The Last American Wizard (3 page)

He could make out some twisted pieces of light-blue plastic in his usual parking
space.

“I guess I will need a
car.”

“Good. Then we are in business, right?”

“I guess
so.”

“Good. I’ve got some things to do right now, but I’d
appreciate it if you could begin
immediately.”

Steve slowly turned around and looked at his apartment. His clothes looked as though a knife-wielding fashion critic had attacked them. He touched his laptop and it rolled away, revealing fluttering bits of paper that he deduced must be his stack of notebooks. One of his shoes was lying by his right foot. He picked it up and slowly poured broken glass out onto the floor. “I’m going to need to be paid up front, I
think.”

“Not a problem. Just answer the door.” There was the
synthetic clicking sound that cell phones made to indicate the end of a
call.

“Answer
the–”

There was a firm knock on his
door.

Steve looked for a moment and then carefully worked his way across the glittering carpet in the manner of a trained soldier moving through a minefield. When he reached the front door, he leaned against the wall and cautiously removed the worst splinters from his bare feet before he looked through the peephole. Standing in the hall was a woman with the wide shoulders and blunted V- shaped torso of an Olympic swimmer. She was wearing a tight olive-green T-shirt, loose tan cargo pants, and a military-style dark-blue baseball cap with an extremely short blond ponytail poking out of the back. Her face had the classic beauty of a movie star–marred by the fact her nose had apparently been broken several times.

He was instantly sure he had never seen her before. He would definitely have
remembered.

He watched without speaking as she reached forward and knocked again. Then she called. “Mr. Rowan? I need to speak with you on a matter of some
urgency.”

Steve realized two things. First, his original assumption that anyone that good looking was knocking on the wrong door was incorrect, and second, he still had nothing on but a dusting of broken
glass.

“Can you wait a second?” he called through the
door.

“Yes.” Steve could almost hear the automatic “sir” that she had clipped
off.

Looking around the debris that filled his efficiency apartment– hell, that now
was
his efficiency apartment–he could see that most of his clothing was in the usual places, i.e., strewn across chairs, bed, desk, and carpet. Consequently, all of it was covered in broken glass. He thought that it might have been a good idea to put some of his things
away.

Well, it was too late, now not to mention that planning for explosions was something he’d always seen as a bad sign when he was working in battle zones. In his experience, that sort of thinking was usually followed by shaking, weeping, and
leaving.

Concentrating hard, he managed to work his way back to his bureau with only two pauses to grit his teeth and stifle a scream as broken glass opened a new cut on the soles of his feet. “I have to keep my mind on what’s important here,” he thought. “Shrieking like a little girl would hardly impress that hottie at the door, would it?”

He opened the bureau drawers and examined the contents. Since it only held things he never wore, he found himself pawing through a pile of colorful, stretchy, and utterly useless exercise outfits that he’d bought in his occasional periods of irrational optimism. For Steve, exercise had always been a case of negative reinforcement. He felt like a schlub in the baggy sweats that actually fit him, so he didn’t go to the gym, and therefore couldn’t even squeeze into the cool exercise outfits.

“Well, it’s no use crying over missed gym sessions,” he thought. “Opportunity has just knocked and I shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

Finally, he pulled out a pair of red gym shorts and a black T-shirt. The shorts had CAPE MAY LIFEGUARD printed across the butt, and the shirt featured a flaming skull with the words WASHINGTON, DC: WHERE THE WEAK ARE KILLED AND EATEN.

“Not perfect,” he thought. “However, they will simply have
to do.”

After he’d banged a pair of flip-flops together to get rid of the glass, he put them on, took a step, winced, removed the flip-flops, and brushed off the soles of his feet. He went through this entire routine twice before he could crunch across the carpet. He took a second to compose himself and opened the door, trying to appear casual and
unruffled.

“I’m Steve Rowan. Can I help
you?”

There was dead silence as the woman gave him an extremely thorough head-to-toe examination–including a glance around the side to read what was written on his rear. She shook her head slowly, took a deep breath, and appeared to gather the determination to weather a bad
situation.

“No, Mr. Stephen Rowan. I’m here to help you. I’m Master Chief Petty Officer Ace Morningstar. You may call me Ace or Chief. May I come
in?”

“Is this a police matter?” Steve asked. “Because if it is, the answer is ‘not without a
warrant.’”

“No, I’m not with the police. I’m your driver and bodyguard. You may call me ‘Ace.’ or ‘Chief’” She reached into one of the many pockets of her cargo pants and produced a small sealed envelope. “Here’s your fee for the first week–in cash as agreed. I’d like to come in and check out your security situation. Once that’s completed, I’ll take you in my car to your first
briefing.”

Steve automatically took the envelope, which felt like any other envelope filled with a fair-sized amount of cash. While his right hand was busy attempting to work out how much money was in the envelope strictly by feel, she stepped around that side and entered his apartment. She said over her shoulder, “I’m sure that these are great clothes for hanging around the apartment, but since we will be meeting with people over the age of twelve, I think you’ll be more comfortable in something a bit
less…comfortable.”

Closing the door, he said with a touch of sarcasm. “Come right in. Make yourself at
home.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rowan, I would, but I’d never consider living in a place like this, so I can’t really consider it home.” She stepped out onto his small balcony through the empty frame of the sliding door and began a long, slow survey of his
surroundings.

Tossing the envelope on the bed, Steve went to see if there were any respectable clothes that hadn’t been rendered into exquisitely painful bondage
attire.

Eventually, he found a pair of khakis, a blue button-down shirt, and a blazer in the back of his closet. To his surprise, there were unopened packages of boxer shorts and socks in the lowest drawer of his bureau–a drawer he could have sworn he’d never opened in the entire time he’d lived in the
apartment.

Clearly, a previous renter, a snappy dresser, had left them by the evidence of the leopard prints and pastel stripes. Steve had a vague feeling that it was wrong to wear someone else’s underwear; on the other hand, he could see by the label that they were his size. As he broke open a pair of red-white-and-blue striped boxers, he reflected that it was probably appropriate in the current state of emergency.

Just as he stripped the red gym shorts down to the floor, he heard glass break over by the window. Evidently, Ace had completed her
survey.

“I have to say, it’s not much to look
at.”

Steve froze as he realized his bare butt was aimed squarely at the woman’s voice. Deliberately, he switched the shorts for the boxers, stepped into the khaki pants, and pulled both up at once as he stood up. Reaching for his shirt, he said, “You mean the apartment?”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah, well, it’s usually a mess. I’d have to say that that explosion outside has significantly raised the bar on what I’d describe as a
‘mess.’”

“Explosion?”

Buttoning his shirt, Steve gestured out the window with an elbow. “Well, whatever that was that blew the sliding doors in just before you knocked. From that engine, it looks like a major jetliner crash.”

“Engine?”

Slipping his feet into the loafers that had taken a good five minutes of banging against the wall, running his hand inside, cursing, sucking on a finger until the bleeding slowed, and then repeating, Steve walked out to the balcony. He pointed at the jet engine still smoking on the parked cars. “Yeah, that big round
thing with Boeing and Roll-Royce logos on it that’s sitting where my car used to
be.”

Ace gave him a sharp look, evidently made a decision, and pulled a pair of mirrored aviator shades from where they were hanging on the neck of her T-shirt. Slipping them on, she turned back to the parking lot. She gave a low whistle. “Yeah, that does appear to be a jet
engine.”

“What are those glasses?” Steve asked. “And I don’t mean, ‘Are they
Ray-Bans?’”

Ace
pulled
off
the
sunglasses.
“It’s
easier
to
show
than
tell. Here, look through
them.”

She held the glasses up before his eyes. Outside, he could see that the cars were all intact because there was no enormous jet engine on top of them. He pulled the lenses up on his forehead and the smoking jet engine was back. He tested it several times. Down, undamaged cars. Up, lead story on the evening
news.

“In most cases, these allow people to see things that aren’t there.” Ace plucked the glasses out of his fingers and slipped them back in her T-shirt. “In your case, I think you already see what
isn’t there, so they work in
reverse.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at
all.”

“Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir. I’ve been told that they won’t work for much longer, anyway. They were designed for an environment we no longer
enjoy.”

“What environment was
that?”

“Reality,” she answered. “Are you ready? We need to go now.”

When they reached the door of the apartment, Steve heard his phone start playing the eerie falling minor chords of P!nk’s
Please Don’t Leave Me.
“Who the hell is calling
me?”

“Your phone is.” Ace looked baffled. “Can’t you hear
it?”

“I know it’s my phone. I also know I never put that song on
it.” Steve walked back and picked up the smartphone from the bed where he’d left it. The music stopped instantly. He looked at the face to see who had called, but there was only an animated cartoon of the gloved hand–now wagging a warning forefinger.
“Something must be wrong with it. It’s showing me cartoons instead of keeping track of missed calls. Maybe I should just toss it and pick up another one
somewhere.”

The phone vibrated violently and Steve dropped it on the bed in surprise. He felt a presence at his side. Ace was standing right next to him, evidently having crossed the room without a
sound.

“Sir, if you’ll take my advice,” the woman looked at him gravely, “I’d be very careful of that particular unit. It’s already saved your life once
today.”

Steve stared at
her.

“Let me make that a bit clearer for you.” She said in that tone that only drill instructors and the football coach on
Friday Night Lights
had ever truly mastered. “Pick. Up. That.
Phone.”

Without a word, Steve grabbed the phone and put it in his shirt pocket.

Ace looked at him critically. “Don’t you have a cover for it?”

“No. It’s just a phone. For that matter, it’s only a cheap knockoff.”

“No sir, it’s not ‘just a phone.’” Ace shook her head, wisps of short blond hair emerging from under the baseball cap. “We’ll
need to pick up a milspec case: unbreakable, waterproof, and with a battery extender. Perhaps solar
power.”

He repeated, “It’s just a
phone.”

Her voice went back to that sharp, severe command level. “Do not say that again,
sir.”

Steve
was
getting
a
bit
tired
of
being
pushed
around.
“It’s. Just.
A....”

The cell phone was clearly malfunctioning–his breast pocket was on fire, with smoke rising in a small column. He reached to pull it out before it exploded but found that Ace had grabbed his wrist. “Damn. She’s got fingers like a bear trap,” he thought as he sucked his chest back from the shirt to lessen the pain and
struggled to free his
hand.

Neither effort had the slightest
success.

The pain in his chest continued to increase and he thought he could smell burning flesh–at the least, the smell of singed chest hair. Then a pistol simply appeared–aimed squarely at the bridge of his nose. His eyes crossed as all his attention was suddenly focused on the hole at the end of the black muzzle. Ace released his wrist, used that hand to pull back the slide, and, with the light behind him, Steve could see a coppery shine appear deep inside the spiraled metal
barrel.

“Sir, I have been told that you are a crucial resource and that I should defend you with my life.” Ace spoke slowly and extremely clearly. “However, I should tell you that my orders state that this particular telephone has the potential to play an extremely important role. The optimum result of my mission is to return with both you and your phone. However, the minimum acceptable outcome is that I return with just the
phone.”

There was a pause. The pistol didn’t move–nor did Ace’s blue eyes. “Are we clear on this,
sir?”

Steve nodded. The sensation of heat and pain against his chest just stopped, the smoke vanished, and the pistol moved up and away from the bridge of his
nose.