Tailed (23 page)

chapter 29

I
was hunkered down in the driver's seat, Nicholas was crouched in the passenger seat. My thumb hovered over the black starter button on the dash, my foot pumping the accelerator, and periodic bullets plinking the truck's armor.

How many times had someone else been in this position? Your car stalls on the railroad tracks and here comes the Chicago Limited.

Start, car, start!

Wuh, wuh, wuh, wuh…

You're in the approach to the Holland Tunnel on a blazing summer Sunday afternoon, ten thousand irritable motorists behind you in a traffic jam when your engine stalls.

Start, car, start!

Wuh, wuh, wuh, wuh…

You're parking at Muldoon Point with your girlfriend, watching the submarine races, when The Blob oozes into view.

Start, car, start!

Wuh, wuh, wuh, wuh…

Remind me to send a letter of commendation to the White Motor Company, if it even still exists. Had Bobby and Peggy Sue been necking in an M3 half-track instead of a '57 Chevy, maybe The Blob never would have devoured them.

The half-track roared to life, exhaust billowing in a blue-black cloud around us.

Hunched over the steering wheel to keep a low profile, I shifted the truck into gear and we lurched forward. Through the little gun portal I couldn't detect the whereabouts of Stella, Brickface, and Stucco, but I assumed they'd taken up position behind rocks to my left. Lanston was last seen somewhere to my right. We were probably headed directly between them, into the fray.

“Where'd you learn to drive this thing?” Nicholas shouted.

“
Rat Patrol
!” I wound the truck up and ground it into third.

We rumbled down the gully, and I realized the helicopters were in the way. Now I could have sneaked around them, if I were careful. But then I thought,
Why be careful?

I ground the tranny into fourth, bullets plinking off the sides of the armor plating.

Titan's rolling pin on the front of the half-track smashed into the Air Force helicopter and bashed it into the FBI helicopter. We pushed them for about twenty feet before the sky heaved into view—up we went over both of them. Rotor blades whirled and splintered before us, bashing into the metal armor of the half-track. Fiberglass shattered and flew in all directions. Metal crumpled and tore, rivets popping. The truck's rear treads shuddered as they ground over one of the chopper's engines and we slammed back down on terra firma.

Nicholas roared with laughter. “Perfect!”

“So, you are here for Gibraltar Aerospace, aren't you?” I shouted back. “That's what I overheard Lanston talking about. Gibraltar was sending someone.”

“I'm here for you, first and foremost.”

His equivocation was palpable, even over the clank, rattle, and drum of the vehicle, shards of fiberglass still clicking free of the undercarriage.

“By way of Gibraltar? All makes perfect sense. You were darn quick to stop Vargas from shooting that balloon. Gabby wasn't anywhere near his line of fire. And I'd be willing to bet a hundred dollars you don't have a subscription to
Popular Mechanics
—how'd you happen to know all that stuff about laser balloons?”

Nicholas shot me a look from where he had braced himself between the door and the dash. I detected a brief calculation, then an internal shrug as he looked me in the eye. “Technically, it was Gibraltar's insurer, Global Underwriters, that hired me. When I started looking into this, about the Air Force kicking Fowler outta here, you telling me the Air Force was involved, things started to fit together. So I made a few calls and then went to Global to sniff them out—I knew they were involved in underwriting things like this for aerospace contractors. They wanted me to find Fowler, and I knew the best way to do that was to stick close to you. I had to make sure Fowler didn't interfere with the liftoff, to back up Lanston. I didn't count on Lanston getting smart and trying to kill us all. And I didn't figure on Stella showing up.”

“Well, well, well. My brother using me as bait to catch Fowler.” I snorted. “Doesn't this all just figure?”

“Garth, I would have come out here anyway, you know. No reason not to come and get paid for it on top of helping you out. Hey, I never would have gotten to you at Vargas's so quick without Gibraltar's private jet. And they flew Gabby here, too.”

Damn him. Risk management espionage? Couldn't he ever do something out of brotherly or filial obligation? There always had to be an angle with Nicholas.

“So let me guess. You're getting married as some sort of arrangement with Mutual of Omaha? Because it damn well couldn't be for love.”

His face reddened, and the skin around his eyes got dusky as he tried to contain his anger.

“You've been needling me about this marriage, trying to get a rise out of me, and now you finally have. Happy? And what is it you want from me? Some sort of admission that I have weaknesses, that I need love? Well, I do, everybody does, I just don't think I have to wear it on my sleeve all the time the way you do. You and Angie fairly taunt me with your family bullshit, thinking you can change me by making me feel inadequate. Did it ever occur to you two that I don't need to be changed, that I can change on my own? That I needed to find the right person for me and work it out? And you, Garth, act so friggin' high and mighty. You have your girl and your love and your little taxidermy paradise, but isn't it funny, the one thing that's missing?”

I'm not sure if I asked him about what was missing or not, but he answered anyway.

“
A dog
. Garth is afraid of getting a dog and I'm afraid of getting married. What do these things have in common, brother dear?”

The barrage of emotion from him was almost unprecedented, and I admit that I was fairly stunned.

“Well, I'll tell you what the common element is, Garth. It came to me a few weeks ago. I visited Skunk Junction, where the house used to be. All wiped clean. Except for one thing. There are some rotten boards still in that tree out back. The one where the tree fort was. The one where you kept that possum, Arnold.”

There were a bunch of biting, hurtful things I could have said. But I decided to save it, to think on it a bit more. Besides, we still weren't out of the woods. Or the desert, as the case may be.

The gully spilled out onto a desert floor and the half-track crossed the shadow line from the hills into searing sunshine. The track ahead was clearly defined for a vehicle, but not for where Nicholas was going with this rampage.

“You still don't get it, do you? OK, I'll spell it out for you. I loved Dad, and through my scheming, I ruined his finances and he died trying to recover the money. In effect, I killed Dad. And you loved that
puppy,
you handed him over to Gabby, and she took him to the vet and had him put to sleep. You killed Arnold. Face it—we both have what people like to call
issues.
Different kinds of love are at issue, but we're both afraid of being hurt, of reliving—”

“Did you think this all up? Yourself?”

“—a past that Gabby wiped clean when she took down the house.
Yes.
I thought of it all myself.” The way he said that made me wonder if the woman in his life hadn't pitched in.

“I mean, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?” He turned and squinted into the distance, and I watched as he took a deep breath of desert air to try to compose himself. “And let's face it. Gabby hasn't made any of this any easier. We were brought up in pretty unsentimental circumstances, insular with no extended family. Then she wiped out the house, the only anchor to our family's past, and lit out. It's like you and I just came out of nowhere. Well, I did anyway. I was left on the doorstep. All makes sense now, doesn't it? Yes, I'm scared shitless of getting married.”

I stared ahead at the flat expanse toward the shimmering horizon. Nicholas was certainly a changed man to some extent, more so than I had imagined, despite his dual purposes. For one thing, he was right for a change. I was just plain scared about the dog, because of Arnold, because that possum also represented a bunch of things about our childhood that were disturbing and alienating. I couldn't put my finger on it exactly, and I'm no good at psychoanalyzing, especially myself. But I had the feel for what had been haunting me, and in the end the heart is often a better doctor for the head than the brain.

And perhaps, somehow, all this vuka nonsense, all this sense of being cursed, was a manifestation or extension of having Kit Carson and my past thrust upon me.

The rattle and clank of the truck seemed even louder as it filled the conversation void. I felt I should say something, but I wasn't sure what to say or how to react to what he'd just said.

Occasionally I follow my own advice, and this was one of those times.
If you don't know what to say, don't.

After ten minutes, I could discern a dark line in the distance. Then telephone poles. And traffic. And the perimeter fence.

From the back, Vargas's head appeared between me and Nicholas.

“Garth. Nicholas. Your mother, she is not breathing well. We need to get her to a hospital.”

I pushed the accelerator to the floor.

The half-track made quick work of the fence.

chapter 30

T
he hospital PA system came alive with a peevish, pissy male voice.

“Attention: whoever has the large military vehicle parked in the hospital's front driveway, please move it at once or it will be towed. This is the final announcement.”

For once I didn't care if my car got towed. Besides, there was a lot of other stuff going on that was more important. Nicholas, Vargas, and I were seated in the hospital waiting room. Angie and Otto arrived, tethered up Wilco outside, and joined our vigil. On pins and needles, we waited for word of Gabby's condition from the doctors.

Otto, the picture of solemnity, approached Angie and me. Standing before us, his eyes were downcast, his suit jacket and tie were folded neatly in his arms. He held them out to me.

“Garv, Otto to make very big wrong, to bring KGB as client to you. I disgrace Garv Carson Critters, and make danger, so it is that I must resignate my command.”

I pushed his
beezness
uniform back toward him.

“Otto, you brought Angie to me, which was good. You could not have known those three were KGB.”

“But what does matter? All same to danger.”

“Otto, I should apologize to you. It is me that keeps getting you into trouble. It is only when I am in trouble that you get in trouble, yes?”

“Mebe, but…”

“And who always comes to my rescue? You. You come when Garth needs help. You are a very special friend, and I need you to stay and run the Carson's Critters.”

“Otto,” Angie began, “you are not only our friend but family. You stay with us. And in our hearts.”

He'd transformed from abject humility into a monument of nobility, chin high.

“My friends, Otto, he to make like brother to both you, father to dog, and Stalin for boss of beezness.”

“Holy…” Nicholas began, pointing the remote at the TV and upping the volume. “Get a load of this.”

We all turned to see a CCN news segment with a red banner at the top reading:
LIVE—BREAKING NEWS.

On the screen was a live helicopter shot over a small-town main street, where a huge crowd assembled. The announcer was quite excited:

“At 10:10 this morning, in the middle of the Alien Days parade here in Flats Junction, New Mexico, a spectacle appeared in the sky. A silver, disc-like object came over a nearby rise and settled on Main Street to much commotion. Local police restored order and cleared the area. Authorities at nearby Kirtland Air Force Base and the Department of Homeland Security were notified.”

Angie gasped. “You're telling me that is the laser balloon you saw this morning? It doesn't look much like a balloon.”

“And if Vargas hadn't shot it full of holes…” Nicholas groaned.

“Hey…” Vargas folded his arms defiantly. “If it had been an alien ship, and those little bastards came at us with those probes, you and your rectum would be thanking me right now.”

Otto had recovered from his resignation and was winking at a nurse, but paused a moment and focused on the TV. “Of course, balloon very nice, yes? KGB has many balloon to come from outer space. Garv, why balloon on tele-vee?”

I'd long ago given up trying to get him to say “teevee” as opposed to “tele-vee.”

“It's a secret balloon that landed by accident in a town, and they think it's a spaceship from outer space.”

Otto stroked his beard, in deep contemplation. “Thinkink maybe balloon not so secret, eh?”

The announcer continued:

“The police are now approaching the craft, to a side of it where there appears to be a tether of some kind…”

“That's the rope where Fowler was hanging.” I pointed.

We were all leaning forward, riveted to the image on the screen. You could see two police officers looking under the slightly raised craft. They jumped back and drew their guns.

“…there appears to be…”
The announcer was at a loss for words.

The crowd behind the barricades surged forward, police running at them with hands raised, urging them to keep back. The helicopter camera zoomed in on the two officers pointing their guns under the balloon.

The cops leaned forward, looking more closely…and a dog raced out from under the craft, vanishing into the crowd.

I looked at Nicholas.

He looked at me.

We both looked to Vargas, who said: “This is not possible.”

“Mr. Carson?” There was a guy in a colorful smock standing behind us, a stethoscope around his neck.

“That's me,” Nicholas and I said in unison.

“Your mother is fine. She just caught a bit of a chill, I think—she has a slight fever, nothing to worry about.”

Angie jumped up and gave me a big hug of relief.

“Whew.” I beamed at Nicholas. “Nothing to worry about.”

He looked sidelong at the tele-vee.

“Except maybe the dog.”