Soft Targets

by John Gilstrap

  In a tight chase, when the chasers are limited to their feet as their primary mode of transportation, the smart play was always to run for it. With a thirty- or forty-second head start, it might be smart to try to start the car—or in Jennings’s case, a crotch-rocket Suzuki motorcycle—but with less lead than that, you screw yourself with the time it takes to find keys, get them into the ignition, and accelerate away before your highly motivated pursuers tear you apart.

  Irene holstered her weapon even as she ran down the three stairs to the alleyway behind the town house. She was going to do this the old-fashioned way. The satisfying way.

  Jennings looked up just seconds before the impact. His eyes looked like billiard balls as he calculated what was coming his way. He hurried to don his motorcycle helmet.

  He never came close. The helmet flew five feet as Irene hit him at a dead run, driving her shoulder into the spot just below the juncture of his neck and his breastbone. He barked like a dog as the air was expelled from his lungs, and his arms flailed as Irene’s momentum drove him clear of the bike and back into the rickety fence that separated Jennings’s backyard from the next door neighbors’.

  Lights came on next door and a dog barked. Stealth was no longer part of the equation. From here on out, it was about speed, and before Irene could even process the pleasure of beating the crap out of this guy, Big Guy’s beefy hands were on her shoulders, lifting her like she weighed nothing and placing her to the side while Scorpion stepped over the mess and slipped a black hood over Jennings’s head. That done, he rolled the monster onto his stomach and nearly ripped Jennings’s arms out of their sockets as he pulled them behind his back and cinched his wrists together with flex cuffs.

  “Let me go!” Jennings yelled. “Help!”

  Jonathan kicked him in the ribs, and leveraged him to his feet by lifting his arms.

  Jennings yelled again, but after a second kick, he fell silent. He seemed to have gotten the point that quiet was better than noisy.

  Irene stepped out of the way as Big Guy took over for Scorpion, hoisting the bound and bagged Barney Jennings over his shoulder like a duffel bag and leading the way back to up the steps, through the house, and out to the waiting van, where he dumped him heavily onto the floorboard.

  “Get in and sit on him,” Boxers said. “We’ve got company.” A man and a woman in nightclothes had appeared on the porch of the house next door. They both looked terrified.

  As Boxers walked around the front to the driver’s seat and Jonathan sat shotgun, Irene rolled the door shut and literally sat on their prisoner. The sound of sirens rose in the distance.

  “That went well,” Boxers said as he eased away from the curb.

  “Take it nice and slow,” Jonathan said. “Draw as little attention as possible. We only need a mile and a half.” As he spoke, he pulled off his mask. Boxers did the same, and so did Irene. As long as the bag stayed in place over Jennings’s head, they shouldn’t have to worry about being recognized.

  “You know those sirens are for us, right?” Irene asked. “Somebody called the police.”

  Jennings shifted under her. “Police?” he said. Muffled by the bag, his voice sounded strained under her weight. “You’re not the police? Who the hell are you?”

  Irene bounced on him. Hard. “We’re the beginning of the worst weeks of your life.”

  Jonathan turned in his seat to face her. He was smiling.

  “You can’t do this!” Jennings protested. “This is kidnapping.”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Irene replied.

  “But I have rights. You can’t do this.”

  She bounced on him again, harder this time. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll do something a lot worse that I don’t have a right to do.”

  “Face it, asshole,” Big Guy said from the front. “From here on out, you’re one-hundred-percent victim. Whatever happens to you from here on out—good or bad—is because we make it happen.” A beat. “And if that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, you’re not paying attention.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  Irene drew her SIG and thumped him on the head with the butt of the grip. “What part of shut up confused you?” It was a solid thump, too, one she was pretty sure had drawn blood.

  He shut up.

  Jonathan asked, “Assuming that the neighbors called this in as a kidnapping, how long will it take them to get organized enough for road blocks and such?”

  Irene had no idea. The Harrelson case was the only one she’d ever worked with Baltimore PD, and their only corner of it was the investigation subsequent to Jennings’s arrest. They seemed professional enough, but there were too many moving parts to even attempt an honest answer to Jonathan’s question.

  She decided to fake it. “They’ll have an officer respond to the scene and speak to the caller. If he’s convinced, he’ll call dispatch with a description of the van. Since it’s a kidnapping, they’ll roll a lot of units to it. Once they find out that Assface here is the alleged victim, though, they might just slow to a stroll. I figure we’ve got a good seven to ten minutes before we have to worry too hard.”

  “From then or from now?”

  “With the two or three minutes we’ve already lost, it’ll be less than seven to ten minutes.”

  They got caught by a red light. “Wouldn’t you know?” Jonathan said.

  “Tick tock,” Boxers said. “Want me to run it?”

  “Negative. If this adventure ends everything for me, it’s not going to be because of a traffic violation.”

  As the words cleared Jonathan’s lips the world in front of the windshield filled with Baltimore Police cars. A five-car motorcade of flashing lights and screaming sirens streaked straight at them.

  “Ah, shit,” Boxers said. “This isn’t good.”

  “Hold fast,” Jonathan said. He’d moderated his tone to something soothing. “We’re just out for a midnight drive.”

  “Like they’ll buy that.”

  “If we bolt, we’ll have nothing.”

  “I concur,” Irene said.

  Big Guy gave a sardonic laugh. “Oh, well if you concur, then I feel better.”

  The cops were coming really hot, closing the final two blocks that separated them with blistering speed.

  “Holy shit,” Jonathan said.

  Irene got it and smiled. “They’re not coming for us,” she announced. The lead cop car switched his siren from wail to yelp as he flew past without stopping. “They’re all headed for the crime scene.” As if they’d been listening, the entire parade raced past them and disappeared down the street behind them.

  “All right,” Boxers said. “I’ll take that kind of luck.”

  “We’ll need to hurry now,” Irene said. “They’ll have noticed our vehicle as they passed. Once word goes out that the bad guys were in a van, they’ll come back in a hurry.”

  Jonathan nodded once and smacked the driver on the shoulder. “You heard the lady. Drive fast and take chances.”

  “Now you’re sounding like my mother,” Big Guy said. He stomped on the gas, and the van lurched forward, propelling Irene off of Jennings, who responded immediately by clamoring along the floorboards in an effort to find his feet.

  Irene found hers faster and settled him down with a savage kick. Honestly, she was aiming at his stomach, but she felt no remorse when her boot found his balls instead. Jennings collapsed with a choking cough. “Oh, my God,” he gasped. He drew his knees up to his chest and crossed his ankles. Without sight, he must have been terrified of whatever the next blow would be.

  “Way to go, Rattler,” Big Guy said with a laugh. “Take no shit from anybody.”

  Jonathan was laughing, too, but she wasn’t sure she understood why.

  “No,” Scorpion said, “Rattler’s not a good enough name. Doesn’t do it for me anymore. We’re going to call you Wolverine. Fast, scrappy, and mean as hell when you’re cornered.”

  As if she cared what the hell her handle
would be among a team she’d never see again. Just for an added bit of security while Jennings was in a docile state, she zip-tied his crossed ankles.

  He said something like, “Oh, God,” she thought, but it was hard to hear through the bag and the gagging.

  From the back of the van, cloaked in darkness, it was hard to tell where they were or where they were going. She knew from the planning session that they were headed to a place called Pier Seven, where Scorpion had arranged for a third party to park a helicopter. Given the stakes, they’d driven past the pier and verified the presence of the chopper before they’d raided Jennings’s place. She knew it sat on the harbor, nearly due south of Jennings’s house, amidst some kind of petroleum tank farm, but other than that, she didn’t know enough about the layout of Baltimore to divine a decent idea of how close they were to being out of danger.

  Ashley and Kelly.

  During the hot part of the op, she had been able to put the plight of her little girls in that locked-up section of her brain where emotion was never allowed. Now the rush of desperation returned. Every moment that passed was a moment when they were separated from her. A moment when they continued to suffer whatever torment this monster had devised for them. Having kicked his balls, now she wanted to cut them off, feed them to him. She bet that that would by God get his attention.

  Time had slowed to a stop, even as the world flew by in a blur through the windshield. Irene wished she’d glanced at her watch when this talk of response times had first started. She told herself that it couldn’t possibly have been as long as it seemed, but then she didn’t know whether she could trust what she told herself.

  With her prisoner in custody, her die had been cast, her Rubicon crossed. She had committed to a path that would turn her into the kind of felon that she’d sworn to hunt down and remove from society. She’d committed to violating a long line of fast-held principles that had guided her life until now, and at one level, it bothered her that she felt no remorse.

  Jennings had earned every bit of what lay ahead for him, first through the abduction of the Harrelson boys, and now—How dare he!—by seeking revenge on her by terrorizing two innocent young girls. In the pantheon of unspeakable punishments, none was painful enough to account for that.

  If time crawls by slowly for me, what nightmare must Ashley and Kelly be living?

  “Looks like we’re going to make it,” Big Guy said as he swung a tight left turn. “That’s our bird out there on the end of the pier.”

  Finally. Through the darkness, Irene hadn’t seen the towering fuel tanks that were so obvious in the satellite images that Scorpion had been able to obtain. As for the helicopter, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know how they’d swung that. The headline here was that the chopper was only a couple of hundred yards away, and when they arrived and got airborne, the first stage of their mission could be hailed as a success.

  Pier Seven was literally a pier—a long stretch of wooden planks supported by pilings that stretched far out into the water. The helicopter—it looked like something a police department might fly—sat at the very end, visible only as a chopper-shaped stain against the night. As she took in the geography, Irene realized that they might have just stumbled onto the first major hitch in their planning.

  How were they going to get Jennings’s bound body from the van to the end of the pier? What would they do with the van? They couldn’t just leave it out there to be seen. Not only would it be found quickly, but it would also give away the secret of their escape plan. Surely they weren’t going to drive all the way down and all the way back just to have to walk all the way back down again.

  She got her answer when Big Guy pulled the van to a stop at the near end of the pier.

  “Everybody out,” Jonathan said.

  Jennings started to buck again—jerky, spasmodic movements that Irene interpreted as the onset of panic. She was glad that she’d thought to bind his ankles.

  “Don’t worry about Assface,” Big Guy said, reading Irene’s thoughts. “I’ll take care of him.” Rather than stepping out the door and walking around, Boxers climbed over and around the engine cowling that separated driver from shotgun. “But if he gives me any trouble, I’ll drop him in the water and see how well he swims with his hands and feet tied.”

  Jennings settled down again. Apparently, he’d caught the not-so-subtle subtext. Irene didn’t doubt that Big Guy’s words were more promise than bluff. She’d never met a man who exuded such lethality. Yet he did it without a trace of psychopathy. That couldn’t be easy to do.

  Irene moved out of the way to make room for Boxers’ massiveness as he all but filled the van’s cargo area. She slid the side door open and found Jonathan waiting for her just outside.

  “Have you got all your kit?” he asked.

  Irene patted herself down, running a touch-inventory of her pockets and her weapons. “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? The police are going to scour everything.”

  “Positive,” she said, though after a buildup like that, how could anyone claim to be positive about anything?

  “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  Irene hesitated. “We’re not going to help Big Guy?”

  “Trust me,” Jonathan said as he turned and led the way down the pier. “More times than not, the last thing Big Guy wants is help.”

  It was every bit of seventy-five yards—maybe farther—to the end of the pier. When they were about halfway, Irene dared a look behind and was surprised to see how close Big Guy was, moving quickly and easily despite his size, his gear, and Jennings’s weight slung over his shoulders.

  “Do I want to know where you got your hands on a helicopter?” Irene asked Jonathan. “Or how you convinced the owner to park it here and leave it?”

  Jonathan flashed one of his smiles at her over his shoulder. “I imagine you do,” he said. “But you’d hate yourself for knowing after you got back to your FBI office.”

  Irene caught the meaning. Under the circumstances, there were many details that she was probably better off not knowing.

  Arriving at the chopper, Jonathan pulled open the side door—the cargo door. Clearly, he knew that it would be unlocked. He moved without hesitation, indicating to her that whatever accomplices he had were damned reliable.

  In the near distance, sirens began to crescendo.

  “Hear that?” Jonathan asked.

  “They know about the van,” Irene said.

  Jonathan nodded. “We’ll make it,” he said. Again, no room for doubt, though she suspected that his confidence was entirely unfounded.

  Big Guy arrived ten seconds later and dumped Jennings onto the floor of the aircraft. “You know they’re almost here, right?” he said. No urgency in his voice. If anything, he sounded amused.

  Jonathan replied, “If you’d stop strolling and step it up a little, we’d make better time.”

  “Kiss my ass, you tiny little man.” Was it possible to utter those words with affection? Because that’s what Irene heard in his tone. These were interesting men.

  “You’re next,” Jonathan said, offering Irene a hand to help her inside.

  She appreciated the gesture, but she climbed in on her own. She was awash in testosterone as it was; she didn’t see the need to encourage more.

  Jonathan stepped in right behind her, and he slammed the side door shut before he settled into a seat.

  The only helicopters that Irene had ridden in had been of the bare-bones variety, a step up, she imagined, from Spartan military aircraft, but only a tiny step. This chopper, by contrast, was all about executive comfort, with cream-colored soft leather captain’s chairs for seats, each of which had its own phone. Plush mauve carpeting covered the floors. She started to say something about the luxury, but stopped herself when she realized that such a comment might provide Jennings with an intelligence benchmark that could work against them.

  Boxers settled himself into the pilot’s seat—the right-hand front seat—and threw switches
seemingly as reflex. Seconds later, the engine started, and seconds after that, the rotors began to whine and turn.

  “Hang on, everybody,” Big Guy called over the noise. “When liftoff happens, it’s going to happen fast.”

  “Who are you people?” Jennings cried. Literally cried, as in past a sob. “Please don’t do this. I don’t know what this is about, but I swear to God you don’t need to do this.”

  “Shut up, Assface.” They all said it in unison.

  Chapter 6

  Jonathan made a point of not telling Irene specifically where they were going. “You have to understand,” he’d explained, “that the people I deal with are the very best at what they do, but what they do exposes them to enormous risk, both real and legal. The fact that you’re with the FBI prevents you from ever being their friend. That doesn’t mean that you’re their enemy—anything but, because these people are the most devout patriots you’ll ever meet—but it means that you can never be fully trusted.”

  Irene was not in the least offended, but she was curious. “You trust me.”

  His answer came quickly: “Only because Dom vouched for you.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Well, it’s true. Look, most government people mean well—they’d rather do good deeds than bad—but when the shit hits the fan, they get confused. Right and wrong gets trumped by career ambitions. I’ve spent my entire adulthood as other people’s pawn in a game where I’ve never been invited to the table. Where politicians’ dreams become my reality. My scars.”

  He’d smiled as he prepared for the next part of his soliloquy. “It so happens that you have pledged allegiance to the one organization above all others that values career advancement over public safety. Because of Dom’s endorsement, I’ll stipulate that you’re one of the good guys, but you won’t get that same benefit of doubt from anyone else in my universe.”

  Irene thought about his words as they bounced through the night in a rattletrap Ford Explorer toward what appeared to be a stand-alone barn in the middle of a field. The vehicle had been waiting for them when they’d touched down a few hundred yards from there. The keys had been left in the ignition, but there was no sign of a driver. They’d flopped Jennings onto the floor of the cargo bay and closed the tailgate.