by Evan Graver
On their left were three cubicles, and there were two more on the right beside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Now that they were inside, Ryan could see that the multicolored panels cladding the exterior were panes of glass set in an inverted subway tile pattern. In the distance, he saw the opposite view of the Pan-Am Highway bridge to Valdez’s apartment across the bay.
Trying to lighten the mood, Ryan said, “I can see your house from here.”
“Yes, you can. It’s one of the reasons I chose this building for the bank’s office.”
“Let’s open the vault.”
Valdez hesitated. “I don’t think you have anyone following Maria.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. “Do you want to take that chance?”
“Everything in this bank is being recorded. I promise you that whoever you’re looking for will find you, and I pray they make your life a living nightmare.”
“Sounds like fun and games to me, Vince. Just open the safe deposit box.”
In his ear, Ryan heard Mango’s voice. “Hey, bros. I think some new friends have just arrived. Four dudes wearing trench coats just entered the bank.”
“What’s your status, Kojak?”
“Ready to fly, squid.”
“Get that bird in the air. Meet us at the open field up the road from the bank.”
“Just get clear of the bad guys before I arrive. This flying tin can ain’t built for a hot LZ.”
“Copy that,” Ryan said. With a kill squad coming, things had definitely gone pear-shaped.
It was time to implement Plan B, which was to retrieve the docs, fall back to the van, and meet the helicopter in a field less than half a mile up the road. Ryan wondered if he should develop a Plan C.
Valdez punched the digital code into the vault door keypad, then fitted his eye to the retinal scanner. A moment later, the locking bars retracted, and Valdez swung the thick steel door open. They stepped inside, and Ryan’s eyes widened at the countless bundles of shrink-wrapped cash. He was here to retrieve documents out of a lock box, not rob a bank, but the thought crossed his mind.
Ryan took one of the safe deposit box keys that Valdez offered him, and together they inserted them into the panel in front of the box, turning them at the same time. Valdez pulled the box from its slot in the wall and carried it to a nearby table.
Oscar appeared in the vault doorway. “Madre de Dios,” he murmured, upon seeing the cash.
“Did you get the video?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah. I erased the footage from today and took the entire surveillance system offline for the next twenty-four hours.”
Valdez removed a file folder from the box and handed it to Ryan. “That will tell you what you want to know about the account.”
Oscar stepped into the vault, scooped all the files out of the safe deposit box, and dumped them into a backpack while Ryan zip-tied the lawyer’s hands and feet together.
“Adiós, el cabrón,” Oscar said to Valdez.
Mango’s voice crackled in their ears. “The goons are heading up the elevator.”
“Oscar,” Ryan said, “you take the files and meet Mango outside. I’ll hold off the goon squad.”
Chapter Eighteen
Before the Venezuelan Marine could argue, the elevator chimed, and the door slid open. Two members of the trench coat brigade stepped out, holding Tavor SAR rifles. Both trained their guns on the bank’s entrance doors and depressed their triggers. The rounds slammed into the glass, crazing and fracturing it. The men concentrated their firepower near the door’s handle, and soon the barrage of bullets had punched a hole in the glass large enough for them to reach through and open the lock.
“What’s your protocol for a robbery?” Ryan asked Valdez.
“There’s a panic button in my office. It drops steel barriers over the front doors, sets off the silent alarm, and locks the vault.”
Ryan knew that if they pressed that button, they would be locked inside with no way out. He and Oscar squatted behind the vault door with their pistols drawn. While the door gave them some protection, it was only a matter of time before their position was overrun. They would have to figure something out—and fast.
“The stairwell on level five is being guarded by our new friends,” Mango reported. “What’s the situation up there?”
“We have the documents, but we’re pinned down in the bank. Say the status of the building’s security guards.”
“Dead.”
“Shit.” Ryan ducked as another flurry of bullets pinged off the vault door.
“What do you want me to do?” Mango asked.
“Save my ass, bro,” Ryan replied without hesitation.
“While you guys are down there screwing around, the cops are on the way,” Rick said. “Holy shit, boys! They look like ants swarming a sugar cube.”
Ryan closed his eyes and steeled himself to act. He lay down on the floor and braced his foot against the doorframe. He motioned for Oscar to take a few potshots through the gap between the vault door and the jamb. The Marine nodded and, without aiming, depressed the trigger on his Glock multiple times, which the Trench Coats returned a firestorm of lead.
Shoving against the door frame with his foot, Ryan pushed himself out just enough to get a bead on the first man. He put two rounds into his chest and swung his pistol to the second man. Oscar was firing again.
The man Ryan had just shot regained his balanced and tried to bring his gun to bear.
“What the hell?” Ryan muttered, before retraining his sights on the man’s forehead and pressing the trigger again. This time, the man’s head snapped back, and the Tavor slid from his hands as he fell to the floor.
By the time Ryan transitioned his sight picture again, Oscar had drilled the second shooter in the brain.
The two men scrambled forward and pilfered the long guns from the dead men. Ryan checked the rounds in his magazine and moved to the front door. He turned to look for Oscar, but the man had disappeared back into the vault.
“Where are you, Mango?” Ryan asked.
“Coming up the steps now, bro. Those dudes were wearing bulletproof trench coats.”
“I know,” Ryan said. A single gunshot rang out, and he turned back to the vault. He ran to the open door and saw Oscar holding his smoking Tavor. A bullet hole wept blood from the lawyer’s forehead.
Oscar placed his pistol in the dead man’s hand and, on his way out of the vault, shoved multiple bundles of cash into his backpack.
“I’m here,” Mango said.
“Coming out of the vault,” Ryan replied. He and Oscar ran to the reception area where Mango waited behind the desk, training a Tavor on the elevator doors. Instead of going down the stairs, Ryan rang for the elevator car. In a moment of silence, they could hear the faint wail of sirens.
“What’s the plan here, boys?” Rick asked through the Bluetooth connection.
“Are you close?” Ryan asked.
“I’m just offshore.”
“See that flat roof at the rear of our building?” Ryan asked.
The high-rise had a wide base which narrowed in the front at the eleventh story. It narrowed again in the rear on the eighteenth floor, and with each step in, there was a flat roof large enough to accommodate the helicopter if Rick hovered just off the edge of the building.
“Got it,” Rick said. “Let me know as soon as you’re there.”
The elevator door slid open and, for a moment, the three operators stood staring at two more goons clad in trench coats, who were staring right back. Then Ryan shoved Mango out of the way and shot one goon point-blank in the chest before spinning out of the line of fire.
Mango slammed against the wall and lost his footing. Ryan hooked him under the arm, dragged him upright, and sped them toward the stairwell on the backside of the elevators. They banged through the exit to the sounds of automatic gunfire.
“Go,” Ryan ordered, pushing his friend upward.
Mango started up the steps. Ryan turned back for Os
car but saw him entering the stairwell right behind him. Oscar sprinted past them as Ryan slowed to keep time with Mango.
“Five flights to go,” Ryan said to both Mango and Rick.
“It looks like you guys robbed a bank,” Rick said. “There’re cops everywhere.”
“Keep out of the area until we’re ready,” Ryan said.
“I know how an extraction works, Weller.”
“Keep your eyes and ears glued on, anyway. Three flights.”
Oscar was waiting for them at the eighteenth floor. “We need to go up one more.”
“This is the floor we need,” Ryan stated.
“Yeah, it opens onto a terrace, but the flat roof is one more floor up,” Oscar reported.
Mango grabbed the rail and all three started up, huffing and puffing, sweat pouring off them despite the air conditioning. When they burst through the door to the nineteenth floor, they found an open office with long counters that held multiple computer workstations. They continued to the rear and entered a conference room. Oscar used the butt of his rifle to smash the lock on the French doors, and they stepped out onto a gravel terrace surrounded by a glass-and-steel safety railing. The flat roof occupied only half the space. The rest was open to a lower terrace one floor below that was surrounded by ten-foot-tall walls of glass.
A stiff breeze blew in from the ocean as Ryan walked across the roof, glancing down at the moss growing between the brown pebbles. He leaned over the railing and saw the assortment of police vehicles that had surrounded the building.
“All right, Ricky. Show us some flyboy shit,” Mango said.
“Roger that,” the pilot said.
A moment later, a black Robinson R66 helicopter swooped in from the southeast, from over the Gulf of Panama, wove between the residential towers around the bank, and came to a hover with its starboard skid resting on the building’s railing. Ryan shoved Mango into the helicopter and helped Oscar up next.
Just as Ryan grabbed for the helicopter’s door, a hail of bullets shattered the glass railing next to him and Rick jerked the collective up, instinctively trying to protect the helicopter.
Ryan felt his stomach lurch as he grabbed desperately for the skid and missed.
Chapter Nineteen
Ryan slammed into the railing and fell to the gravel, clutching his stomach. The gunmen switched their aim from him to the helicopter as Oscar returned fire with the Tavor he’d plucked from the dead goon in the bank.
“I’m coming back in,” Rick called over the comms.
Still trying to catch his breath, Ryan said, “No. Get out of here. I’ll make my own way out of the building.”
He jumped up and ran toward the railing to the lower terrace, vaulted it easily, and dropped the ten feet to the grass-covered concrete below. Rolling with the impact, he came to his feet and pulled his pistol from its holster. He fired two shots into the door lock, slammed his shoulder into the door, and dove inside as the Trench Coats began firing at him.
“Get to the front terrace and I’ll pick you up there,” Rick said.
“Negative. I’ll meet you later.”
“How are you going to get out?” Mango asked.
“I don’t know, but you guys need to leave before the police send another helicopter after you.”
“Roger that,” Rick said. “Stay safe, brother.”
Ryan moved through the office and found the exit door. People who lived in the apartments above the twenty-second floor were now streaming down the stairs and jamming the elevators. He took a moment to drop his suit jacket and comms unit into a trash can before joining them.
As he made the turn down to the next level, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the crowd parting for the goon squad. He picked up the pace, screaming at people to move out of his way, but the goons didn’t care if they wounded civilians as they raked the stairwell with bullets. The concrete acted like a funnel for both the people and the projectiles. Ryan heard ricochets singing off the walls above the cries of the injured. He kept running, trying to get through the crowd and away from the gunmen.
At the next exit door, he veered off to draw the goons out of the stairwell and prevent more casualties. The builder had broken this floor into four distinct office spaces, all of them empty. He tried the first door and found it locked, as were the rest. He smashed two of the glass doors and went through the second, hoping to separate the gunmen.
Squatting behind a desk where he had a view of the door, Ryan saw his plan had worked. The gunmen split up to search both the offices at the same time. Instead of shooting the goon who stepped into his office, Ryan retreated as the gunman advanced. Finally, he stopped with his back against the window of the last cubicle. He dropped to his knees and prepared to shoot as soon as his pursuer spun around the corner, but then he saw the gap under the desk, and he crawled through the opening.
On the other side, he paused and listened, holding his breath, and trying to quiet the beating of his heart in his ears. The gunman stopped abreast of Ryan and raised his weapon. With an evil smile on his face, the gunman swept the weapon back and forth, spraying the cubical where Ryan had just been with bullets and shattering the windows.
Ryan steadied his gun in both hands and shot the man in the head. He knew the gunfire would draw the second goon, and the man didn’t disappoint when he entered the office and shouted for his companion. Before he could advance farther, Ryan dropped to his stomach, shot him in the foot, then put a round in his head when the goon bent over.
He went to the restroom, disassembled the pistol, and washed it with soap and water to clean away his prints before he buried it in the trash can. Carrying the magazine in his pocket, he went down a flight of steps and dropped it into another trash can, then made his way toward the building’s exit.
The police had stopped the elevators, forcing everyone to take the stairs and leave through the lobby. When he stepped through the lobby door, he saw cops ushering the herd of people into a line, where they checked everyone’s identification before they could leave the building. Glancing around, he saw no other way out, so he queued up and waited with everyone else.
The cop who asked for his identification was a sergeant in olive drab fatigues with a black armored vest and helmet. He sported an M4 rifle and a sidearm. Looking at Ryan’s passport, he asked in English, “What’s your business here, Mr. Parker?”
“I own a company called Maritime Recovery. I was looking to lease some space in the building.”
“Where’s your rental agent?”
“She didn’t come with me,” Ryan replied.
“Which space were you looking at?”
“It was on the twentieth floor. Although, after this fiasco, I don’t think I want to rent here.”
The cop wrote Ryan’s passport information on a clipboard, then handed the little blue book back to him. “Your phone number, please?”
“Oh, yeah, hold on.” Ryan dug a business card from his pocket and handed it to the cop, who recorded the details and handed the card back. If anyone bothered to call the number on the card, an answering service would take a message.
“Where are you staying in Panama City, sir?” the sergeant asked.
“The InterContinental Miramar on Balboa Avenue,” Ryan answered as he scanned the lobby again for any sign of the gunmen.
“Very good, sir. If we have any more questions, someone will call you.”
“Sure. Have a good one, Sergeant.” Ryan walked out the door, positive there would be more questions than answers. He had a ton of them himself. Who did the gunmen work for? Had the rest of his team exfiltrated the area without incident? What was so important that the killers would risk so many innocent lives? He wouldn’t get any answers if the cops threw him in jail, and there was no way in hell he was going to spend another minute in a Third World shithole of a prison.
Ryan walked outside and headed for a mall one street over from the bank. He knew he should run a surveillance detection route, or SDR. If there were g
unmen in trench coats still chasing him, they probably had a handler directing them and plain clothes agents ready to trail him to his destination. Using an SDR, he could hopefully spot them before they saw him.
First, he needed to get his heart rate and breathing under control as the adrenaline ebbed. Stepping into a coffee shop, he ordered a cup of black coffee and sat so he could see out the window. No one seemed interested in him, so he stepped onto the sidewalk, still carrying the coffee, and headed toward a construction site. His goal was to check the cars to see if he could steal one, but on the way across the street, he heard a vehicle brake hard behind him and turned to see two men dodging around the hood of the stopped car, each holding a pistol. So much for an SDR. These guys were hot on his trail, and they didn’t care who knew they were there.
Ryan threw away the cup of coffee as he sprinted up the street. Coming at him were two men on dirt bikes. He turned into the construction lot. The scorching sun had baked the dirt dry, and dust caked his pants and shirt as he dove and rolled between two parked cars. Behind him, the two bikers entered the lot and circled to find him. The foot patrol spread out to search through the parking lot. Ryan could see their feet when he looked under the cars.
Staying hunched over, Ryan ran to a scrap pile beside an unfinished parking garage that would form the base of the new skyscraper and grabbed a piece of rebar from it. As he turned to face his attackers, gunshots rang out, and the motorcycles spun and raced toward him. He hopped over the garage’s low concrete wall and raced deeper into the unfinished structure.
The dirt bikes entered the garage, one roaring down the ramp to the underground levels and the other splitting off to search the upper stories. Ryan hid behind a thick support column and waited for the bike to come closer. As the rider sped toward him, Ryan gripped the rebar like he was Babe Ruth, calling his shot to center field.
