Out of Exile: Hard Boiled: 2

by Jack Quaid

  A car horn rang out behind her. The light was green, and she pushed off. It was a short drive to MacArthur Bridge Park. Lopez couldn’t find anywhere to put the government issue, so she parked illegally and walked. The streets were busy, full of the beautiful and tanned. They were out drinking and laughing, and although they were the same age as Lopez, they were worlds apart.

  Cool air rolled in from the water as Lopez crossed the road to the winding footpath that ran the length of park. She found the bench she’d been told to go to, and sat and watched a parade of beggars, junkies, and kids on first dates.

  Then out of the crowd limped Jones. At first she didn’t recognize him. She was used to seeing him looking perfect, with his shirts cleaned and pressed, suits tailored, and hair TV ready. What approached her was a barely recognizable filthy mess. Sullivan looked the same way, but it suited him.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ Jones said.

  Her eyes moved between the pair of them. ‘Adams has issued a warrant for both of you. To say he’s pissed off would be an understatement.’

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ Jones said. ‘Did you find the information we need?’

  She dug her hand into her pocket, took out a single piece of folded paper, and handed it to Jones. He read it and passed it to Sullivan, who did the same and put it in the back pocket of his jeans.

  ‘That address is good,’ Lopez said. ‘It came from Rynderman, over at dispatch. The DPD are setting up a temporary IT center on a disused floor of the old Detroit General Hospital. He said your IT kid, who’s in charge of the operation, is signed in over there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jones said.

  Lopez got to her feet. ‘You don’t have to thank me. Find Mackler and get Monique.’ She stepped away, paused, and looked back at Jones. ‘If you don’t, I wouldn’t come back, if I were you.’

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  They dumped the F-100 down some shitty back alley in West Village, and Sullivan stole a yellow taxi from a cabbie who’d ducked into a 7–Eleven for a snack. When they were a couple of suburbs away, he pulled over and spent ten minutes stripping the vehicle of its GPS tracker and internal surveillance camera. When they hit the road, they blended in with the other five thousand yellow cabs in the city.

  Jones watched the world pass by in a blur of grey concrete and green trees. ‘I’ve never killed anyone,’ he said. ‘What’s it like?’

  Sullivan cracked the window. Warm air blew through the car. ‘In my second year in uniform, I was called out to a domestic. My partner and I had been there before; it was a problem family. Two kids under three, and the parents were unemployed and liked the drink. So we roll up to the location. You could hear the yelling and screaming from the patrol. He had the wife by the hair, and he held her up as he pounded into her face. He was a big guy, and he knew how to throw a punch. As soon as we breached the door, he went for a knife, and before anything could be done about it, he had it at her throat. It took me ten minutes to talk him down. We booked him, and a couple of days later he was released. The wife picked up him up, and everything was happy families again.

  ‘Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, a call comes in; this time, not a domestic. Some friend or relative hadn’t heard from them in a couple of days and went around to the house. She found the husband stabbed to death, the children suffocated, and the mother having suicided on painkillers.’ Sullivan lit a cigarette, coughed on the first drag. ‘I had the shot. I could have taken him out the week before. Legal and justified, a pat on the back and thank you very much for your hard work. If I’d taken that shot, those kids would still be alive.’ He turned to Jones. ‘Killing is awful, Jim. But sometimes not killing is worse.’

  He pulled over to the side of the road. The old Detroit General Hospital had not been operational for years. It had passed its use-by date when another facility, with more space and state-of-the-art equipment, was erected a few blocks away. Still owned by the state and occasionally used by the fire department for training, the building was little more than an antique.

  Except for the rent-a-guard at the main entrance, security around the hospital was nonexistent. Jones flashed his badge at the guard, who barely looked up from the text message he was sending before letting them pass.

  The inside was dark, the lighting low, and the whole place had the smell of lingering stale air. The rooms off the main hall were empty and, although unused, were dirty with accumulated dust. Sullivan and Jones reached the elevator and rode it up to the fifth floor.

  The doors opened with a ding. The hall was abuzz with young computer technicians dragging cables across the floor and tearing plastic covers off brand-new servers. They were lined up on the left side of the hall and ran the length of the building.

  ‘Come on!’ somebody yelled. ‘Hurry it up!’

  Sullivan stepped out of the elevator and squinted in the light. Portable 500-watt work lamps had been erected and placed wherever there was enough room. A uniform stood guard, babysitting; asleep on his feet with boredom. Jones started walking, dodging the cables and equipment. Sullivan hung back, so he wouldn’t be recognized, and pointed Jones in the direction of Christopher Ong.

  ‘People, if you want to work slow,’ Ong was yelling, ‘go work for Microsoft! Come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’

  Jones flashed Ong his badge. ‘Can we have a word?’

  ‘Do I look like I have time?’

  ‘We’ll be out of your hair in a moment.’

  We?

  Ong looked over Jones’s shoulder to Sullivan. It didn’t take him long to recognize him from what was left of the basement of Oxford House.

  ‘Officer. OFFICER!’

  The uniform, tired and slow, made his way down the hall.

  ‘Shit,’ Sullivan mumbled. He took a few steps, drew his revolver, and pushed it into Ong’s belly. ‘Tell him not to worry about it,’ he said. ‘That everything is cool.’ Ong’s eyes sank to the revolver. ‘Do I look like I’m asking?’ Sullivan said.

  Ong called out to the cop: ‘Don’t worry. Everything is all right. It’s cool. It’s all cool.’

  As if having walked ten feet were the biggest pain in the ass he had encountered all day, the uniform about-faced and returned to his spot.

  Sullivan inched the revolver out of Ong’s gut. ‘There you go. That’s one way to stay alive.’

  A warm breeze cut across the roof of the hospital, and although it was night, there was a red shade to the sky as if something up there were on fire. Christopher Ong didn’t need to be pushed to the edge of the building; he knew that, one way or another, that’s where he would end up, and he made his own way there. But as he neared the corner, he slowed, stumbled, and pissed his pants.

  The poor bastard, Sullivan thought.

  ‘What, what do you want?’ Ong stuttered.

  Sullivan crouched; the pain in his knees shot up his hip, and he winced. ‘We need to know where the DPD keep their backup server.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We believe somebody is trying to destroy them,’ Sullivan said.

  Ong shifted his gaze between the pair. ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

  Sullivan stood and offered a hand to Ong. ‘You don’t.’

  Chapter Sixty Eight

  Christopher Ong gave them the address and his security pass. They bounced out of the CBD and into the industrial streets of West Side on the edge of the city. Roads there were wide, empty, and bathed in an orange glow from the streetlights above. Factories surrounded them on all sides. There were warehouses and loading bays, everything behind fences and all of it dormant.

  Sullivan cut the headlights and pulled the taxi over to the side of the road. They watched the warehouse, two hundred feet away. Medium, as far as warehouses go. Well-secured, ten-foot-high fences, with an extra couple of feet of cyclone wire sitting on top. A security box guarded what looked to be the only entrance; there was a light on, but they couldn’t see anyone inside.

  ‘We’re either ear
ly or late,’ Jones said.

  Sullivan wrapped his fingers around the door handle. ‘Let’s go find out.’

  They moved, bent at the waist, and as they neared the warehouse, television murmur from the security booth floated in the air. Sullivan approached. He was cautious in his steps and got an angle through the open door. A security guard slumped awkwardly on the floor. Two rounds were buried in his chest and one through his cheek.

  A thump came from the warehouse. Sullivan and Jones swapped a glance. They were still inside.

  Industrial air conditioners lined the side of the structure and pumped it with air at a freezing temperature to stop the servers from overheating. Sullivan and Jones climbed a flight of steps, used the pass, and entered the annex. Cold air rushed at their faces. There was a small room, another security keypad. Sullivan used the pass again, cracked open the door, and poked an eye through. Rows of computer servers, each six feet tall, and so many of them that they created corridors within the warehouse. Sullivan slipped inside, the air cooling his sweat. Jones followed, and the pair of them pushed up against the wall.

  ‘You take the left side,’ Sullivan whispered. ‘I’ll take the right.’

  Jones nodded and limped off. Sullivan took a step in the opposite direction. The light was low. The servers flickered green and orange, and the colors bounced off his face. Despite the cold, Sullivan sweated through his T-shirt. He pulled the revolver from his waistband and watched it shake in his hand. The last thirty hours were catching up with him. His knees ached and throbbed. His busted shoulder had put half his arm to sleep, and a couple of broken ribs made it hard for him to breathe.

  Sullivan reached the last server, stopped, and pushed his back against it.

  There was movement close to him—just around the corner.

  His hand, full of the shakes, thumbed the hammer on the weapon. All he had to do was breathe on it and the thing would explode. What he would hit was anyone’s guess. He took a breath, yanked the weapon up, and stepped into the open.

  It was Jones. Sullivan lowered his aim.

  Jones shook his head. Between them, they had covered the entire server farm and hadn’t come across anyone.

  Then Sullivan heard footsteps behind him. Running hard and fast. He twisted, saw a figure in the darkness, and took aim. They were too far away and moving too fast for a clean shot. He lowered the piece and gave chase. Every thumping step sent pain through his body. He blocked it out and pushed through it, but he wasn’t as fit or as fast as usual, and the figure escaped through the main door.

  Sullivan tried to bust through the door, but it wouldn’t budge. It was locked. He rattled, pushed, and pulled, but there was no give, and even after using the pass they got from Christopher Ong, the door still wouldn’t open. They were locked in.

  Shit.

  Sullivan put his hands on his knees, coughed phlegm, and tried to catch his breath.

  Jones’s voice echoed through the warehouse. ‘Get over here, Sullivan.’ The fear in his tone took it up an octave.

  Sullivan found Jones in the far corner, staring at one of the servers with a look of complete fear on his face. Sullivan took half a step and got an angle on what he was looking at. A C4 explosive with a cheap timer. He tilted his head and saw that all the servers were rigged to explode.

  Jones took a couple of cautious steps back. ‘We should probably go.’

  Sullivan turned to face him. ‘We can’t, Jim. We’re locked in.’

  Chapter Sixty Nine

  Jones limped off down an aisle of servers, in search of another exit.

  Sullivan stepped in front of the timer.

  3.59

  3.58

  3.57

  It was shoe-box sized, with ten to fifteen cables shooting out of it, running across the floor, up and over the servers; a crude device but enough to send the whole joint to hell.

  ‘There’s two exits,’ Jones said, coming back. ‘Both locked.’ He looked to the timer. ‘Can you stop it?’

  ‘I’m no expert,’ Sullivan said.

  ‘Can you disarm it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Sullivan wrapped his scarred hands around the device, tilted it one way, tilted it the other, and paused.

  ‘What is it?’ Jones asked.

  He scratched his chin. ‘If we stop this bomb from exploding, we’ll have the evidence of the skim, but we’ll be stuck in here for hours, waiting for somebody to let us out. By then, Mackler will be gone, and so will Monique.’

  ‘Or?’

  Sullivan took a breath. ‘We use the explosion to bust open the doors. It’ll destroy the evidence.’

  Jones leaned against a server and also took a breath, hands on his knees.

  ‘It will get us out, and we can go get your daughter.’

  Sweat dripped from Jones’s brow to the floor. ‘We can’t do both?’

  Sullivan clocked the timer. ‘Not in this time.’

  He tilted his head back, as if the answer were there. ‘We can’t let them go,’ Jones said.

  ‘We have to let something go.’

  Jones stood upright and pointed at the explosive in Sullivan’s hand. ‘Blow it. Blow it all to hell.’

  It took Sullivan only seconds to run down an aisle of servers. He skidded to a stop by the main entrance, a server strapped with C4 ten feet from it. He wrapped his arms around the thing and shifted it an inch. Grunted. Put some more back into it. Shifted it farther.

  ‘Ninety seconds!’ Jones yelled.

  Sullivan’s face was red, his skin drenched in sweat. He heaved and pulled until eventually that heavy bastard was up against the locked double doors. One last shove and it was flush, the C4 wedged between.

  When he made it back to Jones, the desperate prick seemed to be clawing away at the walls to escape. Sullivan moved to get a better angle.

  Jones was using a coin to take out the screws of an air conditioning vent. ‘We should be protected from the blast in here.’

  When he was attacking the last screw, he said, ‘Check the timer.’

  Sullivan gave it a filthy look. ‘Twenty seconds,’ he said.

  Jones dropped the coin; picked it up.

  ‘Christ, Jim!’

  ‘I can do it!’

  Sullivan clocked the timer again.

  10

  9

  8

  7

  ‘Hurry up!’

  The last screw hit the concrete floor. Jones threw the grate clear across the room, and before it hit the ground, he disappeared into the air conditioner vent.

  Sullivan followed.

  4

  3

  2

  1

  Chapter Seventy

  Fingers jammed into ears. Eyes clenched shut. When the explosion came, those precautions didn’t matter. The blast threw them around the vent, against the walls, and into each other. Sullivan felt the heat nip his ankles, and when the shaking stopped and the vent cooled, he crooked his neck and saw that Jones was laughing like mad.

  The walls were scorched and the servers scattered. One sparked and died. Something internal popped within another. The ringing in Sullivan’s ears faded, replaced with the sound of an alarm that almost mirrored the pounding in his head. The doors were blown clean off, and he could see movement outside the warehouse. Sullivan took a step, stumbled, put a hand on a still-warm server to hold himself up, and peered through the darkness. He made out a silhouette: male, six foot one. The figure walked to a vehicle and opened the door. The interior light snapped on. It was God. He climbed in and cranked up the engine.

  ‘Come on,’ Sullivan said.

  Jones was still trying to shake the explosion off.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Sullivan pushed his way through the rubble and burst out of the warehouse and into the warm night air. He slowed in the wake of God’s car as it pulled down the road.

  Jones struggled with his limp. ‘Which way did he go?’

  ‘Toward the freeway.’

  Sullivan looked
down the naked street. Two warehouses away, parked by the gutter, was their stolen cab. He sprinted to it, his heart pounding, his body hating him. He pulled the door open, climbed in, floored the bastard. Two hundred feet later, he hit the brakes and slid to a stop. Jones got in, and before he could close the door, Sullivan was redlining the engine.

  He punished the cab. Swung it sideways around a corner on a hard left. Straightened up.

  ‘There he is,’ Jones said, pointing.

  Taillights brightened, faded, and turned right at the end of the street. Sullivan gave the pedal more weight.

  120

  130

  140

  At that speed, corners came up fast. His foot slammed on the brake. The cab began to slide, ABS kicked in, and the yellow streak in the night pulled straight and stopped in a cloud of tire smoke. They overshot the corner. Reverse, a stamp on the pedal, a yank of the wheel, a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, a gear change, and onto the highway ramp.

  Orange light bathed the road.

  The cab pulled around an eighteen-wheeler. Sullivan sped past it. Four cars ahead.

  Jones leaned forward. ‘Which one is he?’

  In the night, from behind, the vehicles looked the same. They passed the first three. Changed lanes, moved up on the last vehicle that was in sight and slipped into its blind spot.

  Jones leaned forward, got an angle. ‘That’s him. He pointed. ‘I doubt he’s just going to pull over for us.’

  Sullivan’s fingers slipped around the seat belt; he pulled it across his chest and heard the click as he pushed it into place. ‘I doubt that he is.’

  He yanked the wheel hard. The cab slapped the back left-hand side of God’s car. The knock and the speed sent it sideways, skidding down the road; it was on the verge of flipping until God straightened up. He overcompensated, and it all went to hell.