Chapter 3:  Touchdowns and Interceptions 

Guess who just got back today?
Them wild-eyed boys that had been away
Haven't changed, haven't much to say
But man, I still think them cats are crazy

They were asking if you were around
How you was, where you could be found
Told them you were living downtown
Driving all the old men crazy

The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town

-Thin Lizzy

***

I slog up an alley the approximate scent and diameter of a dog’s arsehole.  My head is still humming from the brawl and its aftermath.  Haven’t counted how long it’s been since she last set eyes on me, and I don’t want to.

By the time I got here the sun was already coming up, a red line poking out between the gaps, but lately I've been ignoring her.  The suit is stronger than a hundred sodding blankets.  My old yellow enemy can only paw helplessly at it, like a snarling bear trying to work a door latch.

Angel hadn’t much liked this particular caper of mine.  If vampires had their own Coin of the Realm, my current kit would fetch a price somewhere between the Hope Diamond and the Mona Bloody Lisa on the open market. No doubt that back in Hell-A, some powerful buggers were very powerfully pissed off at yours truly right now.  Somewhere under the helmet, the thought of this almost coaxes a smile.

Almost.

As I reach the alley’s black end, a filthy door creaks open and an even filthier face pokes out of it.  This is my "safehouse" as the Forehead likes to call it.  Angel has got ‘em set up all over the bloody planet these days, like Count Drac’s boxes of Carpathian soil. The face belongs to my landlord for this particular field trip; a certain Boschian nightmare by the name of Jainsithelbz Gogswazzingblkt.  Not certain how that’s properly spelt – or pronounced, really – so I’ve taken to calling him “Dr. Wankenstein” or just plain “Wanky”, on account of his resemblance to that bloke’s most infamous cockup.  Tall and expressionless, the ghoul regards me with his yellowed eyes for a moment, as though trying to recall where he's seen me before.  Since he’s done this every night for the past three, I’ve become convinced he is a lobotomy case of some sort.

“What’s the matter, Wanky?” I ask him.  “Igor take your brains out with the washing again?”

He grunts at me once and then makes way.  The accommodations ain't much, but I’ve seen worse and can make do.  I stride across the cracked and oily floor, then pass through the rotting skeleton of a doorjamb that guards my “room.”  It is four clapboard walls blackened by soot and mold, a crusty mattress sprawled on the floor and a small telly plugged into a socket that seems to spark more frequently then it should, considering the tiny trickle of power that feeds the lights in this dump.  Wanky turns one of these on in the kitchen, and it glows back at me wanly like one of the plonker’s own cataract eyes.  He sits at the little folding table and begins a staring contest with what might be a refrigerator magnet or nothing at all.

I don’t have a door to close, so I just try to ignore him.  I wrestle off the helm and gauntlets and then pop on the telly, start blasting the remote at it like a cowboy pistol, bangin’ my way through the rubbish Italian programming.  Half of it seems to be footy replays.  I freeze on one of the matches and watch the tiny poofters run back and forth for awhile.  They kick the ball and chase it, kick the ball and chase it, kick the ball and chase it. 

The mindlessness of it is as comforting as ever.  But her face keeps bleeding in around the edge somehow, those green eyes still blazing, even through the visor’s marshy fog.  I’d conjured this image in my rotten old brain many times over the years, fancied all manner of surprise and anger and ecstasy, but the face was never like this one, never filled with that unholy blankness, that bland human misery, that cold, businesslike detachment.

Part of me plays nursemaid.   Explains that she couldn’t see me, after all.   That it didn't count.

And then another, blacker voice speaks -- a hoarse and ghostly whisper.

I tune out the nursemaid and listen to this other voice for a while.  It's even more soothing than the little homunculi on the screen who kick the ball and chase it.  It reminds me it's good and proper that she didn’t see, and that this was the entire bloody point to begin with.  It sings to me the old song; whispers of the River Lesson, of that old Rule of Mouths.  It conjures that searing image again; a figure standing in the swirling vapors, black sun descending overhead.  The claws...

When I look down at my hands they are white fists, balled so tightly that blood is trickling out from between the fingers.

I shut the telly off and try to get some sleep.  Somewhere in Hell-A, Angel or one of the many twats in his employ is busy runnin’ all the numbers, figuring the where and the when of my next move.

I know that whoever is trying to kill her won’t pack up shop quite yet.  They'll try again, and soon. And when they do, I’ll be there.

For better or for worse.

I close my eyes.

I do not dare to dream.

***

Rupert Giles deplaned at 11:23am, Stockholm time, charcoal Armani rustling ever so slightly as he waded into the flock of Canadian tourists that for some reason had insisted on clogging up the damned gate.  He shook his sleeve loosely over the face of his obsidian Rolex, straightened a pant leg.  Checked the watch again.

The trip had been pleasant.  Not so much due to the deluxe accommodations – First Class was a given, these days, thank you – but rather because of the lack of anything to properly do, for once. For the first time in weeks, he had no new gadgets to fiddle with, nothing to write or read or review or approve. He’d resisted the urge, even, to order a drink, and left the three-star meal untouched on its plate.

Instead, he’d tried to make a solid go of doing absolutely nothing at all. This was an old Sufi trick, and when done correctly it presumably gave one the power to stand temporarily outside of his own consciousness, free to survey the fabric of his being from a safer distance. Rupert had been watching himself more closely than usual these days. He wasn’t alone.

Ciampino Airport was a crashing bore: yet another twenty-first century polymer hive in a world that was increasingly allergic to craftsmanship. Rupert hadn’t been here since before the war, and it seemed to him that the added security measures had transformed the place into a ceramic version of the Berlin Wall.  An occupying army from across the Atlantic had set down stakes, having dragged vast quantities of contraband pop culture behind it. Out with the café carts and cork barrel insalata stands, in with the Burger Tyrants and the Starbuckery.

He dodged past a herd of luggage centipedes, marched straight by the baggage claim and out into the crisp Roman afternoon.  The Head Watcher's pockets held all he needed these days: one lambskin passport, a Nokia cell phone, a small notary stamp for official business and a certain ornamental key which served a purpose so dubious it was a mystery even to Rupert himself.  A slim, black credit card handled everything else.

When he phoned from Heathrow that morning as promised, he’d assured the girl that he could arrange for his own transport to the countryside.  But she’d insisted that he call, regardless, the moment he touched down.

He realized she was quite angry with him.  Quite.

Rupert touched the tiny silver bead nestled just below the skin in the crook of his ear, and it purred to life. Instantly, an invisible grid lit up and wrapped itself around the face of the planet Earth.

‘Come alone,’ she said.  He rolled the bead clockwise, gently tuning an image that only he could see.

Oh, Buffy.

If only I could explain how impossible that is for me now.

He felt the familiar machinery of the Council convulse.  All around him, the Eyes awoke.  It was only for a moment, flashing hotly from a dozen pinpoints in the swirling crowd.  There would be more of them, of course; hundreds if he needed, burrowing themselves into the Italian countryside, waiting for instructions.  Watching.

He wondered, almost idly, if it would be enough.

***

“It’s not enough,” barked Riley Finn, and gunned the Humvee across the concrete island that divided A90 North from the Via Aurelia. “We need a clean corridor to Hen’s Nest. Flood the pan, goddammit.”   Twenty-thousand feet above them, a pair of black Harrier jets diverged, painting an infra-red rectangle the size of Lower Manhattan.  He cursed himself again, and retraced the last twenty minutes of his professional life.

Marco was right, it turned out: the Italian cops were a friggin’ joke. The last stato had given up pursuit about seven miles short of Casa Mattei. And if the carabinieri had reconsidered their generous bribe yet, they certainly weren’t doing a very good job of it.

But they had other problems now.

He’d first noticed them from his perch over the B Loop at Ciampino. They could have passed for ex-CIA if it wasn’t for their sucky taste in shoes.   Particularly the women.  A woman, Riley had learned, can compromise a lot for the right cause. Clothes.  Hair.  Makeup.  Boyfriends.  Everything was negotiable. But the second they go merc’, it was always ‘goodbye Converse, hello Manolo Blahniks.’ These ones were either amateurs, or they were really, really good.

There had been about eight of them down on the plaza, maybe twelve or so more on the mall. It was hard to tell. Tac-ops traced the beacon somewhere between the Falcon's skull and a Taiwanese ComSat floating 300 miles above Gibraltar. Whatever Mr. Giles shot up there was scrambled eggs on the way back down, but luckily the packet signature was still the same.

Riley knew that all the fancy gadgetry in the world couldn’t have marked them, so he had eyeballs everywhere. Including his own. It was the Japanese chick who blew it, the one gabbing on the cellphone. The Falcon had just touched his ear, and she was standing too close to him, only a few dozen feet away.  Riley saw her change.

It was just a moment, a blink-and-you-miss it kind of thing. But it happened. Target taps his ear and the girl looks straight at him. Bang. Her eyes flash, like a miniature sun rolled up behind the curve of her corneas. If he didn’t know any better he’d have thought she was taking the old man’s picture. Shit, maybe she was.

So, he radioed back to Marco and the imaging guys in the RV. They were the best – one playback and they marked them: the fat man with the tourist maps, the three college chicks, tennis racket girl, flower boy, geezer in the wheelchair. The old limey bastard had brought some backup after all.

Riley double-timed it down to street level, arriving just in time to see Giles fiddle with the taxi’s rear door. All the pieces jumped at once. B team hit the street hard to try to wrap up Rupert's Village-of-the-Damned gang. The Humvee roared up full tread, ramming the getaway cab about fourteen feet up the road. The jeep’s slide hatch was already open, Hector’s face leering out from the dark interior like a brown skull.

The Watcher seemed to turn in slow motion, lips parted to say something he never would. Their eyes had met for less than a second before they were both flying forward into the breach. Hector scooped them both up with one massive arm, slapped shut the hatch with the other.  By the time Riley said “go” the needle was already in the old guy’s neck. Hector was a good man to have around.

The next four hundred seconds were dicey. The Italians were infamously slow, but Riley figured they still only had about six minutes before they got the beltway sealed off. The Humvee thundered northeast around the gray loop of asphalt, whizzing past the fender-bender and the attempted rape they’d engineered as pre-op diversions.

By seven-point-two minutes, they’d hit the Autostrada and were riding hard for Magimalle.  The cops were history, but suddenly Tac-Ops was yelling something about “multiple bogeys.”  They had picked up about six tails, and the Taiwanese satellite was suddenly puking electrons all over the damned highway. Poking his head out the window, he spotted a pair of Fiats bearing down on them fast. He could see the drivers' eyes. They were gleaming like diamonds.

Now, as they slammed onto the Via Aurelia, the six had swollen to twenty. B-Team was incommunicado, and the bogeys were gaining, a hot rumbling haze in the rear-view mirror. Riley glanced at Giles still hog-tied in the back seat, probably enjoying some wonderful pheno-barbitol dream. Overhead, the two jump-jets were busy trading unpronounceable auth’ codes with Tac-Ops. Riley assumed they were just buying time while the honchos figured out a good cover story.

It seemed like an eternity had passed when the Go-Word finally came down, crackling in his ear like a prayer. There was an eerie hum, the sound of a thousand microwave ovens set to high and then dumped into the ocean. Riley felt the sudden urge to cover his balls.

The E.M.P. smashed down just a few dozen feet south of the Humvee, flooding a four-mile square with enough E-Mags to stop a small army. In the side view, Riley smiled as he saw sixty thousand horses worth of crap European engine cut off simultaneously. Rows of traffic were shoved to a standstill by a giant invisible hand.  The twinkling eyeballs of the drivers disappeared in the rear view mirror, like stars winking out in the early dawn sky.

Marco hooted. “Right on the mammajamma edge there, Finny! Ooo-Rah! ” Riley didn’t smile back, but he was feeling it: climbing back in the saddle. Felt right.

Twenty minutes later they were cresting over the green, sun-drenched warmth of Palidora hillsides. Giles was still a cold sack of dough, looking like he aged a dozen years in an afternoon. Riley slowed the jeep to a crawl at Malignanno. He and Hector jumped ship, dumping the sleepy Falcon into the trunk of a wimpy AR hybrid with a full tank of gas - or "lit battery" or whatever the hell was going on in there. Damned hippie government subsidies were killing his buzz again.

All things considered, the extraction went off without a hitch. At least she’d be safe. The reward would be anticlimactic. A wet, remorseful stare, he guessed.

Hey, or maybe a hug, if she was feeling generous.

And exactly that much was right in the world.