Skystorm (Ryan Decker)

by Steven Konkoly

  “Oh yeah,” said Mazzie, activating the drone in her hand.

  The quadcopter zipped through the door and took a circuitous route to the Mercedes SUV, where it hovered next to the shattered passenger-side windows for a few seconds. The ringing in Harlow’s ears slowly let up, replaced by distant police sirens.

  “How are we looking, Mazzie?” asked Harlow. “I think we’re running out of time with the police.”

  “Everyone looks pretty dead,” she said. “I really don’t like doing this BDA thing.”

  Harlow squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll be done with this soon.”

  “God, I hope so,” said Mazzie.

  Pam’s voice boomed through the ringing. “All clear, Decker!”

  “Taking out the camera!” he said, followed by a single gunshot that startled all of them. “On the move! Headed for the tank!”

  “Right behind you!” said Pam through the door, before turning to the rest of them. “Katie. Harlow. Watch our left side. We’ll make our way to Decker.”

  “Let’s go,” said Pam, leading them into the garage.

  Harlow swept her sector with Katie as they converged on Decker, who had slowed down so the group could catch up.

  “Who has the keys to the tank?” asked Decker.

  “I do,” said Harlow.

  “It’ll be a tight fit, but we won’t last thirty seconds in one of the unarmored SUVs.”

  Police sirens echoed through the open parking structure, but the sound felt distant, as though the responding units had focused entirely on the Sunset Boulevard side of the building. Something about the police response didn’t feel right.

  “Josh. Are you seeing any police units on Holloway Drive?” she asked.

  Joshua scrolled through the feeds with his tablet while they walked briskly toward the tank, which sat among their personal vehicles in a section of assigned parking spaces.

  “No response yet,” he said. “Just our new friends.”

  “There’s something wrong with that,” said Harlow, stopping the group in its tracks.

  “What do you mean?” said Decker.

  “I mean the police would seal off all of the exits in an active-shooter situation. Especially one with the amount of gunfire the office across from ours would have reported,” said Harlow. “Something doesn’t add up.”

  “I need more than that to work with,” said Decker, before continuing toward the armored Land Cruiser. “The parking garage is our only real way out at this point.”

  “I know. I’m just saying there’s more than meets the eye with this,” said Harlow. “It’s almost like they’re coordinating with the police.”

  “How would that even be possible?” asked Sandra.

  “Remember when Gunther Ross and Harcourt tracked us down using the city’s camera network?” asked Harlow, fishing for the tank’s keys in her pockets.

  “Reeves tracked us down at the same time,” said Joshua. “Pretty slick. Everyone knew where to find us.”

  “Exactly,” said Harlow, pressing the key fob in her hand and opening the Land Cruiser. “Well, we need to think of that as the lite version of what APEX can pull off.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we have this baby,” said Decker. “Who’s driving?”

  “I am,” said Pam, headed for the driver’s side. “But this baby won’t do us much good if they block the exit!”

  “We have a secret weapon. Garza,” said Decker, as if he’d just solved all their problems.

  Harlow didn’t know what to say, and judging by everyone else’s reaction, she wasn’t alone.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Dave Garcia, a.k.a. “Garza,” took another peek at the stretch of road connected to the SunBell Towers parking garage. Expensive cars and SUVs lined the two-lane street, packed tightly together. Showing up late had finally paid off, thanks to a few too many shots of tequila after far too many cervezas at one of his favorite watering holes. A small, sloppy miracle given the circumstances. But there he stood, peeking through a dense palm bush at the edge of a church parking lot. The only thing standing between his friends and what looked like a guaranteed firing squad.

  He’d already identified three of the four hostile vehicles described to him by Joshua. The fourth was out of sight on Hancock Avenue, a street that ran perpendicular to Holloway Drive, directly in front of the parking garage exit. Joshua had somehow run the license plate of one of the vehicles and determined it was a rental, which strongly suggested it was unarmored. The same assumption had been extended to the rest of the SUVs. He didn’t want to think about what would most assuredly happen if that hypothesis proved false.

  Garza studied the men positioned around the exit. They moved like professionals, and according to Joshua, they packed some serious firepower. They’d be armored up, too, so Garza was looking at headshots. Not a problem if he could get close enough, which would be the biggest challenge, from what he could tell.

  That and the simultaneous response from the three cars presumably filled with heavily armed, well-trained APEX operators. But if he moved quickly and shot accurately, Garza figured they had a reasonable chance of pulling this off. Reasonable relative to the prescribed situation. Objectively, their probability of success still fell somewhere between shitty and bad. Not exactly his preferred odds but the best he could wrangle under the circumstances.

  Garza removed one of his noise-canceling AirPods and pushed the other as snugly into place as possible, letting his ears adjust to the dual input. Police sirens wailed in one ear—muted but still present in the other.

  “You ready?” said Garza.

  “We’re all set,” said Decker. “You?”

  “Yeah. I just updated my will,” said Garza. “Should be enough to cover the funerals.”

  “Dude. You’re on speakerphone,” said Decker.

  “Oh. Shit. Sorry about that,” said Garza. “We should be fine.”

  “Great pep talk,” said Pam.

  “It is what it is,” said Garza. “I’m ready to kick this off when—hold on.”

  A police cruiser screeched onto Holloway Drive, a block to the east, and sped in his direction with the full siren and light show.

  “I have a police car headed westbound down Holloway,” said Garza. “Looks like he didn’t get the APEX memo.”

  “This should be interesting,” said Decker.

  “Sure. If a dead cop qualifies as interesting,” said Garza.

  “We can’t let them do that,” said Harlow.

  Garza ran a quick analysis around her statement, coming up with no solution that solved both problems. The only guaranteed way to save the police officer was to take immediate, drastic action to keep him from interfering with the APEX operation. A move that would almost assuredly get himself killed or locked away for years.

  “Guys. It’s either escape or warn the cop,” he said, readying his pistol. “I need to know right away.”

  He edged through the bushes during the long pause that ensued.

  “Warn him off and get out of here,” said Decker. “We’ll ride this out.”

  “Warn him,” said Pam, followed by a chorus of agreement.

  “This is what I get for being late,” he said, stepping into the open, his pistol hidden behind his leg.

  “Hold up! Hold up!” said Joshua. “Their jackets say DEA!”

  Garza glanced from the oncoming police cruiser to the parking garage exit. Sure enough, two of the windbreakers now displayed bright-yellow letters: DEA. One of the operatives unzipped a panel on the remaining unmarked jacket, exposing the same letters.

  “I need a decision in the next two seconds,” said Garza. “These aren’t DEA agents.”

  “Understood. Stand down,” said Decker. “They wouldn’t go through the trouble if they planned on killing a cop.”

  “Plans change,” said Garza.

  “Stand down and recalibrate yourself for the original plan,” said Decker.

  The cruiser tore past, leaving Garza in a trail
of dust from the bone-dry street. He quickly retreated into the bushes to watch the exchange unfold.

  “It’s out of my hands now.”

  The cruiser skidded to a halt about thirty feet from the parking garage exit ramp, at the end of a designated bus stop zone. A lone police officer quickly got out and crouched behind the vehicle’s hood with his pistol drawn. One of the fake DEA agents took off running in his direction, a badge held high. He waved his other hand in a frantic gesture to get the cop to leave. Garza had a bad feeling about this. Even from this distance, he could see that the guy carried some kind of mean-looking piece of hardware under his jacket.

  “This isn’t looking good,” said Garza.

  “The police officer hasn’t raised his weapon. They’re just talking,” said Decker. “It’s under control. This is how they managed to keep the police out of the building and off Holloway Drive. They must be impersonating federal agents to seal off the area.”

  Garza ignored the comment and focused on the police officer’s tenuous situation. The guy had no idea what he’d stumbled into. Remaining mostly concealed by the palm fronds, Garza raised his pistol and aligned its sights with the APEX operative. A little payback was the least he could offer the dead cop’s family. He’d taken all the slack out of the trigger, ready to fire the moment this went sideways, when the officer got back in the cruiser and sped away.

  “Told you it was under control,” said Decker.

  “‘Under control,’ my ass,” said Garza. “I’m on the move. Time to get this over with.”

  “Copy that. We’ll time your approach,” said Decker.

  Garza returned the pistol to its concealed holster on his right hip and tucked the flap of his shirt behind the holster so he’d have immediate access. He picked up the tray of froufrou coffees he’d grabbed at one of Harlow’s favorite coffee shops as a peace offering for stumbling in late, along with his backpack, which he positioned over the exposed pistol.

  Satisfied that he looked innocuous enough under the circumstances, Garza stepped onto the sidewalk and started walking toward the parking garage, bopping his head as though he were lost in music—and somehow couldn’t hear the three hundred cop sirens blaring through the neighborhood. Not entirely implausible. He’d seen people walk into honking cars while staring at their phones.

  The team seated in the dark-green Range Rover directly across from the bus stop zone must have debated what to do with him. Garza had closed over two-thirds of the distance to the parking garage exit ramp before one of the fake DEA agents responded.

  The man waved his hands above his head a few times before pointing at the letters emblazoned in yellow across the front of his jacket. Garza nodded, pretending not to hear him. The guy started repeatedly screaming, “This is a DEA operation. Get out of here.” Garza walked directly at him, pretending to remove an AirPod from his empty ear.

  “What’s going on?” said Garza, glancing around like he’d just heard the sirens for the first time.

  “DEA operation! I need you out of here. Now,” the man said.

  “Holy shit. I’m on the sixth floor,” said Garza, holding out the tray of coffee like it counted for something.

  Tires squealed inside the parking garage, and the two men behind him stacked up against the salmon-colored brick wall next to the exit ramp, their stubby, compact rifles no longer concealed. The operative closest to the exit had a grenade launcher attached to his rifle. Shit. He hadn’t expected that. Regular grenades—yes. Rifle grenades on the streets of LA—no. If APEX brought more than one of those to this show, their shitty-to-bad odds just dropped to fat chance.

  “Should I, like, wait across the street or something?” said Garza, easing the backpack’s strap off his shoulder and into his hand.

  “Just get the hell out of here,” said the operative, his attention oddly torn between the APEX firing squad crouched next to the wall and Garza’s terrible performance.

  “How far is safe?” said Garza, kneeling to lay the coffee tray and backpack on the grass.

  The driver-only vehicle, parked on the other side of Holloway Drive, roared to life, headed exactly where he had predicted. Moments after that, the exit ramp’s orange-and-white-striped security gate lifted. The operative suddenly turned his back on Garza, barking at him as he rushed toward his colleagues. This was almost too easy.

  “I don’t care how far—”

  Garza’s first bullet punched through the nape of the man’s neck, permanently ending the conversation. Before the operative’s knees had even buckled, Garza took two quick shots at grenade-launcher guy’s head. The grenade dropped from his hand the moment his brains splattered the wall. Garza justifiably focused too much attention on the condition of the grenade, which mercifully appeared unarmed, allowing the second operative to snap off a shot—before another dark-red stain decorated the wall.

  He muttered a few choice words at the agonizingly sharp pain in his left shin and shifted his aim to the BMW X7 that had just blocked the street in front of the parking garage exit. He fired a tight three-bullet pattern through the open driver’s-side window, relieved that he didn’t have to put their theory about unarmored SUVs to the test. Garza took off for the BMW, pushing through the pain in his leg as much as the bullet’s damage would physically allow.

  “Four hostiles down. The ramp is clear,” said Garza. “One of these guys had a grenade launcher. Just in case you’re curious.”

  “That’s not good,” said Decker.

  “No. It’s not,” said Garza. “I recommend a dynamic shoot and scoot. Emphasis on the shoot.”

  “Got it,” said Decker. “Did you get hit?”

  “I’m fine,” said Garza, grunting through every step.

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  “You do your job; I’ll do mine,” he said, raising his pistol.

  Firing on the move, Garza emptied his magazine at the green Range Rover in a desperate attempt to buy back some of that time the leg wound had cost him.

  The jacketed hollow-point bullets shattered the side windows and punched through metal, momentarily convincing its occupants to seek cover inside the SUV. The hastily fired volley bought him enough time to yank the dead driver out and get behind the wheel before the APEX operators got their shit together.

  He ducked below the dashboard as several bullets struck the windshield and bloodied passenger window, spraying glass dust and fragments through the cabin. Raising his head just enough to see through the spiderweb-cracked windshield, Garza shifted the vehicle into drive and floored the accelerator—barreling straight for the green Range Rover.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The BMW vanished from Decker’s peripheral vision, Garza finally on the move.

  “Here we go!” said Pam.

  Decker braced the business end of the rifle against the top of the SUV’s door. He had to make quick work of the two remaining vehicles, or they might not make it out of the neighborhood. The armored Land Cruiser could take a beating, but it was primarily designed to protect its occupants from gunfire, shrapnel, and the near-blast effects of an improvised explosive device. A rifle grenade hit against the side armor would be survivable. A hit to one of the windows would likely kill or injure everyone inside.

  “Slow turn,” said Decker. “Then gun it.”

  “I heard you the first three times,” she said.

  The Land Cruiser eased forward, Pam immediately starting a lazy turn through the intersection. By the time he had a full view of Holloway Drive, the silver Nissan Armada originally parked about seventy-five yards down the street had traversed half of that distance, headed toward them at full speed. Decker tracked the driver’s head with the rifle’s illuminated reticle while the Land Cruiser turned, stitching several holes in its windshield—until the Armada abruptly veered into a parked car.

  Before he could even think about the next threat, Pam violently accelerated the Land Cruiser. “What the—” he started, his expletive-laced rant cut short by a black SUV th
at momentarily blocked his entire view as it rocketed past, missing them by inches. Decker glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the massive SUV pile into the concrete barrier protecting the parking garage ramp.

  Garza’s SUV plowed through the green Range Rover’s open driver’s-side doors like they were cardboard flaps and smeared a slow-reacting APEX operative between the two vehicles’ frames. Garza slammed on the brakes and reversed direction before grabbing the MPX submachine gun he’d just noticed in the front passenger footwell.

  After double-parking next to the Range Rover, he flipped the MPX’s selector switch to “Automatic” and fired a few short bursts into the green SUV with one hand. When no immediate return fire lashed back at him, Garza twisted in the seat and shouldered the weapon, expending the bulk of the MPX’s thirty-round magazine directly and methodically into the passenger cabin.

  The Land Cruiser pulled parallel to the BMW as he fired the last burst, its wide-open rear passenger door calling Garza’s name. Actually, everyone inside was calling his name. Frantically. He ditched the MPX and slid out of the BMW, building up a little momentum before diving across a sea of laps in the back seat. Bullets smacked into the SUV’s armored shell and bullet-resistant windows as they sped away from the scene.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Pam executed a full-speed right turn onto Westmount Drive—and the incoming gunfire abruptly stopped. They’d done it. Against all odds, they actually escaped the building and made it out of the neighborhood. Now for his next magic trick. More like a miracle. Decker flipped the rifle’s selector switch to “Safe” and placed it between his leg and the door before checking his phone. No new messages from his daughter, Brooklyn, or his parents.

  “They’ll be fine,” said Pam, a little too matter-of-factly.

  Decker reluctantly nodded, placing the phone in one of the cup holders. He understood what she meant with her tone. Focus on what he could control right here and now. Expand outward from there. His first job. Keep everyone in this vehicle alive. They’d been on the road for about thirty seconds, having traveled maybe an eighth of a mile. Not exactly a safe distance—by any measure.