Fic: Blue Thunder--Chapter Five
Jensen’s session with Dr Traci Dinwiddie, the police psychologist, was positive. He made himself talk about some of the incidents from the war that still gave him nightmares and she asked perceptive, empathic questions, which, he found, actually helped him to look at some things a little differently.
In fact, their conversation helped more than he had thought possible. Maybe part of it was that Dr Dinwiddie was a woman. Opening up to her was a little like talking to Danni and it didn’t leave him feeling quite as vulnerable as he’d felt after his sessions with Dr Kurt Fuller, back in the seventies.
Jensen even talked about the brief flashback he’d had that had so spooked Garcia, and then he told Dr Dinwiddie about getting a new partner. He spoke about Jared at length; the way they’d just clicked; the close friendship that was developing between them, although he’d probably gone and fucked that all up now, not that he mentioned that to the doctor. She asked about his relationships. Did he have a girlfriend? He laughed it off; said he didn’t do relationships, that he was married to the job. And then he mentioned Heyerdahl and the fact that having to work with him again was really ratcheting up his stress levels.
“Jensen, you were evaluated in ’75 and again in ’78 when you were given a prescription for anti-anxiety medication. Are you still taking that?”
Jensen nodded. “Sometimes. As needed. Not every day.”
Dr Dinwiddie made a note in her folder. “You appear to get along well with your new partner.”
“I guess,” Jensen could feel his face flushing. His eyes were firmly on the floor but he could feel Dr Dinwiddie evaluating him.
“And Jared’s gay, you say?”
“Yep.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Nope.”
There was a long silence and he glanced up at her quickly. She was watching him thoughtfully, her head cocked to one side.
“Jensen?” His eyes darted back to her face again. “Are you gay?”
“What?” Jensen could feel the color draining from his cheeks. “I? No. I. What makes you think that?”
Dr Dinwiddie smiled; a sad sort of a smile. “You’re a very personable, very good looking man who is perpetually single,” she said. “And you light up when you talk about Jared. Also,” she leaned forward, “if I may step out of my professional role for a moment, you haven’t looked at my chest once, and I haven’t yet met a single straight man who didn’t notice my rack.”
Jensen swallowed. “Maybe my mama just raised me right?” he said faintly, letting his Texan twang off-leash a little.
“I’m sure she did,” Dr Dinwiddie smiled warmly. “Jensen, if-and I say if-you’re having some internal conflict about your sexuality, that conflict could be a contributing factor in your overall anxiety levels.”
Jensen tried to maintain eye contact, but had to look away.
Dr Dinwiddie sighed. “I’ve counselled gay men before and I will just say that although coming out can be incredibly hard, painful even, not a one of my clients regretted doing so. Ultimately, living a lie is much more stressful than being who you really are.”
Jensen didn’t respond. He was too busy trying to stop his heart from beating out of his chest.
Dr Dinwidde was silent for a very long while, perhaps giving him an opportunity to say something, but Jensen had nothing to say.
“Since your last evaluation,” Dr Dinwiddie said finally, “there has been some progress in the area of psychiatric diagnoses. One of the newly recognized disorders that was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; or PTSD. Symptoms include strong and unwanted memories of the traumatic event or events, bad dreams, emotional numbness, intense guilt or worry, angry outbursts, hyper-vigilance and feeling ‘on edge’.”
Jensen nodded along as she said each symptom, because that was him to a T.
“Your symptoms,” she confirmed, “are in line with a diagnosis of PTSD.”
Jensen nodded again. “Can I still fly?”
“Do you want to?”
“Hell, yes.”
Dr Dinwiddie smiled. “I want you to see me once a week for a one hour counselling session and I want you to start taking half an Ativan a day, every day, just to ease your general anxiety until we get things under better control with the counselling. Okay?”
“Okay. So I can still fly?”
“Yes. I’m not going to recommend any change to your flight status. You can still fly.”
Jensen smiled. He suddenly felt lighter than he had for a long time.
He spoke to Jared that night, and it was a little stilted at first, but then Jensen bragged about the Mavs making the playoffs and Jared declared his undying loyalty to the Spurs and the good-natured ribbing that followed turned slowly into a two hour conversation about sports and family and school and when Jensen went to bed that night he deliberately didn’t jerk off, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it without thinking about Jared and that wouldn’t be right if they were just going to be friends.
--
Jared’s stomach was swooping like a roller coaster. It was late afternoon on a Wednesday, he was driving to work and he felt like a high-schooler on a first date.
On Friday, when Jensen had gone home, Jared had been gutted. He’d moped around the house all weekend like a pathetic love sick puppy. Monday and Tuesday he’d cleaned and he’d worked out and on Tuesday he’d gone to see his GP and gotten a clean bill of health. He’d reconciled himself to going back to work the next day and being the friend that Jensen clearly needed. When Jensen had phoned him Tuesday night and they’d ended up talking for hours, it had re-ignited the crush Jared had been trying so hard to ignore, and now, he was downright scared that, in person, Jensen would be short with him; keep him at a cool, distant arm’s length.
Do you really want to hurt me? by Culture Club came on the radio just as Jared was pulling into the parking garage. He turned the engine off, but sat in the car with the key in the ignition until the song had finished playing. Boy George wondering why people wanted to hurt him and make him cry, just for the terrible crime of being openly himself, hit just a little too close to home for comfort.
Jared certainly wasn’t as flamboyant as Boy George and he hadn’t exactly come out of the closet willingly, but when his sexuality came out at his last precinct, he had refused to be ashamed; had refused to hunch his shoulders, lower his eyes and go away quietly. If they were going to bully him, he’d determined that he wasn’t going to make it easy for them. They were going to have to do it to his face; and when they’d tried to do shit behind his back, he’d confronted them about it. He’d be lying if he said there hadn’t been a personal cost, but at least he could meet his eyes in the mirror each night. He wasn’t sure Jensen could, and Jared’s heart ached for the older man. He wanted to help him, but at the same time, he had to protect himself too. There were rumors in the club scene that Boy George and Culture Club’s drummer Jon Moss were a couple, but that Moss insisted the relationship be kept secret. Jared didn’t want to play Boy George to Jensen’s Jon Moss.
Jared found Jensen in the hangar beside the flight deck, holding some kind of helmet and laughing with a dapper looking black man in a military uniform.
Jensen’s face lit up when he saw Jared. “Jared!” he called out. “Come and meet Sergeant Whitfield. He’s the guy who really knows our new bird.”
There was a sleek, angular helicopter in the hangar. “Is that her?” Jared asked as he approached.
“Sure is. Pretty ain’t she?” Jensen stroked the helicopter’s side lovingly.
Jared grinned. “Is there something you need to tell, Baby, Jensen?” he said teasingly.
And the really funny thing was Jensen looked truly conflicted. “Baby’ll always be my best girl,” he gave the helicopter an apologetic look. “But you’ve gotta admit, Blue Thunder’s a beauty.”
Jared held his hand out to Sergeant Whitfield and introduced himself. “So what are we doing here?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to give you both an overview of Blue Thunder’s controls and capabilities before Officer Ackles and myself take her up for a preliminary test flight. Once that’s done, I’ll sign her over to Officer Ackles and the two of you will take her on a full test flight over the city.”
“Cool,” Jared said. “Where do we start?”
They started with the cockpit. Sergeant Whitfield went over the standard controls and then the special features.
“These here are your television monitors,” he said. “You have three. The one in the center ties in to all your computer banks. Here are your switches. Night vision; infra-red filter; target system; whisper mode, so you can travel silent; audio, which controls your outside mikes, which are here,” he pointed to two long black pipes on the outside of the chopper.
“What’s the sensitivity of those mikes?” Jared asked.
Whitfield grinned. “You can hear a mouse fart at 2000 feet.”
Jensen rolled his eyes, but Jared couldn’t help his snigger. Whitfield looked way too buttoned-up for that kind of language.
“What’s with the helmet y’all were looking at before?” Jared asked. “The one Jensen’s holding.”
Whitfield grinned and took the helmet from Jensen. “This, here is your Harrison Fire Control Helmet. This baby is the heart of your system. Watch this.”
Whitfield walked around to the front of the chopper and stood beside the gun. He turned the helmet right, then left and the gun moved with it. “It superimposes the gun cues on the real world. Wherever you look, the guns follow. You can zero in on any target you want, just by putting the green tracer dot on your target,” Whitfield held the helmet out to Jensen. “You wanna play again? Try a little target practice?”
“Hell, yeah,” Jensen said.
Jared’s lips curled into a soft smile at Jensen’s giddy enthusiasm. He watched as Whitfield and Jensen geeked out over the helmet until his attention was attracted by another one of Blue Thunder’s maintenance crew coming across with an armful of tapes.
“What’s that?” he asked. “Three quarter inch video?”
The maintenance guy was heavy-set and balding, with a crooked nose and cauliflower ears. He raised an eyebrow at Jared. “You know somethin’ about it?”
Jared shrugged. “I was a bit of an audio/visual geek in college. This bird’s got some really interesting tech.”
“She sure has,” the guy stared at him for a moment, considering, and then said, “Come on, kid. Let me show you.”
He walked around and kneeled down beside the chopper. “The tapes go in a locked memory bank here in the belly,” Jared watched the maintenance guy hit “3,3,6, C” and then slot C slid open. “Each reel is code numbered,” he said, “and these hardcovers erase the tapes on a signal from central command. Of course, the tape actually has to be inside the hardcover for that to work.”
Jared nodded.
“You wanna see the schematics?” the maintenance guy asked.
Jensen snagged his arm on their way past. “Whitfield’s gonna take me up for the preliminary test flight now. Should only be half an hour or so. Then you and me are gonna put her through her paces for a couple hours. Okay, JAFO?”
Jared saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain. While you’re doing that, I’m gonna check out her technical specs,” he nodded at the maintenance guy and Jensen let go of his arm.
“You ready?” Whitfield asked Jensen, as Jared disappeared into an office. Jensen turned to Whitfield and grinned.
“Let’s do this.”
--
Blue Thunder’s blades spun and Jensen sat at her controls, eager to get her up in the air.
Whitfield was in the Observer’s seat and Jensen frowned when he reached up to the set of fuse boxes on the chopper’s ceiling and removed a fuse.
Whitfield met his eyes. “Just turning off Big Brother,” he said.
“What’s Big Brother?” Jensen asked.
“The cabin mike. It records everything we say in here and stores it on tape. I figure we don’t need that on right now.”
“Yeah,” Jensen said thoughtfully, “I guess we can lose that.”
Whitfield ran through the various system tests and then Jensen radioed the tower and requested clearance to take off.
“Unable to issue departure clearance at this time,” the tower responded. “We’re waiting for some personnel who need to observe the take-off to arrive. Repeat, unable to issue departure clearance. Hold your position.”
“Received and understood,” Jensen switched off the mike and scowled at Whitfield. “Seriously?”
Whitfield shrugged. “What can I say? Heyerdahl’s an ass.”
Jensen stared at him for a moment and then his lips turned up in a brief, faint smile. “Got that right,” he muttered.
A moment later the tower cleared them for take-off and Jensen lifted the collective with a brilliant grin and put the bird in the air.
“So?” Whitfield matched Jensen’s grin. “How does she fly?”
“She’s a little nose heavy.”
“Wanna check out the turbo boost?” Whitfield asked.
“Is the Pope Catholic?” Jensen retorted, flicking the appropriate switch with a whoop.
Whitfield laughed. “Easy there, Cowboy,” he said as Blue Thunder swooped past the Union Bank’s head office at speed.
As Jensen accustomed himself to handling Blue Thunder, he felt Whitfield glancing at him.
“What?” he said.
“Heyerdahl doesn’t like you very much, does he?” Whitfield said.
“About as much as I like him,” Jensen said.
“I heard you guys were in the war together.”
“Yep.”
Whitfield was silent for a moment and then said. “I’m not gonna ask you what happened, but I will say that Heyerdahl isn’t a man I’d want watching my back,” he paused and then added, “He wants you off this project; was furious when he found out you were the test pilot; even more furious when the Mayor refused his request to have you taken off the project. When I heard you’d crashed,” Whitfield stopped talking abruptly and shook his head.
“I don’t have any cold hard facts,” he said. “But I know what this chopper’s capable of and I have family down in Compton,” he stopped speaking again and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, man, except something ain’t right. And you need to be careful.”
“Yeah,” Jensen nodded. “Thanks.”
The rest of the orientation flight past in relative silence and Jensen landed the bird back at Air Support’s helipad exactly half an hour after he took off.
Whitfield said good-bye and Jared joined Jensen as Observer and they took to the skies again.
Jensen hit turbo boost almost as soon as they were away from the helipad and treated Jared to some very fancy flying, which had his observer whooping and laughing.
“Man, this is so much better than patrolling in a cruiser,” Jared said, turning to smile at Jensen with dancing eyes and his ridiculous dimples. Which Jensen did not find adorable. At all.
Jensen put Blue Thunder through her paces, swooping and diving, climbing high, speeding up, slowing down and hovering.
“So are we gonna check out her special features?” Jared asked.
They were flying over Santa Monica Boulevard now and Jensen flipped to whisper mode and circled the car park of a mini-mall which had experienced an upturn in prostitution recently.
“How about we see if we can pick up any transactions going on down there?” he suggested.
Jared peered through his binoculars and his mouth turned down a little.
“You wanna spy on hookers?”
“I wanna test out the range on the microphones and they ain’t exactly obeying the law down there so I’d rather breach their privacy than some random person’s.”
Jared chewed on his bottom lip. “Okay,” he said, “but let’s just stick to audio.”
“You got it.”
Jared hesitated with his finger over the audio switch. “Santa Monica Boulevard,” he said. “You do know it’s probably gonna be male hookers down there?”
Jensen merely raised an eyebrow and Jared took a deep breath then flicked the switch.
“$20.00 for a BJ,” a male voice said, picked up loud and clear by the mike, “$40.00 uncovered.”
Beside him, Jensen felt Jared tense. “Twenty dollars,” his Observer said. “He’s risking his life for an extra twenty dollars.”
They missed whatever response the trick made, but he must’ve agreed given that the next thing the mike picked up was, “Oh wow, that’s the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.”
Jared made a choked off gasp.
“I bet you say that to all the guys,” drawled a thick Texan accent.
“Nuh, uh,” the hooker said. “I ain’t bein’ an ass kisser, but they sure do grow ‘em bigger in Texas.”
Jared turned to look at Jensen. “I think we should check out the video function. Just to be thorough.”
“Be my guest,” Jensen said with a grin.
Jared took control of the camera and zoomed it in on the black pick-up truck below them, getting right up close and personal with the back seat where a grey-haired man with a handlebar moustache was getting his dick sucked by a blond-haired twink. When the twink pulled back so that only the very head of the man’s dick was in his mouth, both Jared and Jensen leaned toward the television monitor.
“Huh,” Jensen said. “I’ve seen bigger.”
Jared snorted. “I’ve got bigger.”
There was silence for a beat and then Jared groaned and put his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Fuck,” Jensen said, his voice breaking on the word.
Jared looked across at him.
“I’ve been trying to do the right thing here, Jay,” Jensen said. “You’re making it hard.”
Jared quirked an eyebrow and looked pointedly at Jensen’s lap.
The soundtrack of slurps and breathy oh yeahs wasn’t helping Jensen’s growing problem any, so he reached up and flicked off both audio and video.
“Just…stop being so hot for a minute, would you?” he griped at his Observer.
Jared laughed, “Right back at you, Jensen.”
Jensen turned and flew away from the car park, back the way they’d come.
“It’d be a bad idea,” he said when they’d got some distance between them and the scene of the audio/video test.
Jared frowned. “You and me?”
“Yeah. I don’t do relationships and we have to work together so it’d just be awkward if we hooked up, plus I don’t think Jim’d like it, because of the whole fraternization thing and just, it’d be a bad idea.”
Jared was silent for a moment and then he said, “Jensen, we’re friends, right?”
Jensen agreed that they were.
“So we could be friends with benefits. It doesn’t have to be a thing. Doesn’t have to be exclusive. Nothing anyone has to know about. Just…buddies. Who sometimes suck each other off.”
Jensen swallowed. “Is that what you want?”
Jared grinned ruefully. “I’ve been fantasizing about my dick in your ass ever since I met you,” he admitted. “But more than that, I want us to be friends. If we can be friends and I can get my dick in your ass, I’m gonna be even happier.”
Jensen was completely hard now and the thought of taking Jared inside him had his ass feeling miserably empty. It was probably just as well that he was flying a helicopter, because otherwise he might’ve rolled right over, shoved his ass in Jared’s face and begged. And then afterwards he would’ve been embarrassed as fuck and wouldn’t have been able to look Jared in the eye ever again.
“Oh fuck!”
Jensen looked over at Jared, who’d gone white and looked absolutely stricken.
“Big brother!” his Observer said, eyes searching the fusebox frantically.
“Relax. Whitfield took the fuse out earlier. He wanted to tell me how Heyerdahl really, really wants me off this project and I should probably watch my back.”
They were now approaching the Air Support helipad again and Jensen frowned when a red sportscar came barreling out of the Air Support parking garage and rocketed up the road.
“Speaking of Heyerdahl,” he said. “That’s him.”
Jared peered out at the car weaving in and out of traffic at a great rate of knots. “That is definitely the car of a man with a small penis,” he said. “Why do you think he’s in such a hurry? Or does he always drive like an asshole?”
Jensen grinned. “Asshole is definitely his default setting,” he chewed at his bottom lip. “You know, we do have this awesome, state-of-the-art surveillance helicopter at our disposal. You wanna follow him? See what he’s up to?”
Jared answered solemnly, “I think that would be a very fitting final test.”
As they followed Heyerdahl’s car at a discreet distance, Jensen sighed out loud. “I know the cockpit recorder is off, but what about the audio and video? Did we record that hooker?”
Jared said that they did and explained about the locked memory bank in the belly of the helicopter. Jensen asked if they could erase the tape before they handed Blue Thunder back and Jared reassured him that he could get in there, despite the lock.
“Man,” Jensen said, “this chopper hears through walls, fires four thousand rounds a minute and can zoom in on a guy’s dick from a thousand feet away. Jesus Christ.”
“Oh it does more than that,” Jared said. “This terminal is hooked into every databank that there is. Look, if I key in my name,” Jared did just that, “look what comes up. My name, date of birth, home address, social security number, occupation, marital status, the fact that I’ve never been arrested and have no outstanding traffic fines, and, just to really breach my privacy, there’s a link to my LAPD personnel file.”
“Shit,” Jensen said. “Put my name in.”
Jared keyed it in. “Huh,” he said. “It says, ‘No file. File under repair.’”
“File under repair?” Jensen frowned. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah. That’s weird. It’s not like you can break a file.”
The radio crackled to life and the Tower ordered them to return to base.
Jensen looked across at Jared. “Got any candy wrappers?”
Jared checked several of his flight suit’s pockets and then handed Jensen a crumpled Hershey’s Bar wrapper.
“Come in Blue Thunder,” the tower repeated.
“Tower, this is Blue Thunder,” Jensen said. “You’re coming in very garbled. Cannot read.”
“Blue Thunder do you copy?”
Jensen began to crackle the candy wrapper in front of the microphone. “We’re picking up a lot of static. Can’t read you.”
“Hey, let’s look up Heyerdahl,” Jared whispered.
At Jensen’s nod he keyed in the man’s name.
All of Heyerdahl’s basic data came up, followed by: Involved Ngoc Linh incident - sole survivor; involved Quon Duc incident - sole survivor.
“Sole survivor? Is he kidding?” Jensen said incredulously.
He kept reading: Rank: Colonel. Honorable Discharge. Currently on Special Assignment: Project THOR.
“Project THOR?” Jensen frowned. “Son of a bitch. That’s the word that was on the piece of paper I found in Councilor Devine’s yard!” He explained what he’d found to Jared and gave him Garcia’s translation. “We didn’t know what she meant by THOR though.”
“Let’s look it up,” Jared keyed in ‘Request information on Project THOR.’
Green luminous words flashed up on the computer screen:
Project THOR: Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response.
Proposed use of heavily armed military copters to quell domestic disorder.
“Offensive? That doesn’t sound good,” Jared said.
“Those fuckers in Washington have been jerking us around,” Jensen said tightly. “This isn’t about preparing for a potential act of terrorism at the Olympics, it’s about militarizing America’s police force and let me tell you, my friend, when you end up with a domestic police force that looks, thinks, and acts more like an invading and occupying military than a community-based force to protect the public…trust me on this, Jay. I’ve been a soldier. The mind-set you’ve gotta have, it’s different. It’s why I feel safer being up here in the air.”
Jared nodded. “I’m starting to see where Councilor Devine comes in to this now. It’s almost guaranteed that this is going to target minorities and poor communities more than anyone else. If this is just the first step, if the militarization of the police force goes ahead, a lot of the cops out there on the streets are going to start seeing black and Hispanic people as enemy combatants rather than as civilians they’re meant to be serving. No wonder Devine was worried.”
“Blue Thunder, you will respond!”
Jensen frowned. “That sounds like Sterling Brown. I guess he’s in there giving the guys in the tower hell.”
Jensen crackled the wrapper in front of the microphone again. “Can’t read you, Tower. You’re breaking up.”
Jared switched his mike on and began to whistle into it.
“Jesus Christ! Motherfucker!” he heard Brown swear, and Jensen sniggered, imagining the man tearing off the headphones as Jared’s high pitched whistles assailed his ears.
He looked across at Jared with a grin and his eyes widened when he saw the computer screen beside Jared. “Fuck,” he said. “Jay, look!”
Flashing on the screen were the words: Request your Identity and Security Clearance.
“Oh shit,” Jared said.
Below them, Heyerdahl pulled into the parking garage of a large office block.
“Well that’s interesting,” Jensen said. “Look Jay, he’s going in there.”
“What is that?”
“It’s the Federal Building.”
“We should definitely see if we can track him inside the building,” Jared said. “I mean, what if he was a terrorist? We’d need to know the system could do that, right?”
“Absolutely,” Jensen said. “Besides, I wanna know what that fucker’s up to.”
Blue Thunder was still in whisper mode and Jensen slowly lapped the building while Jared used the audio and video functions to see if he could detect Heyerdahl. After a few moments he snorted and shook his head. “I’ve got awesome footage of a couple guys emptying the trash, but nothing on Heyerdahl.”
“Try the thermo graph,” Jensen suggested.
Jared scanned the building for heat signs and found a high concentration of warm bodies in an office on the top floor. “Top floor’s always the big wigs, right?” he said. “And at this time of the evening-what is it? Nine o’clock? That many big wigs in one place, it’s gotta be important.”
“Yeah,” Jensen took the chopper up to the top floor and hovered outside the window that the thermo graph indicated had a large number of occupants.
“Okay, I think I’ve got something,” Jared said. “Yeah, the audio’s locked on. The blinds are down, but I’ve got infra-red video. Hang on; let me turn the sound up.”
“I still fail to understand….Air Support Division…on top of…”
“Hang on, I’ll adjust it,” said Jared.
“Ah yes, Devine. I can’t say you boys have covered yourselves in glory there,” said a smooth self-important voice.
“If she hadn’t started shouting,” said another voice, “then it wouldn’t have been necessary to rough her up.”
“Rough her up?” said the original voice. “Is that the latest euphemism for assassination?”
“Holy shit,” said Jared.
“Hey now,” another voice said. “She had street informants. And she’d already made the connection between our project and the trouble in the streets. She was gonna go public. On the record. It was unfortunate, but for the greater good of the project, one black council woman is acceptable collateral damage.”
“What the fuck?” Jared said. “Who are these guys?” Jensen shushed him. “They can’t hear me,” Jared rolled his eyes.
“Shut up, I wanna hear them.”
“What about this pilot? This Ackles? Is that under control? Because I don’t want any premature attention coming to this project. Blue Thunder might be perceived as a threat if the bleeding heart liberal media get wind of it before we’ve got all the pieces arranged properly on the chessboard.”
“Didn’t you just drop a hammer on him?” someone else said.
“What do you think Colonel?” said the original voice.
“I think, Mr Pileggi, that I should take him out.”
“You mean kill him? When?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Holy fuck, Jensen,” Jared said, his eyes as wide as saucers. “How is this real?”
“Heyerdahl’s hated me since the war,” Jensen said. “I know quite literally where he’s buried the bodies. We got all this on tape?”
“Yep,” Jared said. “Every incriminating word.”
“Alright,” said the original voice, Pileggi, Heyerdahl had called him. “You’ll be given all the help you need. This conversation never took place gentlemen. If it gets back to me, I’ll deny it.”
One of the infra-red shapes moved toward them and then the blind was pulled back and Christopher Heyerdahl looked straight out at them.
“Uh oh,” Jensen said. “Hold your nose, Jay, we’re in deep shit.”
He peeled away and then hit turbo boost, flying fast until they reached the Air Support Helipad.
“Captain Beaver wants to see you straight away, Ackles,” the Tower said as Jensen landed.
“Go,” Jared said. “I’ll secure the tape.”
When Jensen burst through Jim’s door and into his office, the captain was on the phone with a grave expression on his face.
“Yessir,” he said. “No sir. Yessir. Yessir. I understand, sir. No sir.” He hung up.
“Did you have a nice flight, Ackles?” he said, scowling hard at Jensen.
“Yeah, it was great. Listen-”
“No son, you listen-”
“No, you’ve-” Jensen interrupted, only to be interrupted himself.
“Goddamn it, Ackles, you cop, me captain. You listen. If you notice I don’t have an ass when I get up outta this chair, it’s because the old man just chewed it off.”
Behind him, Jensen heard the snick of a cigarette lighter and he turned slowly to find Sterling Brown sitting in the darkened corner of Jim’s office, lighting a cigarette.
Jensen rested his hands on his captain’s desk and leaned forward. “I get that you’re angry, Sir,” he said, “but we really need to have a more private conversation.”
“We don’t have any secrets from Mr Brown,” Jim said. “Besides, you’re off the program, Jensen. You and Padalecki. You’re grounded until further notice.”
The phone on Jim’s desk rang and he answered it, and then passed the receiver to Brown. “It’s the Colonel. For you.”
“Jim,” Jensen perched on the edge of Jim’s desk and leaned in close, away from Brown. “We’ve gotta talk.”
“Ain’t nothing to talk about, kid,” Jim said gruffly. “After the stunt you just pulled, refusing to come in, then that phony radio bullshit, I’ll be out driving a black-and-white myself if I’m not seen to be dealing with you.”
Sterling Brown hung up the phone and charged out of Jim’s office as if he’d just seen the anti-Christ. Jim took another phone call and Jensen waited for him to finish, so that he could finally explain what he and Jared had learned. While he was waiting he glanced up at Jim’s bank of security monitors and saw Jared crawling out from underneath Blue Thunder with a tape in his hands. Jensen looked over his shoulder at Brown’s back, disappearing toward the flight deck and his eyes widened. Fuck. He had to be going after the tape. And by implication, Jared.
Jensen hurried after him, out of Jim’s office and down the corridor. He pushed open the glass door that led outside, but held back when Jared was nowhere to be seen.
He watched as Brown strode over to Blue Thunder and then knelt down beside the helicopter. He fiddled around beneath her for several minutes and then stood up, swearing. “Who unlocked the memory bank?” he demanded of the maintenance crew.
“It was that tall cop,” one of them responded.
“Padaleski?” Brown said.
“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”
Brown took off at a run and Jensen ducked back inside and then retreated down the corridor away from Jim’s office so that he wouldn’t be seen.
Brown burst through the doors and charged through the open-plan desk area to Jim’s office. He made a phone call and paced while talking, spitting out quiet, intense words that Jensen couldn’t make out from where he was hiding.
Brown slammed the receiver down when he was done and barreled from Jim’s office. He summoned an elevator and then stepped inside when it arrived.
As soon as Brown was gone, Jensen ran to the fire stairs, taking them three at a time as he ran down to the parking garage. These guys had a hit out on him and they’d considered an elected councilor ‘acceptable collateral damage’. If they had to kill Jared to get their hands on that tape, they’d do it in a heartbeat and that was something Jensen just couldn’t allow; not on his watch.
--
Jared stopped off at Walmart to get something for supper and a six pack of Lone Star beer, and then went across to Walgreens and bought condoms and lube. He’d taken a detour on his way home and hidden the tape that he’d taken out of Blue Thunder, just in case somebody came knocking on his door looking for it. Jared seriously doubted that they’d want to go to the trouble of killing him; he was nobody after all, and given that they were already planning on killing Jensen, killing his partner too seemed like it would cause them more heat than it was worth.
That’s what he kept telling himself anyway. He actually sat for a moment in his car and considered checking into a motel for the evening, just to be on the safe side. But then Jensen wouldn’t know where he was; wouldn’t be able to get hold of him if he came looking and Jared was really hoping to persuade the older man into his bed tonight.
The first thing Jared noticed when he walked in his front door was the light from his wide-open refrigerator door. He frowned and switched on the main light. His graduation picture had been knocked off the wall. And there was a man sitting on his sofa.
“Hey!” he called, scowling. And then somebody barreled out of the kitchen and punched him hard in the face, knocking him sideways.
Everything happened fast after that. The man who’d been sitting in the living room joined the attacker and between the two of them, they wrestled Jared to the ground, kicking and punching him, pulling his gun from his holster and tossing it onto the sofa and then taping his mouth shut with silver duct tape, before binding his wrists with plastic snaplock ties.
“Take it easy, kid,” said one of the attackers, a craggy-faced, grey-haired man. He grabbed ahold of Jared’s face and stared at him with cold empty eyes. “We don’t wanna hurt you.”
“Yeah,” said the other one, a dark-haired Al Pacino type with a scar above one eye. “We just want the tape.” He was sitting on Jared’s shins and despite his continuing struggles, Jared couldn’t shake him.
“And you’re gonna tell us what we wanna know sooner or later,” Craggy continued, “and I really think you’d rather it be sooner. Because first we’re gonna break all your fingers. And then we’re gonna break your arms, and then maybe your knees. ”
Jared started struggling in earnest, trying to break the men’s hold on him.
“Now I know you don’t believe me,” said Craggy, “so here’s a little demonstration.” He nodded at Pacino who took hold of Jared’s left hand and grasped his middle finger tightly. The crack and the sharp, throbbing pain were almost instantaneous and Jared screamed into the duct tape, his face beaded with sweat.
“Now,” said Craggy, “did we convince you to make it sooner? Where’s the tape, kid? Is it in the car?”
Jared endeavored to look shifty and Craggy grinned. “Check the car,” he said to Pacino and the other man took off, freeing up Jared’s legs.
As soon as Pacino was outside, Jared twisted and brought a leg around, kneeing Craggy in the balls. Craggy dropped to his side instantly clutching at his groin and moaning. Jared staggered to his feet and ran. He managed to maneuver the door handle with his bound hands and as soon as he was outside, he saw Pacino racing back up the steps to his apartment. Jared waited until Pacino was just the right distance away and then let loose with a powerful head-high kick, snapping the man’s head back and sending him tumbling down the stairs. Jared bounded down the stairs and then ran down the sidewalk, toward the gas station and mini mart on the next block.
The night air was cool and the streetlights bounced yellow off the asphalt. Behind him, Jared heard an engine start, the squeal of tires, and he threw a frantic glance over his shoulder to see a white Ford LTD Crown Victoria roaring toward him. Jared cursed under his breath. They’d had a getaway driver waiting out front. Of course they had. These guys were hardly amateurs. The Crown mounted the sidewalk, sending several trashcans flying, and Jared’s feet pounded the pavement, hard and fast, in his desperation to avoid being mowed down. There were plenty of cars parked by the roadside and Jared ran between a couple of them and out onto the road. His pursuer tried to drive through the parked cars and lost a lot of time in the ensuing collision.
Jared switched to the sidewalk on the other side of the road and ran down it until he came to the intersection where the mini mart and the gas station were situated. He ran across the road, looking over his shoulder at the Crown as it came charging after him, and ran smack into a teenager on a push bike, knocking him to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs and spokes and handle bars.
“Shit man,” the kid groaned, and then his eyes widened when he saw the duct tape over Jared’s mouth. “What the fuck?” he said. And then suddenly he was pulling at Jared, trying to drag him off the road, and there was a roaring, screaming noise and Jared’s own eyes widened as the metal grill and bright headlights of the Crown bore down on them.
--
There were flashing blue lights and a police cordon just down the road from Jared’s house. Jensen parked on the roadside and walked toward it, his gut churning and his pulse racing. There were several squad cars and a couple of ambulances. A kid with his arm strapped into a sling was sitting in the back of one of the ambulances wincing as a paramedic shone a small torch in his eyes.
There was a surprisingly large crowd of onlookers, given that it was nearly midnight. They were kept behind the yellow tape by police, and Jensen pushed between them as they shuffled and strained to see, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads.
There was somebody on the ground, long legs splayed, with one paramedic breathing into their mouth and another pushing down on their chest.
Jensen gravitated toward the scene, his heart in his throat. “No,” he whispered.
“Goddamn it, we’re losing him!” he heard one of the paramedics say.
“No,” Jensen whispered. “No.”
The paramedic doing the mouth-to-mouth sat back momentarily and oh fuck, oh fuck, it was Jared lying still and pale on the road, with one leg bent at an unnatural angle.
Jensen grabbed the arm of a woman in a pink fluffy dressing gown and hair rollers. “What happened?”
“Hit and run,” she said, making the sign of the cross. “The kid almost got out the way, but the guy on the ground got tossed like a ragdoll.” She nodded at the police standing on the other side of the road. “They said he’s a cop, but he’s one of those homosexuals. They said his partner in the po-lice ran him over because he made a pass at him in the locker room.”
Jensen’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding?”
“We’ve got a pulse,” said the paramedic and Jared was put on a stretcher and carried to one of the waiting ambulances.
Jensen wanted to run over there; to wrap Jared in his arms and ride with him to the hospital. But he couldn’t. Not only was there a hit out on Jensen, they’d tried to kill Jared. And they wanted to frame him for it.
They’d tried to kill Jared.
Fury coursed through Jensen’s veins like an unstoppable force. He would find everyone who was responsible for Jared being in that ambulance and he would rip their lungs out.
His pager beeped and Jensen walked to a nearby payphone and called in.
“Hey Jensen, it’s me,” said Jared’s recorded voice. So far, so good. Check out Big Brother’s tape on Blue Thunder if you wanna know more.”
Jensen closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing even. When he regained control he hung up the phone and looked over toward his car. There were several cops nosing around it.
Jensen turned and walked slowly to Jared’s apartment. He knew where Jared’s car was parked and he knew how to hotwire it.
Jensen was going to war.
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