Part 78
Castle Greyskull
Simon heaves a black duffle bag on the table and unzips it. An arsenal of roadside firecrackers fill it. Blackjacks, smoke bombs, Roman candles, and so many red stems of bottle rocket poking up like hair.
“Golden?” Mephis echoes. “I tell you to get me into the most well-guarded party on the East Coast, and you give me paintballs? Is your brain broken? What are you thinking, Simon?”
Simon winces at every word. “I’m sorry, Mephis,” he says. “I thought it was a good idea.”
“What happens when you get shot at?” Tyr is getting himself hotter. “We’re walking into a meat grinder.”
I hope my stare at Nepotism will spur him to action, but he just shrugs. “I don’t think it’s so bad,” I say.
Nepotism, Mephis and Simon all three at once say, “You don’t?” which pisses me off, because things like that aren’t supposed to happen in real life.
“No,” I say, “I don’t.” Even Tyr is paying attention. “Those smoke bombs are fucking brutal. You toss a few of those into a crowd, it will probably ignite a cocktail dress, or at least drive everyone away. The firecrackers are sure to trigger a Great War flashback. We’ll easily slip through the hedges, and if it tears up our clothes, we can say it was the fire.”
“You do that in Africa, fighting guerillas?” Simon asks with a chuckle. He overturns the duffle bag and shovels out the mass of fireworks.
“Gorillas, actually,” I say. “Big fuckers, too. They live up around Lake Tana, where I found the Ark of the Covenant. The natives claim the energy from the Ark made them use tools and living in caves. We used smoke bombs as a wall between us. Stopped their charge dead.”
Simon grins. “I read a review that called The Unnatural ‘a whacking big dose of amateur scholarship alloyed with a fervid imagination and the kind of narrative that comes in handy when telling ghost stories around a campfire.’” looks at Tyr and laughs weakly. “I can’t believe you, Mephis. You’re stealing a priceless artifact for a guy whose show was called ‘garbage and hogwash" by an archeologist at the University of Toronto.”
“Hey fuck you, man,” I say. “I present the evidence. People make their own decisions.”
“We don’t have time for this kind of bickering,” Mephis says. “This is where we make our mark.”
Simon stands, and Tyr rises as well. “Another reviewer said she ‘wasted a lot of time watching ‘The Unnatural.’” Simon smiles wide at Tyr. It’s no sign of friendship. “Now you’re pissed because I’m not taking this seriously enough.” Simon is towering over Mephis now. “Yesterday morning I called this drunk, just like you told me, and sitting here now, he’s got no clue who I am. Fuck you, Mephis. Shut up and listen.”
Regular Crazy.
Tyr holds up his hands and sinks back in his seat.
Simon sighs through his nose in victory. “This is your way in. Paintballs and firecrackers.” He stares at Tyr a moment before continuing. “Nigel, Kara, and Goat will pepper the terrace with paint balls, bottle-rockets and smoke bombs to clear the area. In the confusion, you slip in undetected.”
From his back pocket, he produces a folded piece of printer paper and puts it in front of us, pointing to a map, his finger on the library. “You enter here.” He moves his index finger through the two-line door into the long back hall, continuing to trace as he talks. “You will need to rush down the back hall. The stairs to the basement are in the south wall of the dining room. Solomon could be in any of these areas, but I suspect he’ll be coming to see the excitement on the terrace. This isn’t really a rock star party.”
Simon flips the duffle bag and pushes it across the table for us to see inside. Strapped to the bottom is a Mac 10. Simon says, “When it’s time to get serious, shit will be live.”
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