The Ongoing Diary of Casey Neal

He’s Someplace Else, I Think

(Date, Unknown)

The image is flashed into my mind in such a way as I know it will be there forever.

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Don-o is still there on the ground. His eyes are closed and he seems to be asleep.

Ichihara is standing here, examining the scene.  DK has slipped, but is catching himself, and the Russians are standing there with their eyes wide or crossed or otherwise screwed up in confusion.

It is a laboratory.

I see that immediately, or rather, it just feels that way, small, though, like an old chemistry room in high school rather than a big science place like KEK.  It’s mid-afternoon, and an outcast sky casts natural light over the open space that is maybe as big as a middle-class house in Duluth.  It smells faintly of burnt things and of chemicals.

The furniture is familiar.

Or, the walls, maybe.  I don’t know what it is that is familiar until I realize that we are in the back of the room, and at the front of the room are several people including one Alexander Ivanov, and another professor.  They appear to be lecturing students, but at first all I see are the backs of their heads as they sit at chairs.  I can count them without actually counting.

There are twelve.

Twelve students in the classroom today.

And when they turn to see what commotion has come to the back of their room I see that they are all, each and every one of the twelve of them, Charlie Cooper.

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One other person is in the room, too.

It is a woman with dark hair, cut short, with a touch of makeup that makes her cheeks look hollow and who leans against the side wall smoking a brown cigarette and looking bored.  She wears jeans and boots and a dark top and dark jacket.  When she sees us, her hand goes to her waist, and reappears holding a gun that is pointed for some reason directly at me.

Her expression now reminds me of the expressions the Russian goons had been wearing as they stepped out of their car just a few minutes ago.

At the front of the room, Ivanov speaks a stream of Russian, obviously saying something like “WTF?” and Ichihara begins to say he doesn’t want trouble.  But on sight of the gun the Russian to my right sprays a hail of bullets that missed the woman because he’s so danged stunned.  At least I’m hoping that’s the reason, because I sure as heck don’t want to be in some space-time rift with a “bodyguard” who can’t shoot straight.

The woman yells, and dives and the Charlie Coopers all duck except for two who stand up.

The world here begins to settle, and I realize that we are back in Irkutsk, not in the same room the Russians took me to before, but a room probably in the same building.  A classroom rather than an office.

Footsteps are coming down the hallway.

“Come, on,” Ichihara calls, waving his briefcase like a starter’s flag.  “Go get Charlie Coopers!”

He ducks down and he runs forward down the left side of the room.  Maybe it’s the rift, but for just an instant I see him decked out in uniform and trying to steal home.  Then I’m running down the middle aisle and DK, I see, has taken the right side route, and I’m thinking we’re surrounding them, and that pretty soon we’ll have all the Charile Coopers tied up in the middle of the room and be standing around like the Scooby-Do gang at the end of their episode.

Except, of course, Shaggy and the Scoobster don’t have real Russian bullets or real Russian scientists to deal with.  I doubt seriously that we’ll finish this off and find that Mr. McDonald will turn out to be the man behind the Ivanov mask at the end of this episode.  But, then again, we do have twelve Charlie Coopers to deal with, so what do I know?

As Scooby-thoughts flood my brain, the Russian woman rolls to her knee and fires at Ichihara, hitting the wall and sending three hundred year old shards of plaster flying.  She fires again, and seems to hit him in the arm, but then one of our Russians apparently decides to stop her madness, and shoots her in the leg.

Ichihara does not stop, though.

I realize two things right then.

Thing 1: Whose side are the Russians on?

Thing 2: Both Alexander Ivanov and this other unknown physicist are hiding behind a device at the front of the room that is both about the size of a medium-grade refrigerator, and humming with a warm sound.

The footsteps outside come louder, though, and more Russians with guns pour into the room just as I’m getting to my first Charlie Cooper.  He’s trying to slide to the floor.  I help him by shoving him hard, and he falls to lay there curled, up in a fetal position and covering his ears from the sound of the gun blasts.  This seems to be the standard-issue position of all the Charlie Coopers, which seems somehow appropriate for a guy code-named Mr. Slimeball.

“You’re under arrest!” I yell, though I have no freakin’ authority whatsoever. “Citizen’s arrest!” I yell.  “You’re all under Citizen’s arrest!”

I hit the floor, too, though, because the new Russians start to shooting at our Russians, and our Russians, who seem to decide that they’re on the side that isn’t shooting at them, shoot back.  Wood chips fly, bullets are ricocheting like everywhere, and a mist of plaster dust, gunpowder, and hot oil has formed that makes everything hazy.

I look over my shoulder and see Don-o is still laying back there with his eyes closed.  For a minute I think he’s been shot, but then I realize I’ve seen this before, its that same thing he had on his face late at night in a park ground outside Crystal City when Percy Nor was going to kill him.  He’s someplace else, I think.  And if I squint real hard I can see a finger of energy snaking from him to the wavy doorway that still stands open to where we came in.

He’s holding it.  My friend Don-o the Disruptor is holding the gate open.

That’s when I realize exactly what we’re playing with here.

Don-o dies, and we’re stuck here.

Wherever “here” is.

Ichihara runs on to the front of the room and to the big, humming unit, where he delivers a wicked blow to neck of Alexander Ivanov.  Ivanov goes out like a freakin’ light, which leaves only the professor, who is crying “Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!” as he backs away.

Then, amid the confusion and the hail of bullets, Chief Inspector Yuni Ichihara reaches a bleeding arm into his briefcase, and removes a block of something that he’s wrapped up in a newspaper.  I see the headline in Japanese, which I can’t read, of course, but which I understand because I’ve scanned the afternoon edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun in which the editorials are now calling for his resignation.  I realize the package is a bomb at the same time the professor does.

The professor yells, and finally gets up courage to jump at Ichihara, but I get to him first, and my body block would have done a tight end proud.  He’s down, and looks like he’s not getting up.  I pay for it with a wrenching pain in the same arm that Percy Nor shot back so long ago, but that seems like a fair trade right then.

Ichihara works on the device, but he hears a click and looks up to see the Russian woman has retrieved her gun.  She’s struggling to maintain balance, but she’s pointing that gun at Ichihara in what is essentially point-blank range.  Her smile is intensely wicked, and I see her finger tighten on the trigger.

Movement flashes at the same time as I hear the gun blast.

It is DK, who flies through the air, yelling something that all I can make out is the exclamation point.  The bullet takes him in the leg, and he falls to the ground, wailing.

Before she can shoot again, one of our Russians shoots her again.

Ichihara clips two more wires to the box, then presses a button, then he looks at me. I see numbers flashing red from the box he’s been working on, counting down.

“You get Charlie Cooper!  I get DK! Let’s go!”

I give him the OK sign, and turn around.  The “Let’s go!” idea suddenly seems like a helluva good idea that I wish we had thought of before.

But I look over at the pool of cowering Coopers and I’m suddenly locked up.

“Which one?” I ask.

Ichihara is already lifting DK, and helping him limp toward the back of the room.

“Matter not! Grab one! Go! Go! Go!”

Our Russians seem to have slowed the pace of the new Russians, and it gets quiet for a moment.  One of our guys is shot and isn’t moving, and two others have actually went to the hallway to pursue the retreating “new” Russians.

Holding my arm close to my rib cage, I do a ducking run to the Charlie Cooper that is laying closest to the doorway.  I grab a foot and tug on him.

“Get your cowardly ass up!”

He moves a little, looking at me with wide eyes over his shoulder.

He’s younger than me by just a little, and I see he’s afraid beyond the ability to move.

I grab him by the collar and drag him up so that his feet are actually holding up some of his weight, and we make better time.

One of our Russians, the Chief Stooge, has been shot, but is not dead.

He holds his gun at me at first, but then he realizes what’s happening.

“Don’t leave me,” he says, and he starts crawling toward the rift.  The handgun he has clenched in one fist scrapes on the tiled floor.

Yuni, hauling DK with him, gets to Don-o first.  I’m right behind, though.

“Come, Casey!” he yells as he shoves DK through the gate, and bends to pull at Don-o.  “Hurry! Hurry! No time!”

My friend’s weight is too much for him, though.

I throw my Charlie Cooper into the gate, and get on Don-o’s other side.

The Russian is crawling closer and closer.

We each grab a leg and pull again.  He slides a foot or two, and we pull again, and again and I see sweat beading on Yuni’s brow.  We’re not going to be in time, I think.  He looks up at me with command in his eyes. “One more,” he says calmly.  “Hard!”

And I dig my feet in and I pull with every muscle I have, feeling pain in my arms that make me think my shoulder has ripped. Don-o’s weight gives with a sudden release,

I hear the explosion, and I feel pressure.

I feel heat.

Then I’m falling, feeling like that flake in the snowball drifting through oil so think it’s like a liquid blanket.