Armed and Dangerous (The IMA) (5 page)

We both turned to glance at my mother who was making no move to discard her empty coffee cup and
lipstick-stained paper napkins. With a sigh, I did it for her. I believe the term for this is
enabler
. The pitying looks from the stewardess and surrounding passengers only served to further my humiliation.

The fasten-your-seat-belts icon popped up on the LED display above the door leading into the cockpit. Over the intercom, the pilot informed us that we were landing and would arrive in the Phoenix airport in approximately fifteen minutes — oh, and to wait until the plane had stopped before removing baggage from the overhead compartments and to please make sure we disposed of all trash in the proper trash receptacles, and thank you for choosing our airline.

I looked over my mother's shoulder to watch the plane's landing. There were lots of desert shrubs. Tumbleweeds, Joshua trees, and the occasional grove of saguaros scattered over the sand dunes that crested like ocean waves over the burnished landscape. Beautiful, but inhospitable. An endless sea of desert with islands of red rocks reaching up, cathedral-like, towards the sky.

“
You're breathing on me, Christina, and your breath stinks. Stop it.” Mamá shoved a tin of mints at me with an impatient expression, and I took two to make her shut up before the cute guy down the aisle heard her chastisements. She gave me a final irritated look before replacing the tin in her purse and turning to the window. “
Uy
. What a dump.”

“
Mamá —
” I trailed off. There was no point in correcting her. I should have known she wouldn't be able to appreciate it beyond a potential landfill.

“
What? It is true, is it not?”

“
No.”

She spritzed herself with a portable mister, taking care to avoid her carefully coiffed hair so it wouldn't frizz. “What were you thinking, Christina? Clearly you weren't. Remember this moment, when you regret your choice. It will be a lesson for you to curb your impulsive ways and listen to your mother.”

“Is this why you came along?” She looked up from the mister. “So you could nag me?” I clarified.

“
No.” She put the spray back into her purse. “I came along because I had hoped to talk some sense into you, but clearly you have none.”

I somehow managed not to laugh in her face.

She caught a glimpse of my expression. “Are you going to be sick? Turn your head, if you are. I am wearing designer.”

“
I'm not going to vomit,” I said dryly. “Thank you for your concern about my health.”

She winced at my word choice. “Good.”

At least she hadn't commented on my weight.

Only because she hasn't had occasion to do so yet.

Indeed. When we stopped for a quick lunch at a pretzel stand, she managed to squeeze in four snide remarks about my weight, her weight, carbohydrates, and diabetes.

“
Don't glare like that,” she said. “You'll get wrinkles.”

Sometimes, I really hated being right.

We took a cab to Coswell from Phoenix. I hadn't brought much with me. With a little creative rearrangement the driver managed to fit all my suitcases in the back seat and trunk. My mother sat up front with the driver, who looked down her tank top at every right-hand turn. “Planning a trip?” he asked the reflection of her boobs.

“My oldest is starting her first year at college.”

He tilted the rear-view mirror and met my accusing glare. After that, he stopped trying to stare down her cleavage. He even helped remove the luggage from the car without either of us asking. My mother gave him a tip she couldn't really afford. “You did not bring much,” she said.

You didn't carry much
.
I thought you were supposed to be helping?
I shrugged. “I brought what I needed.”

“
This is hardly enough. How many coats did you bring? One? What if it gets dirty?”

“
I'll wash it.”

“
And go coatless in the meantime?”

“
For all of
two hours
, yes. It's Arizona, Mamá. It isn't like Oregon. They don't have cold winters here. They don't even really get rain, let alone snow.”

“
What a nightmare.”

I wasn't sure, exactly, what she was referring to. Better not to know. “Please, Mamá. People are staring — ”

That was a mistake. Her gestures got more dramatic, the idea of a live audience proving too tempting to resist. “Why are you being so self-destructive?”

Was she talking about me? “Excuse me?”

“Is this to punish me? Was I not a good enough mother?”

She had been referring to herself. What a surprise. “Maybe this isn't about you,” I said. She stared at me as if she couldn't possibly fathom a world that dared exist without her edifying presence, and I added, carefully, “Maybe I want to escape. To get away.”

“From them?”

“
Partly,” I conceded. “And partly not.”

She fairly wailed. “I don't understand.”

“It's quiet here,” I said. “Peaceful. I know you don't understand that, that Coswell isn't glamorous like some big city on the coast, but I like that simplicity. It suits me.”

“
Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, I suppose it does.” She tossed her head. “Just so long as you are not throwing your life away because of
him
. It is foolish, Christina, to destroy your future for a man. Especially one like him. Men like that, they do not like to be reminded of personal obligations.”

“
Yeah, well, he's not the only one.”

There was a heavy silence. I hadn't even realized that I had spoken my thoughts aloud until I saw her flinch. I opened my mouth instinctively to apologize, then shut it.
What was she going to do — demand that I pack up my things and return with her to Oregon?

Fat
chance.

“
I am trying to give you advice,” she said.

“
It isn't wanted.”

“
You need to stop blaming me. Us. Your father and I, we are not responsible for what happened. You need to take account for your own actions. Dr. Linden says — ”

“
I don't give a
toss
what Dr. Linden says. I am your child. You're the adult — or at least, you're supposed to be. Take some responsibility for once, Mamá, instead of looking for someone to absolve you of it.”

“
You never used to speak to me this way.”

“
I didn't used to have a choice. But now I do. And I'm choosing to leave, just as you did when you abandoned me. No,” I corrected myself before she could speak, “what you did was worse. At least abandonment is passive. You — you took a more active role. You sold me out. You knowingly put a price on my innocence, my well-being, and my
life
.”

Mamá released a string of barbed Spanish curses that had passerby turning heads. I hoped none of them spoke Spanish. I would die if a single one of them understood what she was saying.

“At least he rescued me,” I said, when she had finished her offensive slurs.

“
Christina.”

“
Ask yourself what kind of person does those things,” I said. “What kind of a woman willingly condemns her own daughter to death? What kind of woman refuses to help her daughter move into college because she doesn't want to hear how much of a scuzz-bucket her new boyfriend is? What kind of woman sets out to ruin her daughter's new life before it's even started? Ask yourself those questions — I think you'll find it's you. It's always been a competition between you and me…and I would have gladly let you win, if it had only meant that you would love me.”

She made a small sound, like a choked-back sob.

“I'm sure I can take care of the rest.” I scooped up my luggage. I didn't want her to see the tears forming in my eyes. “See you at Christmas, maybe.”

I heard her step forward and tensed, afraid that she was going to hug me. But she couldn't bring herself to do it and I was relieved because I thought I might have slapped her if she had.

Chapter Five

Transparency

Michael:

I'd grown up on the streets, been disemboweled, even spent a week on death row, but my retraining had been vicious enough to earn a place in the running of the rat-race my life had become. They hadn't been joking about the torture. Sleep-deprivation, starvation, sharpened blades. Resistance was not just futile, it was fatal. The plane ride back to the United States had been the first time I had been able to relax in almost three months. I spent the entire ten hour flight asleep.

When I arrived in my cheap motel room I received a text message with an address from a number I didn't recognize but I knew who it was from. It looked like my suffering was going to be an ongoing event. I popped some caffeine pills and called a cab. It dropped me off in front of an old Victorian for what I was sure was going to be some prime time shits and giggles.

A flickering screen wavered before the men and women assembled in this stuffy room as the office grunt fiddled with a remote I was pretty sure he had no idea how to work. This had once been the library of a large manor home. Over the years it had been modified and rewired to serve as a base of operations for the IMA.

Forcing an old house to service the grade of technology we use is a bit like hiring a seventy-year-old hooker for trying out new sex positions.

“
This is the Night Bureau.” Office Grunt had figured out how to work the remote. “Also known as the
Bureau du Nuit
.” He clicked one of the buttons. A corrupted image of the French flag appeared. The image was in gray-scale. “The BN are a semi-terrorist organization sited primarily in France, though they presently have bases of operation running in Cambodia, parts of Eastern Europe, and the Sudan. This is their flag.”

He pressed another button and the screen faded to black. He set the remote down on the table and mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Until now, the BN have not been a major source of conflict for us—beyond the occasional inconvenience.” He attempted to shove his handkerchief  into his suit pocket and missed.

“We have no bases in those parts of the world, with the exception of Romania, and bar a few extremists the BN have left us alone. A favor we have always perfunctorily returned. However, the BN are encroaching upon our territories in England, to the point where our clients are beginning to perceive them as a threat.

“
Likewise, the BN is interested in obtaining political recognition. Should they succeed in establishing themselves, the potential threat they pose to us will be great. They are left-wing radicals and notoriously anti-military. They see our clients, and therefore us by proxy, as a threat to political and global security, and have already killed two of our operatives in cold blood. I know what you are thinking: if they are anti-military, why are they using violence to prove their point? The BN operate under traditional utilitarian principles—that pain can be a necessary expenditure for the well-being of the majority.”

Office Grunt paused for dramatic effect and except for the rustle of papers and the subtle creaking of chairs, it was silent. Pleased, he continued, “Our mission objective is simple. Target the individual leaders of the BN and bring them to heel. Should we be unable to reach some form of agreement, a rougher form of justice will be necessary.”

The kind of justice accompanied by mental implements and clamps.

I rubbed at the back of my neck, which had gone clammy. I could feel my pulse; it was rapid, far above what was acceptable for a normal, resting heart rate. My heart was doing some very interesting things in my chest. I wondered if I was having a heart-attack, if I'd overdone it with the caffeine pills. My palms were sweating.

Callaghan got to his feet, clapping slowly. “That will be all. Dismissed, Mr. Rivers.”

Rivers rushed to comply, coming close to knocking over the projection screen in his haste. Callaghan watched the flustered man leave the way a cat tracks a wounded bird. Then he turned to face the remaining operatives. “Ladies — ”

His eyes locked with mine. I lifted my left arm, fist clenched, and hit my elbow.
Fuck you
.

“
Gentlemen. The attacks by the BN have been strictly hit-and-run. Their numbers are great, though not as great as they would have the world believe and certainly not as great as ours. They are trying to engage us in a game of cat and mouse. To eliminate our operatives one by one. It is the strategy of one who has everything to lose, which means that they are already afraid. As they well should be.” He glanced around the room. “It is also why we shall not be playing by their rules.”

Spoken like a true psychopath.

“What are your orders, sir?”

“
As Mr. Rivers so eloquently put it, our goal is to hunt down the individual leaders. So far they have managed to elude us, thereby permitting them to remain silent. Remedy that. Find them. Catch them. Make them feel talkative.”