The Stickmen (23 page)

“The kid’s upstairs,” Sanders informed.
“He’s all right. I didn’t hurt him, I just gagged him and cuffed
his hand to his bed-frame.”

“But what about General Vander and his wife?
You shoot them in the head like you did Swenson and the
others?”

Sanders smirked. “There was no reason to
kill them, and they weren’t on the list. They’re upstairs too,
alive. I knocked them out with amobarbital and tied them up. Don’t
believe me, go check.”

“Oh, I’m going to check, all right,” Garrett
said, “and don’t worry. I
know
you’re planning to make a
move on me. So don’t try any of that hand-to-hand hitman Chuck
Norris jujitsu crap. You’re keeping your fucking hands
up
,
and you’re walk ten feet
ahead
of me. Any funny
business—shit, if I even
think
you’re going to pull a move
on me—I’ll put half this clip into your spine.”

Sanders’ glare didn’t waver.

Garrett waved the gun. “Up the stairs,
killer. Nice and slow.”

Sanders moved out, hands still up. Garrett
gave him a good lead as he followed him up the stairs.

“Hey, tell me something. How did Danny
manage to infiltrate a high-security redeposition perimeter and
walk out with a bomb that weighs more than Hulk Hogan.”

“I don’t know,” Sanders said, just ahead of
him on the stairs. “Some kind of alien influence, I guess. I was
hoping you could tell me.”

“Danny didn’t tell you himself? You didn’t
try to force it out of him?”

“The truth? Yeah, I tried to force it out of
him. I told him I’d drive a stake in his father’s chest and cut his
mother’s head off if he didn’t tell me. Like I told you, I didn’t
hurt the parents but I threatened to, and that’s the fastest way in
the world to get a kid talking. But…it was just like you said. He
didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know.”

This didn’t surprise Garrett. Swenson had
been abducted too, yet didn’t remember how. A retrograde amnesic
effect—common amongst abductees. And selectively maintained
communication—the headaches Swenson had told Ubel about—were
brought on during some kind of trance-channel or telelalia. Maybe
the aliens were even inducing telethesia—out-of-body
experiences.

Time would tell, and there wasn’t much of
that left.

“Next question,” Garrett asked. “Who do you
work for?”

Sanders actually laughed. “Don’t let that
gun make you too cocky, Garrett. Guys like me, we die before we
give up our contractors.”

“It’s a rogue cell in NSA, isn’t it? Or
maybe the Joint Chiefs or the DoD?”

Sanders chuckled. “You’re floggin’ a dead
horse, pal.”

“MJ-12?”

“Forget it. I ain’t talkin’. In The Nam, I
was tortured by the NVA; these guys were hardcore interrogators,
trained by the Soviets; I fully expected to die and didn’t care,
’cos it was my damn job. The thin red line, you know, like in the
French Foreign Legion? If those sick communist bastards couldn’t
make me talk—believe me. Neither can a non-hacking liberal skinny
milquetoast computer-geek tabloid writer like you.”

Garrett frowned long and hard, but he
supposed the man had a legitimate point, and he even supposed he
was asking too many questions, providing a distraction that Sanders
could use to his advantage.

But Garrett couldn’t help it.

“Well, consider this non-hacking liberal
skinny milquetoast computer-geek tabloid writer an inquiring mind
who wants to know. Why’d you sell out?”

Sanders didn’t pause one iota in his reply.
“For twenty-five years I served my country like a waiter, and I
never even got a nickel tip,” Sanders answered via the oldest
motive in the world for treachery. “I took my skills to the highest
bidder. When I was in The Nam, when I was in the French Congo and
Algeria and Iran, I thought I was doing the right thing. I was
wrong. I’d watch guys like Swenson get pig-shit rich and walk
around with more medals on their chest than Marshall Fuckin’
Zhukof, and all I got was tortured with glass needles and
restricted hazard pay, which back then was about $300 per month. If
you’re gonna get fucked for that many years, kid, sooner or later
you want a kiss to go along with it. And then the press schmucks
like you come around and make us all look like baby-killers, and
then one day it smacks home. What the fuck am I doing this for? So
I turned. Yeah, I sold out. Services rendered to the highest
bidder. You know what that is? It’s the American way.”

“Sounds more like treason to me,” Garrett
remarked.

“What the hell do you know? You don’t know
shit till you’re in the bush for sixty days, and shit’s
growing
on you, and you gotta take out a long-range target
with one shot ’cos if you don’t, the Army’s gonna lose a thousand
grunts in a counter-offensive. And if you miss, if you have to take
two
shots, you get scoped in two seconds and in less time
than it takes you to scratch your crotch-rot, you’ve got 80mm
mortar shells coming down on your head, and if you’re lucky—and if
you’re good—you get out of there, but you’re wearing your spotter’s
guts for a shirt. Then you gotta wait another week or two in the
bush to get picked up. You eat snakes and millipedes and drink
creek water that smells like old piss in the meantime.”

Garrett didn’t pretend to make judgments. He
hadn’t been there, hadn’t witnessed the horrors. On the other hand,
though, he would not permit himself to sympathize with a
remorseless murderer.

They were on the second-floor landing now,
and Garrett could see a door open just around the top of the
banister. A light was on. Sander walked slowly ahead of him, then
stopped. Suddenly his shoulders slumped.

“GodDAMN!”

Garrett carefully approached from behind.
Careful,
he warned himself. Perhaps this was the
distraction, Sanders getting ready to make a move by surprise.

“What is it?” Garrett asked, keeping his
distance.

“The fuckin’ kid is gone!” Sanders
yelled.

Garrett’s eyes widened. He looked into the
room, around Sanders’ stance.

Danny’s bedroom.

A kid’s small desk, small chair, Luke
Skywalker and Iron Giant posters on the wall. But Garrett didn’t
really need to inspect the room to get what Sanders was saying.

Along the bottom of the bed, he noticed one
ring of a pair of handcuffs clasped to the bedframe. Half of the
second ring dangled from the short links of chain.

You gotta be shitting me…

The hinged hasp of the second ring lay on
the floor. Broken off.

“That’s impossible!” Sanders asserted.
“Those are Peerless detention-grade handcuffs! They can’t be
broken!”

“Yeah, well it looks to me like Danny broke
’em like they were plastic,” Garrett observed, and somehow—even
though it confused him—it didn’t surprise him. “We’re talking about
an eight-year-old kid who infiltrated an electrified security fence
and broke open three of the Army’s best padlocks.”

Sanders, for the first time, actually seemed
upset, clenching his fists against the sides of his legs. “What?
The fuckin’ aliens helped him? The fuckin’ aliens snuck into the
house and broke him out?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it kind of looks
that way,” Garrett replied, and, indeed, it did. By now, nothing
could really shock him, nothing was “impossible.” And that’s when
he realized the best part of all—

“You lose,” Garrett said. “Danny’s out of
here, and I’ll bet he’s already got the ADM to the depot. He’s
gonna set it off, just the aliens told him, and just like they told
Swenson. The thing you’re trying to prevent is going to happen…and
there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Bullshit. He’s just a little kid. There’re
several steps in setting off an ADM. You gotta put the whole thing
together, you gotta wire it right, you gotta prime a blasting cap.
A little kid can’t do that!”

“A little kid can’t bust padlocks and break
out of handcuffs, either. But he did it. There’s no other
explanation. Danny’s been getting help all along. You and me? We’re
both outclassed.” Garrett grinned. “But at least my name isn’t mud
when all this shit is over with. You? You
failed.
Utterly
and totally. Swenson’s vindicated, and you’re just a busted
over-the-hill hitman who couldn’t successfully complete his
mission.”

Sanders nodded slowly. “Yeah, but the kid
still dies, doesn’t he? When he sets off that bomb, he’ll be
sitting in the middle of a five-million-degree fireball. I’ll bet
that bugs the shit out of you. ’cos there’s nothing
you
can
do about
that.
” .

At once, Garrett felt trampled; Sanders was
right. Whatever was supposed to happen tonight
would
happen.
And however important that event might be, an innocent little kid
was going to die.

“Let’s make a deal,” Sanders offered. “You
hit it on the head. I botched this mission big time. I’ll never
work again. There’ll be a contract out on
me
in less than
twenty-four hours.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Garrett said. “You’ll be
perfectly safe—in prison. Which is where you’re going after I turn
you in. I’ve got the gun, remember? You’re a murdered. Murderers
belong in the slam.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sanders came back.
“Like you just said, I failed. I’m a marked man but I still have
the contacts to get out of the country. Let me go, and I give you a
million bucks in about twelve hours.”

“Oh?”

“That’s probably about how long it’ll take
us to drive to the airport and fly to the Cayman Islands. I’ve got
a numbered account there under an encrypted name. Let’s go. Don’t
be stupid. Be rich.”

Garrett guttered laughter. “I can’t take a
gun on a
plane.
The second I lose this gun, you’ll kill me
with your bare hands.”

“Trust me,” Sanders said through the
thinnest smile. “I’m not quite the bad guy you think I am. I’ll cut
you in if you let me go.”

“I’d rather suck the Devil’s dick than make
a deal with you,” Garrett eloquently replied.

“I’ll give you something else, too,” Sanders
added. “Something more than the money.”

“Yeah? What?”

“What you want more than anything.” Sanders
voice seemed tonorous suddenly, weighty with promise. “You have any
idea how many restricted documents I’ve seen in my career?”

Garrett paused in contemplation.
Probably…a lot.

“Did you know that John F. Kennedy okay’d
the murder of the President of South Vietnam as well as six
in-progress assassination operations against Castro
after
Bay of Pigs? Did you know that MK-ULTRA program is
still
going on? Did you know that the CIA has been flying twenty billion
dollar’s worth of cocaine into Mena Airport in Nell, Arkansas,
every year since the mid-’70s, and that four successive presidents
have
authorized
it for black-funding?”

Garrett stared.

“In 1995, Boris Yeltsin secretly sold three
nuclear-powered submarines to the Iraqis; in 1996 we sunk all three
of them with an orbiting rail-gun that no one knows about. And
here’s on for ya, Garrett. The Aurora spy plane exists—we have five
of them at a secret base fifty miles northwest of Delta, Utah. But
they’re not really even spy planes; they’re long-range stealth
bombers that can fly 15,000 miles without refueling, and we’ve also
got nuclear ram-jets that max out at Mach 7. And that’s just the
tip of the iceberg, Garrett. Get it?”

Garrett felt smothered by the impact of
Sanders’ words. “What is it—
exactly
—that you’re saying?”

Veins beat at Sanders’ temples when he
yelled, “Half of the stuff you conspiracy assholes have been
writing about is
true!
”

Sanders shout seemed to echo as if in a
cavern. “And you’ve got proof?”

“I’ve got a safe-deposit box in a George
Town bank
full
of proof,” Sanders answered. “What of you
think a guy like me does to protect himself? Over the years of my
career, whenever I’ve had the opportunity to copy a restricted
document, what do you think I did?”

“Copied it,” Garrett said.

“That’s right. And by now I’ve got a stack
of the things. I’ll
give
them to you—and money—if you let me
go. The next article you write will headline every newspaper in the
world. You’d be the king of the hill. You’ll go down in history as
the guy who busted it all open.”

Garrett felt lost in his thoughts. Sanders
was verifying his life’s work, and the truth behind it.

That truth needed to be revealed.

Sanders’ face grew more intense. “And this
Nellis business? You think this Nellis crash is all there is?”

“No, I don’t. I think there are dozens of
authentic instances of extraterrestrial contact on this planet,”
Garrett replied.

“Not dozens, pal. Try
hundreds.
Roswell was real, and so was Kingman and Kecksburg. The first time
the U.S. military officially recovered a crashed extraterrestrial
vehicle was in Glenrock, Wyoming, in 1919. I’ve got copies of the
field photographs and the recovery docs, even the official report
to the president and the secretary of war. There’s stuff that you
can’t even imagine. And I’ll give it to ya, with money.” Sanders
eyed him severely. “Think about it, pal. Everything you’ve ever
wanted—in your whole life—I’ll
give
you. But you gotta agree
to the deal.”

Garrett stood flabbergasted; already he was
dreaming. The money was nothing, but the
data?
And it made
perfect sense that someone in Sanders’ position, for all these
years, would have seen so much, and it made just as much sense that
he would’ve duplicated some of it, as a safeguard to himself.

The words echoed back in Garrett’s head:
Half of the stuff you conspiracy assholes have been writing
about is true…

This was Garrett’s own chance, wasn’t
it?