David Koepp - Cold Storage

Teacake dropped to the floor. As he hit the ground, he saw Mike’s feet come around the corner, they were only about ten feet away, and he heard the sharp cracks of three wild gunshots and the clang of bullets hitting metal. Teacake’s view of the feet spun over, upside down, as he rolled under the door and into the storage unit, then the feet were right outside the door and Mike’s hands were reaching down to rip the overhead door open the rest of the way, and Teacake knew he’d miscalculated, just by a few seconds, but it was enough, he’d fucked this up, he was in no physical position to get up and pull the door down before Mike succeeded in ripping it open the rest of the way, shit, great plan, asshole, he’d led them straight into a dead end, a sealed storage unit, they were cornered.

But Naomi was on her feet already, of course she was; she’d leaped to her feet as soon as she’d come through. She was up and braced and had both hands on the door’s center handle— She got leverage on you, motherfucker, Teacake thought—as she put everything she had into it and slammed the door down so hard the clang echoed all the way down the hall.

Mike howled in agony, his hands crushed underneath the metal lip of the door, pinned there for a moment. Naomi pulled it back up three inches, not out of sympathy, but just to let him get his sorry-ass hands out of there. Mike yanked them back, Naomi slammed the door again, and Teacake, now on his feet, threw the metal locking pin at one end of the door, then darted over and threw the pin on the other.

The two of them stood in the pitch dark for a few seconds, breathing heavily, listening while Mike yowled and raged in the hallway outside. He banged on the metal with both fists; it rattled and clanged. He fired another half dozen gunshots at it, and dimples bloomed on the inside of the door as bullets slammed into the thin metal. Mike kicked it, then he tried like crazy to open it again. Light from outside streaked underneath as the door lifted and fell, but it would rise only a half inch, and the steel pins at either end had no intention of ever giving more ground than that.

Teacake spoke first, still out of breath. “So that’s Dad, huh?”

“I know, right?”

Outside the door, it went quiet. They waited.

After almost a minute, they heard footsteps as Mike walked away. They waited another thirty seconds, then they both pulled out their phones and the screens lit up their faces.

Teacake looked at his first. “Griffin called me eleven times.”

“Do you really give a shit right now?” she asked.

“Yeah, just, I need to keep this job.”

“You’ve mentioned.” She squinted at her phone, which was still showing the DTRA website. “There’s a number for a place called Fort Belvoir.”

“Fort Belvoir? That’s an army base.”

“Should I call it? Or the cops?”

Outside the door, they heard the faint patter of footsteps approaching again, fast. Someone was running straight toward them. The footsteps abruptly stopped as the someone launched himself into the air, there was a split second of silence as he sailed toward the door, and then the corrugated metal shuddered with a tremendous vibration as he slammed into the middle of it, denting it inward ever so slightly. But the door held fast.

They could hear Mike’s body crunch to the cement floor outside and he let loose an animal cry of frustration, a shriek that sounded unlike anything produced by human vocal cords.

Teacake looked at Naomi. “Yeah. Call the fucking army.”

The runway rushed up at him and Roberto stretched one last time. He’d moved around as much as he could on the flight, but at sixty-eight his body stiffened up a lot quicker than it used to, and in surprising areas. Wait a minute, I pulled a muscle in my ass ? How does that even happen? He and Annie talked about it all the time; they’d started to strain muscles in odd places or trigger back spasms by doing formerly uncontroversial things like, oh, standing up or opening a jar of peanut butter. That was the last thing he needed tonight, some pop-up infirmity to slow him down, and thirty thousand people die as a result.

The plane landed and taxied toward the far hangar, the one the airstrip at Leavenworth saved for visiting dignitaries and emergencies. Thanks a lot again, Jerabek, way to keep it all low profile. Roberto couldn’t wait to get off the government plane, drop his cell phone in a Faraday bag to block signal detection, and fail to call in for a good four or five hours. Until this was sorted. “Sorted”—he’d picked up that expression in London too and always loved it. Sorted. Handled, dealt with. Everything put in its proper place, quietly and efficiently, like a clerk in an office. Well, this one wouldn’t be quiet, but it would be thorough as hell, if all went according to plan. Permanent. Sorted.

He looked out the window and saw the open doors of the far hangar. The lights were on inside, but it appeared to be empty, just a large expanse of gleaming floor. There was a van parked in front and a figure in a dark coat standing beside it, a cloud of smoke curling up above the person’s head, backlit by the fluorescents inside.

The pickup truck with the airstair reached the plane just as it came to a stop. Inside, Roberto was already at the door. The copilot met him there with just a nod, no loose talk. That was one thing he missed about the service. Pleasantries were kept to an absolute minimum, which felt honest, and God knows it saved time. They both waited a few seconds for the tap-tap- pause -tap from outside, then the copilot flicked a few switches, pulled the handles, and the door sucked inward and rotated open. The copilot gave another nod and a tight “Good night, sir,” and Roberto stepped out into the four A.M. Kansas mist.

He hurried down the metal stairs, returned a salute from the airman at the bottom, and walked across the tarmac toward the van. He closed the distance between himself and Trini, and each of them was struck by how much older the other one looked. He hadn’t seen her in fifteen years, which meant Trini was in her seventies by now. Her health habits had never been good, and they had not improved, judging by the bright red glow at the end of the Newport Menthol King she was inhaling. The cigarette didn’t stand a chance.

Roberto reached her and stopped. He looked around the empty tarmac. “No base security escort?”

“Told ’em to buzz off and go back to bed.”

“And they did?”

She nodded. “I’m persuasive.” She went into a hacking cough and held up a finger— Hang on .

Roberto waited until she finished. “How is it possible you’re not dead yet?”

She shrugged. “Too mean.” She turned, opened the driver’s door, got in, and slammed it shut. Roberto walked around, eyeing the boxy white Mazda minivan with disdain, and got in the passenger side.

He settled into the white fake-leather passenger seat. “Cool wheels. This is your personal ride, right? You don’t expect me to drive it.”

Trini shook her head and put it in gear. “Oh, you’re a real beauty.” She hit the gas, cut the wheel, drove right through the open airplane hangar, and came out the far side. She took a left and headed for the Pope Avenue exit from the base.

“Seriously, Trini, I’m concerned. Didn’t you get lung cancer about ten years ago?”

“I do not have lung cancer, you inconsiderate prick, and I never have. I have emphysema, which is completely different and a hundred percent survivable.” She took another drag on her cigarette.

“Could you at least open a window?”

She opened his, and it sucked all the smoke right past his face.