Busted Flush Read online

  I can’t believe I’m actually checking into the Best Western Swiss Clock Inn in Pecos, Texas. The walls are painted white with a green roof and an absurd clock tower rising from the center of the building. The nearest town to Pyote is Wick, but it lacks any kind of accommodation, and it is now behind the law enforcement cordon.

  At first the woman at the reception desk tells me there are no rooms available, but I milk the British accent for all it is worth, with a hapless Bertie Wooster sort of demeanor. She loves it, and soon she loves me. I get a room. As I’m walking to the elevators I pass the ubiquitous wooden stand filled with flyers detailing all the wonderful things to do in Pecos. The Pecos Cantaloupe Festival seems to be most prominently displayed. Pity I’m here too late for that excitement. Another flyer shows a Schwarzenegger looka-like dressed as Conan the Barbarian. BARBARIAN DAYS! it announces, JUST 259 MILES AWAY IN SCENIC CROSS PLAINS, TEXAS. Yes, 259 miles, just a Sunday drive for a Texan. If there was gasoline.

  I dump the garment bag in the room, and crank the air-conditioning to high. It’s one of those low, under-the-window affairs, and it sets up a frightful clattering. It does pour cold air into the stuffy room. I’m tired, but I’ve got to hit the town. My guess is that evacuees from Wick and any survivors from Pyote will be in Pecos. I need to find them, buy rounds, and loosen their tongues. But God I’m tired.

  I’d dropped Bugsy in D.C., and had to wait for dawn so I could make the daylight-to-daylight jump as Bahir. Once the Hazmat suits were back in London I stopped at my flat and packed a bag so I wouldn’t arrive back in Texas without luggage. I checked on Dad, and prepared him a cup of tea and a slice of toast smeared with Nutella. He ate three bites. I finished it, and now it lies in the pit of my stomach like a piece of lead shot. It’s early afternoon in Pecos. Someone will be at the local watering holes.

  While I walk I use my phone to link to the Internet. Bugsy has been a busy boy. His post is already up.

  It was a Nuke, boys and girls! The coyotes are glowing at night—at least the ones that aren’t dead. I know, I know, it’s so twentieth century to be talking about The Bomb, but it’s clear that MAD has stopped working, and now it’s time for everybody to get Mad.

  I pass one of those white metal boxes that pass for a newsstand in the U.S. The local Pecos paper is still yammering about grain elevators.

  I regret not wearing a hat, and my usual black attire amplifies the heat. The sky is painfully bright, and the sun doesn’t so much shine as glare. My skin prickles. I’m acutely aware of radiation right now. I pause and survey the dining choices—a Pizza Hut, a Dairy Queen, a Subway. I spot a Mexican restaurant. What I don’t see is a bar. Equally unfortunate is that the most cars are in the parking lot of the Pizza Hut. Well, they might have a beer and wine license. And then I spot the fire truck parked near the back. Yes, this might be the right place.

  Inside, the harsh smell of undercooked tomato sauce is an assault on the sinuses. Conversation fills the room with a droning sound, as if a hive of bees were moving in. People don’t even fall silent when I enter. They really are upset.

  The waitress is cute and small and round and Hispanic. She has an expression that is both alarmed and delighted. People on the edges of a catastrophe always have that particular look.

  “I’ll take a small meat pizza and your salad bar. And what kinds of wines do you have?”

  “Red and white.”

  I mentally sigh. Of course. “I’ll take red.” I give her my best stage smile. She smiles back. “I say, dear, I’m a producer with—” I time it so her exclamation of excitement makes it unnecessary to say with whom.

  “Movie?”

  “Well . . .” I look about conspiratorially. “I don’t want to say too much. So often these things come to nothing, but I think you all have quite a story here, and if that’s true, well . . . things might happen,” I hastily add, “And of course anyone with information would be compensated and probably be in the film.”

  She scuttles away. Satisfied, I drift over to the salad bar. In a surprisingly short time a number of people have joined me around the giant bowl of iceberg lettuce. I can smell the MSG as I drop it onto my plate.

  “You’re a movie guy?” says one man whose cheap suit suggests insurance salesman or local banker. I move my head in a particularly noncommittal way. “But you’re not a journalist?” He has that dried leather skin so common in Americans who live in the West, and the wrinkles deepen with suspicion.

  “I can assure you I am not a journalist.”

  “You’re English,” says a large woman in spandex pants. The worried frowns ease. That seems to make me somehow more trustworthy.

  “Well, I can tell you right now it wasn’t no grain elevator. We don’t grow wheat in these parts,” says an elderly geezer whose bald scalp is not so much tan as covered with age spots.

  “There’s an elevator in Pyote,” another local objects.

  “Yeah, but it’s a little teeny thing, just for the local feedlot,” says the geezer.

  “There was no warning. The sky just lit up,” says another man with skin like jerky, and a big sweat-stained cowboy hat pushed far back on his head. “I was shifting cattle to new grazing, and the dark caught up with us. I was just going to wait out the night—then boom. Damnedest noise you ever heard.”

  “Has anyone from Pyote spoken about it?” I ask.

  “We haven’t seen anybody from Pyote. Wick, yes, but not Pyote.” The cheap suit drops his voice. “I think they’re all dead.”

  “Not all,” says a burly man whose head seems attached to his shoulders without benefit of a neck. I watch the muscles in his upper arms flex and move. I think I’ve found one person who belongs with the fire truck. “I saw a medevac helicopter going in. Somebody survived.”

  “Whoever it was, I don’t think they were hurt,” says the fat woman whose plate is so full that lettuce is starting to cascade off the sides. “I heard they’re under guard. Locked up.” The door of the Pizza Hut opens and my old nemesis from the car wash enters. “I bet it’s the guy who caused the explosion. My niece is married to a policeman over in Wick.” I wish she would keep her voice down because the cop has stopped walking and is staring at us—hard. I’m a stranger in town, which is a red flag to a cop.

  “Nobody could have lived through that. I was real close by and I’m damn lucky to be alive.”

  “They could if they was an alien,” argues the old man.

  “Or a joker.”

  I can’t really tell who said that, and I find it interesting that the mind would go to joker rather than ace. It’s far more likely one of the meta-powered would survive, but there is still an enduring discomfort and disgust with jokers.

  “It’s probably them damn rag heads,” says the man in the cheap suit. “Going after our oil. Making sure we have to pay through the nose. We should nuke them.”

  It’s a typically jingoistic American reaction, and I reflect that if Siraj could hear that he might reconsider his stand. The door closes and I realize the cop has left. I try to tell myself that he decided he wanted a burger rather than a pie—

  —but it was a vain hope. They are waiting in my hotel room. One is your typical FBI agent, white, big, broad, with an ill-fitting brown suit and a crew cut. The other is a SCARE agent and an ace. The Midnight Angel is clad in black leather. Every curve of her lush body is revealed by the skintight jumpsuit.

  “Please come with us, sir,” says the Fucking Big Idiot.

  It’s a very quick helicopter ride to scenic Wick, Texas. SCARE has set up headquarters in city hall, and the fact that SCARE rather than the FBI is in charge tells me that the Americans suspect some kind of wild card involvement. The mayor’s office has that small-town-politician-trying-too-hard-to-seem-important feel. The walls are lined with pictures of the potbellied little mayor posing with various national politicians and movie stars, with commendations from the Elks and the Moose and various other odd American organizations including, in fact, the Odd Fellows. />
  A woman sits behind the desk, and if the mayor were still here she would dwarf him. Joann Jefferson, aka Lady Black, is the Special Agent in Charge. As she stands she pulls her reflective cloak more tightly about her statuesque body. A tendril of silver hair has slipped from beneath the hood of her black bodysuit, and it seems to shine on her ebony cheekbone. She sketches a greeting with a black gloved hand, and then waves me into the chair across the desk from her. I don’t offer my hand. I know the suit and cloak are supposed to protect me from her energy-sucking power, but I’d rather not test the limits of the technology.

  “Noel, what the fuck are you doing here?”

  I lean back in the chair and pull out my cigarette case. “Ah, I see we’re dispensing with the pleasantries.” I take my time lighting up, and judge when she’s just about to lose it, then I say, “Someone set off a nuclear device. Normally I’d argue that in this godforsaken part of the world no one would notice and it would make little difference to the general ambience, but I gather some people died.”

  She rubs a hand across her face. Despite great cheekbones her features look like they’re sagging. I sympathize. I’d really wanted to catch a nap back at the Swiss Clock. “I know we can’t hide this from other governments, but we don’t want a panic. If people knew a nuke went off . . .” Her voice trails away as if she’s just too weary to keep talking.

  “Look, let us help. You might recall that we are allies. That special relationship and all that rot that our prime minister and your president mutter lovingly to one another.”

  She’s considering. I decide to help her along. “Sorry about the directorship. We frankly couldn’t believe the news when we heard who replaced Nephi.” Her brows draw together in a sharp frown, but I can sense it’s not meant for me, and she’s a good little soldier and doesn’t take the opportunity to complain. “Well, just know that Flint is on your side, as am I,” I add.

  For a brief moment the hard-charging law enforcement agent is replaced by a woman who looks pathetically grateful and vulnerable. It’s gone in the flick of an eyelash, and Jefferson says in a terse, clipped tone, “It’s got to be the Arabs. I guess they’re not content with destroying our economy, now they have to smuggle in a suitcase nuke and bomb us, too.”

  “But Pyote, Texas? I mean, really. Not much of a splash with that. No, they would pick a far more visible target.”

  “There are oil fields here,” she counters.

  “And the Midland/Odessa fields are just about played out, and believe me, the oil ministers in Riyadh and Baghdad and Amman know that.”

  She fingers that errant strand of hair and stares at me for a long time. “You people do know the Middle East better than we do.”

  “You’re quite right. We’ve been oppressing them and manipulating them for far longer.” I stand. “I’ll see what I can find out. I have a few contacts over there.”

  Even through the thick walls of one of Saddam’s former palaces I hear Baghdad humming. Everyone in the Caliphate—and any Muslim nation whether they are part of the Caliphate or not—gets subsidized petrol. It used to be said that every crane in Europe was in Berlin. Now every crane in Europe and a few more to boot are in the Middle East. Siraj is trying to jump fifty years in one. He may just succeed, unless those of us in the Western nations kill him first.

  Siraj is neither a religious ascetic like the Nur nor a hedonist like Abdul. Instead, he’s a Cambridge-educated economist, so we are meeting in his state-of-the-art office in the midst of marble splendor. Every few seconds the computer dings, indicating a new e-mail. In the outer office a highly competent secretary answers the constantly ringing phone, and the fax machine whines and buzzes and shakes as it extrudes pages.

  I’m in my Bahir form: red-gold hair and beard, traditional garb, shimmering golden cloak, and that damn scimitar. The teleporting ace who beheaded the enemies of the Caliphate had appealed to the Nur, but no assassin likes to get within arm’s length of a target. Give me a McMillan TAC-50 any day, and a location a mile from the objective.

  Siraj is chain-smoking Turkish cigarettes. He’s the one who taught me to like the strong tobacco back when we were housemates at Cambridge. I would love a fag, but can’t—Bahir is a very good Muslim, even down to having a wife. For a moment I think about the girl I married seven months ago under pressure by the Caliph. The old man felt that the Caliphate’s remaining ace needed to set an example. But I need to put her aside. It’s dangerous for someone in my line of work to allow anyone too close to them for any length of time. Fortunately I have the perfect excuse—she’s barren. That accusation will probably keep her from marrying again. There’s an uncomfortable tightness in my chest. The truth is that it’s my fault, I’m the one who’s sterile.

  I realize I’ve missed whole sentences of Siraj’s diatribe, and it shocks me. I’ve got to stop woolgathering. I’m going to get myself killed.

  “. . . Texas? Texas! Why in the bloody hell would I bomb Texas? As if I have a nuclear bomb. Would that I did. Then they wouldn’t threaten me.” He snatches up a sheaf of papers off the desk as he roars past, and shakes them in my face. The rattling is like hail on a tin roof, and the gold ribbon that marks this as an official diplomatic communication waves before my eyes, causing me to flinch and pull back.

  “The secretary of state is holding me personally responsible for this explosion. They are the ones with nuclear bombs buried everywhere. They should take a count.”

  “I am sorry, Most High—”

  “I told you not to call me that.” His tone is snappish and peevish. “I’m not Abdul, and I don’t want us acting like it’s 1584.”

  “Yes, sir, I am sorry. I just thought you should know what they are saying.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I have a contact who works in Whitehall. The Americans are enlisting the aid of the Silver Helix to investigate whether we’re involved.”

  Siraj pauses, and a humorless smile puts grooves in his gaunt cheeks. A year ago he was a portly man with a smooth, unlined face. Now he’s thin, and worry and responsibility have gouged grooves into his forehead and etched lines around the soft brown eyes. “Maybe they’ll send Noel. He is their reputed Middle Eastern expert. I’d like to know how he evaded my hospitality last time, and extend it again.”

  I incline my head. “Would you like me to kill him, sir?” It’s totally surreal. Usually I’m amused by these situations, but this time it gives me an odd crawling sensation.

  “No, I’m tired of the world viewing us as ignorant barbarians. I’m teaching them to respect us.”

  “But hate us all the more.” I pause, then add, “And they have the armies.”

  “I’ll moderate prices before we reach that point.”

  “And how will you know you’ve reached that point without crossing it?”

  He looks at me oddly. I’ve taken a misstep, but to say anything more will only make it worse. I bow and teleport away.

  Political Science 101

  Ian Tregillis & Walton Simons

  THIS WAS NO PLACE for a thirteen-year-old kid.

  He didn’t remember how he got to the hospital, or even why he was there in the first place. His room smelled funny and the walls were painted a color so bland it didn’t even register in Drake’s mind. He was sick of being stuck with needles and hooked up to machines all the time. The gown they’d given him to wear did a lousy job of covering his chubby body.

  The nurse had that fake friendly look on her face. She was middle-aged and skinny and she wasn’t going to tell him anything. Drake was going to ask anyway, though. So far, all he’d found out since his blackout was that he was at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Which was hell and gone from his dad’s ranch outside Pyote.

  “I want my mom and dad. Where are they? Where are my brother Bob and my sister Sareena? Why can’t I go home?” He crossed his arms across his hefty stomach like a pouty, underaged sumo wrestler.

  “By now you should know better than to ask,
young man. You know what’s going to happen if you keep this up.”

  Drake knew exactly what would happen. “I don’t want to sleep anymore. I have nightmares. I’ve told you that.”

  “A new doctor is coming here later on today, to ask you some questions. Are you going to be a good, cooperative little boy, or not?”

  Drake shook his head and gave the nurse his coldest stare.

  She sighed. “I’m asking you nicely, son. Please try to help us.”

  Drake wasn’t interested in cooperating. Maybe if he caused enough trouble they’d kick him out. “Go away. Leave me alone.” He pulled the pillow from behind his head and threw it at her.

  She caught it with one hand and used the other to open the door. “Orderly. I need assistance in here.”

  He put up a decent fight, but the orderly was a big guy who didn’t play games. Eventually they got the needle into him. Seconds later, he felt like his body was an empty shell; his skin made of brittle clay that shattered and collapsed in onto itself. Darkness came, but it wouldn’t last.

  He was naked and curled up in a ball on the ground. Something was wrong with the ground, though. It was hot and his feet hurt. Drake saw small fires here and there. There was a big fire, too, behind him and to his right. He could feel the heat on his back and legs. He stood up and started walking away from it.

  He started shuffling forward, feeling with his toes for anything he might be able to cover himself with or use as a weapon. Unfortunately, if there was anything on the hot ground, Drake didn’t find it. His legs began to hurt and he collapsed to the ground, crying.

  After sobbing until his tears were gone he stood back up and wiped his runny nose.

  He continued shuffling slowly forward. The fire he was heading away from still seemed close, or maybe it was the other fires. There was no way to tell. Drake felt the ground rising slowly beneath him. It was a small hill, but by the time he made it to the top, his sides were burning and he was gasping for breath.