Zero day code, p.20
Zero Day Code, page 20
part #1 of End of Days Series
He idly scoped out his fellow vets as he crossed the main hall. An ancient gentleman in a wheelchair with an Iwo Jima hat sat next to a much younger woman, who patted his hand. Rick guessed it was his daughter or maybe even a granddaughter. The family resemblance was strong. Another man lurched toward Physical Therapy, short of one leg. Somebody was playing a piano next to a table set up with a sign “Cookies For Our Heroes.”
Rick snorted at that. The cookies were genuine, but he knew that actual storybook heroes were few and far between. He was just getting through the day.
Nomi, who was just as familiar with the VA as Rick, led them toward a set of double doors from which hung a brown and white placard, “CTAD/CSRC”. As they walked through, Rick glanced at the VA motto on the wall above and to his left, a quote from Abraham Lincoln. “To Care For Him Who Shall Have Borne The Battle.”
Battle, he thought. It was always there, never far from his thoughts. He pushed through the swinging doors, being careful not to clip his dog. They emerged into a sunny hallway with a series of doors to the left. Rick made a brief stop by the restroom, before continuing to room 1E55 of the CSRC, or the “Combat Stress Recovery Clinic.”
Rick went through the doors and walked into a wall of silence. There were a dozen men and women seated in the room, which was painted light brown. As usual, no one spoke. Rick knew that everyone present was a confirmed combat trauma case; he could hear the fluorescents hum. He walked over to the reception desk. The person closest to him, a middle-aged woman, looked up and spoke.
“Name and last four?”
“Boreham, 5088.”
The receptionist typed something in her computer, frowning. She sighed and tried again.
“Problem?” Rick asked.
“Not for you, sir,” she said. “Systems been glitchy since yesterday is all. There, you’re good, Mister Boreham. Doctor Cairns knows you’re here. Please have a seat and fill out this survey.” She handed Rick a clipboard with an attached government-issue black Skilcraft pen. Rick disliked the surveys but did as he was told. He found a chair facing the door with room for Nomi at his feet.
He sighed and shook his head as he filled out the questionnaire.
“How often do you have intrusive thoughts?”
“On a scale from one to five…”
He forced himself through, answering as best as he could, but how do you quantify the personal aftermath of war? He didn’t know, and he knew the VA couldn’t either. These surveys were the best they could do to assign a number, “from one to five,” to pain and loss, and the creeping horror that clung to them.
A second door in the room, directly opposite from the entrance Rick and Nomi had come through, opened with a click and whoosh. It was the door to the wards. His counsellor came out, Doctor Alan Cairns.
“Mister Boreham? Nomi. Come on in.”
Rick stood. He gave a slight tug to his dog’s leash. A Vietnam guy glanced at Rick, nodded, then returned to studying his hands.
He returned the nod. Rick, Nomi and the doc went through the door, followed by ghosts.
20
Just Like The Crocodile Hunter
Somebody finally got smart and the ICE agents removed Sandino’s cuffs. The bitch who’d kidney-punched Ellie disappeared too, replaced by some black guy who was all tooled up and body-armoured like the rest of the agents, but he didn’t seem to have as much of a hard-on. He politely asked her to sit in the car.
“Because it’s cooler,” he explained.
And it was. They had the AC running at full arctic power and even sitting half-in half-out with the door open so she could keep an eye on this pig circus, Ellie had to admit it was more pleasant than standing out in the hot sun taking random kidney shots.
And random seemed to be the organising principle at work here.
The ICE guys put her people into the vehicles.
They took them out.
They put them back in again, but they never actually drove away. This went on for nearly two hours. There was no way they’d be open for lunch.
She saw the guy in charge, the one she’d spoken to inside, taking calls on a tactical radio and two mobile phones. Somebody was kicking his ass. She’d had enough of those conversations to recognise when things weren’t going well.
“Hey Sandino,” she said to her saucier when the agent threw one of the phones away. “You seeing this?”
Ellie half expected the new guy to tell her, or at least ask her, to shut up. But the agent seemed remarkably chill. Like he was more of an observer than a participant.
“Am I seeing what?” Sandino asked.
Ellie pointed at the dishpigs climbing out of the van they’d just been loaded into.
“Pah,” scoffed Sandino. “They don’t know what they’re doing. Or somebody is stopping them. Perhaps Damien’s lawyers, no?”
“Perhaps,” she said, frowning.
The ranking fed looked pissed.
“Agent?” she said to the black guy watching over them.
“Yes ma’am?” he answered, surprising her a little.
“Is something wrong? What’s happening?”
He snorted.
“Your guess is as good as mine, ma’am.”
He turned away from whatever was happening or not happening and looked at Sandino.
“Are you doing okay, sir? Can I get you some cold water?”
“You can let me get back to my work,” Sandino said. “My master stock, it will be ruined.”
“I’ll get you some water,” the man said. He waved another agent over and spoke to him. The second man nodded and ran back inside the restaurant.
None of this seemed right to Ellie.
Not just the raid itself. That was an obvious fuck up and she didn’t doubt that Damo’s lawyers had been firing off injunctions and restraining orders and all sorts of legal high explosives. But she didn’t imagine that it would make much difference either. La Migra were feared with good reason by everyone in the restaurant trade. These motherfuckers were true believers. And in their own way, Ellie would admit, they were utterly fearless. A lawyer’s letter or even some uppity judge telling them to stand down wouldn’t normally knock them off course.
But two hours after they’d stormed her kitchen, they still hadn’t taken anybody away. And their arrogance had given way to uncertainty and something approaching apologetic disquiet.
The agent who’d been despatched to fetch water returned with two bottles, but he brought with him something even better.
Word that they had been set free.
Karl Valentine was a man of his word. The retired trucker drove her the last couple of blocks to Temescal, managing the little Honda in difficult traffic as easily as Jody might handle a disposable camera at a kid’s birthday party. It took more than the five minutes he’d promised, but that wasn’t his fault. A string of lights was out along Telegraph Avenue and the cops weren’t policing the intersections yet. They’re all busy with my attacker, Jody thought. As they crawled past the old blue church on the corner of 41st, Mister Valentine asked if she wanted him to try a different route, a workaround, but the side streets were already jammed up with cars trying the same.
“No, thanks,” she said in a small voice. “This is fine.”
They managed little better than a walking pace most of the way to Fourth Edition, but Jody was just glad not to be out in the heat or tied up in some rapey Metallica fan’s murder basement. Mister Valentine had a kindly manner and he seemed to know not to ask her too many questions. With somebody else’s gas in the tank, they could afford to run the AC at max, too. Valentine talked about being a truck driver. First for the Army back in the Gulf War, and then for some big transport company out of Kansas City. Jody faded in and out of the conversation. She wasn’t bored or uninterested. She just had trouble holding a thought. Twice on the way over she jumped when she remembered that she didn’t have her camera bag with her, before getting annoyed with her own foolishness. How could she forget that?
“That’s just the shock,” Mister Valentine told her the second time she apologised for suddenly freaking out on him. “Seen it a lot in the Army. In Iraq. That’s why I can’t drive the big rigs now. Doctors said my nerves was no good, not from the shock but. Mine was from the chemicals and meds, and the army had to pay me my compensation, but they said I couldn’t drive trucks for anyone after that.”
“You seem like a good driver to me, Mister Valentine” Jody said absently. “Thank you.”
“I am a good driver, Miss. And please, call me Karl,” he said, pushing the bill of his baseball cap up an inch and peering at the tangle of traffic ahead, as though looking for a secret passage through. “I ain’t complaining none,” he went on. “Bought me a little place with that compensation money. Before the housing got crazy round here with all the hipsters and the computer people. Couldn’t afford to buy here now of course. So I ain’t complaining. Figure I made me a tidy profit on getting poisoned by Uncle Sam.”
Another two minutes saw them past the place Ellie liked to get a cup of tea before work, a cafe called the Hawk and Pony, and ten minutes after that Karl nursed the Civic past the tofu place and the Second Half cocktail bar where they’d gone for Ellie’s birthday drinks. It didn’t help Jody’s mood to remember those things. She distracted herself for a minute sending a long text to Chad, apologising for not waiting at the pick-up…
(Even though he was already half an hour late.)
… And telling him she would get Maxy this evening.
(Even though she had no idea how the rest of this day would turn out.)
It felt better to send it. Like she was taking control of something.
“Nearly there,” Karl announced a few minutes later as the Angel Rose massage parlour slowly—very slowly—receded in the rear-view mirror. Jody’s heartbeat quickened when she saw Ellie’s boss, standing out front of the restaurant waving his arms around, making people do things.
Damo was good at that, Ellie said. His big Australian voice frightened the hell out of everyone, especially when he got very angry and super loud and nobody could quite understand what he was shouting at them, just that he was swearing a lot. It was best just to do all the things when that happened, Ellie said, and hope you got the right one done. Her girlfriend didn’t seem the least bit intimated by the big, shouty Australian, which was probably why he hired her. Ellie could match him word for word when it came to potty-mouthed abuse, too. That was probably another reason Damo liked her.
“Thank you,” Jody said, turning slightly to look at Mister Valentine. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t met you this morning, Karl. You’ve been so kind.” She squeezed his arm and felt like crying again.
“You’d-a been okay miss. You’re tough. I can tell. You just had a bad scare is all, and a knock on the head, and you’re worried about your little boy. I can wait if you like. Got nothing else to do. You might need some more driving done and I’d be happy to help out, you know, if you need the help.”
His offer of help was almost apologetic, making Jody feel guilty for even needing the support. She was about to say no, reflexively, when she realised she might need him after all. She was having trouble turning her head. That Metallica asshole had wrenched something in her neck when he pushed her over and grabbed her camera bag. She didn’t think she could turn her head to check the lanes when she was merging.
“Okay,” she said. “I’d appreciate it, Karl. You should meet Mister Maloney. I mean, Damien. He’s Ellie’s boss. He’s a bit scary, but she likes him. He’s Australian.”
“Like the crocodile hunter?”
“Just like, yeah. He even wears the shorts,” she said, and wondered why she found that funny. Today of all days.
Probably because you’re losing your mind, girl, she thought.
And Damo was indeed dressed in his usual outfit of a white linen shirt and knee-length khaki shorts. He wore a Panama hat and sunglasses too, and he kept taking them off and putting them back on as he shouted at some people she didn’t recognise.
Jody shaded her eyes and peered into the fierce white light. She had to squint hard when the sun burst off the chrome on Damo’s Lexus. The SUV had a lot of chrome. She could see he was very angry. One of the men with him was in a suit and he was just nodding along no matter how much Damo flapped his arms around. The other two looked like some weird mash up of cops and soldiers. One of them was a woman. She had her arms folded, a scowl twisting her face. The other one stood with his hands on his hips and his jaw jutted out at Damo no matter how much the Australian raged and ranted at him.
“This doesn’t look good,” Karl said as they pulled off the main drag and into the tiny car lot next to Damo’s Lexus.
But Jody didn’t really hear what he said.
She had just seen Ellie emerge from the front of the restaurant with a small group of Fourth Edition kitchen staff. Jody almost cried out in relief.
She didn’t wait for Karl to turn off the engine as they pulled up. She threw open the door and ran across the parking lot, past Damo and the people he was yelling at, racing toward Ellie who was very surprised to see her. The kitchen hands saw her coming and parted, making a space for her to run through and into her partner’s wide-open arms. She almost knocked Ellie down, she was moving so fast.
“Whoa, baby, slow down, be cool,” her girlfriend said, even as Jody hugged her fiercely and kissed her, just to know that she was real, that nothing could keep them apart. Pain spiked through her neck and into her eyeballs but Jody would not let go. Pain she could deal with. Losing or Ellie or Max she could not.
“Jody, you’re hurt,” another voice said. It was Mister Sandino, the old chef who did all of Damo’s soups and sauces. He was nice man. He gently took her arm from around Ellie’s neck and Jody winced a little. Her wrist hurt, and she realised for the first time that it was swollen and her forearm was bruised.
“Baby, what happened?” Ellie Jabbarah asked, her voice growing dark. “Aren’t you supposed to be at your photo shoot? How did you get hurt?”
I’m okay, I’m fine” Jody said. “I just fell over,” she explained, wincing as she turned her head and the pain of sudden movement set her teeth on edge. “Mister Valentine…he helped me get my cameras back?”
“Who?” Ellie said. “Jody what happened?”
“Nothing. It’s not important. I can tell you all about it later. I have to get Maxy from Chad and… and… Oh God, what a morning.”
Damo’s voice rolled over the top of her own, loud as always, but not angry like before.
“Maaaate, what’s up?” he boomed. Damo swept both Ellie and Jody into his embrace and launched into a rapid-fire barrage of dialogue in his flat, nasal accent. He was hard enough to understand even when he wasn’t roaring strange antipodean swear words. This was almost a foreign language. “Jeez, you look as crook as a fucking dog, Jodes. But don’t worry, young Nick here, he’s gonna sue these pricks and they’re gonna pay your girlfriend a massive fucking settlement, and they’re gonna give me a genuine reach around, but you guys, with the pay day you got coming from this fucking teddy bears’ picnic you’re gonna be able to buy a house and a boat that’s so fucking big it’ll have its own little baby boats hanging off the arse end of it, just like mine.”
Damo was loud and unstoppable and he never seemed to draw breath. He made absolutely no sense at all. But there was something elemental and comforting about being wrapped in his massive ham-hock arms while he roared like a gigantic meat-eating Qantas bear about the shit storm of biblical retribution he was going to rain down on his enemies. Jody felt herself safe for the first time in hours.
“And who the fuck are you, mate?”
She pushed out of his bear hug, realising he was talking to Karl.
“This is Karl,” she said quickly. “Mister Valentine. He’s a good guy. A friend. He helped me when… Oh, Damo, Ellie, I was mugged.”
“Honey, no!” Ellie exclaimed.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said the Australian. “What a cunt of a day. All right then, Karl, right? That’s your name?”
“Yes,” the trucker said, as though he wasn’t quite sure anymore. “Miss Jody got mugged. They got the fella what done it. And I gave her a lift over here.”
“The fuck is all this about?” Ellie said. “You got mugged?”
“And you got arrested!” Jody replied, as if that made them even. She looked for the other people Damo had been shouting at, and them standing by a black SUV.
“Damo told me you’d been arrested,” she said to Ellie, not sure of anything anymore. “What happened?”
Damo answered first.
“Jodes,” he said, pointing to the man in the suit. “This bloke here is Nick Perriam. He’s my lawyer. I keep his firm on a frankly fucking extortionate retainer and they’re gonna earn their feed today, let me tell you.”
The lawyer, who was anonymously handsome in a TV lawyer kind of way, smiled and shook her hand. He was the man who’d been nodding at everything Damo had been being earlier, when they pulled into the lot. He looked so cool and unruffled she wondered if his expensive suit was somehow air-conditioned.
“Ms Sarjanen,” he said, shaking her hand. His palm was cool and dry. “Please do not worry about your partner, Ms Jabbarah. For her this will soon enough be a minor inconvenience and an excellent story for your next dinner party. For the government, however, and for the agents responsible for this mess, it is about to become a truly horrifying legal nightmare.”
Everyone turned at that.
Jody was surprised to see the two people Damo had been shouting at standing just a few feet away. The woman was looking at her feet. The man had pressed his lips together and his jawline was working as though chewing through a thick and bitter root.
