The drone squirrel remained immobilized in the backyard; its robotic eyes fixated on an empty townhouse. Fifteen minutes after Kip and Bruce’s speedy departure from the premises, another vehicle casually rolled into the driveway. The black sedan’s license plate read: SHAD-E1S. Two such figures emerged from the car’s interior. In size and stature, they were the Abbott and Costello of espionage. The driver, a gangly man with a pitted complexion, eyed the home with a sense of zeal. He sported a gray, pinstriped suit with burnished silver buttons. Among a covert group of agents in MUTTS, he was trained as a drone specialist. His name was Agent Leif Oranger.
Agent Oranger, although not yet forty-years old, wholeheartedly contended that he once served as a grunt in the Vietnam War. The mathematical implausibility of his claim hardly dissuaded him from perpetuating the lie. An undisclosed neurological condition caused the left side of his face to twitch spasmodically, which mimicked a likely consequence of exposure to the defoliant sprinkled like pixie dust over the jungles of Southeast Asia throughout the 1960s. Oranger had given credence to the motto that if someone uttered an untruth often enough, eventually he and others would’ve believed it.
At his immediate right, clad in an ankle-length overcoat, was a man whose face appeared chiseled from a cinderblock. Had an artisan sculpted such a mug, however, he probably would’ve set his subject’s eyes farther apart. Because of this symmetrical flaw, he displayed a unibrow that sprouted like a ribbon of ragweed over his unblinking eyes. If Agent Brick Mason wanted to see anything on either side of what was straight in front of him, he had to rotate his head like an owl. And since his neck was thicker than a tree stump, this often required him to pivot his whole body in the direction he sought to survey.
Following a recon on the townhouse’s perimeter, Oranger retrieved the drone squirrel from the backyard. The mechanical creature still cast a shimmer of electronic light from its lensed eye sockets, but it had obviously malfunctioned. This tech glitch didn’t discourage him entirely. He rejoined Agent Mason on the deck, where his partner had already jimmied the sliding door’s lock.
“Put your squirrel away,” Mason said. “We’re going inside.”
“Are you sure we got the right house?”
Mason checked the GPS tracking on his smartphone. “Why don’t you ask your furry playmate?”
Oranger defended the robotic critter with an aura of pride. “Don’t be pickin’ on Mr. Squealer. He might’ve snapped us a couple clean images of that beagle.”
“You actually named that thing Mr. Squealer?”
“Absolutely. How else am I gonna recognize him from the others?”
“I just thought you’d check its nuts.”
Mason edged the door open on its track and slipped between the vertical blind’s slats. The home’s interior lights were still aglow, indicating what both agents already surmised: the occupants made a hasty exit. Mason then skimmed the home’s interior, revolving 360 degrees to do so.
“Did ya ever think about gettin’ your eyes fixed? You spin in more circles than a ballerina on a merry-go-round.”
“I’ve got 20/20 vision,” Mason replied defensively. “I see better in the dark than your drones. And for a fellow who quivers more than an epileptic with his finger stuck in a light socket, I’d be careful about dishing out too much criticism.”
It was no mystery to either Agent Oranger or Mason that they were currently weighted down by an anvil of pressure from their superiors. Neither one of them wanted to forward a message that Bruce had eluded capture yet again. Before making that call, they needed to uncover something useful. While Mason pirouetted around the living room rummaging for clues, Oranger hooked up a USB cord to Mr. Squealer in order to upload its photographic data onto his cellphone. Mason observed this uncomfortably as his partner plugged the cable in a port directly beneath the drone squirrel’s tail.
“What is this--fifty shades of grey squirrels?” Mason smirked. “Why did you have to give it a butt plug?”
“Hey, I had make it look authentic, didn’t I? Where else was I gonna put a port?”
“I guess. Any port in a storm, right, Leif?”
Oranger ignored Mason’s cynicism as he waited for the drone’s images to process. Mr. Squealer rebooted and its eyes sparked electric blue. Drones weren’t supposed to smile, but this one defied the norm. Meanwhile, Mason scoured the living room and kitchen for less invasive material. He picked up a stack of unopened mail on the counter and checked the address on various letters.
“Kip Hinkle,” Mason read from an unpaid water bill. “Did Agent Flyer ever mention this guy to you before?”
“Nope. He might be a greenhorn,” Oranger said. The images gradually emerged on his phone. After several seconds, he had the drone’s content in hand. “Looks like we’ve got something here,” he noted. Most of the photographs were too blurry to make out. Others were inconsequential. But at least three of them showed Kip peeking out from behind the sliding glass door, and another captured him getting out of his car.
“He doesn’t look like anything special. If you ask me, he’s dressed kind of weird.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s wearing a pirate’s costume. Could this be the right guy?”
“There’s only one way to know for sure,” Mason said. “Did that drone get any images of the beagle?”
Oranger scanned the photos more doggedly before saying, “I got no solid evidence here.” Leave it to Agent Mason to find something concrete. He shifted his attention to Oranger’s cellphone. After using his self-proclaimed perfect vision to scan the photographs, he espied one image that might’ve proved beneficial.
Mason pointed to the thumbnail exposure and said, “Can you enlarge that one?”
Oranger tapped his index finger on the phone’s screen. The photo popped up, but it appeared to be just another shadowed figure of Kip standing behind the sliding door. “That doesn’t look like a beagle to me,” Oranger said.
“Notice the bottom of the pic, behind the blind’s slats.”
Oranger squinted at the screen and attempted to enhance its resolution by pinching his fingers over the image’s frame. “I can’t make it any bigger,” he complained.
“That’s what your wife told you, too,” Mason cracked. “Seriously, if you look closely, you’ll see what could be a dog’s hind leg.” Mason then fingered the grainy area with his pudgy digit and said, “You see it?”
Oranger might’ve seen the tooth fairy if Mason pointed it out. “I can’t say for sure,” he replied. “It’s almost hidden.”
“It’s gonna have to be good enough,” Mason said. “Unless you wanna be the one to tell our boss that we got duped again by a hound.”
“We’ll never get into the Grove if we admit that,” Oranger said. Disappointment spread over his face like a rash, causing the muscles in the left side of his cheek and eyelid to twitch irrepressibly.
“Don't spaz out on me now,” Mason warned.
“Sorry. This just reminds me of being back in Da Nang.”
“Here we go again,” Mason huffed. “Leif, you were never in Vietnam. How many times do I gotta tell you that?”
“They’re tryin’ to brainwash me into believing that, too, Brick. But I keep having dreams about being on the guest list at the Hanoi Hilton. The accommodations were a real drag.”
Mason simply placated him now by asking, “How so?”
“If you complained about anything, they’d drag you by your heels face-first through a troth of pig shit. And a chocolate-colored dollop on your straw pillow never turned out to be a mint.”
“You really are unique, and I mean that in a bad way.”
“Dreams are the basis of reality. We’re all captives in our minds.”
“So slurred the habitual pot-smoker.” Mason grumbled and wobbled away from Oranger. They had more essential matters to discuss than Oranger’s imaginary lodging as a prisoner of war. Besides, if Mason really wanted to get under Oranger’s skin, he would’ve threatened to
fix him up with Hanoi Jane.
“Well,” Oranger continued, “thanks to Mr. Squealer we at least know what kind of car he’s driving. Where do you think this guy’s heading?”
“Anywhere we can’t find him. That’s a blind man’s guess.”
“Do you think we’re dealing with a professional?”
Mason dutifully recorded many of the home’s details, including the barren walls and dearth of furniture. “He’s a loner,” he noted. “But he wasn’t always that way.”
“How do you know?”
Mason gestured to the living room walls. “You see that sheetrock,” he remarked. “Its recently been spackled in ten different spots, but not painted. What does this tell you?”
“He doesn’t have any paint?”
“Astounding, Dr. Obvious. What else?”
“Beats me. I’m a tech guy. I work with drones, other than you, I mean.”
“Our newest stoolpigeon recently had a breakup. His wife probably moved out. She took most of the décor with her.”
“You gleaned all that from some unpainted spackling?”
“No, I got that from his mail. Some of his bills are addressed to a Mrs. Peggy Hinkle. So I’m figuring she’s no longer in the big picture, on the walls or otherwise.”
Oranger shook his head with a conciliatory nod. “You’re clever, Brick. I’ll give ya credit for that. How’d you ever think to look at the sheetrock?”
“I have an uncle in the construction business.”
“Let me guess--he’s a bricklayer, right?”
“No. He’s a plumber. What makes you think he laid brick?”
“I figured at least one brick in your family had to get laid.”
“You set me up for that one, huh?”
“Like a line of dominos.”
“You’re about as funny as a malignant tumor, you know that, Leif?”
Mason already refocused his thoughts on their next objective. Their boss had called them over an hour ago for an update. If another thirty minutes went by without a return call, he knew that they’d both be applying for a new line of work, or maybe even a new line of life.
“Are you gonna call him back right now?” Oranger asked.
“We’ve gotta jump quick on this. I have no choice.”
Oranger gulped and shuddered, but he couldn’t fault Mason’s rationale. After all, Hal “Hooty” Molek wasn’t the type of man who appreciated being kept in limbo.
Chapter 15