Careening around the corner on two wheels, he was mystified to see another Humvee with its blue flashers going, blocking the street. Jesus H. Christ! He hit the brakes, skidded short of the two MPs standing there, and slammed it into reverse, knocking over some guy’s arty-farty mailbox. Shit happens, neighbors.
Well, now, goddamn it all to hell. Here came the two Keystone Kops from the PX, running around the corner and blocking his “Escape and Evasion” maneuver. Held up his watch. Seven minutes. RC was on the seat beside him, thirty hours and seven minutes to payday. He just had to play it cool was all. The way he’d always played it, right?
The two MPs in front stayed put. Hands on their sidearms, tough guys, watching too many episodes of JAG lately.
He craned his neck around and saw the two dickwads behind him coming toward his car. One guy stayed at the rear on the passenger side, the other one walked slowly up to his window. He rolled it down, nice and polite like, shoving the Stoli bottle under the seat with his right hand. He’d like to hide RC, but here was the guy shining some bright light right in his damn window.
Five minutes. He felt the Vitamin V pumping hot in his veins. Hell, any fool could stay cool for five more goddamn minutes.
“How we doin’ tonight, sailor?” the MP said.
“Just fine,” he said, giving the guy a big smile. He couldn’t even see the guy’s face, the light was so bright.
“What exactly you doing in the PX on a rainy Sunday night, sailor?”
“Just having a little drinky-poo, sir,” he giggled. That’s what Rita called cocktails when she was at somebody’s house for dinner.
“Had quite a few, I’d say. Seein’ as how you picked somebody else’s vehicle to drive home in.”
“No, sir, I have not been drinking quite a few. Only had one, sir. My vehicle wouldn’t start is all.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Yes, sir!” He’d been trying to slide RC out of the guy’s sight.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“That’d be your portable CD player, sir,” he said. Damn quick, too.
“Okay, very carefully, get your service ID out and hand it to me.”
“Yes, sir. It’s in the pantleg pocket of my fatigues. Right where I always keep it. ’Cause of the Velcro, you know. Okay?”
“Just show me the goddamnn thing,” the MP barked at him. Touchy, touchy.
He reached down and ripped open the Velcro seal on his pocket. Pulled out his ID packet. An open pack of Rita’s cigarettes came flying out, too, cigarettes spilling all over the floor. What the hell? Oh. She liked to wear his fatigues sometimes, when she went riding. So, that’s where she’d been hiding them! She was going to get an ass-whupping for that all right!
Cigarette. That would steady the old nerves. He reached down and picked one up and popped it between his lips. Then he leaned over toward the MP’s light, put the end of the cigarette right on the glass lens, and started to drag on it, trying to get the damn thing lit.
“Hell’s wrong with your lighter, sir. Can’t even get—”
It wasn’t a lighter, he saw now, hell no, it was a damn flashlight. He’d tried to light his smoke on a flashlight! Sent a bad signal, probably.
“Step out of the vehicle, sir,” the MP said. “Now!”
“Absolutely” he said, moving his foot off the brake and flooring the accelerator. He hit something, felt like a deer, maybe one of the damn MPs who wouldn’t get out of his way, and then his new Humvee was tear-assing across a few lawns and driveways and drainage ditches. He had the ideal “Escape and Evasion” vehicle, all right.
There were a whole lot of flashing blue lights in his rearview now. Shit, looked like the whole damn military police force was on his ass. Too late, kiddies, too damn late! He knew a shortcut to Sparky’s tower. He could be there in two minutes. He banged a wall hanging a hard right and banged walls a few more times going down the alley, sending trashcans flying left and right.
His watch said three minutes till twelve. He was going to make it, goddammit. He was going to pull this big bad mother out of the fire.
He burst out of the alley and there it was. Tower 22. Home of his best buddy, Sparky Rollins. All he had to do now was cross that baseball diamond and then a big open field and he was home free. No flashers in the rearview now. Good, they musta missed his shortcut. He accelerated across the diamond and decided to take out a row of bleachers down the right field line just for fun. Hell, it wasn’t his Humvee.
Then he was tear-assing across the open field, friggin’ airborne half the time. What a ride! His old heap would never have made it across all these damn flooded ditches and bushes and shit. To his left, he could see a train of blue flashers as the Humvees came to a stop in the parking lot of the baseball field. Then they too started racing across the diamond towards him. He managed a peek at his watch.
Thirty seconds.
He skidded to a stop a hundred yards from Sparky’s tower, jumped out, and ran over to the base. Cupping his hands, he yelled up to the tower.
“Sparky! My man! Sparky, you up there?”
“Sparky’s off duty tonight,” a guy up in the tower yelled down. “Identify yourself! Who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing?” Guy had an M-16 pointed right at him.
“I’ll show you what I’m doing!” Gomez said, jumping back in his Humvee. “Watch this, asshole!”
He reversed back a hundred yards and stopped. The fleet of Humvees was racing across the field toward him, all fanned out, thinking about surrounding his ass.
He looked at his watch and saw the second hand coming around, come on, baby, come on, yes! He had the RC in his lap, staring at it. Twelve midnight on the button! Two buttons actually and he pushed both of them simultaneously just like Julio Iglesias had told him.
The red numbers instantly started rolling backwards.
The Big Bug Checkout Countdown had begun.
The whole U.S. cavalry was maybe two hundred yards behind him now and coming fast. He rammed the Humvee in first and floored it. He was headed straight for the fence, screaming at the top of his lungs. Glass was shattering and hitting him in the face and he realized the guy on the tower was shooting at him!
One of his own guys was shooting at him! Friendly fire? No such luck, pal. Court-martial time for somebody!
He was going eighty when he hit the wire fence. It slowed him down a little, and he took a lot of goddamn fence with him and he musta hit one leg of the tower by mistake because it looked like it was starting to topple over, but goddammit, he was headed for the promised land now!
He took a quick look over his shoulder. There was the guy on the tower, only now he was pinwheeling in the air, headed for the ground. He saw that all the Humvees had stopped short of the fenceline. Of course. You’d have to be crazy to drive across a goddamn minefield on a rainy night, right? He was peering over the top of the steering wheel, wondering if the mines would be like little bumps that he could steer around, when he felt his pecker humming.
He jammed one hand down inside his jeans and pulled out his cell phone, put it to his ear. Damn, it was hard to drive with one hand but what else were you supposed to do?
“Roach Motel,” he said, realizing that his mind was totally clear but that he was screaming.
“Any vacancies?”
“No. No fucking vacancies for thirty hours.”
“Muchas gracias, amigo. Viva Cuba!” the guy said.
Then there was a click in his ear and then a much louder noise, some kind of explosion, and he felt the entire Humvee lift into the air, seeming to break in half as it rose. Then it was falling end-over-end and he seemed to be upside down and there was this terrible ripping pain in both legs, hurt so bad he couldn’t believe it and then—