Seize the Night

Bobby asked.
    “Not the record company,” Doogie assured him.
    “Tell me not drugs,” Bobby said.
    Doogie shook his head. “Rescue operation.” Sasha's smile was enigmatic.
    “Interested in the past, after all, Snowman?”
    “Right now, just the future.” Turning to Roosevelt, Doogie said, “I didn't realize you'd be coming, so I don't have a weapon for you.”
    “I've got the cat,” Roosevelt said.
    “Killer.”
    Mungojerrie hissed.
    The hiss reminded me of the snakes. I looked around nervously, wondering if the loco reptiles we had seen earlier would give us the courtesy of a warning rattle.
    Closing the tailgate, Doogie said, “Let's rock.” In addition to the cargo area just inside the tailgate—which contained a pair of five-gallon fuel cans, two cardboard boxes, and a well-stuffed backpack the customized Hummer provided seating for eight. Behind the pair of bucket-style front seats were two bench seats, each capable of accommodating three grown men, although not three as well grown as Doogie.
    Thor Incarnate drove, and Roosevelt rode shotgun, figuratively speaking, holding our long-tailed tracker in his lap. Immediately behind them, I sat with Bobby and Sasha on the first bench seat.
    “Why aren't we going into Wyvern by the river?” Bobby wondered.
    “The only way to get down to the Santa Rosita,” Doogie said, “is on one of the levee ramps in town. But tonight the town's crawling with a bad element.”
    “Anchovies,” Bobby translated.
    “We'd be spotted and stopped,” Sasha said.
    With the way illuminated only by its parking lights, the Hummer passed through a huge hole in the fence, where the ragged edges of the flanking panels of chain-link were as snarled as masses of string left with a playful kitten.
    “You cut this open all by yourself?” I asked.
    “Shaped charge,” Doogie said.
    “Explosives?”
    “Just a little boom plastic.”
    “Didn't that draw attention?”
    “Shape the charge in a thin line, where you want the links to pop, and you're using so little it's like one really big beat on a bass drum.”
    “Even if someone's close enough to hear,” Sasha said, “it's over so quick, he'd never get a fix on the direction.”
    Bobby said, “Radio engineering requires way more cool skills than I thought.”
    Doogie asked where we were headed, and I described the cluster of warehouses in the southwest quadrant of the base, where I had last seen Orson. He seemed familiar with the layout of Fort Wyvern, because he needed few directions.
    We parked near the big roll-up door. The man-size door beside the larger entrance stood open, as I had left it the previous night.
    I got out of the Hummer, carrying my shotgun. Roosevelt and Mungojerrie joined me, while the others waited in the vehicle in order not to distract the cat in his efforts to pick up the trail.
    Pooled with shadows, smelling vaguely of oil and grease, home to weeds that sprouted from fissures in the blacktop, littered with empty oil cans and with assorted paper trash and leaves deposited by the previous night's wind, surrounded by the corrugated-steel facades of the hulking warehouses, this serviceway had never been a festive place, not a prime venue for a royal wedding, but now the atmosphere was downright sinister.
    Last night, the stocky abb with the close-cropped black hair, aware that Orson and I were close behind him in the Santa Rosita, must have used a cell phone to call for assistance—perhaps from the tall, blond, athletic guy with the puckered scar on his left cheek, who had snatched the Stuart twins only hours before. He had handed Jimmy off to someone, anyway, and then had led Orson and me into the warehouse, with the intention of killing me there.
    From an inside jacket pocket, I withdrew the tightly wadded top of Jimmy Wing's cotton pajamas, with which the abb had confused the scent trail.
    To be fair to Orson, who had been briefly baffled but never entirely misled, I was the one suckered into the warehouse by odd noises and a muffled voice.
    The garment seemed so small, almost like doll's clothing.
    “I don't know if this helps,” I said. “Cats aren't bloodhounds, after all.”
    “We'll see,” Roosevelt said.
    Mungojerrie sniffed the pajama top delicately but with interest.
    Then he took a tour of the immediate area, smelling the pavement, an empty oil can, which made him sneeze, and the tiny yellow flowers on a weed, which made him sneeze again and more vigorously. He returned for a