Killfile (15 page)

All I got was this:

I wanted to scream at him. How the hell did he expect me to get us out of this? I wasn't the one who walked us into an ambush. I wasn't the guy in charge. I'd never even shot at a real, live human being before, and now I was caught between a bunch of trained killers. Only their reluctance to shoot each other kept us alive as we huddled behind the shelves.

That was what gave me the idea. I'd never tried anything like it before. But if the alternative was dying, then what the hell: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I picked the brain of the nearest Iraqi. I put a picture of myself right into his field of vision, popping up to his left.

He turned and fired, as if by reflex.

And shot one of his own people.

He froze as a dozen different competing thoughts and emotions ran through his mind at once. I could empathize with all of them: he was guilty, he was stunned, he was so sure it had been one of the infidel Americans.

The last thing to go through his head was another bullet. I'd jumped out and pulled the same trick again. Another Iraqi fighter saw Cantrell's face on the back of the first guy's skull and fired.

I did it again, and again. And again. Jumping in, messing with their perceptions, and jumping out again. Each one was convinced they had us dead in their sights. Right before they took a bullet from one of their friends.

It lasted only a minute or so. Then it was just Cantrell and me. Alone in a store full of corpses.

Cantrell stood carefully, gun drawn. When he saw none of them were even twitching, he got up and went to the counter. He closed and locked the case, then nodded to me.

“You coming or what?” he asked.

I was still in shock. I'd just used my talent to kill a whole roomful of men. I felt no guilt—they'd wanted to kill me. I felt elated that I was still alive. But I also felt every one of them die. It was like watching the lights of a house go out, one by one.

I shook it off and stood up. I thought I was fine. I didn't know it yet, but the darkness would wait for me.

I looked at Cantrell, and for a moment, his guard was down. On purpose, I'm pretty sure. I read him like a book.

“You knew they were going to try this.”

“Of course I did. Question is, why didn't you?”

“I was following you,” I snapped.

“And look where you ended up. You never should have walked in here. You never should have let
me
walk in here. You should have known what they had planned from the second you read them. You should have told me to turn the Humvee around and get the hell back to base.” He spoke with the exaggerated patience of an adult telling a child that there's no such thing as Santa Claus.

“But you knew,” I said. “And you came in here anyway.”

He looked me right in the eyes. “If you didn't survive this, you'd be no good to me anyway, John.”

He didn't have to say any more than that. Not out loud. But I knew what he meant, in precise detail. His commanders didn't have any use for psychic soldiers who couldn't really fight.

Cantrell had always aimed for me to be an interrogator, just like the rest of his recruits. Like he said when we first met, he wanted us to pick the brains of our captured POWs, find out their secrets.

His superiors didn't see it that way. They didn't want to put any of Cantrell's special-ed students in a room with high-value detainees. They wanted more from us.

During the Cold War, nobody really minded spending money and time on Cantrell's psychics, even if they only made vague predictions about enemy troop movements and missile silos. Money and patience were nearly unlimited then. But with two actual wars going, there was a sudden demand for results. We had to prove we were worth the line item on our budget by actually using our talents in combat.

That was the reason Cantrell had me with him. To prove that our abilities could be weaponized. And he was willing to risk both our lives in the process.

I tried to keep some of what I was feeling from showing up on my face. I failed.

“What are you looking so pissed about?” he said out loud. “You passed.”

I was searching for a response when an angry burst of thoughts suddenly broke into my head.

The lookout from the roof.

He'd heard the gunfire and thought he would come down to see his friends celebrating over our bodies. Instead, he found them all dead.

I felt the shock and rage burn through his mind, obliterating any concern for his own safety. He stepped out into the store from the back room, holding an AK-47 on me.

I could have gotten him. He was even less experienced than I was. A kid, maybe a year younger than me. He was confused and angry,
and the AK-47 is notoriously inaccurate. I would have nailed him before he got me. I'm sure of it.

But Cantrell already had him. He dropped the Iraqi with a three-shot burst. I felt the kid's life end before his body hit the floor.

I stood there for a moment, looking stupid for the second time that day.

Cantrell crossed the store, covering the dead kid with his weapon the entire time. He kicked the AK-47 away from the corpse, then rolled the body over with his foot, just to be sure.

He scowled down and pointed at the kid's chest. There were three neatly spaced holes in the kid's shirt.

“Look at that,” he said.

I thought he was admiring his grouping, but he was talking about the shirt. Something from Polo or a knockoff. Hard to tell with the blood.

“These fucking morons,” he said. “Where do they think their clothes and their movies and their music come from? Guarantee you this idiot was listening to Tupac or some shit on his headphones before he decided to take up arms against the infidels. They should have figured it out by now: they're already living in America. We just haven't changed the names on the maps yet.”

He shook his head and straightened up. “Come on,” he said. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

S
IXTEEN HOURS LATER,
we were back at Fort Bragg. Cantrell took me out and introduced me to good Scotch for the first time in my life. He told everyone in our unit who'd listen how I'd saved his ass. He told me he was proud of me.

He might have been willing to let me die in that grimy little store in Baghdad. He played off my trust and inexperience. But he wasn't lying. I read him. I know.

Somehow it means more when you get a compliment from a total bastard. It's like you had to pass a tougher exam to get the grade.

A
LL OF
C
ANTRELL'S
special-ed kids got put on combat missions after that, no matter what our talents. I'll admit, some of us were useless in the field. There was one guy who could sense danger before it happened. In a war zone, that's not a whole lot of help. He'd get ready to go out in a Humvee, and get hit with one of his premonitions of imminent death. At which everyone else in his squad would look at him with the sort of expression that says,
No shit.

They finally found a place for him in the entourage of high-ranking visitors. If he began to sweat, they knew it was time to head for a secure area. Once I saw him on TV, deep in the crowd while the president visited the troops.

I got a lot of practical experience. I was attached to a unit that did search-and-recovery missions, looking for faces from the deck with pictures of high-value targets on each card. At first the other guys were skeptical. But nothing convinces people like saving their lives a few dozen times.

In close quarters, I could tell you how many men were hiding inside an apartment building or a bombed-out storefront. I knew, instinctively, if a room was clear before we went through the door. It was harder for me to miss a shot than to make one: I could use my talent like radar, and aim my weapon for the center of the target, even through walls. It was impossible to get a sniper scope on me. I always
felt it, that sudden prickle of another set of eyes focusing on me. When I hit the deck, everyone in my squad learned to do the same. That's where I learned to trace a sniper's gaze back to his nest, to find him based on his attention to me.

After a while, Cantrell was able to push for more important, more sensitive missions. I was trusted with black ops, attached as a specialist to units that went deep into enemy territory to look for the guys hiding out under protection of the Taliban or foreign governments. We crossed borders that weren't supposed to be crossed. We did questionable things, if any of us had been the kind to ask questions. We came back with captives: fresh meat wrapped and packed for Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and Bagram, as well as a dozen other places no one in the civilian world would ever know about.

I went with them. I began picking their brains, just like Cantrell wanted from the very start.

The old mall is
halfway through the process of being abandoned. The big stores have moved on to newer, shinier homes. The spaces that aren't locked up are occupied by weird, off-brand franchises: a Chinese food/doughnut place; a cash-for-gold pawnshop; and, taking up an entire corner of the mall, a discount mattress store with an enormous, cheap vinyl banner over the old JCPenney sign. It's like seeing insects feed on the body of a big, dying animal.

Inside, the fountain is dry and there are only a few people drifting around. Half the lights are out.

Kelsey and I walk inside the mattress store. A single saleswoman, heavy with sadness, sits behind a desk in the middle of all the beds. She waves but doesn't get up. She thinks we might actually buy something—we still look like healthy consumers—but her knees hurt. Her back hurts. She worries about her next paycheck. There used to be two people on every shift. Now her manager comes in only every other day.

I can barely screen out her long list of complaints. There's too much already loaded up against my firewalls. I'm going to crash hard soon.

I just have to hold it together for a little while longer.

An old recording squawks to life, interrupting the bland pop music coming out of the ceiling speakers. The mall is closing in twenty minutes.

I smile at the saleswoman, shrug, and Kelsey and I head for the exit. She barely looks in our direction. It's easy to double back and duck behind a master-bedroom display set. It's even easier to plant the suggestion that the saleswoman head for home without checking the floor one last time.

She sets the burglar alarm and shuffles for the exit. As she does, I read a short menu of the store's security options from her memory. There are no motion detectors—they haven't worked since JCPenney moved out. The owners are too cheap to spring for full-time patrols. Nobody cares about this place. It doesn't have anything worth stealing. It barely has anything worth vandalizing. People can smell neglect. It sends them in the other direction, even if they're not aware of it.

The lights in the mall switch off. The steel shutters on the entrances go down. Locked inside, we're as close to invisible as we can get for the night.

Kelsey is huddled up on one of the mattresses, arms around her knees, staring at nothing. The events of the day are starting to catch up with her too.

But there's a question she's been waiting to ask.

“Can't you get in touch with Sloan?” she says.

There's something plaintive in her mind when she says that, even though her voice remains firm. The betrayal still hurts. She thought Sloan was different. She thought he was her mentor.

She didn't believe me when I said that Sloan had abandoned us. She wants evidence. Or she wants me to at least try to reach out to him, to give him a chance to prove me wrong.

“You're the one who said he was completely cut off from the outside world,” I remind her.

“You're the superspy. I'm sure there's some way you could contact him,” she says.

She's right. There are a half dozen ways I could contact someone in Switzerland who could get inside the conference and deliver a message to Sloan. If I were really motivated, I could make the trip myself and show up in his hotel room with his morning croissant and cappuccino.

But honestly, I don't care enough to try. Sloan cannot help me now.

I don't know if Sloan has abandoned us, or if he's really out of touch, like Kelsey thinks. Either way, it doesn't matter. He would make the same coldhearted calculation that Gaines did. His vendetta against Preston is real enough—I could read that much from his mind—but that only means that he doesn't have any leverage to get Preston off our backs. More important, it's not worth the exposure to him to rescue me or Kelsey.

Hiring guys like me isn't exactly illegal, but it's not considered a standard business practice either. If Preston wanted to, he could produce the body of the man I killed, and spin any story he wants. The only reason he hasn't done that is because he wants to keep this quiet. If Sloan was to get involved, bring in his lawyers, or bring pressure on Preston by other means, then Preston could make things very unpleasant for him, in a very public way. Then Sloan might have to face some real questions from real cops. Of course, the odds are against him ever doing jail time—he's rich enough to tie any inquiry into knots. But the media would be all over him, and you can never tell how these things will end up, especially if a politically motivated prosecutor gets the case.

Sloan would look at all the negatives of helping us: the chance of exposure, the legal liability, the sheer tiresome inconvenience. Then
he'd weigh those against the potential upside: none. So he'd make the easiest decision, and pull up the drawbridge with us on the other side of the moat. It should be easy for Sloan to write me off—it's an unspoken assumption in every contract I sign. Kelsey would probably be more difficult. Not enough to make a difference, though.

But Kelsey still wants to think her boss is a good guy. And for some reason, I don't feel like shattering that illusion for her.

So I tell her that there's nothing I can do.

I'm not sure she believes me, but she doesn't press too hard. She's smart. She probably knows the truth, same as I do.

In the grand scheme of things, people like us are disposable to people like Sloan.

Kelsey is practically singing out a list of comfort foods. It's enough to make me grind my teeth.

I find the employee break room. Sure enough, two giant vending machines are inside, filled with empty calories.

A minute later, there's broken glass on the floor and a pile of snacks in my hands. I dump them on the bed where Kelsey is sitting.

“It's not cherries jubilee,” I tell her, “but it'll have to do.”

She looks surprised. “I didn't say anything.”

“You don't have to,” I say. “I might have mentioned that once or twice already.”

“Well, you don't have to listen.”

I could almost laugh at that. If only it were that simple. “Yeah, you are really not getting it.”

“Heard that too.”

“Serves you right,” she says. “I was trying to be polite. You know, like normal human beings.”

“If I were a normal human being, Kelsey, you'd be dead by now.”

That hits her hard. She shuts up. For a moment, the only things going through her head are images of men with guns.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

Clearly I need some space. I move to the other side of the room. It's not far enough. It doesn't reduce the volume on the pain and shock working its way through her system. She was working hard to cope. She didn't need me bringing it up again.

For a moment, I fear she's on the verge of losing it. Then she reaches for a bag of potato chips and tears it open. Eating is good. Eating means you still want to live, you're still feeding the organism.

Which reminds me, I really should eat something. But I don't feel all that hungry.

My hands hurt from the fight today. They're barely swollen, so I know that the pain isn't entirely real. This happens from time to time. Most of the ache is psychic. I know it's all in my head. It doesn't help. When you get a bad idea, it might stick with you for a while. When I get one, as a consequence of my very special brain, it grows its own legs and crawls around in my head. It takes on a life of its own and becomes real. Real enough to chew at me and grow bigger and fatter on the meat.

I rub my knuckles, try to shake out the hurt. The pain feels like rot and corruption, spreading in from the point of contact, like some nightmare skin infection, passed on by touch.

This is where the bill comes due, I realize. The feedback from the pain I inflicted on the other OmniVore security people. The thoughts of the salesman who gave us a lift, like touching a used condom.
Kelsey's anxiety and fear, hidden behind her efforts to press it down. And most of all, the dead man.

The pain in my hands is just the way it's all breaking in, getting past my defenses.

I know it's not real, not the worst of it. But it doesn't stop.

“Are you all right?” Kelsey asks.

She managed to get close without my noticing. I'm in worse shape than I thought.

“I'm fine.” It comes out almost like a growl. I really need my pills.

“You don't seem fine.”

Put it aside. Focus. Lock it down. Get it under control.

“Give me a second,” I tell Kelsey.

Over the years, I've come up with lots of little ways to help block out the crazy and the hurt screaming from the people around me every minute of every day. I might take a shower. I have an old-fashioned mug with soap and a straight razor that I use to shave. It's calming. It forces me to pay attention. I spend a good five minutes with nothing but the steam, the scent of the soap, and the sound of steel scraping against my beard and skin. Then I might put on a clean, pressed white shirt, with a decent suit over that. Go to a dark, quiet restaurant, where the waiters don't wear fifteen different kinds of flair and bother you every five minutes with a suggestion to try the Bacon Balls. A place where they know enough to let you enjoy your steak and your drink in peace. And then I can chase my whiskey with enough pills to block out the constant noise of all of you, all of your whining and pissing and moaning and bitching and running in circles as you think about your pathetic little lives. This is how I keep myself human.

Unfortunately, all these rituals depend on stuff that's now gone.

I run through the inventory. Twelve tailored suits in the closet. About thirty good shirts on the hangers. There was an Attolini I had
made to measure in Italy. Two backup guns, another Walther and a Glock 9mm, one in the bedside table, one in a drawer in the kitchen.

Not to mention a bar full of whiskey and vodka and a bottle of fifty-year-old Laphroaig I got from a client. Was saving that for a special occasion.

I'm not particularly sentimental, but I'm going to miss that bottle.

Not as much as my pills, if I'm being honest.

My pills. The results of doctor-shopping, duplicate prescriptions, and a half dozen Internet drug dealers. A whole bunch of Vicodin and oxycodone, some antiseizure meds for when the migraines got really bad, and some Ambien, Haldol, and Ativan to help me sleep.

I'd even take an Advil right now, because my hands will not fucking stop hurting.

Out of nowhere, I see it again. Body dropping, blood in the air. That absence in the mental landscape as a man suddenly stops. Stops breathing, stops thinking, stops existing. The freshly made hole in the world where a human being used to live—a little rip that threatens to suck all the warmth and life into the cold and emptiness of the abyss, and take me right along with it.

Every time, I am convinced that this will be the one that drags me down.

I realize I am shaking and sweating. I listen desperately to the sound of my own heartbeat, trying to convince myself I am still alive.

I try to block it out. Not working.

“Are you all right?” Kelsey asks again.

No. No, I am not.

It feels like insects are under the skin now. My bones feel like someone is scrubbing them with steel wool. Everything I own is gone. The idea sits there, in my brain, like a chunk of ice that stubbornly refuses to melt. Everything I own is gone.

I spin and punch the wall, trying to block the fake pain with the real thing.

I look down. There's a hole in the drywall and blood on my knuckles. It didn't work. The insects are still there, under the skin, chewing away. I can still feel the hole, like a sudden increase in gravity, plucking at me, pulling me down.

“Jesus,” Kelsey says. Her voice drags me out of my head for a moment. “What's going on? What are you doing?”

“I need my goddamned pills,” I snap at her, biting off each word.

Her eyes are wide. She's looking at me like I'm a strange dog blocking her path. She steps closer, carefully.

“Easy,” she says. Her voice is very low. “Take it easy.”

“Stay back,” I warn her. I don't want her picking up on my pain. It can be contagious when I'm like this.

She keeps coming anyway. “I can help,” she says. She reaches out, slowly, like a bomb-squad technician, and takes my hands in her own.

She brushes away the dust. I flinch.

“Take it easy. Breathe,” she says. “Breathe.”

My whole body is a clenched fist now. But I try.

“Come on. Breathe. Listen to my voice. Focus on that.”

Somehow it works. I don't know how. She's a calm center in the midst of it all.

She can see me crank down the level of tension, bit by bit. The static and pain begin to clear.

“There you go,” she says. “You're getting it back, right?”

I nod.

“Prove it,” she says. “What am I thinking?”

I look into her head.

That can't be right.

She's got a look on her face. Half smile, half smirk.

“Maybe we can do something to take your mind off the pain,” she says.

“I thought you didn't want to use my body for cheap thrills.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well. Tomorrow we may die, and all that. Besides”—she takes a look around the store—“what else are we going to do in here? Build a fort?”