Mad Dogs Read Online Free PDF

Zane, Hailey, Eric. They stared at mine.
    Together we said: “Nah!”
    â€œSo,” said Hailey, “if we didn’t do it, who did?”
    â€œHere’s the more urgent question,” said Zane. “Are we targeted, too?”
    â€œAbsolutely,” I said. “If the CIA buys the killer’s frame and calls us guilty, they’ll bury us. If we miraculously convince the Agency that we’re not guilty, then someone else is—and we’re witnesses, extreme liabilities to the killer or to a cover-up.”
    â€œOh boy,” said Eric. “Oh boy.”
    We whirled to look at the Ward door. Locked shut.
    Zane said: “One hour to dinner.”
    â€œMeatloaf,” said Eric.
    From Russell’s room came: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
    â€œWe are,” said Zane, “in trouble.”
    â€œExposed,” said Hailey. “Endangered.”
    â€œYou know what else?” I said. “Pissed-off. Some hitter wrecked our Ward, set it up so Admin will blunder around like a herd of elephants. Chain us up. Transfer us. Dope us more. Sure, a killer here means some spy has penetrated America’s top secrets. That’s a huge security risk, but what pisses me off is that a mechanic nailed our Doc.”
    Hailey asked: “Was it something we said?”
    â€œIf it was,” said Zane, “even worse. Then they’re truly after us.”
    â€œGhosts.” I shook my head. “They always get you.”
    Russell said: “The inmates won’t run this asylum anymore.”
    â€œWhatever happens will be terrible,” said Hailey. “Won’t respect who we are. What happened to us. What’s going on with us. Our fate.”
    â€œWhatever the big bad is, it’s coming for us,” said Zane.
    â€œThey promised safe here,” said Eric.
    â€œBig surprise,” said Russell. “They lied.”
    In physics, critical mass is obtained when the minimum number of individual elements to create a transforming process coalesce in one time/space continuum.
    Consider us. Five maniacs. Spies. Trained, experienced professional paranoids who’d been programmed to Do Something. Scarred beyond repair, but still, Once Upon A Time We’d Been Somebody. Forces with which to reckon. Now locked in a castle. With the corpse of a guy who’d earned our respect. Whose murder we were set up to take the fall for. With Keepers scheduled to catch Our Whole Situation in less than an hour. We had nothing to gain but all that we had left was on the line to lose.
    Physicists, psychiatrists and snipers talk about the trigger. The event that starts the chain reaction. When I think about our trigger, I hear the sudden wave of silence rushing into the Day Room that April Tuesday afternoon as Russell’s CD player shut off.
    There we stood.
    Five maniacs staring down at a corpse.
    With no theme music.
    â€œTwo choices,” I said. “We either stay here and suffer what gets done to us…”
    â€œOr?” said Russell.
    â€œWe bust out of this place.”

6
    â€œWild,” said Russell. “But we gotta take the Doc with us.”
    â€œHe’s dead!” I yelled.
    Zane said: “Nobody gets left behind.”
    â€œAre you nuts?”
    â€œWell,” said Hailey, “technically… yeah .”
    â€œThink of it as poetry,” argued Russell. “A great lyric. You can’t just walk away from a killer line because it’s inconvenient.”
    â€œThink of it as strategy,” said Zane. “We take him with us, we fuck with The Bad Boys’ set-up. What could be smarter than that?”
    â€œOr more fun?” said Russell.
    Hailey sighed. “Victor: if it was you lying there, what would you want?”
    In a blink, I saw it.
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re right. We’ve got to take Dr. F. We need him to get past security.”
    And I told them how.