He had just the one clear memory. In that memory, he was looking up at three stories of bronzed glass rising in geometric panels to an angled roofline. And he recalled one more thing: the painful, blinding glare coming off that glass wall, the front of the Beige Group’s new Arizona center — a technology facility owned by his employer, one of few places on Earth where he should have been completely safe and protected.
He could remember standing in front of the glass-fronted building with the car door open, reaching inside for the sunglasses he’d just discarded. Then the slam of his body against the door post and seconds later the sound of the shot. The strange, brutal but weirdly painless impact on his chest and then the bite of the gravel under his hands.
The memory lasted only seconds. Sometimes, he thought he had crawled to the front of the car and examined the facade of the center, the low garage on the left and the high fences that extended on both sides. At the times when he believed he had done that, he would also remember that the narrow glass panels bracketing the ornate steel doors were not mirrored but frosted. And through one of those panels he had seen Gerald, with his graying auburn hair, slumped forward, motionless in his chair.
Although the image of Gerald was constant, he didn’t trust it. He believed in facts and his instincts. After each period of swirling images, glimpses of events which were obviously hallucinations, he would recover control of his intellect and for brief periods he would be able to think and plan. And separate the suggestive images from solid reality. During those times, he rejected the possibility of Gerald’s death.
When he wasn’t being sick, he lay on his back, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. He had looked down at his shirt only once. He’d peeled back his lapel, evaluated the extent of the bleeding, and immediately wished he was bleeding more on the outside because that might indicate less bleeding inside. It worried him, especially the way his lungs felt, like they might be filling up with something thick, making each breath difficult. Not much pain yet, which was worrisome in a different way but not a productive thing to think about because he had a hole in a bad spot and there was nothing he could do about it. So he thought instead about the events of that day, the ones he knew were real and might hold a clue to the who and the why of the bullet high up in the right side of his chest.
He remembered LAX in the early morning, the rental car with the double sixes on the plates, leaving the smog and traffic as Interstate 10 began to stretch out, flat and fast across the desert.
Checking into the hotel in the afternoon. Especially, burning with thirst, he recalled the shower at the hotel. Then dressing in a hurry, cursing Gerald for the tux and the shirt studs. The freeways and exits, exactly as his directions had said they would be, and then the rocky foothills and the final turnoff to the center. The winding gravel road so deceptively untended and rural. His first amazed reaction to the exaggerated, towering A-frame that housed the new Arizona data center. A billion dollar project and impressive as the exterior was, the real worth was hidden inside.
Then, parking and stepping out, turning to stretch for his sunglasses. Each time, replaying it, his chest would clench into a fist of fire, anticipating the shock of the bullet and the sinking, breathless feeling.
It was during the hot time that the actual remembrance of the shower began to slide into something else, and he would find himself back in the hotel shower. Then he would be standing under the spray with his mouth open, greedily drinking the warm water.
Despite his positive knowledge that he was hallucinating, he was never able to stop. Each time, he had to let it happen and watch himself, dreading it; going along for the ride while half his brain recoiled from the irrational repetition. The other half of his brain would be fully engaged and tasting the water.
After a certain point, drinking that warm phantom water made his gut spasm violently, igniting more pain in his chest than he was able to prepare for. After each wave of nausea, the agony cleared away the false images for long minutes. He would open his eyes and welcome the pitiless intensity of the sun and the pain and for a while he could be present and think about the choices available to him.
Soon enough, he’d find himself back again in the shower, confused and then hot, gagging, and with every indrawn breath fanning the fire in his chest, he would be sick again. At some point, he realized that the cramping in his gut was the catalyst for the shower images, not the result, and that even if he were somehow able to turn off the hallucinations of the shower, he would still be forced to endure a cycle of retching that left him weak and gasping.
When his mind was clear, he thought about his body, objectively, the way a workman thinks of his tools. Body size and weight define life expectancy in cases of trauma and blood loss. These things, he knew. He was big and fit, so he might survive where others would not. He allowed himself a sliver of satisfaction in his ritual of daily workouts.
Sometime later, lying sweating in the sun, reviewing the day’s events for the hundredth time, he discovered another almost real picture, that of running. Like the doubtful image of Gerald bent forward in the chair, he could almost recall running down the shoulder of the narrow gravel lane. Moving quickly downhill, back to the cover of the wide curve that had afforded him the first glimpse of the center from the car. He rejected this image also, although, like the picture of Gerald he was never able to excise it completely. He doubted he had run because he doubted he could.
He was an important man and a shrewd, careful man. The rental carried California plates. It was parked at the front door of a secured site, the license a clear link to him. They’d be looking for him. There was only one role for him now: to sweat it out, maintain concealment, wait for rescue. Altogether a role that did not suit him.
He was not a patient man and he seldom had to wait but he waited now. Waited by force of will, with the sickness and the pain, breathing carefully against the iron bands around his chest, suffering the hallucinations.
Waiting in the sweltering afternoon sun, he reminded himself that every time he had extracted an agent, whether experienced or green, male or female, without exception, they had said to him, ‘Man, I thought you were never coming.’ Everybody said it, in one variation or another. He felt their emotion without embracing it. Holding himself, as he always did, apart from their fear and weakness; doing his job, doing it well and without sentiment. He would say nothing like that when they came for him.
Also, he knew he was not going to die. Not unless he took another bullet. Thinking about that, he worked his way deeper into the sparse, dusty shrubs and cactus that filled the sandy depression between the road and the taut, electrified fence. One thing he knew about bullets: if they didn’t kill you in the first hour, they took their time, often three or four days to do it. Triage teams called the first hour after a trauma the golden hour, and he spent the afternoon squinting at the sun, trying to time that hour. When the western sky at last turned red, his confidence that he’d outlasted the hour was certain, though it felt like a mean triumph.
During the long hours of dusk, as he watched stars appear between black patches of clouds, the hallucinations changed from the shower to that of a rescue team that was searching for him but unable to see him. He would see them plainly, sometimes with familiar faces, other times strangers, but always passing him by and keeping their distance as though deliberately avoiding him.
Again and again, the frustration of a near miss was transmuted into black rage. In a repetition of the finale of the shower images, the rage would eventually choke him. He would regain control of his mind in the agony of deep breathing following the violent dry heaving which had long since ceased to produce anything but pain.
Lying gasping from one of these, he discovered his gun in his left hand. Dubious, he gripped its familiar form, shocked by its presence. For a period he just held the gun, real or imaginary, allowing relief to take hold, even if only for the moment. Eventually, he put it down in the sand and checked his chest for the shoulder harness, which he could not feel and did not believe he was wearing. His hand confirmed its absence. He retrieved the gun, felt enormously reassured by its definite presence and began once more through the events of the day, questing with his temporarily restored analytical powers for an explanation for the gun. He checked for a belt holster without success. Why and where had he picked up his gun? It was real and that was good. But it was totally unexplainable. That was bad.
Finally he had to accept that he had lost track of real events, that some part of his memory had become lost or twisted while his mind wandered. The next time the image of the inept rescue team came to him, he feared them as well as despised them and returned to consciousness with the conviction that whoever came could be more foe than friend.
When he felt the first raindrops, he mistook them for the shower and licked them from his parched lips with reluctance. He waited for the cramps. Slowly the reality of the rain sank in. It was almost as good as finding the gun. He savored the moisture in his mouth. Clear-headed, he gazed up at the clouded sky where a moon had risen behind the clouds. He could hear the wind moving through the shrubs though it did not touch him on the ground.
For long minutes he willed his attention into the burning hole in his chest and licked up the rain, holding fast to his pain and anger to delay the nightmares. When they came again, they brought neither mock shower nor lethal rescue team. They brought Angel. This time, as soon as the gagging stopped, he got painfully to his feet and forced himself into a stumbling walk and then a jog down the ditch, staying well clear of the fence. He had made the decision to move hours earlier but to had taken Angel’s memory to force him to his feet.
At some point, he realized that running made the nightmares more frequent and intense. Whenever he was in control and could think, he warned himself to move with care and conserve his strength. The cooling temperature was a relief but being upright meant each painful breath took effort. He wanted to stay within a few miles of the center because this was where they’d start the search, but he also needed to find cover before daylight.
So he moved when he could and rested when he had to and attempted continually but unsuccessfully to repel the images of the woman who had been called Angel. And when his mind was clear, he reminded himself that she was dead. A long time dead.
At first the rain was a blessing. Soon he was chilled and had discovered that if he imitated the shower nightmare and swallowed it, his stomach would reject it. He awoke from each nightmare of Angel tight with rage, disoriented, frantic. Unlike the hot afternoon, the rain offered no burning focal point to pull him back. His attempts to reconstruct the day became increasingly labored and often intertwined with the old memories of Angel and Gerald in Brazil.
He had not dreamt or even thought about Angel for years. It almost surprised him that she should be so immediately familiar. That she had been beautiful he would never forget but to see her, hear her, touch her skin and watch her face while he touched her was unbearably real. Just as with the shower images, he was forced to watch himself with Angel while half his brain craved her and the other half was sickened. Then she would be turning, wiping hair oil off her hands, ordering him to hurry, showing him the picture. He knew each time exactly when the slap was coming but could not forestall the shock of the blow with anticipation. Each time, he felt it all again as his head snapped back. Then she would open the door and they would move out and he was into it and following her orders, beyond his own control.
He did not see the dawn. When he woke from one of the nightmares, the sky was low and misty with early light, the rain settled into a drizzle. No part of his body didn’t hurt. The right side of his chest felt bloated and ached all the way through to his shoulder blades. He lay still, thinking, breathing carefully, grateful to wake for once without the frantic need to vomit.
In a few minutes he forced himself to a crouch to scan the grassy, sloping meadow. Obviously, he’d left the road sometime during the night. He switched the gun to his numb right hand, winced as he gripped it, took it back in his left.
At the edge of the meadow, a rocky hill rose behind a clump of brush. It was the only cover in sight. He headed for it, determined to find someplace to wait out the daylight hours. He estimated that he had covered more than five but less than ten miles overnight and that he had traveled west and slightly north which should have taken him steadily up into the foothills and away from the city. He was satisfied with the distance and given his remembrance of lying in the sun, relatively satisfied with the rain.
He was cold. He knew he’d get colder, but he had no intention of dying; not out here, like this, not without getting a crack at whoever had put this bullet in him.