The Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  “He hit ‘im,” the first officer said, sounding unsure whether or not he saw what he saw. “That pipe didn’t faze him. He must be wearing full body armor, but it sure doesn’t look like it.”

  His partner put down his light-intensifying binoculars. “I’m going over there and talk to this guy,” he said.

  “You what? You’ll blow our surveillance, man…”

  “The guy knew about the Major, and he knew about the meeting here between him and Mullins,” the second cop said, rolling open the sliding door of the van. “He knows a lot more than any civilian should know. If he’s a cop, then he’s trying to pull some kind of off-duty or vigilante shakedown thing, and we gotta stop him before he sets this city on fire. Besides, I want to figure out how he can take a hit from a steel pipe and keep on standing. Tell the black-and-white I’m 940.”

  The second blow was sheer rage. It was hard, fast, and overhead, aimed right at the head. Patrick McLanahan deflected it with ease with his left arm, cracking the pipe. The surge of electricity from the arm to the rest of his body mixed with the surge of energy he had felt from the blow to his leg, and the two power waves seemed to meet right at his heart, sending an explosive stream of energy through the rest of his body.

  Patrick screamed through a wicked-looking smile. They hadn’t fixed the problem with the energy surge through the suit but he didn’t care. In fact, he was glad. It was like a drug-and he was hooked on it.

  It all happened as if in slow motion. The bouncer stared at Patrick as though he were a swamp monster, then grasped the pipe in both hands and tried a major-league home-run swing at his head. Patrick never let it happen. He simply stepped forward and drove his right fist into the bouncer’s chest.

  The guy was wearing a bulletproof vest, which attenuated some of the impact and probably saved his life. His sternum and left rib cage shattered, collapsing his left lung. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose and he crumpled to the ground. Patrick was close enough to be showered with blood, but instead of sickening him, it further fueled his anger and thirst for…

  … for what? Patrick wasn’t sure what he wanted: revenge, information? No, just to take out his frustration and bitterness on whoever was inside. To hurt someone. To make them afraid, the way he and his family were afraid. He was going to…

  “Stop! Police!” Patrick turned. A plainclothes man with a badge on a chain around his neck was galloping across the alleyway from Anne Street. His right hand was behind his back, probably hiding a gun. He held up his gold detective’s badge. “Hold it right there! I want to talk to you.”

  Patrick tossed away the watch cap and put on his helmet. The instant the final component of the suit was in place and activated, he felt the extra surge of energy course through his body. He had bypassed the safety system that deactivated the suit when the helmet was removed, which allowed him to take it off but still be protected by the rest of the system. Now that he had put it back on, and the environmental system was fully functional and data was streaming in on his heads-up display and headphones, he felt utterly alive, utterly powerful.

  “Take the helmet off now!” the detective ordered. Patrick stood there, unmoving. The cop’s gun came up. “I said, take off the helmet, then put your hands on top of your head and turn around!”

  “I’m unarmed,” Patrick answered, his voice now electronically amplified through the helmet.

  “Do it, buster. Helmet off, hands on top of your head. Now!” To his surprise, the guy simply turned around and headed inside the rear door of the Bobby John Club.

  He holstered his gun-the guy was unarmed, and he couldn’t shoot an unarmed man, especially in the back. If he had killed the bouncer, he was a murder suspect and could legally be detained by any means necessary, including shooting him-but if the guy didn’t have a weapon it would still be hard to justify using deadly force. “Jesus, Dave, get over here and give me a hand,” the cop said to his partner, who was listening on the directional mike. “Better call in a 245 and possible 187, get some backup, and roll an ambulance-I think the bastard killed the bouncer.”

  As Patrick came into the hallway, a biker appeared from the kitchen area, rushing him. Patrick solidified his entire left arm and straight-armed him in the face; it was as if the biker had run headlong into a steel girder. The door Patrick was looking for, the one that was closed and guarded the last time he was here, was on the right, locked. He stepped back into the kitchen and ran at the door, using his shoulders as a battering ram. The door splintered and came off its flimsy hinges.

  Two bikers were inside, with several partially dressed girls. Patrick recognized one of them as the same guy who had confronted him with the broken beer bottle, the same one who cut Jon Masters-and the one who knew about Mullins and the Major. One girl was kneeling between his legs; the others scurried around the room at Patrick’s entrance, grabbing for their clothes. Several lines of a white powder, crank or cocaine, were laid out on a serving tray on the table.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the biker shouted.

  “I want the Major,” Patrick said, his voice eerie through the helmet. “Tell me where the Major is and I’ll let you live tonight.”

  The biker reached over to where his pants were on the floor beside his chair and pulled out a 9-millimeter Glock. “I never killed anyone while getting a blow job before,” he said with a laugh. He yanked the woman’s head back into his crotch, smiled, and pulled the trigger. At the same moment, the other biker pulled a shotgun from out of the corner of the room and fired. Patrick tumbled over backward, crashing into the opposite corner.

  The first biker grinned as the invader hit the floor. “Damn, that felt good,” he said, firing another round into him just for good measure. He yanked the woman off his cock by the hair and shoved her aside. “Get dressed, bitch-the cops are going to be swarming over this place any minute. Clean up that coke and take the tray into the kitchen and get it in the sink. It was self-defense. All you bitches remember that. The guy busted in here and threatened to…”

  “Holy shit!” the other biker yelled. They all turned in horror to see the helmeted invader picking himself off the floor. There was not a single hole in him. A shotgun blast from less than twenty feet away should’ve put a hole the size of a softball in his chest.

  “I want the Major!” Patrick said again. The girls grabbed whatever clothes they could and fled, screaming, from this… apparition. The second biker racked the action on his shotgun and fired again, but he was shaking so hard from the sight of this guy still standing, walking, and talking, that he missed from fifteen feet away. He dropped the shotgun and ran.

  “Hey, asshole!” the other biker screamed futilely, “get back here and nail this guy!” He swore, aimed, and fired his Glock. The invader reeled, hit right in the chest-but this time he did not go down. Another shot and another, from ten feet away and less. Still standing. It was clear he had been hit, because he stopped in his tracks and howled, as if ready to collapse from pain or shock, but then he straightened up and kept right on coming.

  Patrick grabbed the biker by the right wrist, then chopped his forearm with his hand. There was the sound of bone snapping, and the Glock dropped to the floor. Then he lashed out with his right hand, hitting the biker square on the left collarbone. Bone snapped again, and the biker sank to his knees, screaming like a child. “I want the Major,” said Patrick. “Tell me where he is or I’ll kill you.”

  “I don’t know where he is, man, I swear…”

  Patrick’s hand jerked out again, breaking the other collarbone. “Next, I’m going to break your sternum,” Patrick said, jabbing a finger into the guy’s chest. “Then I’m going to break your neck, and then your skull. You’ll be a vegetable for the rest of your life. Now talk. Where’s the Major?”

  “I swear I don’t know,” the biker gasped, his face contorted in pain.

  “Who contacted Mullins? Who met Mullins here?”

  “I never seen him. One of his guys, one of his lieutenants, ca
me here, but I didn’t see him. Mullins told me he was going to meet the Major at a ranch in Wilton. I don’t know where, I swear to God!…”

  “Were they Germans?”

  The biker nodded. “Yeah… yeah, Mullins said he didn’t want to deal with no krauts, but they paid him good.”

  “Where was this ranch in Wilton? What road?” No response. Patrick forced the biker’s head between his left arm and his side and squeezed. “I’ll pop your head right off your damned shoulders if you don’t talk!” But the guy had fainted. Patrick let him drop in a heap on the floor and headed for the bar. He knew that the patrons had probably scattered like rats in a fire when they heard the gunshots, but he had to find that other biker. If he was this guy’s friend, he might know more about…

  “Police! Freeze!” Patrick turned. Two plainclothes cops with gold badges hanging from their necks were taking cover just outside the back door, aiming what looked like very large automatic pistols at him. “Hands up! Turn and face the wall! Now!”

  Patrick ran a system self-test. Battery levels were still in the green, but down to less than two hours’ endurance. He had only had the suit on for less than an hour-must be a problem with the power-reserve indicators. Taking all those gun blasts certainly didn’t help. He could probably withstand these cops emptying their guns on him, but he couldn’t take the chance of more cops showing up and his power draining down into the reserves or to emergency levels. He would then have no choice but to surrender.

  “I’m unarmed,” Patrick told the cops. He raised his hands, palms out, so they could see they were empty. “I’m leaving now. Don’t shoot me. I might hurt you if you shoot, and I don’t want to hurt the police.”

  “Shut up, turn, and face the wall!” one of the cops yelled. Patrick started walking out the door, hands raised.

  “Oh shit,” the second cop muttered, “he’s not going to stop. I heard gunshots in there-do we shoot this asshole?”

  “He doesn’t have a gun, dammit,” said the first cop. “I don’t see any weapons.” He shouted again for the guy to freeze, but he kept on coming.

  “Fuck,” said his partner, holstering his weapon. He shouted, “Cover me!” and ran full speed into Patrick like a charging linebacker.

  The first cop heard a dull clunk when the two bodies collided. The guy was knocked backward into the wall by the flying tackle, but his buddy lay facedown on the floor and wasn’t moving. The guy simply got on his feet, took a second, as if regaining his balance, raised his hands again, and started for the door, careful not to step on the unconscious cop.

  “Freeze!” the first cop shouted again, aiming his 9-millimeter SIG. “Stop right there or I’ll shoot!” He had made the decision to shoot; his partner was down. At Patrick’s next step, he fired three rounds-two in the chest, one in the head. He heard the scream as Patrick collapsed on his back.

  The cop grabbed his portable radio and keyed the mike with a shaking hand, keeping his gun aimed. “KMA, Sam One-Niner, shots fired, officer down, officer down, one suspect down, send cover and an ambu-”

  He broke off in midword, gaping as the guy in the helmet crawled to his feet, held on to the wall for support for a moment, then walked toward the door.

  This time the shot hit somewhere in the torso, but after reeling back against the wall as before, the guy pulled himself up, pushed the cop out of the way, and stumbled out into the alley. The arm that shoved him felt like a steel bar, but by now he was so stunned, the guy could’ve used a feather.

  “Mother of God!” the cop muttered. He followed the guy outside, his smoking pistol still leveled at him, but a small crowd had formed out in the alley, so he had to lower the gun and decock it. The crowd let the guy trot past them and down the alley, his gait improving with every step until he was sprinting by the time he vanished out of sight.

  Torn between pursuit and his downed partner, the cop retrieved his radio and mashed the mike button: “KMA, Sam One-Niner, the 245 suspect…” Shit, how in hell was this going to sound on the radio? He’d just reported that the suspect was down-now he was running down the street?… “Suspect is on foot heading west down the alley behind the Bobby John Club, heading toward Fairfield Street. All units be advised, the 245 suspect is wearing a black leather jacket, dark coveralls, some kind of backpack, and a full-face motorcycle helmet. Suspect… shit, suspect does not appear to be armed but should be considered dangerous.”

  At Del Paso Boulevard, Patrick ran left onto Fairfield Street. Using the thrusters in his boots, he leaped to the second-story roof of an abandoned printing shop, then paused to do another system self-test. Battery levels were already in the emergency reserve range. The emergency reserves were for escaping and survival, not for fighting. If he encountered any police now, he’d have no choice but to surrender.

  Patrick called up and interrogated the discrete global positioning satellite search function on the heads-up display inside his helmet. A tiny red blip appeared, with a direction and range to the target. The red blip was Jon Masters, riding inside a specially equipped AMC Hummer they were using as a mobile support vehicle. Both Patrick’s suit and the Hummer carried satellite navigation transponders, for each of them to see and track the other’s location. Masters was now less than two-tenths of a mile away, cruising around the target area and trying to look as inconspicuous as a six-thousand-pound Hummer wagon could look on a city street in the middle of the night.

  Using the thrusters, Patrick hopped from roof to roof along Fairfield and Forrest streets until he got to Arden Way. He waited on the roof of an apartment building until he saw the Hummer moving closer. Then he leaped off the roof, landing on a patch of lawn-right beside a startled guy just getting out of his car in the parking lot not forty feet away. Patrick ignored him. Fifteen seconds later, when the thrusters had recharged, he made another leap across the parking lot and lit down a few feet away from the Hummer as it slowly cruised down Arden Way. He pulled open the door as it stopped; then Jon hit the gas and sped away as fast as the big all-terrain vehicle could take them.

  After they crossed the river and headed down Sixteenth Street south toward the downtown area, Jon finally asked, “How did it go?”

  “Great! It went great!” Patrick said, removing the helmet. Remembering his awful visage when he had taken off the helmet after the demonstration, Jon had been afraid of what he might see this time, but Patrick looked pretty normal. “Everything worked great!”

  They had installed a portable gasoline-powered generator in the back of the Hummer, and Patrick started it up with a push of a button, then brought a cable around and plugged it into a receptacle on a bottom corner of his backpack. Although he couldn’t monitor the power levels without the helmet on, he knew from testing that it would take thirty to sixty minutes to recharge the backpack power unit.

  “We’re done for the night, right?” Jon asked hopefully. “You got what you were looking for?”

  “Hell no-we do it the way we planned!” Patrick answered. “I got a lot of good information, but I need more. The next stop might give us the rest of what we need to bust these guys.”

  “There seemed to be a lot of cops around…”

  “We’ll do it the way we planned, Jon,” Patrick repeated. “We’ll go to a wider radius to keep this vehicle away from the next location. If all else fails, I’ll meet you at Sac Executive Airport, at our rendezvous point. I can hide in the hangar or up on the tower.”

  Jon fell silent. It had to be played out…

  Rosalee Subdivision,

  Elder Creek neighborhood,

  Sacramento, California

  A short time later

  Sometimes it took days to find the best location for parking a surveillance van. Ideally, the crew wanted a spot a block or so down the street from the target address, close enough to see and photograph everyone entering or leaving the premises with a medium telephoto lens or to look inside an open garage, but not so close as to attract attention to itself or the target. Even in better ne
ighborhoods, the van had to be moved periodically so it didn’t attract attention or become a target for thieves or vandals.

  Although it only involved sitting, waiting, watching, and listening, doing a surveillance was tough, uncomfortable, tiring work. Depending on the neighborhood and the nature of the operation, the cops doing the surveillance could sometimes switch with other officers for food or relief breaks. But a lot of times they were stuck inside the van for the entire eight-hour shift, forced to use “piddle packs,” portable toilets, garbage bags, or soft drink cans to do their thing.

  But the worst part of a surveillance, even after only a couple of days, was the godawful smell. Thankfully, few cops smoked inside the van anymore, but a closed-up surveillance van quickly collected a variety of odors-fast food of every conceivable kind, sweat mixed with various deodorants and perfumes, fumes from a leaky exhaust, and other, more unmentionable, smells. Leaving the van actually made it worse. The cops grew accustomed to the smell after a couple of hours, no matter how bad it was, and if they then left the van to grab a bite or take a piss, the fresh air made getting back into the stinky, stifling, claustrophobic vehicle that much worse.

  The Rosalee subdivision, between Sixty-fifth Street and Stockton Boulevard north of Elder Creek Road, was one of the predominantly white areas of the Elder Creek section of town, with lower- to middle-class homes on generally nice suburban or semirural streets. Go a few blocks in any direction around Elder Creek, however, and it was very different territory. Some houses showed pride of ownership, with clean yards, neat landscaping, and fresh paint; but most were rentals, subrentals, sub-subrentals, or squatter-occupied, and no handyman or can of paint had come near them in years. The area was a melting pot of races and ethnic backgrounds: whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, plus every possible mix.

  The house just north of the target address on the corner was a very nice single-family property with a decent-looking lawn, well-trimmed shrubs still wrapped in burlap to protect them against the winter frost, plenty of lights surrounding the place, and a For Sale sign in the yard. The reason for the sale was probably the ramshackle house next door, a one-story frame structure of rotted wood and cracking stucco set in a dirt yard covered with patches of brown grass. It was surrounded by a mangled, rusting chain-link fence, and a huge pit bull terrier prowled the yard, barking fiercely at the slightest provocation. Some of the windows were boarded up, and others caged in steel bars bolted onto the outside of the house.