Wint arrived at the designated meeting point nestled within the Cow Belly Mines on schedule. He received a phone call from Mark shortly afterwards on his private line. Mark was running late, almost two hours, but he made it a point to mention that nothing else had changed from their original plan. Sunlight had just crept over the low hills looming over the abandoned iron ore mines. No accessible road existed for throughway traffic; any headway within the thicket had to be accomplished on foot. Since the forest’s ground was dry, Wint listened to every crackling leaf. He carried no serviceable weapon other than his own uncanny brain and instinct for trouble.
After a few edgy moments, Mark appeared in a glen amid the underbrush. As previously stipulated, he arrived alone. Wint noticed nothing abnormal regarding Mark’s appearance other than the conspicuous fact that he wore driving gloves; this detail by itself was enough to make a rogue agent skeptical. Wint may have been as green as guacamole in most areas of life, but not when it came to deciphering a sudden peculiarity in a confidant’s fashion. Seeing gloves on Mark’s hands was like finding a pair of mittens on a fish.
Neither of them uttered word until they stood close enough to converse without pitching their voices above a whisper. Mark spoke first. “Are you trying to make me look bad?” he joked. “You’re more punctual than an untenured schoolmarm.” Wint appreciated the small talk, but it wasn’t enough of a distraction to shift his attention away from Mark’s hands.
“Did you stop and go shopping?” Wint asked. He stockpiled his inquiry with more sarcasm than the DHS had done with munitions. Mark should’ve remembered that nothing so obvious slipped by Wint’s gaze. “It would’ve been cleverer on your part if you kept your hands bare,” he recommended. “I might not have noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“Too bad it wasn’t Cinco de Mayo, Mark. I would’ve sprung for the salsa if I knew you were bringing the chips.”
“Don’t get all paranoid on me now,” Mark said. “We don’t have time for it.” Mark stepped closer to Wint, being mindful to maintain his movement at a leisurely pace. “Do you got the DVD with you?”
“Maybe,” answered Wint. “Why don’t you take those gloves off first and let me see your hands?”
“I appreciate your wariness. But how long have you known me now?”
“Long enough to know that you’ve never worn leather driving gloves before tonight.”
Mark chuckled, but it sounded just like the canned laughter borrowed from television sitcoms. “You really are being serious, aren’t you? Well, under the circumstances I guess I can’t fault you for being too careful, right?” He then peeled the gloves from his hands and held up his palms for Wint’s inspection. “Happy now?”
Wint didn’t notice the wound on Mark’s hand because Molek had already masked it with a concealing skin ointment. Even still, he remained leery of Mark’s intentions. Luckily, Wint had a test devised to verify that his partner wasn’t in fact defecting on his double agent status.
“Are you gonna give me the disc now?” Mark pressured him.
“Not just yet. Before we go any further, I need to confirm that you’re in the right frame of mind. You and me both know that newly chipped hosts have trouble with their short-term memory function for the first 72 hours after the device’s implantation. Do you remember talking about that with me?”
“Of course. You’re really milking the issue, aren’t you?”
“Would you expect anything less in the Cow Belly Mines?” Wint countered.
“Okay. We’ll do it your way. What do you want to know?”
“When we last spoke on the phone six hours ago, as a precaution, we decided to change our password upon meeting here. Do you recall our conversation?”
“C’mon, I’m not brain dead. What do you think?”
“I think I’d like for you to say the new password right now.”
Mark suddenly looked like a prisoner who felt the heat of a searchlight as he planned an escape. His eyes shifted from side to side, as if he was either stalling or trying to conjure up a memory that no longer existed.
“There’s just so much going. I can’t keep my thoughts straight all the time. Molek and his henchmen are getting too close for these sort of games.”
“This is no game, Mark. You know that better than I do. But since you’re such a busy guy, I’m even willing to give you a clue. Our password is part of a rather famous anagram first discovered in Scrabble tiles.”
“Okay, okay. I know it. The password…it’s this I think: ‘Comes with the fall’.”
Wint kept silent for a moment. He snooped for a flinch in Mark’s mannerisms, but he just peered back at him stoically. “You’re close, but the cigar stays in its fumigator, my friend.”
“You’re acting like a baby. That’s the right password and you know it.”
“That’s the old password,” Wint corrected. “I asked you for the new one.”
Mark hesitated again, but it was already evident that he had no recollection of the recently changed code phrase. “Why don’t you just hand over the DVD? Don’t make this any harder on yourself. We’re old pals and I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
Wint had already scanned the ground for an escape route, but he didn’t want to flee from Mark without substantiating what they both already knew. “I was hoping that you’d be able to escape the Agency,” he said. “But at least one of us can still try.” Wint wasn't known for his fleet-footedness, but dashing between the trees foliage in green garb gave him an unforeseen advantage of camouflage. Of course, the beveled landscape served as an obstacle to any heedless traveler, and since Wint had no alternate exodus mapped out, he ultimately ended up cornering himself about two hundred yards from his motorcycle.
Hics was positioned in an ambush pose within the wood’s middle ground. Molek instructed him to guard the area and drive Mark toward the perimeter. Wint had no way of knowing how many men followed Mark into the grove, so he was only partially surprised when Hics jumped out from behind a tree to accost him. Unlike Wint, Hics brandished a small caliber handgun.
“N…not another…s…step, Wint,” Hics stammered.
Wint threw up his hands after he noticed the weapon shaking in Hics’s hand. “I prefer Winter Greene,” he said, huffily.
“They’ll…be…be…c…chiseling that on your t…tombstone if you budge another i…inch.”
“If you let me go, Hics, I’ll tell you a surefire way to get rid of your hiccups.”
On the surface it would’ve been ridiculously sophomoric trade, but for someone who suffered from nearly nine consecutive years of an unsettled diaphragm, Wint’s offer almost registered like a bargain to Hics’s ears. Ultimately, the beleaguered chauffeur had only one real option.
“Keep your hands w…where I…I can see them,” Hics cautioned. For a driver who spent the majority of his time doddering in aimless circles at his boss’s command, this capture would’ve surely merited him some clout with Molek. At least it might’ve kept him behind the Caddy’s wheel long enough to soften the upholstery. In Hics’s case, however, a clear benefit in any given situation happened less frequently than a sunny day in Seattle. When he approached Wint to administer the arrest, Hics’s own clumsiness cost him a long overdue acknowledgment.
Stones in the forest weren’t labeled for unvigilant hikers, and Hics’s vision made a mole’s ocular capabilities adequate by comparison. In his pursuit, Hics tripped more freakishly than those who partook in the brown acid at Woodstock. And in doing so, he managed to fumble around on the ground long enough for Wint to launch into another spirited sprint toward the unknown. Hics quickly regained his balance and gave chase, but his running skills proved just as jittery as his voice box.
Not far from Wint’s scramble, on the roadside framing the Cow Belly’s perimeter, Molek waited outside his car. Nepo perched on the crook of his elbow.
“The race is on,” Molek assured his bird. “But Mr. Greene will be truckin’ this way any moment now.”
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“I can hardly wait to greet him again,” Nepo cawed. “I’d truly like to scratch out his jaded eyes, if perchance you permit me to do so.”
Molek friskily tickled his parrot on her crown and smiled before saying, “All the time, Nepo, you truly are the Napoleon of crime.”
It was unnecessary for Molek to shift from his current blockade. Wint’s dash through the woods seemed magnetized right toward the bohemian’s clutches. It helped that Hics licked at his heels like a surge of floodwater, but this effort lasted only a spurt farther. Wint’s progress stalled after Hics projected an abrupt scream. Wint turned back to check the source of his pursuer’s distress, but Hics was nowhere in sight. It seemed as if the earth had opened up and swallowed Hics in a single unforgiving gulp. As it turned out, there was a severe drawback to trampling over terrain that had more tunnels beneath it than bedrock.
Rather than reverse his footing and test his luck on this precarious field, Wint decided he’d be better off taking his chances in the vicinity where Molek anticipated his arrival. Moreover, Mark was already cautiously angling in on the tapered stretch of land with Hics’s gun in tow. Wint waited for Mark to nudge the revolver between his shoulder blades. The two men then emerged from the pocket of trees in tandem. Hics never came out.
For a man who was pickled, where he fully understood the consequences, Wint remained remarkably bullish. He even managed to shoot a scowl in Molek’s direction that would’ve given the outlaw Josey Wales cause to avoid a scuffle. But a loaded gun pressed against the center of Wint’s spinal cord had virtually removed any chance of resistance on his part. Mark served his new puppet master compliantly even without the strings attached.
“What happened to Hics? Molek asked Mark. His inquiry was met with Mark’s grim stare back toward the woodland.
“Cave-in. He was running after Wint and just suddenly dropped out of sight,” Mark explained. “I don’t think he’s coming back any time soon.”
“How unfortunate,” Molek sighed, but his composure was not lost when he spoke to Nepo. “Well, nobody believed that we’d complete this mission without enduring a few hiccups. So we now indeed have one fewer to contend with.”
“He had no pertinence to us anyway,” Nepo declared. “We just need another peon to drive the car, preferably one who makes less digestive noises.”
Molek waited until Mark ushered Wint closer to his Caddy before addressing him directly. “It may be too late for Hics,” he said to Wint. “But seeing that you’re still here with us, I assume you’ll be cooperative. After all, we just witnessed what happens when the hunter gets captured by the game.”
“Maybe you should go into the woods and look for him yourself, Molek,” Wint suggested. “It’d be a real hoot watching a hole open up big enough to consume you.”
“Aren’t you the snappy one? You’re like a little turtle coming out of its shell,” Molek returned. “Don’t fault me for the company you keep.” Molek leered at Mark before he continued. “If you become a friend of the devil, why are you so surprised if he lures you toward hell?”
Molek then ordered Mark to frisk Wint. After a brief pat down, Mark yanked a keep case from an interior pocket in Wint’s overcoat. He opened the case, and checked it. “Looks like this is the right disc,” Mark announced. “But we’re still going to need Wint’s passcode to activate it and make sure he doesn't have any other copies.”
Molek already presumed that Wint wouldn’t willingly volunteer such information. Nepo appeared eager to pounce on the man’s face and perform her feared talon tap dance, but Molek only employed that tactic as a last resort. “Despite what you believe,” Molek whispered in Wint’s ear, “I’m a civilized man, and whenever possible I avoid inflicting pain upon people, even those people who’ve intentionally tried to undermine me.”
“Remind me why it’s so civilized to piss in the woods and worship a Masonic god in mock ceremonies,” Wint said. “If that’s what you call refined, I’d rather hibernate in the ranks of the primitive-minded.”
Molek reached into his pocket and clutched a handful of birdseed. He opened his fingers and permitted Nepo to feast ravenously from her perch upon his shoulder.
“Apparently, this is a seedier business than I realized,” Wint mused.
“You insult what you don’t understand, Mr. Greene. But I suppose that serves more to my benefit than it does your own. As it stands, you have something I need, and I have a few ways to go about abstracting that information from you. I could simply torture you, but I’m much too old for all the screaming and thrashing that that method entails. Besides, getting the blood out of Nepo’s feathers is a dastardly chore in itself. Did I mention that my birdie just had her claws sharpened?”
Nepo extended her talon. She swiped it in the air like a rapier. Wint attempted to look unimpressed with this feat.
“When mixed together,” said the bird, “the colors green and red make brown.”
“In other words, you’re gonna look like a piece of shit when she gets through with you,” Molek tittered. As Molek paced in front of Wint and Mark, his beaded necklaces jangled like a shaman in a tribal dance. “Option two is barbaric and counterproductive at this juncture,” he continued. “I could have Mark blow a hole in your torso with a hollow point bullet and we’d watch you bleed out like common road kill.”
“What’s behind door number three, Hooty?” Wint asked offhandedly.
“Free chips for the house,” he responded. “But, of course, we lose valuable time in the process and I’ve currently run out of Class V transponders. In fact, I’m waiting for my men to bring me refills. One can never have enough chips in hand, so to speak.”
“They’ll be here in another hour,” Mark affirmed. “Oh, and Agent Oranger said they’re delivering the secret weapons as you’ve requested.”
“What weapons?” Wint questioned.
“Don’t trouble yourself with our nasty little business, Mr. Greene. You have enough to concentrate on at the moment. The pass code, please?”
“I’m afraid my memory is a bit foggy at the moment,” Wint mentioned.
“What a pity,” Molek said. “Let me try and clear the air for you.”
Molek shifted his position so that he stood behind Wint. He then held out his palm and commanded Mark to place the revolver in his hand. “Don’t you want me to shoot him myself?” Mark asked, almost robotically.
“Not just yet,” Molek replied. “I’d like to give your former ally one final opportunity to tell us the passcode before we send him to the Promised Land.”
“You heard him, Wint,” Mark said. “This is your last chance.”
Wint rarely backed down from a game even when he had only the slightest odds of winning, but this roulette wheel had come to a standstill. “Okay. You guys got me in a bind. But if I give you the passcode now, what’s gonna prevent you from killing me?”
“We still need you to access the computer files and delete all the stored data that you planned to disseminate,” Molek offered. “That should get you into at least the next chapter of your life.”
“I just hope you know that you’re making a huge mistake,” Wint said to Molek. “Maybe you’ve stopped people from finding out about your brotherhood this time, but it can’t last forever. Eventually you’ll be exposed for the tyrants you are.”
“Stifle your preachy rhetoric,” Molek admonished. “Give me the passcode now.”
“It’s ‘Elf Shot Lame Witch’,” Wint revealed.
“That’s a rather arcane reference, don’t you think?”
“Not as obscure as ‘roast mules’, but it’s about rituals and sacrifices, Hooty. You know all about them, don’t you?”
Molek neglected to respond to Wint. Instead, he returned the gun to Mark’s hand and walked toward the car. “What do you want to do with him now?” Mark questioned his new mentor. Molek almost conferred with Nepo for guidance, but seeing that the white macaw had an unusual disdain for Wint, he allowed Mark to make the decision
. “We’ll need him to find the computer terminal out here,” he debated. “But I guess we can wait until Mason and Oranger arrive. Wint might be more accommodating after he’s tagged.”
“Very well,” Molek agreed. “In that case, Mr. Greene, we bid you goodnight for now.”
Mark received a hand gestured command from Molek, and he followed through by striking the gun’s handle against the back of Wint’s head. The agent in green toppled to the roadside like a piece of uprooted turf grass. Nepo supervised the violence; her moon-glow eyes sparkled with sinister delight.
Chapter 23