Sammi hadn’t left her gun in the Blazer after all. “Stay down or the next one will put you down,” she said. “David…?”
David nodded, and reached into his bag for supplies. Other than him rustling around, the only sounds in the room were the rain peppering the windows, the steady thick drip of blood from Ralph’s wrist hitting the floor, and his pathetic whimpering. His family had fled when they’d realized he really meant to shoot Sara. David approached Ralph with a bandage and wound pad, but before he started working, he kicked the magnum to Sara. “Do something with that,” he said grimly.
Sara stared at the gun, and then looked at Ava, who was still on the sofa, her eyes wide with shock.
Do something with that.
The magnum, blue-black steel, tooled and precise. Engineered to near perfection.
Yes. What will I do with it?
From the disastrous prison raid to her flight from Terre Haute, and then the weeks with David and Sammi spent healing and helping, Sara had hardly held a gun, let alone taken one up again in battle.
But Ava was right. She’d never be free of people like Ralph, or able to avoid capture forever. Who will be the next Ralph?
A long line of faceless enemies zoomed through Sara’s mind. She’d thought she was free of it, but now she knew what a naïve hope that had been.
Sara wasn’t a healer. She was an assassin.
Locking eyes with Ava as David began to dress Ralph’s wound, Sara bent down and picked up the gun.
The gunfire started exactly at the time Calhoun had predicted it would.
First, there was the sound of Mandingos shouting to each other, and then cell doors crashing open. Two screams came from people who Parker assumed were corrections officers coming to investigate the disturbance, not knowing that the cell doors had been opened. Echoing clangs of metal signaled a succession of more doors thudding against walls as they were kicked outward, and shooting split the air, which quieted the screams.
There was shouting and cheering, and the roof klaxon alerted the whole prison of the C-Block breakout.
Parker wanted to use the key right away; he wanted to open his door and get the hell out of his cell, but he needed the Mandingos to draw as many corrections officers toward them as possible. That had to happen first
Feet ran down the hall outside his door. He couldn’t tell whether they belonged to Mandingos or corrections officers. The footsteps went past on the metal gantry tower, and then all Parker could hear were gunshots firing and the odd scream in the distance.
Parker unlocked his door and peered out. The smell of smoke hit him. Someone had started a fire. It added to the chaos, spreading the authorities too thin while they tried to deal with two emergencies. In the early minutes of the riot, a fire would give the edge to the rioters. Parker knew he could use that to his advantage, too.
He stepped fully out from the cell and looked down into the rec area.
Two corrections offices lay dead. One of them had had his head stamped on until the skull had shattered, and the other’s head had been near lifted off by pistol shots, the upper portion raised like the lid on a saucepan. Broken dolls, they lay twenty feet below in spreading pools of blood and brains.
From the bloody footprints leading past the table tennis set-ups, Parker could see the direction the main riot had gone. He went to the stairs at the opposite end of the landing and jumped down them four at a time until he was in the rec. The exit he wanted was close enough to touch; he fisted the key and moved toward the door.
“Fuck you think you’re goin’?”
Cold metal hit him in the back of the neck and forced him into the wall.
“Crazy bitch Calhoun must think I is crazy as her.”
Parker raised his hands. It was Kleet, alone and armed with a pistol, sticking it hard into the back of Parker’s neck.
“I knew they wasn’t on the level.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Bitch wanted us for a diversion, while you got the fuck out.”
Calhoun had made the same mistake so many others had with Kleet—she had underestimated him. That’s why he’d hung back while the Mandingos went to do Calhoun’s dirty work for her.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Parker said. “I couldn’t get a message to you. I thought you’d already gone with the others.”
“But yo got a sweet way out, yes? Yo ain’t following my brethren now, are you? I saw the way you were cat moving. You got some different plan, right?”
With the gun still against his neck and Kleet’s intelligence burning as brightly as his anger, there was no point in lying. Parker told him about the key, the south compound. The waiting truck.
Kleet seemed to think for an age before he spoke. He moved the gun away from Parker’s neck, clapped him on the back, and nudged him toward the port. “Jackpot, muthafucka. Anything else and yo brains be decorating that wall. Let’s move, man.”
They pushed on through the gates as quickly as they could move. Parker dealing with the locks, Kleet keeping the gun ready in case they met any resistance.
As they moved toward the administration block, all that suggested trouble in the prison was the wailing roof klaxon and two corrections officers running ahead of them. Kleet shot them both with clean headshots before they had a chance to open their mouths. Moments later, Kleet threw a Beretta to Parker so he had another gun and collected the other gun and magazines for himself.
“What about the rest of your gang?” Parker asked as they made their way down another featureless corridor, following signs that read South Compound.
Kleet was pragmatic. “They got enough firepower. We fixed a rendezvous point outside, and they’ll be out soon—they lettin’ other mean bastards out who’ll take this riot all-out. And Gace will take over as pack leader if I don’ make it out with you.”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
“You sound like my counselor in juvie, man.”
Parker felt himself grin as they moved forward. “You know it’s true.”
They moved through another sally port, the last before the entrance to the administration block. Kleet shrugged as he covered both directions with his pistol, glancing back and forth. “Ain’t no easy way for a boy from the projects to make his way in this world, brother. You know dat true.”
Parker held his hand up to Kleet. “We ain’t so different, man.”
Kleet grinned. “Yeah, but you po-po. I ain’t ever gonna stoop that low.”
Before Parker could reciprocate Kleet’s friendly grin, the bars around them sparked and sang as machine pistol bullets sprayed into the confined space from behind them. It was a miracle that Parker wasn’t hit; Kleet wasn’t so lucky. Two bullets slammed into the back of his thigh, and one he took a little higher.
“Muthafucka shot me in the ass!” he shouted, spinning and returning fire down the corridor they’d just exited. Two marshals ducked behind a guard station door, returning fire around its edge.
It gave Parker little time to finish unlocking the gate, sliding it across as he pulled the still-firing, rabidly-angry Kleet through the doorway with him.
“I gonna kill yo ass, muthafucka! I gonna kill your sorry ass deader ’n dead! I’m gonna kill yo whole family!” Kleet screamed, still firing as he was propelled backwards.
Backing into the wall, Parker slid the port gate back across the gap, twisted the key, and then fired three rounds directly into the lock, shielding his face from the spits of sparking metal that came up off it.
“Yo only think of that now?” Kleet shouted.
Sweat was bubbling out all over his forehead, and his jumpsuit was blossoming patches of blood. The bullet in his ass cheek might not be painful by Kleet’s standards, but the two that had smacked into his thigh might be fatal if they’d clipped an artery. But Parker had no time to assess Kleet’s injuries now. “Can you walk?” he asked, sliding another mag into his Beretta and keeping the marshals pinned through the sally port.
> “Fuck it, man, I can run. I a muthfucken lion!”
Parker and Kleet took off into the administration block, leaving a trail of blood and brags from Kleet as he leaned on Parker and made forward in a hobbled sprint.
The door to the south compound burst open, and Parker came out carrying Kleet. The lion was losing more blood than was healthy, and as they’d moved through the building, Kleet had become progressively weaker, half stumbling, half dragging his leg behind him.
Whipping rain thrashed the compound. A broiling sky showed clouds and lightning racing overhead like galloping horses moving for the horizon. The rain hit them in bursts, drenching them immediately so that the blood on Kleet’s jumpsuit thinned from arterial red to rusty orange.
“Man, I hate rain,” Kleet gasped bitterly. “I don’ wanna die in the rain.”
Parker pulled him on.
The truck was a FEMA appropriated M939 series 5-tonner. It stood in the center of the rainstorm, rain ricocheting off it. Parker dragged the ever-weakening Kleet toward it, rain hacking into his head and eye.
“You’re not dying today, Kleet, not today,” he muttered.
“I… like your style… Parker, but… you ain’t no doctor. I know the score. Without a hospital, I… is gonna bleed out.”
They reached the truck, and Parker was grateful to lean Kleet against it to get some respite from his weight. He fumbled beneath the wheel arch of the front tire. His hand settled on the key just as the ricocheting rain was replaced by bullets. A line of MP5 slugs from marshals who had burst from another door into the compound, tore up the dirt in muddy splatters. A stitch of bullets sewed itself across the door of the truck as Parker ducked behind the vehicle, dragging Kleet down with him.
The marshals were running and firing toward them. Parker aimed at one and took out his legs; Kleet fired with his Beretta, but he didn’t have the strength to aim accurately and his bullets smashed into the wall of the administration block.
The two marshals split, firing as they moved. Bullets tanged around them with ear-shattering closeness and sparks stung Parker’s cheeks. The marshals were trying to outflank them and, through the fizzing rain and from the low position, Parker was finding it almost impossible to get a bead on the running men.
It came as a complete surprise when a pistol dug into the left side of his face. Had there been another marshal he hadn’t seen while he’d been concentrating on the first two? He had to turn his head fully.
Kleet was sticking the gun in his cheek.
“Wha…?”
“I know you ain’t gonna leave me unless I make you, man. Get out now. Take the truck; let me shoot their asses. Give you the time to go…”
Bullets thudded into the truck. Glass shattered and crashed down, the sound almost indistinguishable from the heavy rain.
“I can’t…”
“Don’t give me that shit, man. Get in the truck, or I will fucking kill you now.”
Parker couldn’t believe Kleet was willing to sacrifice himself. The ultimate gang criminal, with all the social conscience of a dog with distemper digging up the White House rose garden.
“Man, don’t look at me like that, with that one stupid eye. If’n I wasn’t dying anyway, I’d be getting the fuck out of here wid you, but there’s no sense in us both checking out. Right? Now go.”
Parker swallowed his argument, hearing the truth in the man’s words. Even if he got Kleet out, the man had lost too much blood to be saved by Parker. And he knew this gang leader well enough to know that he’d rather die than go back to that cell.
“Just take these assholes down. All of them.”
Parker nodded, his lips set. “I will.”
As Parker began crawling backwards, Kleet rolled onto his front and began firing his two pistols at the marshals, who were now only twenty yards away, if that. Kleet’s shots remained inaccurate, but they still made the officers dive sideways for cover. One went behind a pyramid of oil drums, the other rolling to a wire cage filled with recycled metal. The cover gave them the ability to bob and fire as Kleet’s bullets crashed against their hiding places.
Parker crawled out from behind the truck and tried the cab door. It was locked. More time was wasted while he fumbled the key into the lock in the downpour. He had to wipe rivulets of water out of his eye as it ran in sheets from his hair and over his forehead. With the door open at last, he climbed up into the cab and fumbled the key into the ignition slot on the flat green dash.
The engine roared to throaty life, shaking the cab. More glass exploded around him as the marshals stopped trying to neutralize Kleet and concentrated on Parker and the truck.
As the truck roared forward, his foot hard on the gas, Parker hoped that Kleet would have the sense to roll clear and surrender.
The machine was a good one, solid and reliable. It reached a reasonable speed in five seconds as Parker turned it around, broadsiding the marshals and clipping the oil drums with a mighty clang. The marshals had dived for cover, but one of the drums smashed into one of them, sending him sprawling in the mud.
In the huge side mirrors, Parker saw Kleet rise painfully to one knee now that he had no cover, emptying his magazine at the recycling cage. As his Beretta ran out of ammunition, the truck tore through the cage, twisting metal, cans, and garbage. He didn’t see what happened to the marshal.
Machine gun fire from a different direction clattered into the truck. The mirror on the far side of the cab shattered, and Parker knew it meant that more had come from the administration block and were firing at him as he headed around the side of the building, following the signs to the prison exit. The last he saw of Kleet in the mirror was the gang leader falling backwards into the mud, arms splayed. Parker had no idea if Kleet had been shot or if he’d fainted from blood loss, but he had no time to go back and check. The man was lost either way, and had been as soon as he’d taken those shots.
It was time to put the hammer down.
The compound gates came up much quicker than Parker was expecting. The windshield of the truck was running with streams of rain, and he still hadn’t worked out how to start the wipers. So, when the walls and gates ahead were lit by a huge skittering of lightning, and the boom of thunder tore through the truck’s shot-out side windows, Parker realized he had only seconds before he reached them.
The windshield fell apart as it was strafed from off-center fire. Parker had already ducked as the muzzle flashes lit up. The cab sang with tortured metal and another burst of bullets rattled into the metal surrounding him.
Parker kept his hands on the wheel and crunched down on the gas, the engine protesting like a monster from the depths.
Lightning crackled overhead with attendant thunder. Parker heard the front of the truck smack into the gates and sail through easily with all the momentum its five tons had mustered. He heard the gates clattering behind him, leaving bullets flying past the cab as the truck powered past the officers and marshals who were still shooting.
Parker risked a look over the dash.
Now out of the compound, he could see another short road heading toward an outer perimeter fence, and another set of chain-link gates and the forested hills beyond. He squinted into the distance, rain coming in to drench him and irritating his one eye so he had to shield himself from the pelting water.
What Parker saw ahead gave him the first pause he’d had since getting out of his cell.
Calhoun was the easiest to recognize. Her barrel chest and hairbun identified her in her army nurse uniform. The two figures next to her were undoubtedly Castillo and Rodgers. All three were kneeling on the road, directly in front of the chainlink gates which came next. Blocking his exit. Their hands were clasped to the back of their heads. Behind each kneeling figure was a FEMA soldier holding an MP5 against their skulls.
Parker had four seconds to make up his mind as he slowed the truck. Stop, or drive through?
Before he had a chance to choose, though, Calhoun looked up, wind and rain whipping at
her body, her face a mass of cuts and bruises. She had been beaten hard. Her nose was bleeding as if broken.
Blood decorated her like warpaint.
Their eyes met, and she was staring right into Parker’s soul.
Don’t stop. Don’t make this all for nothing. Make it count.
Calhoun roared, reached up, and took the barrel of the MP5 in her hands, taking the FEMA soldier by surprise. Instinctively, he squeezed the trigger and Calhoun flopped forward into the mud.
Parker screamed his rage into the storm and pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
26
Ava had explained her plan to Sara in the Blazer as they’d headed toward Seelyville through the storm. Sara had listened with increasing incredulity. It was daring and it was borderline insane, but it might just work.
Still, Sara had to mentally slap herself back to reality a few times as doubts crept into her mind. The last time she had tried something along the lines of what Ava was proposing, everyone had died. But as she felt the weight of the magnum in her hands, she also knew that risks had to be taken—otherwise, the world would never change. If they could free her father from the Council, he would be the man to lead a revolution.
David and Sammi were quiet as they drove. Sara knew that Sammi shooting Ralph had probably ended their lives as they knew them—especially in the area north and west of Terre Haute. Sara thought grimly about where she herself would have put the bullet if their roles had been reversed with Sammi, with that man threatening Ava, but Sammi was not a killer.
That was the real measure of the gulf between people like David and Sammi, and Sara and Ava. They had made their choice long ago, to use their talents and skills for the preservation of life. Understanding how different they were from her and Ava, Sara felt a fraud, like she’d been playing at the healing role out of self-indulgence. Gazing into her own navel because she’d lost one battle so one-sidedly.
But while David and Sammi might have been great at healing the sick, Sara knew there was another question to be answered: Who was going to heal the country?
911: The Complete Series Page 68
