No Way Out

by Simone Scarlet

  “Go fuck yourself,” Mason repeated, sneering at Officer Dempsey. “I’d rather fucking die.”

  Dempsey blinked.

  The two cops stared at Mason incredulously – like they couldn’t believe he’d just said that…

  But, in some ways, neither could I…

  “Are you fuckin’ serious, man?” Sanchez eventually spoke up. He waggled the barrel of his gun in the direction of Coyle. “This motherfucker said he was going to kill you.”

  “Yeah,” Mason nodded. “Yeah, he did. But you know what?” Turning to Coyle, Mason gave him a respectful nod, and murmured: “I’d rather die as a Knucklehead, than live as a traitor.”

  Even though he was staring down the barrel of two handguns, the corners of Coyle’s lips curled as he heard that.

  “You’d rather die?” The barrel of Dempsey’s gun was trembling, as he asked that. “Are you for fucking real?”

  Mason turned to look at him – and there was nothing ambiguous about the look in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “Yeah, I fuckin’ am.”

  Dempsey shook his head: “Well, be careful what you fuckin’ wish for, man.”

  And then he turned his gun towards Mason.

  “When you were gonna vouch for us,” he warned, “we needed you alive. But if you ain’t, you’re more useful to us dead.”

  And then he squeezed the trigger.

  A deafening boom reverberated around the cramped little trailer, and suddenly we were all blinded by gun smoke.

  Officer Dempsey had unloaded his .40 Glock at Mason practically point blank – and there was no way he should still have been alive…

  Only, the moment before Dempsey pulled the trigger, Coyle had thrown his glass of whiskey right into the cop’s face – and as the glass shattered, and bourbon splashed, Mason had shoved the gun Dempsey was wielding aside.

  Instead of going right between Mason’s eyes, the cop’s bullet shattered the window of the Airstream.

  The gun smoke started to clear.

  Blood streaming down his face – the broken whiskey glass having split open the corner of his eyebrow – Officer Dempsey struggled to bring his gun back down to bear…

  He never got the chance.

  Like a lion, Mason pounced.

  With a meaty slap, he knocked the Glock out of Officer Dempsey’s hand, and the gun clattered to the floor.

  With the other hand, he slammed the dirty cop against the Formica wall behind him, and curled his fingers around Dempsey’s windpipe.

  “Huuungh!” Dempsey clawed at the big, beefy hand wrapped around his throat. “Huuuuuungh!”

  But Mason wasn’t letting up.

  His fingernails sunk into Dempsey’s throat. The cop’s face bulged red. Mason was literally choking him…

  “You son of a bitch…”

  Sanchez brought his gun around to bear – but he never got the chance to pull the trigger.

  Why?

  Because I’d grabbed for the knife lying across the table of the breakfast nook.

  Raine’s big, gleaming Bowie knife – fourteen inches of finely-honed, razor-sharp steel…

  As Officer Sanchez swung his gun around, to get Mason in his sights, I swung that big knife at him…

  There was a meaty-sounding thwack, and four inches of steel sunk into Sanchez’s chest, making the same kind of noise as a watermelon cracking open.

  Sanchez stood there, eyes wide. The gun he was holding trembled in his outstretched hand…

  Blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, Sanchez slowly looked downwards. He saw the massive Bowie knife, sticking out of his chest – my tiny hand wrapped around the ornate handle.

  “F-fuck,” he gurgled, before his Glock slipped limply from his fingers, and the tall cop sunk powerlessly to his knees.

  He slumped backwards, eyes wide, onto the dirty floor of the Airstream trailer. I’ll never forget the last sounds I heard him make – a thick, treacly gurgle as blood filled his lungs.

  “Huuunnngh!” Struggling wildly, Officer Dempsey tried to fight off Mason. His eyes darted towards where his fallen partner lay, and that gave him the strength to reach forward, and claw desperately at Mason’s face.

  But it was no good.

  His face was turning beet-red. His eyes were bulging. There was a blueish tint to his lips, as spittle bubbled down his chin.

  It was probably the most terrifying, grotesque, and disturbing sight I’d ever seen in my life…

  …and I didn’t blink.

  As Mason literally throttled the life out of Officer Dempsey, I stepped up to him, and looked the terrified police officer right in the eye.

  “You killed my father,” I hissed, watching his eyes widen in terror. “I’ve thought about nothing but this moment for months now…”

  And then I lifted up the dripping knife, and plunged it deeply between Officer Dempey’s ribs.

  I’ll never forget the look in the man’s eyes as he died. I’d never be sure whether Mason choked him to death, or the gleaming steel blade finished him off. All I know for sure is that I got to stare into the eyes of the men who killed my father, and watch them get the justice that had been denied for me for so very, very long.

  Finally – after what seemed like an eternity – Mason released his grip on Officer Dempsey’s throat.

  Like a rag doll, the officer slid down the wall, head flopping forward as he finally reached the floor.

  Then, there was silence.

  Nothing but Mason and my panting breath, as we surveyed our handiwork.

  It was Coyle who broke the silence:

  “Fuuuuuuck.”

  The big biker took a step forward, and peered down at the two dead policemen on the floor.

  Not that they deserved to be called police officers. They were a disgrace to everything their badge stood for.

  As if the implication of what he’d just done suddenly hit him, Mason sunk onto the bench of the breakfast nook, and stared at his shaking hands.

  The hands he’d just used to choke the living breath out of somebody.

  “W-what have I done?” He murmured.

  Coyle laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  “What you had to do, son.”

  Was that true? Did Mason really have to do that? He could have cut a deal. He could have just run. There were a dozen different ways this could have ended…

  But I knew this was the only way any of us could live with.

  I stepped forward, and sunk to my knees. Dwarfed by his muscular bulk, I wrapped my arms around Mason’s broad shoulders, and buried his head between my breasts.

  His hot, ragged breath was scalding against my skin.

  “Okay,” Coyle ignored us. Turning to Bertha and Raine, he snapped: “We’ve suddenly got a big fucking mess to tidy up, and not a lot of time to do it in.”

  He jerked his head towards the shattered Airstream window – where, outside, the rest of the Knuckleheads were gathered; eager to see what the noise and disruption had been about.

  “Get Rooker, Bowser and Big Mac in here,” Coyle ordered. “We’ve got some work to do.”

  Chapter Forty

  Mason

  A tumbler full of whiskey slid across the table in front of me.

  “Here,” it was Coyle, looming over me like the Grim Reaper. “It’s the last of the bourbon – but I figure you’ve earned it.”

  I was sitting alone at the breakfast nook now, hands still trembling. Christi had finally released me from her embrace, and was busy helping Raine and Bertha figure out what to do next…

  I stared at the amber liquid in the glass for a moment – and then gratefully scooped it up. The scalding liquor burned a delicious path down my gullet, and then warmed me like a forest fire, deep inside.

  Coyle slid into the booth opposite me.

  “Never easy, is it? Killin’ a man?”

  I finally looked up – finally finding the strength to make eye-contact with another human being again.

 
“I-I’ve killed plenty of men,” I told him. “Just never like… never like that.”

  How many men had I killed? Through the sterile distance of a rifle scope, or after I’d called in an airstrike from a drone or an A-10 “Warthog.”

  More than I’d like to count.

  But never like this. I’d never killed a man with my bare hands, or stared into his eyes the moment life finally left them.

  Coyle reached over and placed a heavy, calloused hand on mine.

  “It’s okay, Recon,” he reassured me. “Those two? They deserved to die.”

  He snorted bitterly.

  “Here in America, we go on about how ‘life is sacred’ all the time… But you and I know better than most what bullshit that is. Oh, they bitch and whine about banning abortion, or complaining about police shooting unarmed suspects… But that’s more about politics, then anything else. Choosing between the Coke and Pepsi of whoever the next asshole who goes to Congress will be...”

  He took a deep breath.

  “But even the most self-righteous of those fuckers still vote for the politicians who drop bombs in the middle east, or let kids grow up with lead in their water.”

  He shook his head.

  “Everybody thinks life is sacred, until it’s a life they don’t have to look at. Some brown-skinned baby overseas. Some old, black man wrongfully on death row. They’ll let them die, ‘cos the only thing more sacred than life is convenience.”

  Coyle squeezed my hand.

  “So, at the end of the day, life is only sacred if it’s a life you choose to care about.” He jerked his head towards the limp bodies of the two dead cops. “And nobody is gonna care about those two double-crossing, back-stabbing, cowardly fucks.”

  Nobody, I thought to myself. Nobody except the local police department, when two of their own turned up dead.

  But in answer to that, the door of the Airstream slammed open, and the whole trailer rocked from side-to-side as three more burly figures squeezed themselves into the already-cramped confines.

  Rooker, Bowser and Big Mac.

  Big Mac could barely fit through the door, and had to duck his head beneath the low ceiling.

  “Holy fucking shit,” the massive biker breathed, as he finally surveyed the bloody scene. “What the fuck happened here?”

  Coyle pushed my hand away, as if it was scalding hot.

  Climbing to his feet – that moment of vulnerability completely erased – he turned to the three new arrivals and explained curtly:

  “Me and our business partners over there had a renegotiation.”

  He snorted bitterly.

  “They’re probably not too happy with the terms.”

  “Jesus, Coyle,” it was Rooker. “They were fucking cops.”

  “They were pigs,” Coyle snapped back. “Those two didn’t deserve to be called cops.” He took a menacing step forward. “They got everything they fucking deserved – and more.”

  “I’ll fuckin’ say…”

  As the three bikers stared incredulously at the carnage, Raine poked his head up from the corner. He’d been ransacking Officer Dempsey’s bloody body, and held up a wallet he’d liberated from the police officer’s pants.

  “Here we go,” he was rooting through it. “Got his address from his driver’s license… And his debit card…”

  “Good,” Coyle nodded. “Now search the other one for the same shit.”

  Raine nodded, and skooched over to Sanchez’s body to resume his ransacking.

  Leaving Raine to his work, his brother turned to face us.

  I don’t know how many years Coyle had been leading the Knuckleheads, but when he spoke next it was with the authority and grim determination of the Army Ranger he’d once been.

  “Big Mac,” he ordered. “Take three boys and go and rent some vans.”

  “Rent?” Big Mac’s brow creased. “As in – pay for?”

  “Yep,” Coyle nodded. “All legit, and shit. I want it all legal, documented, and traceable.”

  Big Mac didn’t seem to comprehend – but when you’re given an order by a man like Coyle, you don’t worry about shit like that.

  “Yes, boss.”

  The trailer rocked, as Big Mac clambered out of it.

  Next, Coyle turned to Rooker.

  “Take those two,” he jerked his head towards the bodies of the two dead cops, “and make sure they’re never seen again. I don’t care where you go, or how deep you have to fuckin’ bury ‘em, but I want ‘em gone. Vanished.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Rooker nodded with the grim determination of a man who’s been asked to do that kind of shit – and worse – many, many times.

  “I’ll get a ride and be back for ‘em in a moment.”

  As Rooker turned and left the trailer, there was only Bowser left. The grizzled biker wiped his whiskery moustache with the back of his hand and demanded: “What d’you need from me, boss?”

  Coyle jerked his head towards Raine. Wordlessly, his brother passed him the two driver’s licenses he’d dug from the dead men’s wallets.

  “As soon as it’s dark,” Coyle ordered, “take a couple of boys and head over to these addresses.” He handed Bowser the two licenses. “Don’t be fuckin’ seen, okay?”

  Bowser grabbed the cards, and snorted:

  “Been a few years since I was last in uniform, but I was a SEAL even longer than you were a Ranger.” The corners of his beard curled. “No disrespect.”

  Coyle flashed a grin.

  “None taken. That’s why I chose you.”

  Bowser checked the addresses on the two cards, and nodded.

  “Find a bag at each place,” Coyle ordered. “Pack a few changes of clothes, toothbrushes, passports… Take anything somebody’d grab if they were leaving in a goddamned hurry. Make it obvious.”

  Bowser nodded.

  “But not obvious it wasn’t these two assholes doin’ the packing.”

  “Don’t even worry about it.” Bowser handed back the cards – he’d already memorized the addresses, and didn’t want to carry incriminating evidence on him. “We’ll pack two bug-out bags, but other than that, we won’t even leave footprints, boss.”

  “I know you won’t,” Coyle nodded – as damn near to a salute as a biker can get.

  Now he’d received his orders, Bowser turned and left as well – and finally it was just the five of us alone in the Airstream trailer again.

  Coyle wheeled around, and addressed us:

  “We don’t have much time, and we don’t want to screw up.” He turned to his brother. “You’re in charge of cleanin’ out Bandy Canyon Cannabis. Stick to the original plan – take those stolen vans, and as many boys as we have left, and load ‘em up.”

  “Yessir,” Raine nodded.

  “Only,” Coyle held up a warning finger, “bug out east, afterward.”

  Raine nodded, wordlessly accepting his orders.

  “Stay out of trouble, avoid the cops, and you could be in Phoenix by this time tomorrow.” Coyle glanced at his military wristwatch. “I’ll give Donovan a head’s up that he’s about to receive the shipment originally intended for Old Man Grundy.”

  He snorted bitterly.

  “He’ll probably pay us double.”

  Then it was Bertha’s turn.

  Turning to his lover, Coyle laid a loving hand on her bare shoulder. The leathery blonde looked faintly ridiculous, with those bandages wrapped around her head – but there was nothing funny about the steely look in her icy blue eyes as she listened to the man who was practically her husband.

  “Hun, you need to work your magic with a laptop.” Coyle passed over the two debit cards. “I know you can do it. Transfer twenty grand into each of their accounts. Just make sure it ain’t obvious it came from us.”

  Bertha peered at the cards.

  “You got it, babe.”

  And then, as Raine and Bertha left the trailer, it was finally just Christi, me and Coyle.

  Christi came and s
at on my knee, as I slumped at the breakfast nook.

  She laid a cool, soft hand against my cheek, and turned my face to look into my eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  I leaned forward and kissed her.

  It was a brief, light kiss – but connecting to her felt like the most magical thing in the world…

  …while it lasted.

  “Okay, lovebirds,” Coyle snapped, making us both look up sharply. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Recon? You need to get your ass out of here. Wait for me outside.”

  Christi and I froze.

  Coyle’s face was a rigid mask – the look of a man who knows grisly work awaits him.

  And I knew what that work was.

  Coyle had promised to kill me for betraying his trust, and for double-crossing the Knuckleheads, by riding with them while working undercover…

  …and despite all that had happened in the last few minutes, Coyle was not the sort of man who went back on his word.

  “Now, listen, son.” When I didn’t move, Coyle narrowed his eyes and growled: “You said you’d take what was coming to you like a man. So, get your ass out of this trailer, and wait for me outside.”

  He snorted bitterly.

  “And don’t get any funny ideas. You try any amateur heroics, and I will shut that shit down.”

  I looked up at him, my face now as grim as his.

  “I’m not going to try anything,” I promised. “I said I’d take what’s coming to me like a man. I ain’t gonna back out now.”

  “Oh, God…” Christi squeezed my hand. She looked into my face, and I saw realization there – that Coyle really was going to make good on his promise.

  Coyle, on the other hand, simply raised an eyebrow.

  “You know what, son?” He leaned back in that theatrical way of his. “Just as I think I’ve got you figured out, you turn around and surprise me.”

  He snorted bitterly.

  “Pity it’s got to be this way. If things had worked out differently, I think you and I could have been friends.”

  I sat there and looked up at him – this towering, dangerous man. He was brutal, and methodical, and took what he wanted with practical impunity…

  …but there was also an honor to him. Just like me, he’d once been an Army Ranger; and somehow the values he’d learned in the service had been the ones he’d built his gang around.