Will Staeger - Public Enemy

Maybe they won’t be that good.

On the other hand, maybe they will-he is their president.

That was when the claustrophobia hit.

One instant he was thinking rationally, contemplating his plan-and in the next he could no longer breathe, stand, or think. He fell first to one knee, then the next. He felt as though the weight of the ceiling had fallen on his chest, his lungs collapsing slowly, so that with each successive breath he was capable of bringing in less and less oxygen-until, like an asthmatic, he couldn’t find a single cubic inch of air to feed his failing chest. He pushed his hands out against the walls, trying to convince his brain there was plenty of room-plenty of air-but he only felt the walls shrinking in on him. Sweat burst suddenly from his pores, a lukewarm, salty sprinkler sprung to life in a flash of heat.

He wanted to scream, Fuck! but he couldn’t. He wanted to hear himself say, It’s not real! You’re losing your fucking mind! But he couldn’t.

Get up and go now, he heard from some lesser-traumatized corner of his brain, while you still have the chance. You have to find a place to hide-your past, or the ghosts of these tunnels, or both, are taking away your mind. You’d better get yourself someplace where nobody can find the intruder curled up against the wall in a fetal position, and you’d better do it now.

He started out on his knees, then rose to one foot, then both, moving deeper into the shrinking tunnel one slow-motion step at a time, unable to breathe-his vision blurry from the sweat dripping into his eyes. He felt as though he had dived into molasses, but he kept on, and in twenty paces came to another door. This door was closed, but not padlocked. He struggled, arms beginning to weaken, but he got it open and a junction of tunnels presented itself to him. He attempted to determine the direction that would take him farthest from the house, and took it.

He lost all focus and impression for the remainder of his meandering journey, Cooper’s return to the hell of his past blunted by his accelerating phobias and post-traumatic-stress attack. He didn’t know how long it took him, only that he got himself somewhere deep in the labyrinth before deciding almost by default on a hiding place. Unable to fend off the leaking pores, failing lungs, and ringing headache, his weakened mind turned in on itself and he fell to the floor, a sweating, heaving potato sack. He pulled his legs under his arms and lay there, trying to keep warm but caught in a cold-shiver loop of the sort he regularly endured in the course of his recurring nightmares.

He slipped from consciousness, unable even to find a sense of relief.

The Three Wise Men-as Laramie preferred to call her team following Cooper’s more insulting nickname-decided to recruit a bounty hunter to capture the sleeper and deliver him to Detective Cole’s childhood home, a dilapidated ranch in Yonkers the cop said he’d inherited when his mother died eight years back. The peeling old house was a forty-minute drive from the sleeper’s home, a drive Laramie understood the bounty hunter, his posse, and bounty to have made in a rented Freightliner Sprinter without incident.

Cole assured them that nobody besides the mailman ever visited the old house. He also claimed to be remodeling it, but Laramie saw no evidence of such as she paid her cab fare in cash and came up the stoop. They had the sleeper, whose current name was Anthony Dalessandro, in the basement. Laramie was greeted in the foyer by a thick-necked member of the bounty hunter’s posse; it seemed the seizure team still wore their gear, this guy coming at her with his heavy handshake and a blue flap-down windbreaker of the sort FBI agents wore for public raids. The only difference being the words on the coat-this guy’s jacket saying BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT in favor of a more legitimate declaration of authority.

The “bail enforcement agent” escorted Laramie down a set of creaky wooden stairs to the basement. The cellar’s floor was made of gravel, which looked wet in places, and its walls appeared to be nothing more than sagging piles of stone laden with leak stains.

Dalessandro was zip-tied to a chair on the far side of the space, hands bound behind the rear of the chair, ankles secured separately to the chair’s two front legs. A rectangle of black tape covered his mouth and twin loops of yellow rope secured him around the chest. He was out cold.

A man Laramie knew to be the head bounty hunter-a scrawny, longer-haired version of her escort, standing no taller than Laramie’s five-four-came over and shook her hand without introducing himself or asking her name. She noticed that once he’d let go-as compared to the shake of the guard dog who’d brought her down-her fingers seemed less likely to crumble and break off.

“Afternoon,” the bounty hunter said. She found his voice almost gentle. “Based on the assignment particulars, we’re assuming you’ll prefer total privacy during your ‘conversation’ with the subject. My recommendation, ma’am, is we remove the tape from his mouth so he can speak with you, but otherwise leave him as is. Strapped in. We’ll be standing by upstairs for the duration.”

“That sounds fine,” Laramie said. She thought a little about how unwilling to talk the sleeper might turn out to be while strapped to the chair, but she wasn’t figuring on getting much out of him anyway and wasn’t about to risk her life for zero intel. Better, she decided, to stay on the safe side, particularly if she wouldn’t have one of the guard dogs with her. Which she wouldn’t regardless-the bounty hunter was right. Neither he nor the members of his squad would be permitted to listen to the interrogation.

“If you prefer, we can hang tight in the van,” he said. “But I’m always more comfortable sticking to what I like to call ‘bumrush range.’”

Laramie nodded, needing no explanation.

“Agreed,” she said.

The bounty hunter came around behind her, lifted the folding plastic-top table he’d been keeping there, and placed it in front of the sleeper. He repeated the circuit and brought a second chair over to where Laramie could sit and face Dalessandro from across the table.

Then he nodded and smiled.

“Use the word ‘help’ or just make a lot of noise,” he said. “We’ll be right down.”

“From bumrush range,” Laramie said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh,” the bounty hunter said. “Almost forgot.”

He headed to the storage post against the wall one last time, carried a heavy bucket over to Dalessandro’s side, reared back, then doused the comatose sleeper with a full bucket of what Laramie assumed from the reaction to be very cold water.

Dalessandro came suddenly awake, wide-eyed, sucking frantically for air through his nostrils, searching in a panic around the dim basement for some clue as to his whereabouts and circumstances. The bounty hunter assisted Dalessandro in his effort to breathe, ripping off the rectangle of tape in a quick swipe that looked to Laramie as though it hurt like hell.

Dalessandro heaved in a few breaths of air.

“There you go,” the bounty hunter said to Laramie. He walked upstairs and shut the basement door behind himself.

Laramie waited, standing, until the sleeper got his bearings and settled down. Once she could see he’d realized that a fairly unthreatening woman was all who stood before him, she approached the table, flipped the file she’d brought onto it, took a seat, and pulled her chair nice and close to the table.

“Hi, Tony,” she said.

Dalessandro blew some dripping water off the edge of his nose. He took the opportunity to peer around the basement again. After a while his dark eyes settled on Laramie, where they stayed for a confused couple of minutes.