The Janitor by Adam Decker - HTML preview

Chapter 20

The Wind in Our Face

I

It was a perfect day. One of those days that blue sky goes on forever, because there are no clouds to stop it. Hot but not too humid. Green grass everywhere and butterflies floating in the breeze. The smell of spring turning to summer.

Graduation would be held on the football field, with us seniors on the grass and our families in the bleachers. Our group of friends had agreed to meet beforehand in front of the clock tower. I parked the Pinto across Stephenson Street and walked to our meeting place. Heather stood by herself in front of the evergreen that months ago she’d decorated with the spirit of Christmas.

As I walked across the street our eyes met and I couldn’t help but smile.

Even though my head pounded from my encounter with Mr. Daniels, I didn’t care.

This was parole day, a day to finally celebrate our freedom from the crimson brick prison. I kept looking down at my feet because I wasn’t use to the black gown obscuring the length of my legs. All us guys wore black and the ladies silver.

Heather looked gorgeous as usual, her hair done up all fancy with braids coming out of her graduation cap, her gown sparking in the sun light.

“Where’s Roman anyway?” I asked.

“He insisted on walking of course. I don’t even argue with him anymore.” Heather stepped up to me and adjusted my tie. “I thought you’d be jumping up and down today.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because the worst day of your life ended up being the best, silly.”

“What the hell are you talking about, woman?”

“Hello…Sally and you. She told me about last night.”

The smile on my face faded. “What about last night?”

“You honestly don’t remember?”

I searched my memory banks—number four green at the Country Club, the party at Scotty’s, Jack Daniels, Sally telling me she was going to take me home, and then…I woke up in my own bed. “You’re shittin’ me right? I was toasted. Everything’s fuzzy.”

“Anthony Falcone! You spend your whole senior year trying to get with a girl, and when you finally do you forget?”

“It can’t be. There’s no way I’d forget.”

“Well I think you better at least act like you remember. Girls like you to remember things like that. We’re odd that way.”

As I stood there trying to recall last night’s events, our friends began to arrive—Pick and Scotty drove up together, Jack and Johnny in the Vette, Sam Peterman. All of them patted me on the shoulder or made a point to shake my hand—something teammates do when you have literally dropped the ball. I wasn’t sure if it was all moral support. Some of it might have been congratulations for my apparent conquest the night before.

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A dirt bike pulled a wheelie from the railroad tracks all the way to the clock tower. Its rider was none other than Brunno, with his black gown flowing in the wind like Evil Knievel. When his front tire finally hit the ground, he threw one of his arms up as if he had just jumped the Grand Canyon. Jack and Johnny clapped. I couldn’t think of anything more fitting than for Brunno to be arriving to his high school graduation on a dirt bike.

“He’s never gonna be right is he?” I asked.

“His dad got him the bike as a graduation present. I guess he couldn’t wait to test it out,” Johnny the Killer said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Roman walking by the tracks down the street. His head was tilted up toward the sun just like that first day I watched him walk home from school. He walked with his cap folded neatly under his arm and as he got closer I could see his smile widen from ear to ear. I wondered what his valedictorian speech would be about. I imagined it would be very different than the story I got in that long ago email—about the suicidal nerd and his friend the jock. After all it was never about me saving him, quite the opposite in fact.

Heather walked to meet him on the sidewalk. Roman picked up the pace at the sight of her. His whole face was a smile and then all at once, he stopped and just stood there. His smile faded away, replaced by a look of utter disappointment and loss. That image still burns in my mind to this day. He didn’t even have to look to know they were there—it was one of Roman’s special abilities that I could never fully understand. I followed his eyes as he scanned the landscape.

A black van sat on the side street that intersected Stephenson. Another idled in the parking lot just south of the school. The third crept up the street behind Roman. Above a jet-black helicopter floated over, its shadow gliding over the asphalt. Roman gave a brief frown to Heather, dropped his graduation cap, and in a second he was across the street sprinting for the gravel parking lot just across from us.

II

Even geniuses make mistakes and now Roman found himself in a fenced in parking lot, both exits of which were blocked with NN vans. The third van idled on Stephenson waiting to see what its prey’s next move would be. Agent Johnson sat in the passenger seat of his van, looking down the row of cars at the boy who had become his nemesis. Roman backed up to the fence, scanning the parking lot frantically for a way out. His eyes landed on Brunno’s new dirt bike as two of the vans began to converge on him. Roman jumped on the bike, failed twice at kick-starting it, then pushed the pedal down one more time, slamming it hard and throwing all his weight into it. The roaring of the engine pulsed through the air and Roman wasted no time in giving it its full test run. Instead of trying to avoid the van in front of him, he drove straight towards it. A few feet away, he stopped.

The agents in the van looked at each other, puzzled. A second later Roman hit the throttle and spun around, throwing the gravel of the parking lot into the van’s windshield. He made an aisle where there wasn’t one, slipping through the small crevices between car doors. I saw a mirror fly off at one point.

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The NN vans recalibrated their attack. Even though they were bulky and slow in that small parking lot, it was only a matter of time before they cornered Roman, dirt bike or not. Roman kept up his cat and mouse game, zigzagging in and out of cars and trucks, continually making his pursuers adjust to his route. I imagine Roman thought of it as chess—if you make your opponent move enough, sooner or later he is going to make a mistake.

The NN turned out to be a worthy adversary. They cornered Roman on the south side of the lot. To his right was a wall of cars up against the fence. To his left was another row of cars, but at the end of them sat Johnson’s van. Even if Roman repeated his previous routine and passed through the line of cars, Johnson blocked his exit. In front and behind Roman were the other two vans, each rolling toward him, cutting down the free space between them. Roman let them get closer.

At a distance of ten feet both vans stopped, one in front and one behind him. Their doors opened ready for the agents to pour out. Roman pulled back on the throttle, lifting his front tire off the ground and landing it on the hood of the car to his left. An instant later Roman’s motorcycle was jumping from car hood to car hood, bypassing the van in front of him. The agents scurried back to their seats and the doors slammed shut. The driver of the van threw it into reverse, hitting the gas and peeling out backwards in an effort to beat him to the exit. It was too late.

Roman was at high RPMs, darting up Stephenson Street. The vans and helicopter followed him.

“We’ve got to help him,” I said.

“We’ll never catch up to them,” Johnny the Killer countered.

“We don’t have to. I know where he’s taking them,” I said.

“They were fifteen-passenger vans. I couldn’t count how many agents there were because of the tinted windows, but they looked to be full,” Heather said.

“Forty-five of them,” I mumbled to myself. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“What are we waiting for?” Sam Peterman asked.

I looked around at the guys. Roman had affected each of them for the good in some way; still I didn’t expect them to risk their lives. But I knew what I had to do. I started to jog for the Pinto.

“I’m going too,” Heather said.

“Count me in,” Sam Peterman said.

“We’re going to miss graduation to fight a pointless fight?” Pick Bryant asked. “Even if we all go they’ve got us outnumbered. They’re the government for God’s sake. What are we gonna do, fart on ‘em?”

“My mom will kill me if I miss graduation,” Scotty added.

“Fuck your mom Scotty,” Johnny the Killer said flatly. “Do you think the janitor would have a second thought if it was one of our asses in the sling? Hell no he wouldn’t. He saved Apollo. I owe him.”

“He threw me a bucket of balls after every practice,” Peterman said.

“He gave back all the blackjack money at my dad’s bar,” Pick added.

“He helped me with my b-b-business math,” Brunno said.

“We all owe him,” I affirmed.

“I don’t owe him shit,” Jack Rollings whined. “The only thing he ever did for me was dislocate my leg. I’m not missing graduation for that piece of shit.”

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“He also relocated your leg,” I said.

“You’re going,” Johnny said, pointing at Jack.

“Bullshit,” Jack responded.

It was the only time I ever heard Jack disobey a direct order from Johnny.

The insurrection did not last long. The Killer had enough with the talk apparently.

He grabbed Jack, dragging him by the collar as we ran to our vehicles. We piled into the cars to go help our friend.

III

The Kawasaki KX500 glided over the black asphalt of Collingston, running red lights, cutting in between cars, and reaching speeds of 100 miles per hour. In minutes the buildings of the business district and the homes of neighborhoods were left behind, replaced by farmland and forest. Roman could see the shadow of the NN helicopter following on the road alongside him.

The NN vans followed at a close distance and though they had a more dubious time with city traffic, they never lost sight of their fleeing prey. Agent Johnson loaded the odd pistol that lay in his lap with something that looked like a watch battery. His tinted window slid down into the door. Johnson stuck the pistol out, aimed carefully, and shot the short silver cylinder. The tracer hit the motor casing on the bike and stuck like a magnet to a refrigerator.

The traffic had lessened since leaving the city limits and now it was only three vans and a dirt bike for as far as the eye could see. Route 1 straightened for a good five miles at one point, a perfect time for the NN to make its move.

Johnson’s van sped up to pass the Janitor’s dirt bike in the left lane and then cut back in front of him. The second van pulled into the oncoming traffic’s lane and mimicked the speed of the dirt bike. The last van came up behind Roman, just a few feet from his back tire. The NN made a moving barricade, and now the mobile walls started to slow down, forcing Roman to decrease his speed.

“Should we take out one of his tires?” A voice said through Agent Johnson’s earpiece.

“Negative,” Agent Stenworth answered. “The target is to remain intact if at all possible. Decelerate until we have him stopped.”

Roman had other ideas.

He cut the bike to the right—the only direction he could go—and veered off into the cornfield next to them. The vans stopped in the road, watching as Roman and his motorcycle disappeared into the forest on the other side of the field.

The chopper flew over the tree line but came back when it could not see him through the brush.

Johnson looked at the GPS monitor in his hand. Roman inched along the screen as a small blinking dot. “I put a tracer on his bike. He can run but he can’t hide anymore.”

“He will be ours soon enough,” Stenworth said.

IV

Our group parked a little less than a mile away from Buttworst’s house, disrobed from our graduation gowns, and hiked it through the woods. We stopped 352

at the tree line fifty yards or so from the teacher’s long driveway and watched as the NN unloaded from their vans. I spread the leaves of the greenery in front of my face to count thirty men, all dressed in suits and ties, shoes shined to perfection. Most of them removed their coats after exiting, revealing the belts around their backs and shoulders that held their holstered guns. Besides their usual side arms I could see a smaller weird-looking pistol. It looked like those lighters with the long barrels that could spark a flame at the squeeze of a trigger. It must have been the dart gun that Roman had become familiar with in that Iowa cemetery.

Half of the agents spread out, swarming over Mr. Buttworst’s house and garage. The other half formed a circle and stood like soldiers at attention, scanning the environment for the man they sought. There was never a spoken word, but still they moved like lions hunting—communication was replaced by years of skillful repetition. They were a football team that had practiced a certain play so many times it just became instinct. Johnson and a smaller man stood in the center of the worker bees, watching patiently as the area was secured enough to begin their search. The smaller man seemed to be Johnson’s superior. He looked more like a college professor than a skilled agent of the government. He had thin rimmed glasses in the shape of perfect circles, a large bald spot that covered more of his head than his hair did, a fragile-looking stature, and height that seemed to diminish next to the towering Agent Johnson.

One of the agents returned with a black gown in hand. Another followed with Roman’s suit coat, pants, and dress shoes. “Agent Stenworth, we found these in the loft above the garage,” one of the agents said.

“There’s no one inside the house or on the immediate grounds,” another said.

“I smell a trap. Someone doesn’t change out of clothes unless they have clothes to change into. He’s thought this out,” Agent Johnson said, sounding certain.

“Easy, old friend,” Agent Stenworth advised. “I don’t care how good he is, we have him out manned and out gunned. It is only a matter of time.”

“Don’t underestimate him.”

Stenworth looked down at his GPS scanner. “Very strange. According to this he is within three feet of us circling at an astounding pace. I hear no motorcycle.”

The Agents looked around with their dart guns in hand. Johnson looked around and then up. I followed his gaze to the crow soaring overhead. Johnson pulled his gun out and aimed. There was a soft click of his silenced weapon and the bird fell to the ground. Johnson walked over to the dead bird and knelt down.

“Crows are a very curious bird. They like anything shiny,” Johnson said as he opened the bird’s beak and produced his silver tracer.

“Regardless, he’s out there somewhere. Find him,” Stenworth ordered as he pointed to the woods behind Buttworst’s house and garage.

The wall of agents spread apart—leaving a good twenty yards between each man—and slipped into the forest. Johnson and Stenworth remained in the 353

gravel driveway. Stenworth talked into the toothpick-size microphone in his hand.

“I want a report every twenty minutes.”

“What ya reckon R-R-Roman did with my bike?” Brunno tried to whisper.

“I’m sure it’s in a safe place, Brunno,” I said back.

“What’s the plan here?” Johnny cut in. “There are only two of them left. I say we rush the bastards. There’s eight of us.”

“That’s a great fucking plan until they take out their guns and shoot us,” I said back.

“Good point. I should have brought my gun,” the Killer said.

It was useless to even argue anymore about Johnny’s gun. Something occurred to me at that moment—it might have been a mistake coming here.

Roman knew all along what he would be up against, when this day finally came, what the NN would do, how they would try and capture him, what their procedures would be. We might just be in the way, maybe even be a handicap. As I looked down the row at my friends squatting behind the brush in their best slacks, ties, and dress, I started to feel guilt. Not only had I taken their graduation away from them, but all of them except Heather were naïve as to what we were really up against. I suggested that we just wait and see what Roman had in store for the NN. My classmates complied for the most part, except for Jack who backtracked through the woods to take a piss.

V

The forest behind Buttworst’s home sloped downhill to a small ravine with a creek running through it, and eventually flattened out from there. As the agents’

distance from their starting point increased the webbing of leaves and branches overhead thickened, sheltering them from the light of the sun. Here and there single rays of light broke through the leaf barrier, turning the environment into a patchwork quilt of light and dark colors. Not only was it hard to see at times, but also the forest seemed to be twenty degrees cooler.

Agent Marick walked slowly, twigs snapping and dead leaves rustling under his feet; holding his dart pistol with both hands, he constantly checked the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions around him. Several times he thought he saw the young teenager he’d been instructed to find, but it turned out to be just a shadow on a bush or the odd shape of a tree. Marick was a young man himself, no more than thirty years of age, recruited by the NN after college and then three years with the CIA. He had no wife or children and the NN seemed to be a perfect fit for him.

This was the first time in his career that he felt out of place—wearing dress attire and polished shoes, walking through a forest he wasn’t familiar with, and losing line-of-sight contact with his fellow agents a hundred yards back. He wondered what the “target” had done or had known to deserve the wrath of thirty NN Agents. This was the largest-scale mission the agency had taken on since Marick had joined it. After several minutes of thought and considering the possibilities, he could not come up with a satisfactory explanation for the mission.

This Roman Swivel must hold the keys to a good number of problems that plagued the NN.

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Agent Marick’s speculation would not be resolved anytime soon.

Something very hard hit him in the head—a rock maybe—and now as he staggered in a circle, trying to check the surroundings for the source of the projectile, his vision blurred and his body moved in slow motion as if he were under water. The occasional beams of light breaking through the tree cover might have been sunshine hitting the ocean floor. As Marick finished his circle-scan of the area, his one-time prey suddenly stood inches in front of him—as predator.

Although still unable to focus well or aim, Marick pulled the trigger on his dart gun anyway, and was surprised when he felt something like a needle penetrate his own chest. Roman had turned the gun so that it was pointing at Marick. As the dart’s sleep poison crept into his veins and blackness started to close in around his eyes, Agent Marick was one step closer to understanding what all the fuss over Roman Swivel was about.

VI

“Why did we even come if we’re not going to do anything? This is bullshit,” Johnny the Killer said.

“Watch your voice,” I whispered back. “We came in case he needs our help. And until he needs it we’re going to sit here and be quiet.”

Johnny shook his head.

“Is Jack back yet?” I asked.

The Killer looked around down the line of our squatting friends and then toward the vegetation behind us. “Don’t think so. I’ll go get him. He’s probably talking on his cell phone or something stupid.”

“Hurry up, and be careful,” I said.

“I don’t know if this is good or bad,” Heather whispered. “If it’s good that their search is taking so long, I mean.”

Before I could answer her there was a clicking sound behind us, and I heard Johnny say two words—“Oh shit.”

Six agents stood behind us with their dart guns pointed. Jack was already in cuffs crying like a baby. His bathroom break had turned out to be very costly.

“Everybody up,” one of the agents ordered.

VII

It took only a matter of minutes to herd us out into the open gravel drive, cuff us, and force us down in a neat little row on our knees. Johnny and Brunno both tried to resist, only to be beaten down in seconds. The Killer and the wrestler with all of their brawn and bull-headedness were no match for the NN Agents, whose quick hands and joint locks brought them to submission.

Agent Stenworth now called off the search, and the Agents began to return one by one. Johnson walked by each of us prisoners, looking us over to make sure we were faces he recognized from his previous spying escapade to Collingston.

Jack continued to sob and I could tell it was wearing on Stenworth’s nerves.

I could sympathize with Jack I guess. Here we were on graduation day, hands cuffed behind our backs and knees in the dirt like we were about to be executed. There was a time when I would have been shitting myself like Jack, but 355

nine months with the janitor had changed my mindset in such situations. I counted only twenty-seven agents now—three less than before. Sure they might be out taking a piss or just taking their time returning, but by the look of urgency on Stenworth’s face I’d bet that Roman had something to do with it. For some reason I knew everything was going to be all right. I knew Roman would save the day once again. That was, until Agent Stenworth spoke.

He looked at Johnson. “Marick, Washington, and Jackson are not back and are not responding to their radios.” Stenworth looked at the eight of us as he thought to himself.

Jack’s cry only got higher and now there was a mucousy cough with it.

For a brief instant Stenworth and me had something in common. “Would somebody shut him up please?”

The agent next to Jack shot his dart into Jack’s arm. Jack’s crying slowed and eventually stopped—like a song in a tape player in which the batteries were dying. Jack fell face first into the dirt in front of him.

“That’s fucking…” Johnny didn’t get out the last word. Another agent hit The Killer in the side of the neck with a drugged mini-arrow. He too was now asleep.

“Careful with those things,” Johnson said to his comrades. “We don’t have an unlimited supply.”

“Don’t worry my friend, it will only take one to stop young Swivel,”

Stenworth reassured him. “Which of his friends will get him out here the quickest?”

Johnson looked at me and then Heather. “The girl.”

Stenworth hoisted Heather off the ground by her cuffs. “I know you can hear me, Swivel. I’m going to make life very uncomfortable for your girlfriend if you don’t show yourself. I don’t wish any harm to anyone, not even you, so do the sensible thing.”

Stenworth waited a couple of seconds and when there was no response he pulled on Heather’s hair until she screamed. Heather tried to wriggle herself free and then tried to back into his grip, maybe to throw him over her back like Roman had taught her. But Stenworth stopped her counter-move by jamming a knee into her back. Heather was sent sprawling, her face hitting the dirt.

“Stop!” A winded voice yelled.

Roman appeared from behind Mr. Buttworst’s house, his chest pumping hard for oxygen as he ran—wherever he’d been in the woods, he‘d had to move fast to get here. The glimpses of the warrior that lived somewhere in Roman’s soul were now fully apparent—he wore camouflage and his face was a brown, green, and black mosaic of paint. The friendly janitor I had grown to love was firmly entrenched in the art of war.

Roman continued to run toward us, then regained his senses. He stopped thirty yards away. I could see the struggle going on his eyes—he wanted badly to help Heather to her feet. My worst fears were now realized. We’d followed Roman to help him, but in fact we had done the exact opposite. We were no more than helpless worms dangling on the end of a hook.

“I don’t suppose you’re surrendering?” Stenworth asked Roman.

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“Never,” Roman responded.

“Have it your way. Put him to sleep boys,” Stenworth ordered.

The dart pistols rose and fired. Twenty-seven sharp tips hit Roman in the chest and torso, like he was a bull’s-eye at the firing range. A second or two passed but Roman remained on his feet. Instead of falling to his knees, he pulled the darts one by one out of his chest and stomach and threw them to the ground.

Johnson and Stenworth looked at each other.

Roman pounded on his chest with his knuckles. It sounded like he was knocking on a plastic bucket.

“Some sort of body armor,” Stenworth murmured. “I guess we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

Twenty-five of the agents—all but Stenworth and Johnson—surrounded Roman in a matter of seconds. They formed a circle around him. Roman put his hands in the pockets of his camouflaged shirt, and pulled out two dart pistols—

spoils from the three missing Agents in the woods. With a pistol in each hand, Roman’s fingers squeezed the triggers on both guns, sending the poisoned darts plucking through the air with the sound of a blowgun in the jungle. Nine darts and a total of three guns later he was out of ammunition, but the weapons had served him well. All of the poison projectiles had found skin to penetrate, and those agents had stumbled around, eventually falling to the ground. Eighteen agents were left standing.

Roman dropped the last empty dart gun as the circle of his remaining pursuers closed in. The first Agent punched Roman in the chest, only to retract his hand, shaking it from the collision with the makeshift body army under Roman’s fatigues. The agents adapted, aiming their fists and feet at Roman’s head and legs.

It was the same dance as before all over again—Roman ducking, blocking, and getting his own offensive blows in during the few split-second windows of opportunity. As many times as I’d seen it, it was still amazing—how two arms and two legs could block and duck the attack of so many. Roman could sense their swings coming—dealing with the ones in front of him with his eyes and dealing with ones in back of him without ever turning to look.

Stenworth looked at Agent Johnson.

“I told you he was good,” Johnson said.

“Yes he is.” Stenworth reached into his suit coat and produced a taser.

He walked toward the fight in front of him.

Two Agents grabbed Roman’s arms and held him as Stenworth charged in with his high-voltage device. Roman struggled to free himself but failed. Blue electricity sparked between the silver poles in the taser. Just before Stenworth placed it against his neck, Roman jumped onto the unconscious body of one of the agents. The two agents continued to restrain him by the arms.

Stenworth held the zapper against Roman’s neck, but he did not convulse.

Instead the two agents holding him jerked and spasmed. Roman had grounded himself somehow by placing his feet on the unconscious agent so that the current passed through him and his arms, into the two agents restraining him.

Before Stenworth realized he shocking his own men, Roman lifted one leg in the air and launched a succession of quick kicks . The first kick connected with 357

Stenworth’s stomach, the second with his taser, and the third with his nose. The taser flew through the air and landed in the grass. The current stopped and the agents on Romans arms fell to the ground like robots unplugged from their power source.

Stenworth picked his broken glasses from his face and felt his nose, which was broken and badly disfigured to the right side of his face. He squeezed it between his index finger and thumb, popping the ca