“Let me guess, he picked up bags from baggage as well? Suspicious.”
He sneers his lip at me in typical Merc fashion. “Don’t patronize me, just take me to your rig. I got a smallish-big, I said.”
“You said you have a small, Merc. Not some smallish-big.”
“Yeah, well, think of it as a biggish-small then. Roll with it, dude.”
I’m gonna regret this, I can already tell. “Nice to see you again, Merc.”
He grunts. People think I’m anti-social? This guy, he’s the anti-social one. He’s OK one on one, but get this ass**le in a group and I won’t take responsibility.
I make my way down to the first level and follow the signs to the exit. Since it’s a busy day, I wait in line for ten minutes as every car is photographed and matched to the picture they took at the parking garage stop gate. They do that under the guise of collecting the fee money to use the garage, but really, they are just cataloging your vehicle in case you’re a terrorist.
“My rig’s up in Fort Collins still. I have a place there.”
“Perfect,” Merc says as he lights a cigarette. He blows the smoke out of his nose and mouth at the same time. “I got a gun deal up in Cheyenne later, so that’s perfect. You can take me up to Wyoming, right? I mean, you have no plans today. It’s Christmas Eve for Christ’s sake.”
I shoot him a look for the blasphemous humor. “I said I have a date at ten.”
“Yeah, but that was a joke, right?” I look over at him and he’s got one of those you-fuck-with-me-I’ll-fuck-with-you-back grins on his face.
I glare at him.
“You owe me, Ford. So just get over it. You’re in.”
“Fine, but this is beyond my debt, so you owe me a big once this is over. What’s the job, anyway?”
“Some senator’s sixteen-year-old daughter was kidnapped last night. Some kind of pathetic wanna-be militia in the hills between Laramie and Cheyenne is responsible. I’m going in.”
He says all this like he just said, I’ll have eggs for breakfast. “Why not the Feds?”
“Hush, hush, you know. The girl’s caught up in something bad. Drugs, sex, something. Who the f**k knows, who the f**k cares. They didn't really kidnap her from the way I see it. I figure she went on her own volition, but the senator is having none of that. All I know is that if I can get her out alive with no media involvement, I get five hundred tax-free grand.” He takes a long draw on his cigarette and lets it out through his grinning teeth. “Fuckin-a, I’m in.”
“What if the media gets involved?”
“Penalty,” he says though a puff of smoke. “They knock off twenty percent for media f**k-ups. I’ll shoot you ten grand for the lift, though.”
“Fuckin-a then, I’m in too.”
Why the hell not? Wyoming is not that far, it’s Christmas Eve, I’m a total Scrooge, and my pet date is twelve hours from now. I got plenty of time to make ten grand and get back home in time to plan some dirty sex.
Chapter Three
It’s a lot easier to get the hell out of DIA if you’re going north than it is if you’re going south. There’s an expensive toll road almost no one uses that shuttles you past all the worst I-25 traffic, and spits you out just before you hit Longmont. From there, it’s a fifteen minute ride to my apartment on the southern outskirts of Fort Collins. I pull into the complex driveway and Merc starts laughing. “You live here? In this suburban singles complex?”
“Guess what I do here, Merc?”
He lights up another smoke. Fucker’s been chain smoking since we left. If this was a high level job, he’d never smoke. Leaves a scent on his clothes that can give his ass away when he’s sniping. So he must feel this one is no big deal.
“Eat, sleep, shit, and f**k?”
“No, I said guess what I do here. Not what most people do here.”
He tilts his head, interested. “Fuckin tell me then.”
I say nothing. Just park the Bronco in the spot numbered E33, then get out and head towards the stairs that will take me up to my third floor apartment. Merc follows behind, his cigarette still smoldering. I open the door and wave him in, then reach out and snatch the smoke from his lips and toss it over the balcony. “No smoking in my gear room.”
He hands me a sly smile and I follow him in and close the door. From the entry it’s just your basic shit apartment, albeit, in a luxury suburban setting. Nondescript brown couch, two dark wood end tables with matching lamps on either side. Dark wood coffee table, an over-sized chair and matching ottoman, and a dining table.
“No TV, Ford?”
“Fuck TV.”
It’s got three bedrooms, but only one has a bed. I open the last door on the right and let Merc walk in ahead of me. “The rig room, eh?” he says as he looks over his shoulder at me.
“You bet. The rig room.”
The rig room is one long stainless steel table with one laptop and a metal stool.
“Sparse, dude.”
“It’s all I need.”
“Right, then.” He sighs his frustration with me. We’ve been friends since senior year of high school. He knows me well. All my strengths and all my weaknesses. “Get to it. I need info on…” he rattles off names as I pop off an electrical wall cover plate, fish around inside the wall for the end of the cable, then pull it through the hole and plug it into my laptop. I sit down in the chair and open the rig and start typing. The external drive inside the wall contains all my scripts, but its password protected and has an automatic trip. If you get the password wrong, just once, it nukes the drive.