Chapter 7: The Skull of Doom, Part 7

EPISODE in the CATTARAUGUS CREEK VALLEY, Continued

July, 2006

EAST OTTO, NY

8

Tossing back his head, the Frenchman appears to have entered a deep dream-state while sitting up. He comes out of it shaking, squinting, and holding himself by his hands on his thighs like someone recovering from a sucker-punch. "How long was I there?"

"Bout a minute."

"That was uncanny," he says. "Uncanny."

The artist smirks. "So where'd you get to?"

The shadow of a branch slants across the youth's eyes like a mask when he turns and haltingly describes his impressions. "I know most of them were memories," he concludes. "I could feel it in one part of my mind. And then... Things were coming in from somewhere else. And then it went creepy."

"Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!" laughs the artist, half-howling. "You musta had more on there than I thought! Hoo, hoo! You gotta pace yourself on this stuff. Man, you do too much of that and you don't know when you'll come down."

"I've taken psychology," says the Frenchman, squinting with resolve. "I've taken human development. You can't remember anything before you're four. With most people it's five. It isn't possible. You can't remember back that far."

The artist grins. "You can get farther than that. So much farther."

"What do you call this stuff?"

"People I know call it 'savvy,'" nods the artist.

"Where do people get it?"

"I don't know where it comes from. I think you get lucky enough to come across a little and that's all you get. I've been holding onto this for six months. I just wanted to do it the last time at a special occasion."

"Where did you get it?"

The artist looks down and laughs. "Friend of a friend. He was getting rid of it. Asked me if I wanted it. It's yours. You got more there than you're probably going to need."

The Frenchman holds the container before him like a cookie he's about to taste. "Can you get hooked?"

The artist smirks without humor. "I don't know. It hasn't been around that long."

The Frenchman returns the tin. The artist curls an index around it, rears back his blocky arm, and whips it at the tree line like someone skipping a stone. It cuts the air with the grace of a disc, pierces the shadow, and then, for all they know, drowns itself in the Cattaraugus behind the thin wood.

****

EPISODE of TEAM 8

May, 2007

Buffalo Niagara International Airport

BUFFALO, NY

1

A plane touches down at the Buffalo airport on a brilliant late spring morning. Among the passengers filing out is an attractive young woman with her dark hair in a short pony tail. She wears a slinky, sleeveless fog-grey dress that seems to be made of Lycra. She wears light, wraparound, oil-black sunglasses that reveal nothing of her eyes. She pays no attention to anyone around her. She carries a light purse and strides purposefully past the baggage claim. She cuts across the airport's human traffic in her high heels and makes straight for the bright automatic doors that lead to the curving, six-laned passenger pickup roadway outside.

The young woman takes a look to her left, then to her right. She spots a shiny silver convertible Mercedes and strides to it. Parked in a prime reserved taxi stand, its top is down and its key is in the ignition.

The woman looks to an awning fifty feet to her right back toward the terminal. Leaning against a column is a tall, dreadlocked black man in glasses much like her own. She tosses the purse into the passenger seat, gets in, and heads out aggressively.

She comes to a freeway and accelerates as if discontent with the pace of traffic. Her hair is down. The sun falls on her. She's a stunner, with a straight profile and sharp, classic features. Her bare arms are lean but strong-looking. Muscles ripple as she turns the wheel.

She drives on an expressway through the city. Her brow is intent but untroubled. She soars over raised turnpikes and dives under bridges.

Impatient and aggressive, she weaves through lane after lane to make ever more headway. Once on a three-lane expressway she looks quietly furious with a slow driver in the left lane. She pulls through the middle lane, speeds through a gap into the right, slows quickly, pulls back into the middle lane behind an SUV, guns it, and shoots the gap between it and the slow vehicle in the left lane, missing its bumper by inches. At least one horn resounds sourly. Her expression doesn't change. She fires off beyond them all.

2

The dark-haired woman in the silver Mercedes comes to a section with many abandoned buildings. The few active businesses sport chipped, faded signs.

In a block of mostly residential houses whose better days were in the past, the woman comes to a broad, two-story Victorian-era factory building that like many in Buffalo must once have been served by horses. She pulls over the crumbling curb and parks in a dusty lot in the building's shadow. Her sheeny vehicle looks odd near the two rusted hulks under the shelter of a low, flat-roofed, open-air shed.

Three young black men lounge about in strategic positions, all in sun-proof eyewear. All wear voluminous vests and loose cargo pants that could easily conceal hand-sized objects. Two rest in folding porch chairs on opposite ends of the roof of the shed, listening to music through their headphones. The third sits on an outdoor lounge chair at ground level. He is a big, powerful-looking fellow in bulky camo shorts and a grey tank top. He approaches as the young woman gets out.

"I have a meeting with T-Shaka," she says.

"T-Shock doan mine waitin'," says the young man. His voice is high for someone so big.

"I have something just for T-Shaka," she says firmly. The big man smiles and takes hold of her left wrist.

"You need to focus," she says. "T-Shaka is expecting me."

One of the other men gets up, trots down a short wooden staircase, approaches, and takes the woman's other hand. They start to usher her toward the low storage area. In seconds she will be within the building.

The woman bends her head down over her necklace. "Yellow... Shit," she says clearly and sourly.

The man holding her right hand smiles quizzically. His head explodes, and a quick chugging sound is heard just after. People appear as if out of nowhere.

A young woman in fatigues and a Kevlar vest leaps out from the other side of the building with a Glock-9 pistol held in two hands, a long suppressor stretching from it. She wears a small hands-free mike and earphones. "Fucking freeze it!" she says harshly. Her voice could break glass. The man on the roof stands and reaches for something in his vest. She fires at him three quick times. His falling form lurches as if he's hit by an unseen shooter. He crumples and drops.

From a low window on the third floor of the building just before them, three men leap, one after the other, onto the roof of the two-story building beside it and rush off, hidden from anyone on the street. Their running feet make an odd syncopation against the repeated metallic coughs of a silenced rifle.

A third young woman in dark glasses, a baseball hat, and a kevlar vest rushes up, holding a pistol like her colleagues. There is no way behind the building into the alleys, yards, or corridors of the former industrial complex along which the three fugitives must still be running. "Shhhhhhhhit!" she says into her head phones.

A young white man in a kevlar vest pops up out of a garbage can behind them and runs like mad, pistol in hand, around the block to head off the fleeing men. He stops at the corner, presses his earpiece, and talks. Then he crouches and aims with two hands on the gun.

3

Two young black men are standing against the wall of an old garage, their hands behind their heads, their sports lenses on the gravel below them. The red-haired woman in fatigues sits on a barrel, talking on a cell phone. A big young dreadlocked black man sits on a folding chair against a far wall, a semiautomatic carbine resting on his lap. It has a red-dot sight on it and, like all the other guns here, a smoke-colored suppressor that makes the barrel look much longer.

The dark-haired Mercedes driver paces before the two standing men. "You blew two years of work, you know," she says, her hair just hitting her shoulders. A forelock covers one eye, and she puffs it aside. "Two years. Mister Macho. You break in all the women for T-Shaka, don't you? You're really Mister Macho, aren't you?"

The sturdy woman in the vest stands and steps forward. Her frizzy red pony tail sticks out the back panel of her black, unadorned baseball cap. She has thick, muscular arms. "Give me an excuse to fucking kill you!" she says. "Go for my piece! Go for something! Make any kind of move! Give me an excuse!" She points her pistol.

"What you doing with us?" says the man on the right against the wall.

"Give a brother a break," says the one on the left. "We'll talk to a brother. We didn't know you had a brother. Just get her to chill."

The black agent rests his carbine and comes up. He wears jeans, a T-shirt and a bulletproof vest. He looks about thirty. Like the women, he has an earpiece. He's tall and well built, with wide shoulders and lats. He's got the body of a linebacker or tight end. He stands before the two men as if considering their offer. He gets close to the one on his left as if about to speak to him confidentially. Then he gives him a brutal knee to the groin, which drops him. He knees the other one in the gut. The man leans forward and clutches him like a long lost friend before falling to the floor under a couple of expert blows from fists and forearms. The tall agent has clearly had martial arts training.

"You're going to tell us everything," says the dark-haired woman, pacing above their crumpled forms. "Every last little thing."

"I just want to kill them!" snarls the red-haired woman. "Let's fucking kill them!"

"You can't kill them if they talk to us," says the dark-haired woman impatiently. "Still... Two years..."

"Let's make them talk to us and then kill them," says the red-haired woman, and one of the men on the ground moans.

"We go through this every time," says the dark-haired woman in the tone of a teacher reiterating the most basic point of a lesson. "If we kill them, we can't come back and get them if they lied to us."

"Two fucking years," says the red-haired woman.

"Maybe there's a way to work with these guys," says the dark-haired woman. "Keep 'em on the outside where they can help us down the road."

"You heard them," says the dreadlocked agent above the two groaning culprits. "They'll talk for a brother. Let's have a brotherly little talk. See if we can figure out where T-Shaka's got himself off to. See if we can figure out where he gets his contraband happy wax."