To The Lions - 02

by Chuck Driskell

  Speaking accented Catalan, he told her to close her door.

  Feeling the blade puncturing her skin, and unflinchingly realizing this was probably her end, her passageway to reunite with her beloved Mateo, Señora Moreno, queerly excited by this dangerous liaison, found the door handle and pulled the door shut, her mind running through her narrow series of options.

  The man, keeping the blade on her throat, reached to the driver’s door, mimicking her actions. He wore a beard, neatly trimmed, over his richly tanned face. He had one of those sneering smiles, trashy but handsome, and could have been a famous athlete, an actor or even the sleazy womanizer who barked for the Ferris wheel at the carnival. But most prominent, even in the shadows of the darkened car, was the conspicuous tattoo on the man’s neck—it was the tattoo of a smoking revolver.

  Los Leones.

  The man moved his tongue around his lower teeth, his wet mouth audible with the movement. Suddenly, he pricked her throat, sending a sharp pain through her body before he asked, “Who are you, lady, and why are you working a confidence game with that tall blonde on Cortez Redon?”

  “What tall blonde are you talking abo—ayeee!” Señora Moreno squealed, unable to control herself as the blade of his knife twisted on the skin of her neck.

  “Now that, my dear, is just a flesh wound,” he murmured, pulling the knife back and sounding completely at ease. “I can honestly tell you I don’t get my kicks from harming old women but,” he said, moving his right hand behind her neck as the flat black blade of the Smith & Wesson M&P knife was held in front of her eyes, “I won’t hesitate if you lie to me. Redon is a gutter-dwelling piece of shit—that I won’t argue. So, please, dispense with your lies and tell me about this hustle.”

  Her mind briefly clouded by pain, Señora Moreno gasped for breath, trying to determine an angle for proceeding. What she came up with was surprisingly lucid. The goal today was to entrap Acusador Redon. And Justina’s boyfriend, Gage, was at odds with Los Leones over Navarro’s money. This knife-wielding man was with Los Leones, so bringing Navarro’s money into it would be the incorrect pathway. It would incense her aggressor and make the situation worse. She’d be better off to put him on the wrong track. She chose the first idea that came to her mind.

  “That girl you saw…we work together.”

  “How?”

  “We run schemes against men in public places.”

  “What kind of schemes?”

  “All kinds. It just depends on our target’s proclivities.”

  “Really,” he said flatly, clearly not a question.

  “As you said, Redon’s not a good man…an easy target for a girl like her.”

  “Then why were you talking to him first, in the café?”

  After years of real estate deals, Señora Moreno was an expert at ferreting out liars. She knew the telltale signs, the hesitations, the tonal changes. Rather than appear distressed by his questioning, she tried to make herself look disappointed, like a sullen teenager who’d been caught with cigarettes but was too old, too experienced to be entirely scared of the coming punishment.

  “Why?” he asked, shaking her neck and lifting the blade.

  “Like I said, we have a process. I approached him, telling him I’m her aunt and her brother is awaiting trial for robbery. Then, after wending my way through the story, I offered her to him, sexually, in exchange for his intervention, so the charges against her brother might be dropped.”

  “So, there is no brother?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “And now we will have pictures of him, naked, in a hotel room.”

  He smiled with mouth only. “Poor Cortez.”

  Señora Moreno eyed her captor.

  His smile faded. “You know what? You’re a magnificent liar.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I know you called Redon about Ernesto Navarro’s money.”

  Oh no…

  Feeling the tension change in his controlling hand, Señora Moreno futilely resisted as the blade ascended, pointing between both of her eyes before he lowered it, pushing it between her lips.

  Just before he sliced her face, in his British-accented Catalan, he said, “Time to tell the truth, old lady.”

  Despite her absence of fear, Señora Moreno was unable to control her screams as he sawed through her flesh.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Gage clomped down the prison hallway, shield over his face, baton in his right hand—this is how the guards walk, he reminded himself. Swaggering. Arrogant. Uncaring. He recalled first entering through this same hallway, having no idea that he’d be stabbed soon thereafter. And while he could certainly feel the prick of the scabs over his still-healing wounds, it was now his upper buttocks and kidney area that screamed with each step. Gage knew he needed to get a strong antibiotic into his system—once they were free and clear of Berga.

  The double doors were just ahead and to the right. According to Angelines, her car was just through the doors, situated behind a screen of boxes. As he pushed through the door, he heard someone calling out from down the hallway—a man’s voice. Without hesitating, using the mechanical clicking of the door’s metal latch as a reason to not hear the voice, Gage walked straight through.

  Damn it!

  As soon as he’d passed through the doors, he lurched to the left. With Angelines’ car in his peripheral vision, Gage wielded the baton from the shadowy blind spot.

  Don’t follow. Please, don’t follow.

  Gage waited, silently cursing their luck. If the guards learned that Angelines was in on this, the game was up.

  A droplet of sweat collected on Gage’s nose under the mask. Quite a bit of time had passed. Maybe whoever had yelled had dismissed Gage’s coming into the warehouse.

  The door latch clicked.

  The door opened to the inside, beaming antiseptic light into the darkened area. Without any discernible caution, a guard in full armor stepped through. He didn’t look left but walked straight ahead, as if he were routinely headed out into the warehouse. He must have been one of the guards who’d been mustered in the main bay. Gage reasoned the guard didn’t suspect him; he probably assumed Gage was one of the tower guards.

  There was one problem: according to Angelines, the warehouse guard was required to remain at his post at all times. If this guard stepped out into the warehouse, the warehouse guard would see him. They would talk and then this one would ask where the guard who just came through the double doors went. The warehouse guard wouldn’t know who he was talking about. Then suspicions would rise and all sorts of bad things would happen.

  Gage had no choice. He lunged forward, smacking the guard in the back of his neck, right where his spine met with his skull. It was a dangerous blow but, because of the guard’s protective helmet, Gage was limited in his places to strike. As the baton had come whipping across, Gage took a little bit off his swing. The blow itself, even at eighty percent, knocked the guard out cold. He went down in a heap, his helmet clattering on the floor. Gage whipped a thick orange zip tie from his belt and secured his hands behind him.

  The door flung open again. Gage whirled, jerking the AutoMag from its unmatched holster, his finger on the trigger.

  It was Angelines.

  “What happened?” she asked, her hair still dripping as she stared at the downed guard.

  “He was behind me in the hallway. The muster that you called must be over. Now we’ve got to haul ass before someone finds him, or us.”

  She clicked her key fob and the trunk automatically popped up.

  “Let me drive,” Gage said. “This jig is about to be up.”

  “No,” she still insisted. “They’re going to come after us with the same gusto, regardless. And with me driving, if we can get out peacefully, it might buy us an hour before they figure out what happened.”

  Gage climbed into the trunk. “If something happens, gun the gas and don’t let up.” He tapped the piece of plastic leading to the
back seat. “Open this pass-through so you can hear me.” That done, he held the trunk lid down with one hand and the AutoMag in his other. When she started the car, he asked if she could hear him.

  “Yes, clear as a bell.”

  “Can you tell the trunk is unlatched?”

  She peered out her door. “No. Now be quiet.”

  Faster than he would have liked, she backed from the wall of cardboard boxes as her tires lightly squealed on the painted floor. There was a light chirp from the brakes as she stopped reversing. They drove forward a bit before stopping again. Gage heard the window going down.

  “Gotta hurry, Pito,” she said, sounding routine yet irritable.

  “What happened to you, capitana? You’re soaked,” came the distant voice. “We heard on the radio that there were bottle bombs on the second terrace. Were you up there?”

  “That’s why I called the muster. I had one thrown at me, too, and I got covered in some sort of acid.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I will be once you open this door. I tried to wash it off but regular water won’t remove it completely.”

  “But capitana, the infirmary…they have something to neutralize acid. Don’t waste time driving to—”

  “I’ve already been to the infirmary and their stuff didn’t work!” she yelled. “My skin’s on fire so I’m driving to the hospital at Manresa and, because I think there could be more to the riot, I didn’t want to pull anyone from the infirmary staff to go with me. Now, can you open the damned door? I’ll be back as soon as they treat my skin.”

  “Sí, right away.”

  The mechanical sounds of the motorized door began, followed by her rolling up her window.

  “Good girl,” Gage whispered. She’d played that well. Then, just as she’d begun to pull forward, he heard a distant sound from the back of the car. It was a clunking sound, like a door being open and shut.

  Following that was an urgent yell, in Spanish. “Alto! Alto!”

  “Alto,” of course, meant “stop.”

  Gage pressed his face to the pass-through, yelling for her to go. No sooner had he gotten the words from his mouth than he heard the alarm, a whooping tone intermingled with a low, menacing buzz. He was thrown to the side as the Opel lurched forward and into a fast turn. He raised the trunk, risking being shot to gage the situation.

  Above him, having passed through the threshold, Gage could see the guard Angelines had just been talking to. He was brandishing a rifle, fumbling with it. Aiming to the right of the man, though with the wheeling car his aim would almost certainly be foul, Gage squeezed off a single .44 round, watching the aluminum puncture several feet from the guard’s head. Predictably for a poorly paid civil servant who’d probably never been in a firefight, he scurried back inside his guard shack.

  “Hold on!” came the warning from the front, followed by a calamitous boom as the car blasted through a gate, sending a shudder through the Opel. Gage heard the crackle of machine gun fire. He yanked the trunk lid back down, latching it, just before they went through a second gate, this one sounding, and feeling, more formidable against the light sheet metal of the car. Then, as the machine gun fire faded, the car accelerated onto a smooth surface. It was only a second or two before he felt the thumping.

  “One of my tires is flat,” she yelled.

  “Ten minutes until response?” he asked through the pass-through, fumbling for the mechanical catch that would fold down the rear seat. He glimpsed the depleted airbag fluttering in her lap.

  “At least ten. There will be two police on duty in Berga, and one each in Cercs and Gironella. They’ll be called and the Catalonian police from Manresa—they’ll send a chopper.”

  “You’re headed towards Cercs.”

  “That’s what you said to do.”

  Finally the seat released, pushing forward. When Gage climbed through, he crouched in the back seat and pushed the seat back into its original position.

  “How’s the car driving?” he asked, peering over her shoulder at the gauges.

  “Pulling hard to the right.”

  Gage rolled down the window, putting his head out. “It’s your right rear tire.”

  “What now?” she asked.

  He recalled this stretch of two-lane road between Berga and Cercs. It was rural, with scrub land on both sides and not much else. With the flat tire, the car was laboring to do eighty-kilometers per hour.

  “Can you go faster?”

  “The pedal is in the floor.”

  He eyed the tachometer, finding it nearing the engine’s redline. Then, at once, a cluster of red warning lights came on.

  “Shit! They hit more than the tire.” Gage glanced back, seeing dark smoke trailing in their vortex. His eyes moved upward, noticing shredded threads hanging from the roof liner. Bullet holes. Then he noticed the cracked hole in the driver’s window, and that’s when his eyes went to Angelines’ left leg.

  It was crimson, and her left hand was clamped on it.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “The hole feels big but, oddly enough, it doesn’t hurt that much.”

  Gage pushed his hand back through his hair, reckoning that it had been two minutes since their bust-out. Assuming the call to Cercs, which is where they were headed, had just taken place, the policia there were jumping in their car right now.

  The turnoff to the lake house was about two kilometers ahead.

  Was there time?

  “How far from here to the town of Cercs?” he yelled.

  “I…I don’t know. Maybe six or seven kilometers?”

  “Are you sure?” he yelled, shaking her headrest.

  “As sure as I can be!” she yelled back over the whining engine.

  He glanced at the instrument cluster. The car was now only making forty kilometers per hour while the tachometer was in the redline. The rear wheel, grating on the asphalt, was probably nearly gone and the car was struggling to keep plowing forward.

  The engine would seize up soon and they’d be left out here on the barren road, like an ugly red zit on an otherwise clear face.

  A small blue car passed them in the opposite direction, the driver peering at them with curiosity. Gage turned. Thankfully the blue car kept going. But Gage could see that the smoke from the Opel had increased, whirling from the vortex created by both cars.

  Then, without hesitation, he leaned into the driver’s area and yanked the wheel to the right, causing the Opel to careen off the road and down a steep embankment. Seeing a tree in their path, Gage whipped the wheel left, causing the car to spin ninety degrees where it came to a smoldering stop.

  “Turn off the car and get out. If you see a fire start from the heat, throw dirt on it.”

  “But my leg is—”

  “Just do it!” he yelled. He lurched from the backseat, scrambling back up the hill, twenty feet above the copse where the car sat. The area was wooded and hilly, probably a hundred meters higher in elevation than the lake house which sat on the valley’s hillside, north of their current location.

  At the road, seeing no cars coming, Gage used his feet and hands to flatten the cuts on the shoulder created by the tires and the one destroyed wheel. There were faint gouges in the asphalt, veering to the right. He used road grit from the very edge of the asphalt, walking back thirty meters and concealing it as best he could. He turned, thankful that the wisps of smoke from the Opel were no longer visible as they had been dissipated by a stiff breeze.

  The sound of an engine could be heard, revving high, accompanied by the distinct sound of cutting air. It was a car, and though he couldn’t see it yet, he knew it was driving very fast. Gage moved backward, just below the weeds at the edge of the embankment, flattening himself. From his right, from Cercs, came a Mercedes with police markings, hurtling through the mild curve. The police weren’t using their siren but the lights on top were on. The car whizzed by, never braking. There were two police officers in the car.

  Gage ran back down to t
he Opel, finding Angelines sitting on the pine-needle-covered earth next to the rear wheel. She was trying to fashion a bandage from a piece of cloth. He moved her hands aside, ripping the pants suit open and probing the wound with his fingers. She’d taken a bullet on the side of her thigh. It had been traveling downward and Gage could feel the exit wound underneath. Fortunately for her the bullet had been jacketed and didn’t mushroom as it ripped through her leg. Both holes were the diameter of a pinkie finger but were bleeding profusely.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  Her eyes searched the area, as if she might find one.

  Please don’t go into shock, he thought. Grasping her shoulders and noticing that her nose was bleeding—from the airbag—he said, “It’s not all that bad, okay? If we can stem that blood, you’ll be fine. Wait right here.”

  As he opened the trunk, he processed the timeline. The Cercs police car would be at Berga Prison in another minute. He’d have to assume by that time the Berga and Gironella police would be there also. Hopefully, coming from such small towns, those police wouldn’t be assertive because, surely, the Berga prison guards would tell them Capitana de la Mancha’s car had sped to the north. She’d said that the Manresa Police, with the helicopter, would have jurisdiction in representation of the territory known as Comarques Centrals. As he yanked the small first aid kit from the trunk, he looked up at the sparse canopy of pine trees, knowing an air search would reveal the Opel in short order.

  They would need to be far away by that time.

  Guessing at the timeline with a measure of optimism, he wagered the first cops on the scene were just now hearing the story.

  Assume ten more minutes before the Manresa Police arrive in their helicopter, hopefully making the decision to land first. Give them ten more minutes to get their bearings and organize a search, and that’s when the chopper lifts off again. This car will be spotted in five more minutes, tops. They’ll probably use dogs to trail us. That will take at least five minutes, maybe more. Give the dogs and their handlers two minutes to get the scents, and then the chase is on.