When I came to, I was still in the driver’s seat. My eyes were burning—not due to an injury, but due to the barbeque sauce that had splattered all over the dash. Steve was slumped over in the back, blood trickling down the side of his face. Barack’s seat was empty.
I stumbled outside. The smell of burnt rubber filled my nostrils. There were deep scars in the field from the tires, all the way back to the road. The Escalade had left fifty-foot-long black skid marks on the highway. We’d come to a stop just short of a herd of cattle, which hadn’t taken much notice of us. I counted twelve of them, in addition to the cow that had somehow wandered onto the highway. A baker’s dozen.
I heard the trunk slam shut.
“Barack?”
He peeked around the corner of the car. “You’re awake. I was just coming to check on you.”
He was holding a first-aid kit. “I’m fine,” I said.
“You sure? You hit the steering wheel pretty hard.”
I touched my forehead and found a knot. I didn’t remember going headfirst into the wheel, but I must have.
“You feeling nauseous? Brain fog?”
“Not any worse than usual,” I said.
“You’re making jokes, so you can’t be too out of it,” Barack said. He opened the rear driver’s-side door.
Now that the smell of burnt rubber was dissipating, another smell took over. I looked down at my feet. I was inches away from a pile of manure. We were in the middle of a fecal minefield.
Barack peered back at me. “Oh, and watch your step.”
“I’ve been on farms before,” I said.
We both had. A couple of summers, we’d spent more time in Iowa than in Washington. That was what you had to do if you wanted to win the first-in-the-nation caucus. My only regret was that with all the cows I’d milked in the state fair over the years, I’d never won the state Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Never even came close. At least there’d been ice cream.
I peeked over Barack’s shoulder. Steve was awake, but he didn’t look good. There was a glassy look in his eyes. Steve wasn’t an agent, I realized. He was a human being. A human being in pain. He hadn’t asked to be dragged along on this quixotic quest. He’d only come along because he didn’t want a black mark on his record, not when he was so close to getting a spot on the presidential Counter-Assault Team. We’d taken advantage of him, and he didn’t deserve this.
Still, he should have been wearing his seatbelt.
Barack carefully wrapped gauze around Steve’s head. “There’s a cut along his hairline. The scalp bleeds more readily than any other part of the body. Except for arteries, of course.”
“Of course,” I said, though I had no idea what he was talking about. Barack didn’t have any medical training, as far as I knew. But his brain absorbed everything. If it came down to it, I had faith that he could deliver a baby. Maybe even perform a circumcision.
“He’s definitely got a concussion, but what worries me is internal bleeding. He wasn’t buckled in. He flew into the back of your seat pretty hard.”
Steve squinted at me. “Was it the Russians?”
“The Russians?” I asked, squeezing his hand. It was cold and sweaty.
“They’re trying to tamper with the election. We have to stop them.”
Barack frowned at me.
“What happened?” Steve asked. “They won, didn’t they?”
“We were chasing a biker,” I told him. “Do you remember that?”
Steve coughed into his hand. There was fresh blood in his cough. “The Marauders.”
“Have you called the meat wagon?” I asked Barack.
“There isn’t an ambulance in Delaware that could make it through the mud in this field. Don’t think they’re going to land a helicopter here, either, least not without some trouble. We’ll take him ourselves, as long as the Little Beast starts.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
“That’s because it is a plan, Joe.”
“The Marauders,” Steve said again.
Barack shook his head. “Hand me the keys, Joe. We need to get on the road.”
It was his car, so that was fine by me. Or it was his wife’s, actually. Despite everything I’d driven it through, the Little Beast wasn’t in bad shape. It was bulletproof and, apparently, barbed-wire-proof. At least I hadn’t hit the cow. No car is cow-proof.
“The Marauders,” I said, trying the word out on my tongue. Steve wasn’t talking about the Russians. He was drifting in and out of lucidity, but he was trying to tell us something. The Marauders…
I snapped my fingers. “The MC.”
“We don’t have time to talk hip-hop,” Barack said. “The keys—”
“Not an MC, an MC. Motorcycle club. The Marauders.”
Steve started to nod, but winced. He grabbed his ribs. He was trying to tough it out, but it was hard to hide his pain. He was a soldier…but even the best soldiers can go down. His eyes kept wandering, never stopping long enough to focus. He was fading fast. The last thing he said before passing out was, “Are those cows?”