by Eric Beetner
“Well, thanks, Dale.”
He smiled. It was the first time she used his name. Made him feel like a human again.
Dale saw the stenciled 5. His feet had reached the beam directly on top of the elevator door to the fifth floor and he knew he had to get out of this shaft.
Below them, somewhere, Elton was decomposing as a stark example of the dangers of falling down to the bottom. They had descended another fifteen feet from where he fell, but it wouldn’t make any difference. You drown the same in ten feet of water as you do in twenty-five.
He went to set his foot down on the beam below, but he slipped. With an involuntary moan, he grasped the wall and pushed hard with his good foot to stay clung to the narrow outcroppings he used. The foot and his missing toe were giving out. He couldn’t put pressure on it anymore.
“I’m getting out.”
“What?” Lauren looked at where his voice came from in the darkness. She could see a shadow in the blackness and the white number five.
“I gotta get out.”
Dale put a hand on a bar in back of the door. His hand wouldn’t reach far enough to wedge his fingers in between the two doors. He pulled toward him, his arm straining as if he were locked in an arm wrestling match with a steel rod.
Dale didn’t try to stifle the grunt of effort and the sound carried off up the shaft. The door opened slowly. When he had the doors opened, Dale let go and spun his body toward the door. He tried to land on his good foot but it immediately collapsed under him when he hit. He banged a knee and rolled half way over before sprawling out and laying on his back, sucking wind.
Lauren made a slightly more graceful exit from the shaft, then also immediately lay on the ground to catch her breath. They both had to shut their eyes from the glare of overhead lights.
Lauren craned her neck over her shoulder to get a look at the floor. What she saw jogged her memory of the space from her studies. The money floor.
CHAPTER 23
“Fifteen minutes.” Chief Schuster ran two fingers over his upper lip, an old habit from when he sported a mustache. The bare skin still felt like a rubber band over his teeth. “No, twenty.”
There hadn’t been any outside pressure—from the mayor, from the media. He’d just had enough of waiting. If Dale was taking this long, then something had to have gone wrong. A part of him felt an ulcerated pain of guilt digging at his insides for sending a man to such a fixed fight. Dale may have screwed up, and screwed up badly, but he still wore a badge and Schuster’s job was to keep the men behind the shield safe, not send them on mini missions impossible.
And Dale was no Tom Cruise. He wasn’t even Peter Graves.
“Move in twenty?” Greely, the team leader, was poised to give the command, all he needed was a confirmation from the chief. For the past hour and change, he’d watched the normally decisive man dither and do nothing. He still didn’t know exactly what was going on inside the building that they had to wait to deploy. His men were ready.
“Your men should get ready in twenty.” A few minutes more, thought Schuster. But he knew the SWAT team was ready to go in a moment’s notice. They remained locked and loaded, geared up and eager to take down the city’s most notorious gangster.
They even had the department’s sole helicopter on standby.
“Goddammit, Dale.” Schuster rubbed his upper lip again. The crooked cop had robbed Schuster of the pleasure of prosecuting him as well as a clean, casualty-free extraction of the mayor’s daughter.
Now a blood bath was coming. Lauren O’Brien was probably already soaking in her own blood. And Schuster would be soaking in a pool of red ink and bad media coverage when this was all over. How long until the mayor fired him? And how long until it came out about Dale’s connections to Tat? A black cloud would cover the whole department unless Dale could somehow pull one out and save the girl. Then they could contain, control, and manage the situation.
Schuster watched the tops of the trees, imagining the building beyond. He listened to the team leader call out the command to start the countdown to twenty minutes. He could hear the annoyance in Greely’s voice.
Wasn’t his ass on the line, though.
Esmerelda Losopo, Tat’s mom, flexed the fingers on her right hand, finally free of the ropes that bound her. Her left hand wouldn’t move after she’d crunched her hand small enough to slip through the loose knot. Whoever that guy was who tied her up, he was a goddamn amateur. When she was younger, she would have been able to throw off those boy scout dropout knots in two minutes flat, but time marches on. As it was, she barely had to break anything. Felt like a series of bad sprains more than anything, and half her extremities were numb most of the time anyway these days.
Back home, in Guam, she’d been through the rite of passage that was being kidnapped by local gangs in the slums. Poor people kidnapping poor people’s kids, getting twenty or maybe fifty bucks for the trouble. It wasn’t a high-stakes game, but the men carried machetes anyway.
At fifteen she was held for nine and a half hours. At nine hours and twenty minutes, she got loose of her bindings and killed the man in the room with her. The one eyeing her with bad intentions in his bloodshot stare. If you were a girl in the slums and you got kidnapped, prepare to get raped. Honestly, Esmerelda was surprised it hadn’t happened already.
But she saw the look in the young man’s face. Left alone with him, he was getting ideas.
She beat him first with the tiny tin plate they gave her for food. The plate bent easily so she turned it on its side and brought the thin edge down on his throat until she cut a path to his windpipe and left him whistling on the dirt floor of her cell.
She found his machete in the corner and walked out the front door to slash open three more men before walking home in bare feet toting a new, blood-stained machete that she rinsed off and gave to her father, who kept it in the closet and used it frequently for yard work.
Setting her feet into the lush carpet of her bedroom, Esmerelda cursed herself for taking so long to escape. She didn’t have a machete to carry out of there, but she held the same murderous feeling in her heart.
When the elevator didn’t come, she marched through her apartment to the back stairs. The bureau was already pulled away from the wall, leaving a path for the door, and Esmerelda went out.
5TH FLOOR
A large steel cube sat in the middle of the otherwise open floor. Built nearly to the ceiling with rivets like off a battleship and no windows except for a thin metal flap Dale recognized as similar to the gun ports on armored cars, the cube was built to keep something inside. And to keep everything else out.
A keypad and card swipe blinked red beside a narrow door.
“What the hell?” Dale almost forgot the pain for a moment as he marveled at the impenetrable box.
“It’s the cash.” Lauren stared at it, imagining what was inside. “This is Tat’s bank.”
“All his money?”
Lauren nodded.
“Jesus—”
The emptiness of the floor echoed the machine gun fire and the ricochets until they crossed each other in the air and made a white noise of destruction. Dale spotted the thin barrel poking out from the gun port and spraying indiscriminately at the perceived threat.
“Shit!” Dale rolled away from the bullet impacts, bumping his already battered body across the floor.
The person inside had such a small gap to fire through, they couldn’t focus on aim. The major deterrent was fear and rounds per second.
The first burst of shooting stopped. It took several seconds for the echo to fade in the cavernous, floor-length room. Dale looked to Lauren who had scurried several feet away to the other side of the room. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
Dale silently chastised himself for asking her. He was the damn cop here. She may have two good feet still, but he had training and experience. Although nobody in the world had experience with
his day so far.
The black nose of the gun poked again through the slit. Dale could see a small peephole below and to the left of the gun port. The kind of fish-eye view of the world you get from behind the door of your average apartment.
There was no way to tell how many people were inside or how many guns they had, but getting in wasn’t the goal. Not being shot was mission number one. Dale saw the only way he thought of to avoid being sprayed with bullets.
He got ready to run on his nine toes and take command of the situation again. He called to Lauren. “Follow me. You know how to serpentine?”
“You mean run in a crooked line?”
“That’s it.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the box.”
Dale took off like a sprinter with a cramp. He pushed forward and let the momentum drag him along with a heavy limp. He grunted every time his bad foot slapped the floor.
Lauren thought he was nuts. Rush the place where the gunfire was coming from? What kind of plan was that? But she had no ideas of her own so after she watched him lope four ugly staggers forward like he was in a three-legged race with an invisible man, she followed.
Almost immediately as she stood, the machine gun roared to life again. She zigged and Dale zagged as the gun sprayed a rainbow arc of shots too high to be much danger. The design of the cube wasn’t suited to marksmanship. With the peephole offset in a parallax view from the slot of the gun port, and the distorted warping of the fish-eye lens, it was no wonder the shooter inside couldn’t seem to find them with a decent shot.
As they sidewinded toward the box, the shots became even harder. She had to admit, Dale was right.
She beat him to the thick steel walls of the cube, but he was close behind, dragging his leg, which had given up even working a limp about half way across the room. He pushed his back against the wall below where the door was cut into the steel structure and Lauren could see the agony on his face. Eyes clenched shut, hand holding the knee of his injured leg, not daring to go any closer to the bleeding wound.
The lab coat sleeve she’d wrapped around him had gone from white to deep red. Blood didn’t spurt, but it definitely leaked.
Lauren turned her eyes up and noticed she was directly below the gun port. Above her she saw the black metal barrel of the gun poking through like a crow’s beak. It panned left to right as the shooter inside frantically looked for his missing targets.
“What now?”
Dale kept his eyes tightly shut. “I don’t know. I got us out of the line of fire.” He dared to open his eyes. Lauren watched him scan the rest of the floor. She looked too but saw nothing. She leaned over to see behind the cube to the far side. There was a door leading to the back stairwell where they had begun this hellish descent.
She leaned back and pointed to the spot. “The stairs.”
Turning around seemed to be too much effort for Dale, but he trusted her and didn’t need to see for himself. “Is there a gun port on the other side?”
Lauren kept her back to the steel box and shuffled her feet around to where she could peek onto the opposite wall. She tried not to think of how much money was beyond the five-inch-thick steel behind her back. Knowing Tat, it was a lot. And knowing her dad, some of it was designated for him.
She craned her neck and saw an identical gun port on the opposite side with a direct line of fire to the stairwell door. “Dammit.” The black finger of the machine gun barrel peeked out from the slit and searched the back of the room. Lauren crawled back to Dale in front.
“Yeah, there’s another one.”
“Shit.”
Their luck had held out so far, but how much were they willing to risk to make the mad dash with their backs turned to a firing squad?
Lauren looked over Dale’s head to the keypad and card swipe. It reminded her of how she needed her ATM card to gain access to the bank vestibule after business hours. Probably the same style unit since there really isn’t a retailer for super strong money boxes the size of a studio apartment.
A fuzzy memory, all of an hour old, played across her mind. She smiled and reached into her pocket.
Dale watched her, leery of that smile. What could she possibly have to smile about?
She drew out a thin silver card, like a section taken out of a tin can and pressed flat. Where had he seen that before?
Upstairs, when she cleaned out Tat’s pockets before they stuffed him away. He slowly realized, a few beats after she had, what it was for. Access. He turned to look above him. A tiny red light blinked on the card swiper, waiting for just that—access.
What was her plan? Open the damn door and let the gunman out so he can look them in the eye when he kills them?
“What are you doing with that?”
“He’s not going to come out, right?” Dale nodded, reluctantly agreeing. “Then the only way to make a hundred percent sure he doesn’t shoot us in the back is if we go in and get him.”
Breaking down her logic, which, on the surface was very logical, required brain cells Dale didn’t have at his disposal right then. Too much of his mind power was taken over with furious pain and exhaustion. When Lauren moved toward the card reader, Dale wanted to protest, but he reached around his back and drew his gun instead, preferring to be ready to fight the man with the machine gun rather than Lauren.
She hovered the card beside the thin slot. “You ready?”
Dale shook his head. “No. But go ahead.”
Like paying for groceries, she slid the card down the slot and the light turned from red to green. There was a click from inside and the door hissed open an inch, looking like the opening to a mausoleum.
Dale rolled out of the way, scooting himself around the corner of the cube. Lauren retreated back to the spot under the gun port with the added protection of now being behind the heavy steel door as it swung open.
Nobody moved. Nothing happened. Dale half expected a flood of armed men like a clown car of death. Instead, he pictured a lone man inside trembling with the same fear he felt, wondering what the protocol was for something like this. This had to be the first time the vault was ever attacked. And now someone used an entry card. Presumably, Tat had the only one. The shiny, silver, one-of-a-kind key to his riches. The numbered keypad the way in for the guards.
“Mister Losopo?”
The voice inside was timid. Dale could imagine the man shitting his pants thinking he’d just been shooting at the boss and maybe some special guests. Well, if the hired gun wanted to think it was Tat, let him think it.
Dale rolled and flopped onto his stomach in the doorway, gun at the ready. He saw the shooter, looking at head height and waiting for Tat to step in. It was enough of a surprise for Dale to shoot first. Three quick bursts and the man jerked with three bullets to his legs, one of them up near his hip bone. He dropped the machine gun, fell to his knees, and seemed to see Dale on the floor for the first time, as if an alligator had crawled in to his miniature fortress. The strange creature slithering on the floor so out of place in his insulated world.
As the man gave him a confused look, Dale aimed at the man’s head.
“Don’t make me do it.”
Dale couldn’t believe the man wasn’t screaming. Three bullets in him, probably shattered bone, and he held himself up on his knees by will. The man bent down and put a hand on the machine gun.
“Come on, man. All we want is to get out of here.”
The man struggled to get a grip on the gun. Dale scolded him angrily.
“We don’t want the money. Just let us walk out and nobody else has to get hurt.”
The man got a hand on the grip of the gun. He bent at the waist and put his other hand on the weapon, started to straighten up.
“Please, don’t.” Dale gripped the butt of his gun, but kept his finger slack on the trigger. Enough killing. He’d had more than he could handle. He felt like he knew what soldiers must feel like. What other c
hoice is there when someone is trying to shoot you?
“Fuckin’ cut it out.”
The man lifted the machine gun in both hands. Dale fired a single shot into the man’s right arm. The machine gun dipped but lifted again in his left hand.
Whatever they pump this guy with, Dale thought, I want some when I get out of here.
Dale fired again. The bullet entered his chest on the left side. Finally the man fell face forward and lay still. Dale let the gun go limp in his hand. His chest pushed against the hard floor as he tried to get a deep breath. He squeezed his eyes shut and cursed the man for not listening to instructions. Dale’s instructions, anyway. He seemed to have followed Tat’s rules to a T. And what did it get him?
Dale opened his eyes again. What he saw eclipsed all other thoughts from his head.
Lauren came around the door and stopped. Dale was already staring, his body low enough to the ground to be in danger of literally letting his jaw hit the floor. Money. Cash. Stacks of it. Pallets of it. Stacked NBA-player high and row after row so deep that the shooter who’d been stationed in here only had about a ten-foot strip of real estate to move in.
A tiny TV played and a mini fridge buzzed in the corner. Otherwise, the room was devoted to money, and nothing but.
Lauren moved into the room like Alice entering wonderland. She took slow steps, not wanting to break the spell. There was more money in the world. Men traded this amount daily in firms all over Wall Street, often losing an entire cube worth of money in a single transaction, but that was all electronic. This was paper. Faces. Engraving. Real money.
She reached out a hand and it hovered over a stack about waist high on her, a palette not yet filled to capacity. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to touch it. It had nothing to do with fingerprints or liability, it just didn’t seem real and she felt if she touched it, the stacks would all vanish or turn to dust.
