‘Do you think Bobby-Ray did this?’ asked Kaitlyn.
‘I can’t believe he’d shoot FBI agents,’ said Standing. He used the towel to wipe the bathroom door handle. ‘But that’s what it looks like. Come on, we need to get the hell out of here.’
He wiped the front-door handle and kept the towel on it as he pulled it open. A bald man in shirtsleeves and brown trousers was standing there, holding a pump-action shotgun. He had a name badge clipped to his shirt pocket. ERIC. He gestured with the barrel. ‘Hands up, mister,’ he said.
‘We didn’t do this,’ said Standing quietly.
Eric smiled without warmth. ‘Looks to me like you kicked in the door,’ he said. ‘Now where’s the woman? The one saying she was Mr Jones’s sister.’
‘She’s inside,’ said Standing. ‘Look, sir, we haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘You broke into a guest’s room,’ said Eric. ‘That there is wrong for a start. What were you planning to do? Steal from the guy? How low can you get?’
Standing took a step towards Eric but stopped short when he aimed the barrel at Standing’s chest and tightened his finger on the trigger. ‘Put your hands in the air or I swear to God I’ll blow your head off!’ he shouted.
Standing did as he was told. ‘Where is the woman?’ asked Eric.
‘She’s deaf,’ said Standing. ‘Let me talk to her.’
‘I know she’s deaf. Now you stay where the hell you are.’
Kaitlyn came up behind Standing and flinched when she saw the shotgun. Standing twisted his head so that she could see his face. ‘It’s okay,’ he said slowly. ‘Just put your hands in the air, don’t be scared.’
She nodded nervously and raised her hands. Standing turned to look at Eric. A car drove around from the road but Standing kept his eyes on the shotgun. ‘Listen to me, Eric. When you see what’s inside that room you’re going to get a shock, but you need to know that we didn’t do it.’
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘You been smashing the place up, is that it?’
‘No, Eric. It’s worse than that. But we had nothing to do with it.’
Standing stepped to the side and Eric moved to get a better look inside the room.
The car stopped. Standing heard the engine of a second car.
Kaitlyn was blocking Eric’s view of the room. He waved the shotgun at her. ‘You get out here, missy,’ he said. ‘And keep your pretty little hands in the air where I can see them. You didn’t think I bought your story about being his sister, did you?’
Kaitlyn stepped outside. Standing looked over at the cars. They were SUVs. One was white. The other was black. Both had tinted windows. The white one had stopped at the side of the motel, the black one was driving slowly parallel to the building. Standing’s eyes narrowed. They clearly weren’t police or FBI. Were they more Redrock vehicles?
Eric moved to his left and craned his neck. He could see into the room now but Standing knew that he wouldn’t be able to see the body on the floor.
‘Sir, can we step inside for a moment?’ asked Standing.
‘You stay where you are!’ said Eric. He moved further to the left.
The windows of the black SUV slid down.
Standing turned to look at Kaitlyn. ‘When I say now, get down on the ground,’ he mouthed silently. She frowned. ‘Understand?’ he mouthed. She nodded.
Eric took another step and his jaw dropped when he saw the body. ‘Who’s that?’ he said. ‘Is that Mr Jones?’ He looked back at Standing. ‘You killed him? Is that what’s going on here? You broke in and killed him?’
A gun appeared in the front window of the SUV.
Standing turned to look at Kaitlyn. ‘Now!’ he shouted.
She immediately dived to the side and hit the floor. Standing turned back to look at the SUV. A second gun had appeared in the rear window. An Uzi or a Ruger MP9. Both were capable of spraying a lot of bullets in a short space of time. The gun at the front was a Glock. Less of a threat but still fatal.
Eric aimed his shotgun at Kaitlyn, his mouth open wide in confusion, and Standing lashed out with his foot, kicking Eric’s ankle and knocking him off balance.
He heard the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire and the motel window shattered, followed almost immediately by two rounds thwacking into Eric’s back. Standing was already moving, diving to throw himself next to Kaitlyn so that he could shield her from the bullets.
The shotgun fell to the ground. The rounds had gone through Eric’s back and exited, blowing bloody holes in his chest. His mouth worked soundlessly and for a second he looked uncomprehendingly into Standing’s eyes.
The SUV was still moving and now both guns were firing. The machine pistol was still aiming high and a second window exploded but the Glock was being fired low with rounds ricocheting off the tarmac around him. Standing pulled out his gun and held it with both hands as he brought it to bear on the vehicle.
The machine pistol was doing the most damage but the man firing it was aiming high and would soon have an empty clip. The guy in the front seat was a better shot and so was the more immediate threat. Standing sighted on the front window and fired twice. Almost immediately the Glock was pulled back inside the vehicle. Standing switched his attention to the rear window. He fired twice. The machine pistol continued to fire and then stopped. Standing jumped to his feet and ran towards the SUV. He fired two more shots through the back window and this time was rewarded with a scream of pain.
The white SUV was moving now, and Standing dropped into a crouch to make himself a smaller target as he swung the Glock around. He aimed at the passenger side of the windscreen and fired once. The glass shattered and he saw a man with a crew cut and dark glasses holding a machine pistol. Standing fired twice and the man’s head exploded.
The white SUV picked up speed. Standing could easily have shot the driver but he wanted them to leave because if they stayed he would be outgunned. He fired twice more into the vehicle but kept his shots to the left. The SUV pulled a U-turn and headed back around the motel to the road, its tyres screeching.
Standing looked back at the black SUV. Another gun appeared at the window, a semi-automatic, presumably in the hands of the other backseat passenger. Standing moved to the side to make himself a harder target and fired twice. The SUV stopped. Three shots rang out and rounds whizzed by him and thudded into the wall of the motel. He fired two more shots. He had been counting instinctively. He had fired fifteen times. The Glock’s magazine held seventeen rounds which meant he only had two shots left.
The gun disappeared and the SUV went into reverse. It headed back the way it had come and then pulled a tight one-eighty handbrake turn before accelerating away. Standing kept his gun trained on the vehicle until it had disappeared around the side of the motel, only then did he hurry over to Kaitlyn. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
She nodded at him shakily. ‘I’m okay.’
He helped her to her feet and then went over to the motel employee, who was lying on his back, his hands clutched to his chest. The rounds had penetrated his lungs, deflating them so that he couldn’t breathe. Bloody froth was trickling from between his lips. His eyes had gone blank and Standing could see that he was only seconds away from bleeding out. He held his hand. ‘It’s okay, Eric, just relax,’ he said softly. He wasn’t sure if Eric could hear him but he continued to speak. ‘Think of the people you love,’ he said. ‘Think of them, think of them around you.’ Eric squeezed his hand once and then went still. His mouth fell open and his eyes stared sightlessly up at the sky. ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Standing.
He stood up and put his arm around Kaitlyn, who was staring down at the corpse in horror. He tilted her head so that she could see his lips. ‘We’ve got to go,’ he said. She nodded and allowed him to lead her to the car. He eased her into the front passenger seat and then climbed in next to her. He glanced at the motel windows as he started the engine. There didn’t appear to be anyone watching. Maybe he’d been lucky. He just hoped that if anyone had seen th
e shoot-out they wouldn’t have the presence of mind to note down his registration number.
He drove around the side of the motel and slowed as he reached the road. He looked left and right to make sure there was no sign of the SUVs, then headed for the 405 South back to Los Angeles.
7
Standing drove south. He really wanted to talk to Kaitlyn but the fact that he was driving made it impossible. He reached Venice Boulevard, where he had the choice of heading east to Los Angeles or west to Santa Monica. Kaitlyn was clearly upset; she sat with her head down and her arms folded, biting her lower lip. He decided to take her to the beach. He drove to the ocean and found a parking space close to the pier. ‘We need to eat,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t face food.’
‘You’re in shock,’ he said. ‘You need to get your blood sugar up.’
She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, so he held out his arm and she linked hers through his as they walked along Ocean Avenue. He found a quiet seafood restaurant, and a pretty Asian girl showed them to a table with a view of the ocean and gave them menus.
‘I’m really not hungry, Matt,’ she said. ‘My stomach’s churning.’
‘It’s stress,’ said Standing.
‘Damn right it’s stress,’ she said. Her voice was loud, so he motioned with his hand for her to keep it down. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
Standing reached over and held her hands. He could feel her trembling. ‘What you’re feeling is totally natural,’ he said.
‘How can you be so calm?’
‘I’ve been well trained.’
‘They were shooting at us. I couldn’t move. I only got down because you told me what to do. I would have been frozen to the spot, like the motel guy.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I can’t believe they killed him.’
‘They didn’t mean to,’ said Standing. ‘It was us they wanted.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’ she said. ‘When they were shooting at you?’
Standing shrugged. ‘Not really. I was reacting instinctively, I didn’t really have time to be scared.’
‘How did you know what to do?’
Standing grinned. ‘Kaitlyn, I’ve been well trained. So has Bobby-Ray. We train and we train hard so when stuff like that happens the training kicks in and you just do what you have to do.’
‘You could have been killed.’
‘You don’t think about that. But to be honest, firing a gun from a moving vehicle is not an easy thing to do. One of the guns was a machine pistol and they’re not accurate above a couple of dozen feet, and the others were pistols and again they’re not very accurate.’
‘They killed the motel guy.’
‘They sprayed bullets everywhere and he was just unlucky. They call it spray and pray. You spray bullets and pray that some hit their target. I’m a bit more … methodical.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
A waiter appeared and they both smiled up at him, though Kaitlyn’s eyes were still wet with tears. Standing let go of her hands as the waiter rattled off the specials. Kaitlyn clearly wasn’t interested in food, so Standing ordered the swordfish special for them both, and Coke to drink, figuring the soft drink would be the quickest way of raising her blood sugar, while he could do with the caffeine.
‘Is that what it’s like when you’re in combat?’ asked Kaitlyn after the waiter had left.
‘It’s not usually as close as that,’ said Standing. ‘Generally, you know where the enemy is and you go after them. They only attack you if something has gone badly wrong on the intel side. And when they attack you in places like Syria or Afghanistan they usually do it with AK-47s and RPGs. More bang for the buck.’
‘And how do you feel, when you’re being attacked?’
Standing shrugged. ‘I don’t really feel anything,’ he said. ‘You just try to work out what your options are and which of those options has the best possible outcome. You assess the threat and then decide how best to react. There’s no time to have any feelings about what’s happening. That’s for afterwards, when the shooting’s over.’
She held out her hands. They were still shaking. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I’m a mess, but you were like ice then and you’re still …’ She shrugged, struggling to find the right words. ‘It’s as if it doesn’t mean anything to you.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he said. ‘But as I keep telling you, I’ve been trained by the best. Your brother’s the same. When the shit hits the fan you just do what you have to do. You might talk about it over a beer afterwards, but you don’t let it worry you. That’d be the quickest way to a nervous breakdown.’
‘You didn’t even seem affected when the motel guy died.’
‘There was nothing I could do,’ he said.
‘You held his hand.’
‘Sure. Maybe it made it a bit easier for him.’
She looked at him earnestly. ‘Have you seen a lot of people die?’
‘Some,’ he said. ‘But usually the enemy, so there wasn’t much hand-holding going on.’
The waiter returned with their Cokes. Kaitlyn sipped hers. ‘So is there a girlfriend back in the UK getting worried about what you’re up to?’ she asked.
‘The work I do, it’s hard to keep a relationship going.’
‘So have you got a girl in every port?’
Standing laughed. ‘The sort of places we tend to be sent, the women are covered from head to foot and they are stoned if they so much as look at an infidel.’
‘But what about at home?’
‘Our base is at Hereford, near Wales, but these days we’re not there much and when we are there we’re training and don’t really get out of camp.’ He sipped his drink and grimaced. It was way too sweet, but that was what Kaitlyn needed just now. ‘What about Bobby-Ray? Does he have a girlfriend here? Someone he might go to?’
‘There was one girl he was seeing. Lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘Her name’s Lucy but she misspelled it in a text to him once, so he called her Lucky ever since. She’s a paralegal. I think he met her in a bar.’
‘You’ve met her?’
‘A couple of times.’
‘Do you think he might be with her now he’s left the motel?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s possible. Maybe.’
‘Do you have her number?’
‘No, but I know where she lives. We picked her up at her home a few weeks ago and went to the beach. Here actually. Santa Monica.’ She leaned forward. ‘Matt, what do you think happened at the motel? Those men were FBI agents. Do you think Bobby-Ray killed them?’
Standing grimaced. That was exactly what he thought. Which put Bobby-Ray in a whole world of trouble. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘But he might have had just cause.’
She frowned, not understanding.
‘The guy on the floor, his gun had a silencer,’ said Standing. ‘FBI agents and cops don’t use silencers. So you have to wonder what that guy was doing with a silencer on his gun.’
‘They were definitely Feds?’
Standing nodded. ‘The shields seemed real enough. The question is, were they there officially or not? I think not.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m guessing they identified themselves as FBI. Bobby-Ray lets them in. But that right there doesn’t feel right because if the FBI knew he was at the motel they should have gone in with a SWAT team. They’d assume that Bobby-Ray was armed and dangerous and he’s a former SEAL. I can’t see they’d go in alone. Not unless they had some other agenda.’
‘They were there to kill him, is that what you mean?’
‘Why else would they have a silencer? It looked to me as if the guy on the floor was killed with his own gun. There was bruising on his right hand as if the gun had been twisted around. I think Bobby-Ray realised what they intended to do, grabbed the gun in the man’s hand and shot the agent by the bathroom. That agent staggers back and sits down on the toilet, bleeding out. The gun
goes off again and the other agent dies. There were four shell casings on the floor and they look like they were from the cop’s Smith & Wesson. And that would explain why nobody heard any shots. So the good news is it wasn’t Bobby-Ray’s gun. And with the motel guy dead, hopefully there’s no one who can identify Bobby-Ray. But it’s messy, all right. Very messy.’
The waiter returned with their food. They thanked him, and Standing waited until he’d left before continuing.
‘There are a lot of unanswered questions,’ he said. ‘How did they know where he was? Why did they try to kill him? Who were the guys in the SUVs? And how did they know about the motel?’
‘Do you think they were working together? The SUV guys and the Feds?’
‘If they were, they’d have gone in together. The SUVs turned up later, so I think they were following us.’
‘But how? They couldn’t have known about the rental car.’
‘I don’t know. They were following the Polo this morning and they left you alone. They were definitely only tailing me. So something must have happened for them to have known we were at the motel.’ He shrugged. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘So what do we do now?’
Standing toyed with his fish. Kaitlyn had the knack of asking the questions that were upmost in his mind. Unfortunately he didn’t have much in the way of answers. ‘There were no clothes or a bag or anything in the hotel room, so Bobby-Ray must have taken everything with him,’ he said. ‘That’s a good sign. Is there any other way that Bobby-Ray might try to get in touch?’
‘Email maybe.’
‘Can you check?’
‘Sure.’ She put down her knife and fork and tapped away on her iPhone. Eventually she shook her head. ‘Nothing. Why hasn’t he been in touch?’
‘I’m guessing he thinks they’re tracking all communications,’ said Standing. ‘And the fact that the FBI turned up at his motel has probably made him even more careful.’
Last Man Standing Page 7
