Quieter Hand Grenades

I was momentarily relieved when the guard shack came into view and there was nobody in view.

That changed when the Skoda backfired.

And not a little one either.

I've had quieter hand grenades.

I think it was curiosity, more than anything, that brought the first guard to the barrier.

I could see him scan the perimeter looking for smoke plumes, or fire, or some indication where the explosion had happened.  It took him a moment to recognize that the call was coming from inside the house.

He slowly began to focus on the car that was speeding toward him.

It was almost cute the way he pulled himself together, and raised his arm indicating that I should stop.

Not going to happen.

I slid as far down in the seat as I could and floored it.

It was pretty late in the game when he realized I wasn't going to stop.

He was barely able to shoulder his weapon before being introduced to car and its bumper.

The hardwood barrier pole squeezed him off the hood like old toothpaste before slicing off the windscreen.

By then, the remaining guards were out of the shack and firing.  I think I lost a taillight, but that was about it.

No, to get to the RP.

To his credit, Jim always put the time in on ex-fil.

Even if it was one of those ridiculous 24-hour launches that the Secretary and his people came up with.

He was great at planning--probably the one thing he was great at.  He'd have the clock worked out to the minute.  No hiding out:  finish the play, blow-off the mark, and then ex-fil.  No time to catch your breath.

He'd always say that the end of the play was no time to get caught waiting for a bus.

He had kind of a sixth sense about how long each step would take.  Even when things went completely to shit, he'd somehow have taken that into account.

And here I'd gone and screwed up the schedule by going off script.

How was he going to handle that?

I kept thinking about that as the temp gauge kept climbing.

Jim would go back to the beginning.

Start over....

Start....

I made a quick U-turn.

Skodas

Sticking to the tree rim, I followed the road as it led away from the yard.

I was careful to steer well clear of the guard house and watchful for any remote sensors.  I didn't really expect any, but I hate surprises.

After about a mile, I found what I was looking for.

Actually, tripped over it.

A railway siding.

I followed it until I came to what I took to be an employee parking lot.

Lots more cars than I expected.  The workers must make good money.

Hope it's enough to afford insurance.

I started  my sneak and peak, looking for doors left unlocked, and any visible clothing that looked like it might fit.

I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks between bowls of porridge, when I came to an old Skoda that seemed to have everything I was looking for.

Now, to be honest, I fucking hate Skodas.  They're bad luck.

Made with six cylinders, you could MAYBE count on half of them working at any one time.  They were maybe the worst for our line of work because they talked.  You could always tell when one was coming, because of the knocking and the cloud of smoke coming from the tail pipe.

We were wrapping up the Svardia job and the only work car we could get was the ironically named Skoda Rapid.

Christ, we could have walked out of the country faster, but Jim wanted to "stick to the plan."

We spent more time by the side of the road than some streetwalkers.  Ex-fil was meant to take under an hour and ended up taking four days.

Four days.

No way that was part of the plan, Jim.

The giant coat that had been tossed so carelessly into the back seat turned out to be a surprisingly good fit.

I slammed the driver's seat as far back as it would go, got in and hot-wired the starter.

The car started to cough like a two-pack-a-day smoker clearing their throat.  Hack, splutter, cough, cough..., and then it caught.

I kept expecting security to show up at any moment, but I guess it was cold enough to keep them close to the guard shack stove.

After grinding a couple of pounds of coffee, the Skoda slid into gear and I slowly backed out of the space, heading for the front of the lot.

I hadn't gone a hundred yards before the temp gauge began to spike.

Christ.

There was no option now, I was going to have to risk the barrier just to keep the vehicle from burning up.

I quickly unfastened the soft top and made sure to bundle it as big as possible.

Less of a sitting duck.

I worked through the gears and built RPMs.

Getting Your Hands on a Compass

I needed to get to the rendezvous point.

I knew where it was, but I had no idea where I was.

You have to remember this was long before GPS and cellphones.  Getting your hands on a compass was considered a stroke of luck.

On a clear night, you could tell where north was.  I knew where West was, because I'd seen the sun go down.  Problem was that the RP was at the Four Corners, just across the border in a friendly country--at least, they were friendly when we started this--and that was north northwest.  That's harder to stay true to.

Daylight was beginning to stir by the time I reached the light source.

It was a large parking lot.  Looked like acres of cars and small trucks; each one just as uninteresting as the one next to it.

Acre after acre of utilitarian design:  taste by committee.

I never felt more American.

Why would somebody be stockpiling all these vehicles?

There was a factory somewhere close.

And security.

And party faithful.

Time to go shopping.

Now I Was Fucked

Now, I was fucked.

Surrounded by trees, it was impossible to know where I was, or what direction I should take.

At least a couple of hours until dark.

The schedule was blown as far as I was concerned.

Nothing I could do about that now.  I was in the cold and would have to find my own way out.

I picked out a good looking tree and decided to stretch my legs.

I used to love climbing trees when I was younger, before gravity proved to be an untrustworthy ally.

Nothing link spending a very hot summer with your leg in a cast to make you question some bad decisions.

Didn't keep me from making more of them, but I did always question them.

The daylight did not so much fade as melt like an ice cream in winter.

I dozed off a couple of times.  Very dangerous thing to do when you're balanced on a branch sixty feet in the air.  

The last time I snapped awake I could have sworn that gravity was close by, licking its chops.

At last, it was dark enough.

I climbed a little higher so I could see the night sky.

There was a large plume of light off to my left.

Humans.

As good a place as any to start.

I started the long climb back down.

Nothing Familiar About Anything

 I have no idea where I am.

There is nothing familiar about anything.

It's the middle of the day, and I'm wearing a uniform that barely fits.

I needed to find cover fast.

I was so busy looking for landmarks that I didn't pay attention to my big stupid feet.  So, it was not really a surprise when I tripped over a rail.

Trains.

Gotta love these old European countries and their trains.

I started following the right-of-way toward what I took to be the centre of town.

When I came upon some undergrowth, I worked my way in and bedded down to wait for dark.  I'd be less of a bruised thumb after dark.

I woke up to the sound of a train rumbling past.

It was headed in the right direction, so I rolled out of my lair and caught a ride.

It's not easy hopping on a moving train--not like they make it look in the movies--but it's also not that complicated.

I pulled myself up on one of those ladders and worked my way to one of the couplings.  There was just enough of a perch that I could stand there with very little chance of being seen.

Little risk is not the same as zero risk.

At one point, we passed a passenger train that had been sidetracked to let us pass.

As we slowly lumbered past, I noticed a number of children with their faces stuck to the windows.  One of them even waved at me.

I did the only thing I could think of, I saluted.

He must have been thrilled, because he turned away to tell the nearest adult.

I took that as my cue to make a quick exit.

I jumped off the coupling and rolled away from both trains.

My Jaw was Starting to Cramp

​My jaw was starting to cramp.

You’re supposed to keep it loose, so they don’t break it.

I’d had a broken jaw and was not anxious to go through that again.

Where were they?

One of the Hartford guys have trouble with their costume?

Like most day players, they were always overstating their skill sets and understating their vital statistics.

There was that one job where we needed some divers—scuba, you know—and the Hartford guy  said he had just the people.  

There were six of them.  For some reason—I don’t remember why—they all had to have matching wetsuits.  

Fine. 

No problem.

We got the gear, got the suits to the job and then those fucking guys show up.

Like High School football coaches, the lot of them.

You know like sometimes you see a group of guys on motorbikes out for a weekend ride, and you can just tell they’ve spent all week polishing the chrome and Friday conditioning their leathers?

They looked like that.

We had to send them home.  No way would they fit the suits.

Jim had to improvise.

Jim hates to improvise.

They could have been the best divers in the world, but, in our scenario, they were going to stick out like beachballs in a funeral home.

After that, we never built a move around them.  They were the parsley.

If I got my jaw broken off some parsley, I was going to be pissed.

He was taking another water break.

Apparently, it’s thirsty work beating on me.

I was reaching my limit.

Time to get ready.

I can’t tell you how grateful I was that we were close to the same size.

Bad Guy HQ

​I wasn’t exactly sure where I was.

Sure “Bad Guy HQ, but was this a satellite office, or the main branch?

No evidence of windows:  basement probably.

I looked up.

Sprinklers.

I smiled.

We could be in the worst fucking country and it was still somebody’s job to go around and make sure the minimum code was enforced.

Bureaucrats are the same everywhere.

“Excuse me, Mister Dictator, Sir, but your fearsome and fatal secret torture chamber and prison must be set back from the roadway a minimum of fifty feet.”

I followed the supply lines.

A couple of corners later, I found what I was looking for.

There was an illuminated panel over what looked like a fire door,

“Xzit.”

I pushed through and headed for the fresh air.

Thinking He’d Killed Me

​If the chair hadn’t wobbled, maybe it would have turned out differently.

Movement equals opportunity.

So,  I took advantage.

He wasn’t ready.

I have to tell myself that so I don’t feel like such a heel. 

But, he clearly wasn’t ready, because, when the chair went over, he froze.

Maybe he was thinking he killed me.

I don’t know.

Anyway, it gave me time.

Not a lot, but enough.

First, the chair leg snapped.

Then, so did his.

It wasn’t fair, but, like I said, he was starting to piss me off.

And, after I’d wedged myself into his uniform, I did take a minute to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Turns out he could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it.

I may even have broken his jaw.

That’s on me.

Memories of Meals I Had Forgotten

 You can feel the last bits of last night’s dinner as they come loose from the gaps between your teeth.

In an instant, you recall the mountainous lasagna and soupy house salad, you had at Somme hole-in-the wall that Paris said was the best in town.

Never take restaurant recommendations from the Talent.  Trying to be s team player will always leave yo reaching for the antacids.  Every single time.

Then, he used his left.

Caught my tongue between my teeth.

More memories of meals I had forgotten.

I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re taking their sweet time.

“Oh, we need a stall for half-a-day.  Let’s send Willie.”

I can’t tell you how many times I got the short straw while Jim, or Rollin, or even Barney in the later years, would go off and work the mark.

“Get yourself caught, and keep them busy while we do this one thing.”

The “one thing” was, invariably, the toughest part of the play, and would take way longer than planned.

And, while they were sweating over which wire to cut, I would be getting the crap beat out of me.

After a while, you get numb to the beatings.  It was the shots that took it out of you.

Like first year philosophy students, there was no agreement on what constituted truth, and so there were as many different varieties of “truth sera” as there were dictatorships and criminal organizations we would go up against.

I remember this one job where I had to fill some time and I worked my way up the organizational chart of interrogators and each one of them had a different truth serum.

It struck me as funny at the time, and I got very philosophical about truth.

Aren’t we all just searching for knowledge?

It seemed only right that each serum deserved its own truth.

Okay, this guy is really starting to piss me off.