but I had gone to the University of Receiving Pain as a kid—me and pain went way back.

“Come on in. Let’s get some chow and I can brief you about what’s happening.”

It wasn’t a restaurant, it was a mess hall: stainless steel trays with indentations for food. The food itself was steam-table, buffet, and not bad. Murphy apologized for the selection. The food we saw heating was just kept to feed strays like us. The next meal, dinner, was usually very good. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I ate all that good anyways. I don’t know if Murphy even realized that he and everyone else here was eating better than 70 percent of America these days. I pulled a tray and so did Max. It had been a while since breakfast, plus, it was a free meal. Murphy apologized for not joining us, saying he had eaten earlier.

We sat down at an empty table. I concentrated on eating while Murphy told us what our day was going to be like. “Well, the official plan was feed you, take you to your rooms, and then go hang at the range. Then it is dinner, with you two getting to go up to the big house and eat with the colonel. Damn, Max, you must have impressed the hell out somebody important somewhere. Then, come back here and we go hit the club. What do you think?”

Max shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

“What about you, Gardener?”

“I think if you show me my room, I’ll hang out there until dinner.”

I didn’t miss the quick narrowing of Murphy’s eyes. You had to be looking at him at exactly the right second; it was gone that fast. “Sure, no problem.” He laughed. “You are only about a hundred yards from it.”

Max and I had rooms next door to each other in the lodge. Max asked, “How can y’all afford something like this? I mean this is a nice base you got here.”