Page 85 of Slow Burn

Martin

Martin had never worn a bulletproof vest before, and he didn’t like it much. It felt like wearing one of his Aunt Martha’s hand-knitted sweaters, lumpy and suffocating and ugly as hell. He picked at the Velcro fasteners until Mrs. Womack slapped his hand.

“I don’t like bringing you into this at all,” she said, and stepped back to admire the fit. “Still, I suppose we have to make do. Agent Mendoza simply must stay with Carling in case anyone tries to get to her, which leaves me without a driver. I assume you can drive.”

“I did okay earlier.” He knew he sounded defensive, but couldn’t tell if he sounded scared, which was how he felt. Mrs. Womack looked at him over the top of her glasses. She was wearing a bulky black sweater, a loose black skirt, and sensible black orthopedic shoes. Her support hose were black, too. She blended in to the dark shadows of the parking lot where they stood, except for the silver blue gleam of her hair and the glitter of her eyeglasses. He shivered in a new blast of arctic-cold wind and reached for his coat and gloves.

“You got the car shot half to hell, lost the back window, and managed to let Agent Carling collect two bullets along the way,” she corrected. “I believe you’ll have to do better this time.”

She dug in her big purse and came up with her ball of yarn and knitting needles, frowned, and dug again. She came up with a handful of ammunition clips that she slipped in the pockets of her big black slouch coat.

“Do I get a gun?” he asked. Agent Jennings, who was silently donning his bulletproof vest a few feet away, looked up. He had two expressions, the second one was disgust. It vanished as quickly as it appeared. A car drove through the parking lot, speakers booming bass. Agent Jennings turned to track its progress and only relaxed when it disappeared back to the road and sped away.

“No, dear,” she said, speaking carefully as if Martin had a hearing impairment. “You drive thecar.”

“Shouldn’t you be calling in the local FBI agents?” he guessed. “The police? The boy scouts? Somebody?”

Mrs. Womack left him to join Agent Jennings at the trunk of the car. She reached in and clicked open a case, took out a shotgun, and racked the shells with terrifying precision.

“Bryce dear, I think you might want to take something with more range, perhaps the Mac-10. We should have some extra clips in here somewhere.” Without looking away from whatever assortment of death-dealing weapons she had in the trunk, she said, “Mr. Grady, I don’t think you fully understand our position. We are not, per se, here in an official capacity.”

“What?” He watched the two of them load guns and felt weak at the knees. “What? Excuse me?”

“Oh, it’ll be quite all right, you’ll see. All you need to worry about is driving.” She paused a second and sighed. “I do wish Adrian were here. I wish that very much. She’ll be so disappointed to have missed it.”

Agent Jennings slammed the trunk shut and walked around to open the passenger-side door for Mrs. Womack. Martin stood flat-footed and openmouthed, breathing in air cold enough to sear his lungs, until she clucked her tongue and came back to him, rooting in her oversized purse.

“I almost forgot,” she said, and came up with the blue scarf she’d been knitting in Carling’s room. “Here, dear. Keep your neck warm. It’s going to be very cold tonight.”

The car was a nondescript-looking blue, American-made, new but not flashy. He wasn’t even sure what model it was, but it was automatic and had a lot of power under the hood. He pulled out of the hospital parking lot and followed her directions east. Apart from the directions, she had nothing to say to him. He felt like he was sixteen again, taking his driver’s exam.If she asks me to parallel park, I’m dead.

“Where are we going?” he asked after ten minutes. She gave him a beatific smile.

“Don’t ask silly questions.” Her tone was steel. “Agent Jennings?”

He was doing something with electronics in the backseat, producing beeps and bleeps and blips. She turned to look over her shoulder; a green CRT light gave her a gargoyle complexion.

“The truck’s still parked behind the dry cleaners,” he reported. She nodded. “I should be able to tell when they start moving.”

“That’s excellent. Very good work. Martin, Mr. Jennings visited our friend’s dry cleaning establishment today and dropped off some suits. While he was there, he took the liberty of a quick tour of the back rooms, and in one of them there was a large stack of boxes ready to be loaded for shipping. What did you find in the boxes, Bryce?”

“Dallas Cowboys sweatshirts,” he said in between bleeps. “Nice thick ones.”

“Now, I don’t know about you, Mr. Grady, but I am such a football fan, and sweatshirts like those sell. And not just in America. They could be sold in Russia, for instance. In England. To American troops abroad.” Mrs. Womack turned back face-forward. “I’d guess this is just the first stage of a larger operation.”

“But—wait—what about the ones who’ve already died? What were they? Accidents?”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Womack who answered, but Jennings.

“Object lessons. We think he was proving the effectiveness of the process to potential buyers—one of the buyers, for example, was probably based in Louisiana, so he picks a Louisiana preacher in Dallas for a religious convention, gives him the special dry cleaning, and tells the buyer to watch for the preacher’s name in the papers.” One of the electronic tones changed to a higher pitch. “I’m getting movement on the box.”

“Bryce put a tracking device in one of the boxes,” Mrs. Womack said. “Isn’t he clever. Where’s it moving?”

“South,” he said. “Downtown.”

Mrs. Womack stopped smiling.

“Drive,” she told Martin tightly. “And quickly. Half-time is over.”

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