Gun Metal Heart (3 page)

The senior soldier, Kostic, had brought a thick, hardback Serb–English dictionary. It wasn't a simple tourist's dictionary; the conversation he was anticipating needed a broader range of words.

Kostic spoke in English. “Hallo.”

“Hey. Hey!” Guzman jostled his beefy arms, straining against the white plastic cuffs. He peered around, teary eyes trying to focus on the warehouse, the metal chair, the brawny men in polo shirts. He really shook the chair now, putting his weight into it. The metal legs scraped on the rough cement floor, the sound echoing.

“The fuck is this! Hey!”

Kostic said, again, “Hallo.”

Lazarevic said nothing.

Guzman struggled. “Get this fucking shit off me!”

Kostic ignored him. “You are hired. Are bodyguard. In Florence.”

“What? Hey, I don't know what you guys are talking about. Get me the fuck outta this and let's talk. All right?”

Kostic said, “We do not have much time. Time is very bad.”

“Time is bad? My time is bad, motherfucker! Let me up!”

Kostic said, “You enjoy American movies? Bruce Willis. Sylvester Stallone.”

Guzman shot glares from one to the other.

“Action,” Kostic said, then made a gun of his finger. “Bang bang.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

Lazarevic, his biceps and mustache bulging equally, stood with arms crossed and said nothing. Kostic said, “The hero is running, running. Always. Bad guys fire bullets. But they don't hit him. They hit walls, they hit street. Not Bruce Willis.”

Lazarevic, unspeaking, uncrossed his arms and touched each of his elbows with his opposite hand.

Guzman didn't know the Serbian word for
elbow
but understood. He glanced down and noticed the square, white adhesive bandages on the insides of both elbows. Similar pads were adhered to the insides of both knees. Those plasters were adhered to his jeans, not to his skin. He blinked at the completely unfamiliar things.

“What the hell…?”

Kostic was leaning against a metal worktable. He twisted at the waist and picked up something that looked, from Guzman's angle, like a multioutlet power strip. Wires and shiny silver tape dangled from it.

“You have interrogation before, we think. You are tough guy. It goes: You don't talk. We beat you. You don't talk. We beat you. Tonight, tomorrow, next day. Yes? You tell us what we need to know.”

“Look, you bastard! I don't know—”

Kostic rode over him. “Hero in movies. Bruce Willis? Is not dodging bullets. There are no bullets.” He waggled the long, narrow electric device in his right hand. He changed its angle. Guzman could see it was a cobbled together remote control with four toggle switches and a battery pack. “Are…”

He frowned, turned to Lazarevic. Lazarevic picked up the hardback dictionary. They had marked a page with a nude torn out of a girlie magazine.

The silent Lazarevic showed him the word.

Kostic said, “Squib. Yes. Small bomb. Very small. Goes boom in movie, it looks like bullet hits wall.”

Guzman didn't have to act confused. “What?”

Kostic held the remote in his right hand and casually used his thumbnail to flip one of the toggles.

The small explosive squib adhered to Vince Guzman's left elbow exploded.

The small charge—the size, shape, and color of a cinnamon stick—smashed the elbow, sending bone chips up into Guzman's arm. The explosive, plus the bone chips, combined to shred Guzman's collateral ligaments.

In the blink of an eye, his left elbow became a permanently crippled bag of blood and sinew and floating bone fragments. The sleeve of skin, mostly unruptured by the directed explosive, acted like a sausage casing, holding his lower arm connected to his body.

Vince Guzman screamed. He flailed as best a bound man can, the chair shaking, metal legs beating a random tattoo on the cement. Every long muscle in his body went rigid. His head snapped backward and forward quickly, as if he were listening to a thrash-metal band.

He screamed until he puked, then screamed some more.

Kostic and Lazarevic watched. Kostic held the remote with the remaining three toggles. He didn't believe he would need to flip them.

*   *   *

Six minutes later, Vince Guzman sat quietly, head down, shirt stained with vomit and sweat, his trousers soiled, his left arm a soggy, seeping bag of morbid flesh. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the unfeeling mannequin's arm and hand flex-cuffed to the chair.

“Diego,” he gasped, “… the job … Florence…”

Kostic nodded, pleased not to have wasted hours on an interrogation. “Diego. Is alone?”

A thick rope of drool and puke hung from Guzman's lips. “In trouble, he'll … go find Daria … always does…”

Kostic turned to his partner and translated. Lazarevic frowned. “Daria?” He went down on his haunches, attempting to make eye contact with Vince Guzman. Guzman just stared at the plastic-looking, gray-white hand cuffed to the chair. “Is woman? Daria? Is trouble?”

“Y-yeah … she's all high and mighty but … yeah.” He sniveled snot. “She's trouble.”

“Her name?”

“Gibron. Daria Gibron.”

Kostic stood straight. Vince Guzman, a lifelong tough guy, spat out a sob. His eyes never left the lifeless handlike thing attached to his arm.

Lazarevic drew a Russian-made .9 auto and waited for the next jetliner to roar overhead.

Sandpoint, Idaho

Todd Brevidge thought the three worst ideas of the past decade had to be: trading Jeremy Linn to the Houston Rockets, a Broadway musical based on the Spice Girls, and moving the Research and Development Division of American Citadel Technologies to Sandpoint Freaking Idaho. And not in that order.

Brevidge guided his Ferrari F430 through the streets of the sleepy town.

Todd Brevidge stood out, in his Hong Kong suits, seven-hundred-dollar Tom Ford shades, and his Ferrari, for which he'd paid extra to make sure the hot-hot red was the exact color of his favorite escort's lingerie. At thirty he was considered a prime shaker and mover in the high-tech industry; in five years he'd be an elder statesman.

And here he was. In Idaho. The Siberia of the West.

Brevidge made nine hundred grand a year after stock options. He'd been with American Citadel since it was a three-room office suite behind an AM/PM Mini Mart in Modesto. Since before the four international buyouts. He'd been loyal from the start. For which he'd been exiled to this gulag of country music and Big Gulps and mud flaps.

Brevidge roared into the five-space parking lot, the Ferrari purring, and climbed out.

He understood moving research and development away from Silicon Valley, away from the prying eyes of the competition and the high-tech media and the various federal government oversight agencies. Special Projects was on the verge of some incredible breakthroughs. Not the least of which were Mercutio and Hotspur. It was time American Citadel got to sit at the grown-up table, and Todd Brevidge had been instrumental in making that happen.

He walked into the entirely unassuming office with its entirely unassuming lobby. The only people present were the morning guard, who nodded his greeting, and the chief engineer for the Hotspur and Mercutio projects, Bryan Snow.

Snow looked, as usual, like a guy in costume playing Buddy Holly, with black plastic frames and a maroon cardigan and—literally—blue suede shoes. He wore jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and Brevidge wondered when that trend had reappeared.

Snow adjusted his retro glasses. “Good morning.”

“It will be,” Brevidge said, “if engineering holds up its end of things.”

Snow shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “We will.”

Brevidge glanced around, then stepped to the elevator. He hit the retrieval button. Above the elevator, only three floors were marked. Brevidge checked his watch and waited. The elevator dinged open. Snow stood with his fingers sheathed in the rear pockets of his jeans.

“You guys have no idea what's at stake.” Brevidge appeared to be addressing the digital readout of floors on the panel over the elevator door.

“I think we do,” Bryan Snow replied softly.

Brevidge spat out a mirthless laugh and adjusted the Bluetooth earpiece he wore at all hours, even when he wasn't taking calls. He stepped into the elevator and Snow followed. The controls inside included three large, round plastic buttons, beside three numbers, 1, 2, and 3. Next to the 1 was a star, which denoted the lobby. Brevidge didn't hit any of the number buttons. Instead he pressed the knuckle of his forefinger against the star. He applied pressure.

After a second's delay, the star depressed.

The door slid closed and the elevator descended to a basement that was not represented on the elevator controls, on the building schematics, or in the blueprints on file at the Sandpoint Fire Department.

“This demo is make or break, man.” Brevidge shook his head ruefully. “I mean it. Make or fucking break. No third option. Besides the buyers, do you know we've got brass here?”

Snow toed the floor of the elevator, as if trying to draw a line in the sand. “Yes.”

“You know that? You know we've got actual management in the building today? Really, Bryan? See, I don't think you did know that. I don't think you're cleared to know that the guys who sign the paychecks are actually here in—”

The door hissed open and revealed the gaunt and spectral form of Cyrus Acton. Of the American Citadel board of directors.

Snow looked down at his suede bucks and cleared his throat. “Todd, you know Mr. Acton? He got here about an hour ago.”

Cyrus Acton was pale and bald and appeared to have been manufactured by the process of stretching human skin over chicken wire. He wore a somber suit, a plain black tie on a plain white shirt. No Bluetooth for him.

He said, “Todd.” His voice had been bled of all emotion. “Good morning.”

“Mr. Acton.” Todd ginned up a grin. He couldn't believe that geek Snow hadn't warned him! Asshole! “Good to see you, sir! Your flight was okay?”

Mr. Acton nodded. The overhead lights glinted on his liver-spotted pate.

“Outstanding, sir. Well, we're ready for the demonstration.”

“You're sure?”

Brevidge grinned. “Oh, hell yes, sir. I was just telling Snow here, we're absolutely gonna knock their socks off. The minute the buyers get here, have we got a show for them!”

“They are not,” Mr. Acton intoned.

“Ah … not … here?”

“Buyers,” Mr. Acton said. “They are not yet
buyers
, Todd. They have examined the merchandise. They have weighed their options. And they have chosen not to invest in the American Citadel product. They continue to cite these utterly outrageous sanctions from the State Department.” Mr. Acton looked like the word
sanctions
tasted chalky.

“Ah. Right. Of course.”

“The people who sanctioned our company are the kind that have kept America weak,” Cyrus Acton continued. “They would put onerous regulations ahead of American jobs. It's our responsibility to convince our guests to look beyond the sanctions.”

Brevidge beamed. Convincing people to do
otherwise
was as good a description of the art of the sell as any he'd ever heard. And when it came to that, Todd Brevidge was the Beatles of sales.

“When they see what we can do, they'll change their minds. Guaranteed!”

Mr. Acton smiled. His face was long, his cheekbones prominent, his chin pointed. “Guaranteed?”

Todd felt his underarms begin to perspire. “Absolutely. Positively. Completely.”

Mr. Acton smiled. “That's what we in management like about you, Todd. We appreciate your uncompromising faith in the product.”

Brevidge grinned and shot the engineer, Snow, a look. “Then give me twenty-four hours, sir. And I think I can make wholehearted believers out of the buyers. You could stake your life on it, sir!”

Mr. Acton smiled. He patted the young salesman on the shoulder.

“Oh gosh, no, Todd.” He laughed. “We'll stake yours.”

 

Three

Daria and the quiet man, Diego, retired to her rented apartment in the tiny village. The town consisted of one paved street that paralleled the highway to Genoa and a second paved street that led down to the docks.

Daria stripped, removed her various bandages, and showered. Gingerly.

She threw on panties and an old T-shirt and padded out to find Diego leaning against the wall, glancing out the room's single small, dingy window. He set his hat upside down on the room's cheap, chipped chest of drawers.

Diego was Mexican; born and raised in Mexico City. He was of Indio blood, claimed to be an Aztec, but only if he was drunk enough to speak in complete sentences, which was rarely. He'd spent his teens in East LA. He'd been a hoodlum (good at it), and after 9/11, a soldier (excellent at it). When soldiering hadn't turned into a career—something about decking a superior officer—Diego had gone back to the family business, thugging.

Diego stopped inspecting the town's one dusty street as Daria stepped out of the bathroom. She tossed a tube of ointment, a box of cotton balls, and adhesive plasters onto the bed. She perched on the side. “Make yourself useful.”

Diego walked over and sat on the bed, too. He applied astringent to the cut under her right eye, drawing not a sound from her. He rooted through the box, found two small plaster strips, and fashioned them into a butterfly bandage.

“There. Rib?”

Daria glowered at him, but glowering just tugged at the butterfly bandage. She twisted sideways, raised her left arm over her head and lifted the T-shirt over one breast. Any casual observer could tell that Diego had seen all the important bits of Daria Gibron before today. Usually wounded. He leaned forward and peered at the zucchini-shaped bruise on her flank. He probed it none too gently with a blunt finger. His hands were small but rigid and scarred from boxing.