Kelly turned sharply to stare at her profile. Her hair had fluffed during the drive, shading her cheeks, but she cocked her head enough toward the veteran to let him see her grin.
He smiled as well, releasing the catch of his seatbelt in order to shift the weapon in the hollow of his back. “I wouldn’t have, no sweat,” he said. “But yeah, sometimes it’s nice to know that endgame’s your choice, not some other bastard’s.”
Kelly was wondering idly at the facades of Central Washington buildings, lower and more interestingly variegated than those of most comparable cities, when the Volvo cut smoothly toward the curb. The veteran glanced from Elaine, thumbing the trunk-latch button on the console, and back with new interest to the hotel at which they had stopped. The ground level expanse was of curtained glass and glass doors printed with “The Madison’ as tastefully as gold leaf can ever be. Despite the hour, a uniformed attendant was coming out almost simultaneously with the muffled pop of the trunk.
Elaine had her door open and was stepping into the street before Kelly could even start around the car to hand her out. “They’re gonna confiscate my shining armor, lady,” he called plaintively over the green roof.
“Get the case, Tom,” she replied as she pointed out the keys still in the ignition to the attendant, who slid behind the wheel.
The sound from above was unmistakable, but it was so unexpected in the present context that Kelly could not fully believe what he was hearing even after he paused to stare up into the darkness. “What the hell?” he said as Elaine walked back to him and glanced upward as well. “There’s a helicopter orbiting up there.”
The clop of rotor blades was syncopated by echoes from building fronts and the broad streets, but the whine of the turbine waxed and waned purely as a result of the attitude of the aircraft to the listeners below.
“Get the case,” Elaine repeated calmly. “It’s not us – not that they told me.” She shrugged and pursed her lips in a moue. “The President of Venezuela’s in town. He’s probably staying here.”
Kelly hefted out the black Halliburton in the trunk. The attache case was not so much heavy in the abstract as it was disconcertingly heavier than the norm for things that looked like it. “I congratulate you on the excellence of your expense accounts, ah – ” he said as he slammed the trunk, “Elaine.”
He followed the woman at a half step and to the side as they strode through the lobby, heeling really, as if he were a well-trained dog. Which was true enough, very true indeed, though he wasn’t sure just whose dog he was right at the moment. Not NSA’s, certainly not that of the bastards he’d just met at Meade, whatever their acronym turned out to be for the moment.
The hell of it was, the hell of it was, Tom Kelly probably still belonged to an abstraction called America which existed only in his mind. It didn’t bear much similarity to the US government; but he guessed that was as close as you came in the real world.
Fuckin’ A.
Elaine had fished a key from her purse as they walked between a quietly-comfortable lobby and the reception desk. She ignored the clerk as she strode toward the elevators, but Kelly noticed the man turned and spun his hand idly in the box that would have held messages for room 618. Kelly winked, and the clerk waved back with a broad grin.
The graveyard shift was boring as hell, even if you were pretty sure the other side had you targeted for a night assault.
Kelly entered the brass-doored elevator at the woman’s side and pushed the button for the sixth floor before she lifted her hand. “This isn’t the briefcase you had earlier?” he said, staring at his poker-faced reflection in the polished metal.
“No, it’s the one that stayed under guard in the car until we knew we’d want it,” Elaine said, eyeing the veteran sidelong with an expression resembling that of a squirrel in hunting season.
Keep ’em off balance, Kelly thought as his expression of wide-eyed innocence looked back at him. Especially when you don’t know which end is up yourself.