Hardline

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

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The whole thing started in an almost-empty parking lot in front of an anonymous motel in the suburbs of DC in a light snow squall. The sort of place just off the highway where you would only ever stop if you were on a road trip, had already blown your budget for the day on food and fuel, and just wanted a place to be unconscious until the morning. Doors that hung a little bit loose on their hinges, yellow walls even in the no-smoking section, neighbors you didn't want to get too close a look at.

Or maybe it all started in another parking lot a decade and a half before, with the rain pounding down on the back of my head while I lay there face-first in a puddle of muddy water mixed with blood while somebody screamed a name over and over. Not my name.

The music on both occasions was about the same. Angry young men with loud guitars, simple chords in simple patterns. The two memories bleed into each other when I think about them, I can never imagine one without the other. I wake up sometimes and realize I've been dreaming about them as if they were both the same night, the details of one incident mixed up with the other. People died both times. I could tell the story starting from the first parking lot if I wanted to. How I came to be lying there and what came after that and how it all led up to here – but we'll start with the motel parking lot, it's easier to tell it that way.

The thing that sticks out in my memory is how heavy and dirty the sky looked that Tuesday, how heavy and dirty it made everything else look. The neon letters on the vacancy sign were red and garish, the prostitutes in the truck-stop parking lot across the street looked exhausted and sick. Stray flakes of snow drifted down from the sky like they had lost the will to stay up there, floating silently past the gray branches of dead trees. I felt colder than I should have felt considering that the car had heat and I was dressed for the weather. Snow in March is enough to make anyone feel like a Tom Waits song, later Tom Waits I mean, where he always sounds like he's pounding on a bucket and shouting some incoherent nonsense.

From the motel windows, the orange light from a desk-lamp seemed to flicker in time with the chaotic rock n roll blasting out of an old boombox inside the room. I couldn't see who was moving around in there very clearly, but based on the shadows passing in front of the curtains there were three or four of them. Bank robbers and maybe worse than that, if the information we had was reliable. It made me mildly embarrassed that I was enjoying the music. Enjoying it in a nostalgic sort of way.

I sipped my coffee and puckered my mouth at the citrus-peel aftertaste, glancing at the man in the driver's seat of our stakeout car. He was also grimacing. How the hell do you get citrus aftertaste in coffee anyway? That's what I was thinking. My partner Jim Duffy was thinking about something else.

“No kidding,” said Duffy. “Their music is terrible.” It was certainly loud. None of the pigeons dared to get close enough to grab the half-eaten fish sandwich lying in a styrofoam container in the parking spot next to ours. But some people like that sort of thing, and once upon a time I was one of them.

“The music's alright,” I said. “The coffee's sour.”

“You actually like that noise?”

“I guess I used to. Don't really listen to it anymore. You know how it goes.”

“I guess I don't. I'm an old school guy. Led Zeppelin and the Eagles all the way.”

“Oldies radio, you mean.” I laughed. The standard gag between us was that he was a square or an old fogy and I was a freak in sheep's clothing.

“Classic rock. Whatever was on the radio when I was in high school,” he said.

“Led Zeppelin was already on the oldies station where you were in high school. Seriously, Duffy. You literally act twenty years older than you actually are. And anyone who only listens to whatever was playing when they were in high school doesn't really like music in the first place.”

“Oh f*****g well, so I don't like music much. This is not exactly a liability for an FBI agent. Being some kind of grown-up metal kid is not exactly an asset either. One of those scrawny guys with greasy hair and a leather jacket, who somehow cleaned his act up and got his ass into Quantico.”

“You've got me all wrong, my friend. I was never a metal kid, even if I did have to clean my act up a bit to get into Quantico. And anyway, that isn't metal they're playing,” I said. “That's hardcore punk. I can't tell what kind exactly, I can't hear it that clearly.”

“Hardcore punk. You're serious. You do realize you're a federal law enforcement officer. Not to mention a grown man.”

“Well, I don't really listen to it anymore,” I said. “Misspent youth.”

“No s**t. I'll bet you were even in a band.” Duffy was not the kind of guy to be impressed by that sort of thing.

“Guilty as charged.” I raised my hands in mock apology. “Chaos Factor.”

“Chaos Factor. With circles around the A's, right? Really radical. You know, there's nothing sadder than a guy who used to be bad-ass.”

“That's a fact,” I said. “But I was never bad-ass. All we did was play three chords as fast as we could.”

“Long as you know yourself,” said Duffy solemnly. “That's the important part.”

“Okay then, wise guy. It was a long, long time ago. We never even made an album, just played local shows. And like I said, I don't really listen to that stuff anymore. Different time of life entirely.”

“So what is it these days? Smooth jazz?”

“Laugh it up, Duffy, laugh it up. Let's get back on the job. Right now what I need to know about is Ultima Thule.”

“We're not gonna find out much about them here. I can't see a damn thing.” The curtains on the motel room windows were still drawn and all we could see was shadows. Distorted black shapes that looked like dancing neanderthals celebrating some primal ritual of fire and darkness. The melting snowflakes smeared across our windshield didn't make it any easier to see what they were really up to.

“Neither can I,” I said. “Let's review what Alvin gave us.”