David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

“You think he’s with us?”

“He’s not running,” said Leo. “He could, I suppose.”

“Do you think they want to meet us in this store? Dear Diary, I mean?”

“I think they were the ones following us.”

Leila squinted her eyes. Her thinking-hard look.

“The phone just said You’re being followed, ” said Leo. “It didn’t say by whom.”

“But why? We’re on their side.”

“I’m not in Dear Diary. He’s not in Dear Diary. From what you told me, this isn’t even really an HQ-approved operation. They may be worried that Mark is some sort of bait. Or maybe you’re like the rogue agent who goes off the reservation and they have to treat you as potentially compromised. They got you to give up your car.”

“You’re right,” she said. “My overnight bag’s in that car.”

The phone luminesced again, like kryptonite.

“They’re outside,” said Leila. “Let’s go.”

“You go ahead. We’ll be right there.” He gave Mark a small urgent wave.

Mark wasn’t even into the meat of his hangover yet. That would come in the afternoon. He was going to feel like barf on a day that mattered. Leo Crane and the Mysterious Girl knew something about the Committee’s nefariousness and wanted him to quit working for Straw? Me too, he could happily, easily reply to Leo, but there’s a little more at play here .

“Where’d your partner go?” he asked Leo. But then through the big plate-glass window behind the magazines, they could both see Leila, leaning in the driver’s-side window of the big Wagoneer, the vehicle they had supposedly been trying to lose.

“Okay, Leo,” said Mark. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You’re getting a chance to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself?”

“This is what you’ve been waiting for, Mark.”

That such a chance was just what Mark had been waiting for was beside the point. The point was that you shouldn’t let people talk you into anything. So he just said evenly, “Actually, I meant more like, what’s this little scheme you and Scheherazade have cooked up?”

“Big scheme, Mark, big scheme. Just come with us. You’ll understand soon.”

“Tell me I’m in no danger, then. That dude in the Jeep looks serious.”

Leo looked out the window to where Leila was still conferring with the driver. He did look tough, the Wagoneer guy. “I guess I can’t do that,” he said.

“Jesus, Leo! Promise me something.”

“I promise you that if you don’t come with us now, you’ll have missed your last chance to be on the right side of history. And you’ll regret it.”

History? Mark was just wondering how to get himself out of a bad spot.

Leila came back in the bookstore to summon them. She was buzzing. Still he hesitated. “Come on, Mark,” she said. “Please? I helped you with the Jumble.”

Outside, the Wagoneer was idling in a loading zone.

“Let me see the driver,” said Mark.

As if he had heard that, the driver zizzed down his window.

“What’s your name?” Mark said to the man.

“Trip Hazards,” said the man.

“Sure. Is it just you in there?”

“Yup.”

Mark did a once-over of the vehicle. It was a dinosaur, a Grand Wagoneer from maybe the early 1980s, deep green with plastic wood paneling down the side and a roof rack on top. There was a rich kid at Mark’s high school who’d shown up in one of these senior year. All the windows on this one were tinted, but only slightly. It wasn’t really a tint, he saw when he looked closer. It was a kind of smearing effect.

“Where’re we going?” he said.

“To a meeting,” said the guy.

Mark made a show of considering his options. He looked toward his hotel; scruffed some fingers around his chin; checked his watch. Then he crossed in front of the big car and got in on the passenger side.

Trip Hazards tapped at a phone Velcroed to the dash, then he nosed the Jeep back out into traffic. He was paying keen attention to the streets around him and checking three mirrors constantly. A bicycle messenger slotted in on his right flank, outside Mark’s window. The messenger kept even with them for a block, then fell back. But then Mark saw the same bike messenger slip up on their far side, and another one assume the wingman position on his side. He torqued around. Yeah, they were sort of boxed in by bicycle messengers.

“What up with the bicycles?” he asked Hazards.

“It’s okay. They’re mine.” They made three lefts and they were now headed downhill, toward the river and the Burnside Bridge. The bikes stayed with them in the thickening traffic. Once they were nearly over the bridge, the bikes fell behind and slowed. They were throwing some sort of interference, tying up the lanes behind them. Trip took a hard right, gunned it for a block, and then took another hard right, then another. He pulled the Wagoneer into a scrub lot two stories below the bridge they’d just come over, right beside a sort of construction around which teenagers were gathered in a Mad Max —like fashion. The scrape and grind wafted into the car. What place was this?

“It’s a skate park. The Burnside Skate Park,” said Leo, who must have sensed Mark’s curiosity.

Trip zizzed up Mark’s window from his driver’s armrest, which lifted Mark’s forearm with it.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Mark.

“Listen,” said Trip to all of them. “I need your full attention.”

But Mark couldn’t provide it, because a trio of skateboarders had climbed down from the undulating concrete moonscape of the park and were coming toward the car, with intention. They were dragging a machine behind them.

“…I have no idea what’s so important that they had us come into the city to get you, but we scrambled a lot of resources for you, quickly. So do me the favor of cooperating — and go easy on the chat — while I get you to the meeting.”

The favor of cooperating? thought Mark. “Um, Mr. Hazards,” he said. “Skaters want a word.”

Dressed in layers of frayed T-shirts, the three dudes outside were arrayed around the car in a sort of menacing flanking fashion. Trip zizzed down his window and spoke to the Chief Skater. “Skin us down,” he said. “Take the rack and switch the plates.”

“You got it,” said the dude.

Trip zizzed his window back up. The three skaters outside went to work. The plastic wood panels came off first. The machine they’d been dragging turned out to be a pressure washer. One of them switched it on and began swiping the powerful spray across the hide of the car. It growled over the metal and roared on the glass. Mark could see that the green of the car he was in was sluicing off the roof and hood and washing down into the nearby storm drain. Their car was shedding a skin; it was changing color. It was gunmetal gray beneath the green.

“We need to take certain precautions with you,” Trip was saying. One of the skaters was working on the roof of the Wagoneer with an impact driver.

“I’m not wearing a blindfold,” said Leila.

“You don’t have to. You’re a Diarist. These guys, though.”

“Look, can’t we just have this meeting at a Starbucks?” asked Mark.

Trip ignored him. “It’s got to be a blindfold”—he indicated some sleep masks hanging from the rearview—“or one of these pills,” and he lifted a little enamel pillbox from a concavity of the Wagoneer’s wide dash.

“I’m in recovery,” said Leo.

Trip handed him a sleep mask.

“What’s the pill?” asked Mark.

“It’s like a benzodiazepine,” said Trip, as if he were saying lemon — poppy seed .