Hyperleggera

The Mark (Part Two)

Jettison Your Thoughts

In which Flo­rence watches ekra­noplans and learns to shoot a gun. Pre­vi­ously in this series: Pop-​Tarts

Words: Peter Orosz | Pic­ture: Balázs Fenyő

There goes the cuti­cle on my right thumb. A bloody fuck­ing mess. At least I know how to take Dovos through air­port security.

At 6:32 AM from the high win­dows, I watched the Vienna ekra­noplan take off on its thirty minute dash, com­muters clutch­ing paper cups. A blip of the throt­tle left a bril­liant rooster-​tail of river water in the craft’s wake. I watched. With an espresso cup in hand, look­ing for rain­bows, seeing none.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, they teach you.

A close inspec­tion of the mark revealed noth­ing to grasp. The expres­sion­less, goa­teed face. The curly chest­nut hair. Famil­iar in a way people in tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials are famil­iar. On bill­boards. In your local supermarket.

I stud­ied an hour of video footage and noth­ing. Stud­ied every facet of his back­ground. A child­hood in the Nevada desert. Busi­nesses in Japan and Pak­istan. And nothing.

Noth­ing I can put my blood­ied fin­gers on.

Still, that nag at my vis­cera. The unease.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, the loud­speak­ers say, as you crawl alert in the South Car­olina mud, swal­low­ing hard not to swab at gnats which would inevitably give your coor­di­nates away, not to men­tion hit­ting the hi-​power CO₂ laser beams which criss­cross the train­ing swamp.

Your hair your fatigues your very corneas caked with dirt, you make not a single sound.

The bureau’s ornithopter cir­cles over­head, a faint purr in the sultry Sat­ur­day mid­morn­ing. Jet­ti­son your thoughts, the loud­speak­ers say.

You don’t look up. Men sit crouched on its door­sills. Their pulse rifles scan the foliage.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, you think.

I suck at my thumb then dab a Q-Tip in a vial of clot­ting agents and rub it across the wound. It is 8:07 AM and I take my gun apart one last time.

Fol­lowed by the backup gun.

And the backup gun’s backup gun.

Knives: check. Shurikens: check. Col­lapsi­ble mini­gun: check.

If only they could make titanium-​reinforced tac­ti­cal cloth­ing that doesn’t wrin­kle. With a grin, I grab the cord­less iron on the dresser drawer and fire it up.

A girl cannot look seedy on this rasp­berry of a June morn­ing, no-​ho.

The steam tank is filled with jasmine-​scented water.

The fuck­ing gnats are unfuck­ing­bear­able but you do not twitch a single eyebrow.

You crawl eel-​like through the fecund foliage.

The humid­ity fogs up the Leica scope.

From over­head at nine o’ clock, a rapid burst of pulse fire, fol­lowed by a scream and a groan.

You do not twitch a single inter­pha­langeal joint.

That was Jeff, a hun­dred feet to your right. A ragged pulp now. The ornithopter swings down to pick the corpse up.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, the loud­speak­ers say.

A mile away, well beyond the chain-​link fence that guards the train­ing area, a family set­tles down for break­fast on their patio.

You look through the clouded Leicas.

8:25 AM now. A final rehearsal. I stick three shurikens in my boots.

Easy now, Flo­rence. Easy now.

The ekra­noplan idles down on the river, back from its Vienna run. Six minutes.

Who the fuck is he? Who. Thefuck.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, Florence.

Mitchell drives one of the deliv­ery trucks that bring sup­plies to the com­pound every other day. Danielle, his wife. Their two kids, wolf­ing down Cap’n Crunch.

Danielle makes killer okra. Last night’s dinner. With corn on the cob and ham.

Mitchell looks unshaved through the Leicas. He is about to dig into a plate of scram­bled eggs when Danielle gets up to fetch some­thing from inside the house.

You are enter­ing bullet time. Frame by frame, she adjusts her chair, brushes back her hair, then leans in to whis­per some­thing in Mitchell’s left ear.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, you think.

A single ura­nium pro­jec­tile cuts a trail of shim­mer through the thin­ning cloud of gnats.

T-minus ninety minutes.

The frosted glass bul­let­proof door hisses shut. I scat­ter down the stairs and plant my gear in the Touareg’s shot­gun seat.

“Hello, Flo­rence,” the car’s speak­ers say. It’s Larry. Logged in, he guns the V12 into life.

Pompous son of a bitch, I think.

You swal­low hard as you stand up, combat boots halfway in the mud. The ornithopter swoops in from half a mile away. Except for the faint murmur of its carbon fiber blades, there is silence.

“How about a plate of left­over okra for lunch, Flo­rence?” a voice beams from the loud­speak­ers. Hang­ing off a grap­pling hook, Jeff’s torn-​up body sways in the headwing.

Jet­ti­son your thoughts, you think.

To be continued…

∞ Published on Friday, June 27th, 2008

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