Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "This is just like my grandfather told me, about the Kristallnacht. The guards couldn’t tell them which diamonds were associated with your friends, so they said to take them all. The vaults and doors of the diamond exchange stand open and looted. Monday morning there won’t be a diamond trade in New York. We’re not going to be like the fools who didn’t get out of Germany. The diamond merchants are calling their friends and relatives to run as we speak."

  "Don’t be rash," Haim implored. "I’m sure we can get your goods back and straighten this out."

  "My goods be damned," Aaron cursed. "They stole our trust and they don’t have anything to restore it. Once there is no rule of law there is no safety. If the police loot and destroy, the mob won't be far behind. My boy is in our plane headed for Israel; tell your three their Great Stones are in his pockets going to safety too. My wife and other boys were upstate when this happened. I will join them in Canada and we’ll be flying commercial to Israel as soon as we can buy tickets."

  "You redeem yourself trying to warn us," Aaron allowed, "but that traitorous collaborator, that Amalek, Ehud - his life is forfeit to any of the traders who can find him. They can put a billion dollars on his head, if that’s what it takes to put paid to his worthless butt. I can only warn you not to try to protect him, or you’ll get carried away by events just like we were today."

  "Thank you, I – I will see you in Israel I’m sure. I will do what I can to make this right and I’m sure I will be recalled to explain it all."

  "Peace with you then Haim, I’m glad you are not part of this filth. I always liked you," he admitted and hung up.

  "Oy, what a mess," he concluded and held both hands over his face overwhelmed for a moment.

  Josh was walking around calmly releasing little bursts from the spray bottle of DNA test scrambler as he listened.

  "What is that?" he asked.

  "You don’t want to know," Josh assured him. "We’re out of here as you suggested. I suggest you go down the hall to Ono and tell him to walk you out. Tell him that’s the last thing we’ll need from them."

  * * *

  In the lobby Steve was watching a fellow in a nylon windbreaker, have an intense conversation with the manager. The manager looked up and made eye contact with Steve once wild-eyed, like he wanted to say something and then broke it off. But whatever was happening, he never raised his hand and pointed Steve out, although he was halfway expecting it. The manager was suddenly very busy on the phone talking to several people in quick succession, with a look Steve would label earnest.

  When he hung up he gave a nod to Mr. Windbreaker, who spoke in a cell phone. Then he took off the windbreaker and turned it inside out. Underneath he wore a ballistic vest and two automatic pistols in the sort of shoulder holster that hangs way down almost on the hip, not tucked up in the arm pit. When he put the jacket back on, it said CUSTOMS in big block letters across the shoulders. By this time Steve had reached in his pocket and pressed his button to dial Ono.

  "Customs agent on the way up," he informed Ono. "Wearing a vest under a windbreaker and a brace of big pistols. Oh shit…"

  "Oh shit what?" Ono demanded. "It scares me when you say that."

  "He’s holding the elevator with a key and six more piling in with full combat armor and helmets with ballistic visors. Jock flaps in front and ballistic thigh guards down over the knee. They have submachine guns and at least the guys in front look to have suppressors. "

  "They Customs too?"

  "Frigging alphabet soup. Customs, Treasury and FBI two by two. Everybody smelled money and wanted a piece of it. Better call down the hall. Doors are closed and they are on the way up. The other elevator is held by hotel security, so you can't pass them by going down quickly. Don’t argue with these guys, Ono."

  "Not me," he assured him. "Out." Roger’s phone rang and he talked briefly. "That’s right, don’t give them any shit. Send them down here if they ask," he agreed.

  "Too late to send you down," Roger informed Haim. "Variety pack of Junior Storm troopers in the elevator on the way," he informed Josh. "Armored down to the knees," he detailed.

  "Then I must carefully shoot them in the foot first," Martee concluded. "That’s what I had to do to the one standing in front of my ship. Otherwise I might have damaged it."

  So that’s what happened. It suddenly made sense to Roger why Martee had fired so long and carefully that day they were ambushed. She let the fellow get off a shot, rather than take a chance of damaging her ship behind him. Then shot him in the foot to take him down and put three more carefully in the prone figure so he wouldn’t be getting up. He could picture it now.

  "You aren’t thinking of resisting, are you?" Haim asked horrified, looking at the long slim weapon, as Martee put a speed loader between the fingers of her left hand.

  "Depends," Josh explained. "Let’s see how they talk to Ono. If they present warrants real nice and ask us to surrender we’ll consider it. I really hate to make a fuss, since we are associated with you now. But if they just come in shooting, well… Sorry Haim, but I don’t mean to stand and let them just shoot me down."

  "That’s absurd," why would you expect that?" he asked.

  "Hey – mighty hard to sue and try to get your forfeited stuff back if you are dead," Roger explained.

  "I don’t want to believe things are so corrupt here," Haim objected.

  "Uh-huh, So Aaron with his comparison of Kristallnacht, is full of it?" Josh asked.

  Haim didn’t have any quick answer for that. The man was leaving every comfort and fleeing his established life. He undoubtedly would not be poor, or a refugee, but none of them doubted his sincerity.

  "There’s some shampoo in the bath. Would you get that and pour it all over the marble foyer please, Martee?" Josh requested. She hurried to comply and added a little water to the mix. Josh turned the love seat facing the door over, with the back rear edge making a ridge in the air.

  Josh’s computer was open, the center screen showing the guard room looking from above the door and the wing screens showing the hall outside and the ship on the roof. "If we go to the roof," Josh instructed, "cut the cords tying the tarp down on each side of the door."

  "Got ya," Roger agreed, fussing with a pistol Haim had not seen him draw.

  The elevator opened and the agent in charge led the mob down the hall. When they got to the guard room where Ono was he used hand signals and left a trooper squatted down across from that door, covering it with his weapon. They came down to their door and left another trooper guarding their door too.

  When Haim looked away from the screen, he was disturbed to see Josh loading a compact but deadly looking weapon, cross hung from a strap over his shoulder. He was securing the end of a belt of ammunition in the breech, from a sizable square carrier bag hanging under it full of more belt.

  "You guys let me take the lead if comes to shooting," he requested. "This will penetrate the armor except where they have hard plates. You just watch for anyone that is still able to point a weapon, after I take them down."

  Rog and Martee both gave a verbal OK. Their calm was the most frightening thing yet about the surreal scene to Haim. Worse even than seeing Josh produce a belt-fed weapon.

  "You might be safer, if you want to go lie down in the bathtub," Josh suggested.

  "I’m not a coward," Haim objected offended. "I’m with you and either surrender or stand to their fire, whichever way it happens."

  "Crap Haim, I'd like to be in the bathtub if it gave me a good field of fire. Nobody thinks you are chicken. You don't have a weapon so why expose yourself? I suggest you at least get down behind the chair there, or something. If you're standing up you're just a target."

  He turned the computer around, so he could see it from behind the overturned sofa and folded down the bipod built in the front of the weapon to hang across the couch. Martee took up a position behind in a bedroom door, braced against the frame and Roger turned the other chair sideways and put his pistol across the ar
m double handed, where he could see the computer screen too.

  The troopers in the hall had everyone from the other three occupied suites extracted and were silently hustling them down to the elevator. As soon as they were evacuated, they formed up on the door of the guard room with Ono. Just the lone trooper was still guarding their door.

  "Nope, not gonna knock or serve any warrants," Josh concluded. They were all craning their necks, watching the camera feed on Josh's screen. One of the troops was getting a hefty pipe ready, that had two big padded handles on it. From the way he was handling it, they could guess it was very heavy.

  With the others forming a lane, he started from the wall opposite and hit the door with the pipe right beside the knob, at a dead run. Once through he let himself fall to the floor like a base runner sliding in to be safe. The two behind him rolled in from each side and Josh switched the feed to inside the room.

  Ono was standing in front of their love seat, both hands in the air palm out, empty. There was a Chuff- Chuff- Chuff, repeated rapidly.

  They saw the line of puckers smack into his chest at a diagonal. His vest underneath stopped the subsonic rounds easily, but it was one of his better suits and it was trashed for sure. The impacts knocked him back into the love seat and he rolled it right over ending up behind it.

  "NYPD," he shouted, raising his shield in his hand from behind the couch.

  A line of wild fire walked up the couch and thumped a line up the wall behind almost to the ceiling and he snatched his hand back down. It carried down to the other suite as a series of thumps like somebody stomping on the floor. If they hadn’t had the video it might have been lost in the noise of the city.

  "I’m a COP damn it," he yelled. "And you are on live video assholes. You want to be in the movies shooting a City cop in cold blood?" he bellowed at them.

  "On your belly – hands behind your back," Mr. Windbreaker demanded.

  "Why?" Ono called from behind the couch. "So you can shoot me in the back? Even you can’t miss standing over your target two foot away."

  "You have a weapon?" Windbreaker asked.

  "Off course I have a weapon. I’m a cop. I’m required to have a weapon."

  "Toss it out and nobody will do anymore shooting," he promised.

  "A big hand came over the top of the couch and heaved an automatic with uncanny precision. It barely cleared Windbreaker’s ear and it embedded itself in the drywall, grips hanging out. He ducked pretty quickly.

  "That almost hit me," he objected angrily.

  "Fore…" Ono belatedly called from behind the couch.

  "Secure him," Windbreaker ordered his men and they complied none too gently, but the grin a couple had, said it wouldn’t have ruined their day if Windbreaker had failed to duck.

  "Where are McGregor, Koszicki and Dotrizel?" he said mangling Martee’s name.

  "This is the room for their hired security," Ono explained. "They have another suite down the hall."

  "The idiot at the desk told me backwards," Windbreaker told his troops. Nobody looked like they really cared, even if they did believe him.

  "You want to leave a guard on him?" somebody asked.

  "No, you, cop – Listen up. Stay where you are and don’t try to stand up or leave the room. We’ll be back in a little bit for you." On the screen he made an emphatic gesture out the door.

  "I suggest you frigging knock when you go down there," Ono called loudly to their backs, but nobody was listening.

  "I wouldn't have believed it..." Haim said, shocked. "They just meant to gun him down..."

  When they formed up outside with the battering ram, Josh let out a sigh of frustration. "This is so unnecessary," he lamented. "Anyone in favor of standing with our hands in the air?" he inquired, holding his palms up by example and making a point of looking at Haim.

  "You people are nuts. Even I'm not that crazy after seeing them shoot Ono."

  When the pipe carrier started his run for the door, Josh started about three foot to one side of the door and walked a three second burst across, hip high off the floor. About thirty rounds were sufficiently close they stitched an uneven line across the wall about a meter off the floor.

  A haze of powdered gypsum board filled the air across the room. Momentum carried the door breaker and his pipe through the doorway and he hit on his belly and slid across the soaped up marble, halfway onto the carpet. Despite being hit in both legs he tried to lever himself up on an elbow, but both Roger and Martee’s guns spoke and he went back down.

  The rest of the invaders were down in the hallway. Josh reversed his transverse and walked the fire back across near floor-level, pumping another eighty or ninety rounds into the plane where they were laying. The brass and disintegrating belt links just rained down every which way, bouncing off the ceiling. Haim had both hands clamped over his ears from the roar.

  "Oh God, they didn’t even get a shot off, any of them," Haim moaned in the sudden silence that followed. The air was cloyingly thick with burnt powder.

  "Hey Josh, let your barrel cool off a bit," Rog ordered. "You’re supposed to fire in bursts," he reminded him, "not half a belt at a time."

  "Yeah, well that’s the safest way to do it," Josh acknowledged. Whether to Haim or Rog neither was sure. Rog jumped up and ducked into a bedroom like he had forgotten something.

  "You don’t have immunity, like the diplomat at your embassy does, do you?" Josh asked.

  Haim was too stunned by events to respond normally. Josh had to repeat the question. "No," Haim agreed, surprised at the question at a time like this. "I have extraterritoriality at the consulate, but I only enjoy immunity when I’m actually there, doing consulate business. Not out and about like an ambassador."

  Rog hurried out of the bedroom and ducked in the next.

  "Up to you then, but if you are smart I think you will accept a ride with us. I imagine things will be pretty hot for you here if you are seen walking out of this hotel. He grabbed the box with the glass jug and headed out the door.

  The room phone on the foyer table rang." Roger, coming behind, grabbed it. "Hello? No problem. We were just stepping out anyway."

  Josh looked a question.

  "The people below us asked if we could keep the noise down."

  "Where are you going?" Haim asked.

  "Someplace safer, where you can contact your superiors. You don’t need to know where if you don’t come. Trust us, or stay here and take your chances," he offered.

  "I’ll trust you," Haim said with no small effort.

  "Try to keep your shoes clean," Roger suggested from behind him, exiting the room, stepping daintily through the mess in the hall. "Well, try to keep your pants out of it at least."

  Rog confused Haim by going the wrong way at first. He went to a locked service panel on the end wall, blew the lock open with his pistol and opened it. Inside were pipes and conduits. Rog grabbed a bundle of wires attached to a box on one pipe and ripped them off with one jerk. There was a separate padlock on a valve and Roger shielded his face with an arm and shot the chain off, allowing him to spin the big handle around until it wouldn’t turn any further.

  Josh had something to delay him too – he stopped and got a pair of keys and a pistol off one body. Haim was made of sterner stuff than they expected and if he was a little hard-faced didn’t upchuck or even comment on the gore. In the guard room Ono was still on his belly with his wrists cuffed behind him. Josh undid him and helped him sit up.

  "I want you to listen to me," Josh insisted, handing his pistol back to Ono, along with the cuffs and keys. Ono was goggle eyed at the squad automatic weapon hanging around Josh’s neck.

  "I want you to close your eyes when you go out the door here and turn right. Don’t look over your shoulder. Don’t use the elevator. Take the stairs down and don’t, whatever you do, come back up. This is for your protection, not ours.

  "When you are questioned, get befuddled and mix up today with yesterday. The shock of everything just scrambled y
our thinking, to where you are a useless witness. You may remember it happened on a Friday one time and then be convinced it was Saturday another time. You may think Harris was still here, or remember he was let go. Make a whole bunch of confused replies that don't have anything to do with the question. Start babbling about Coney Island or something in the middle of it. Got that, you poor confused sap, you?" He made a mock slap and backhand on each cheek, like he was jolting Ono back to reality.

  "Got it. Damnedest Thursday I ever experienced, Mom," he grinned.

  "Get going."

  They followed him to the stairwell, Martee and Rog carrying the last few things from their rooms. When he went down they went up. At the half-way landing, where the stairs reversed direction and went up to the roof, Josh set the glass jug in the middle of the floor and tossed the box in the corner. There was a small plastic case taped on the cap. When he came out on the roof Martee was waiting, carrying his computer. Josh punched a number in his cell phone and let it dial.

  A soft >Pooom< echoed up the stairwell and could be felt through their feet. As they went around the little roofed shed that held the top of the stairway Rog had already cut the cords and was helping Haim in and then strapping him in his seat. Martee had the screens lit up in short order and she didn’t even wait for Roger and Josh to belt in. Lifting off slid the tarp off, that was cut loose on one side.

  Josh was feverishly keying a text message into his phone then hit SEND.

  He looked terribly sad when he was done.

  "What was that?" Rog wanted to know.

  "I blew up my house while we were in cell phone range." Josh mourned. "I really liked that stupid shack."

  "Well why did you do it then?"

  "They know us by name now. It’s only a matter of time until they go out and try to break in. They know enough now they'll really dig deep. I'm sure they'll find the safe room. It’s booby-trapped, so better to blow it now and nobody gets hurt breaking in. This way brings the whole hillside down and fills the basement. I’ll even blame them for blowing it up, if anybody makes an issue of it. Get it through your head Rog – chances are we'll never be able to openly come back to the States again."