Kill Chain

by Meg Gardiner

  Motionless, he stared at her. Gulls circled in the sky. The stacking crane lumbered along its tracks and stopped above him.

  “Untie my mother,” he said.

  I stepped into the container, knelt at Rio’s side, and removed Dad’s belt from her ankles. “I don’t have the key to the handcuffs. This’ll have to do.”

  Rio slid her hands under her butt so they were in front of her. “Frigid hole.”

  I stepped back outside. “Let Georgie go.”

  Christian untangled his fingers from her ponytail and pushed her away. She took an unsteady step and looked at him, as if questioning her freedom.

  “Georgie, climb down,” I called.

  “Come on, hon,” Dad said.

  She took another uncertain step, but a racket of metal and cables distracted her. She glanced up as the crane lowered its latching mechanism. For a second she seemed to think it was coming down to grab her. Instead it settled over the container next to the one she and Christian were standing on. The mechanism’s hooks slid home.

  Christian nudged the gun against her head. “Get on.”

  She looked at him, horrified. “What?”

  “Get on the crane.”

  Dad and I both moved at the same time. “No!”

  Christian pushed her onto the latching mechanism, now hooked solidly to the container like a giant hand. She sat down, grabbed hold of a metal strut, and started crying. With the whir of motors, the rigging cables retracted and the whole thing lifted into the air, carrying her into the sky on top of the container.

  Christian watched the container swing fifty feet into the air. The crane rolled into action, crawling past us toward the dock, carrying the container and Georgie overhead. She was crying loudly.

  “Kit!” she yelled.

  My breathing faltered. God, don’t fall off. If she held on, the crane would bear her over the top of the stack, across the tarmac, and set her down in the loading area. Then if she moved quickly, she could climb down before the latching mechanism retracted on its rigging cables.

  Rio’s lips parted. She stared at her son. “Why did you do that?”

  Christian stepped to the edge of the container and jumped down a level onto the one below. His feet rang on the metal. He walked to the edge, eight feet above the alley, and surveyed us.

  Rio stood up. Her face was livid. “Christian, we need her. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  His coat swirled in the wind. “What did you say to me?”

  “What is fucking wrong with you? Go get her back.”

  “Excuse me? What is wrong with me?”

  He jumped from the top of the container to the ground. He hit hard and straightened.

  At the end of the alley, beyond the spot where it dead-ended at a rusting blue container, we heard an engine. Metal squealed along metal, and at the bottom of the container two tines appeared. The container rose off the ground, a backup horn beeped and a forklift reversed down the alley, carrying the container away. Yellow lights spun off the asphalt.

  Christian walked toward us. “What is wrong with me?”

  Rio flicked her shackled wrists at him. “Stop it. Settle down and go get the girl.”

  He kept coming. “Wrong?”

  He lifted his gun, pointed it at Rio’s head, and squeezed the trigger.

  There was a hard snap. Rio jumped, eyes popping.

  The gun had misfired. Her face went ashen as she realized what Christian had just done.

  He stepped back, eyes on the pistol. “No.”

  He pulled on the slide, trying to rack it, but his left thumb was grotesquely swollen. He looked sweaty, and so pale that the red sun seemed to sink through his skin to illuminate his veins.

  Dad stepped toward him. Christian straight-armed the gun at him.

  “I’ll do it, it’s loaded, fuck off, old man, fuck off.”

  His eyes were burning. Dad stopped dead.

  Rio bolted. Hands manacled, she sprinted for freedom down the alley. Christian spun.

  “No. No.”

  He lit out after her, fumbling with the pistol. She cut between containers and ducked out of sight, heading in the direction of the dock. He followed, yelling, “Stop.”

  The forklift carried the container out of the stack and angled out of sight. On the tarmac I saw Jesse’s pickup.

  Dad said, “About damned time.”

  I ran toward the truck. Faintly I heard sirens. More faintly I heard a child’s sobbing. I couldn’t bear it. Waving at Jesse, I pointed and yelled, “Georgie!” His head swiveled and his face went stark. The crane was rolling through the stack. He put the truck in gear, spun the wheel, and took off in the direction it was headed.

  I heard a man’s voice, rough and shocked. “Jesus, how’d she get up there?”

  It was the forklift driver. He had set down the rusty blue container and stood in the open door of the cab, staring in dismay.

  I ran out of the alley onto the tarmac. “Can you shut off that crane?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at it. “Take a minute, but I’ll get it done.”

  The crane rolled out of the stack and headed toward the loading zone a hundred yards away. I cut toward it.

  The driver shouted, “Holy shit. Don’t.”

  I spun. Christian was climbing on the forklift, gun aimed at the driver. He barked, “Out.”

  The driver scrambled from the cab. Christian got in, slammed the door, and put the forklift in gear.

  He was going after Rio.

  Jesse saw it too clearly. Georgie clung like a limpet to the crane’s hoisting gear as it carried the container through the evening sky to the loading zone, where containers that had been removed from the stack sat on the ground. She was hanging on for her life.

  At the edge of his vision he saw Rio run out of the stack, hands cuffed, black hair tumbling from her bun, fur coat flapping. For the weight of the fur and the strictures of the handcuffs, she was making tracks. She looked back over her shoulder, face panic-stricken.

  Christian was coming after her with the forklift. The thing couldn’t go fast, but it could definitely overtake a woman running in spike-heeled boots. Christian poured on the gas. Smoke roared from the exhaust pipe.

  Jesse stared. Fucking hell.

  Rio aimed for the loading zone. The containers there were lined up about four feet apart, which meant she would have enough room to cut between them, but the forklift wouldn’t.

  The crane carrying Georgie reached the loading zone, stopped, and lowered the container to the ground. Rio headed straight for it. So did the forklift. The crane’s hoisting gear unclamped. Georgie stood up and picked her way toward the edge.

  She had to get off. If she didn’t, eventually she was bound to fall or get caught in the rigging. It was a death trap. He had to do something, but he couldn’t possibly get her down. His throat closed up. He kept driving.

  He passed Rio, running like the world champion whore sprinter, and barreled toward the container. Georgie scampered to the edge of the hoisting gear. With a huge breath and an amazing reservoir of courage, she jumped.

  Running toward the loading zone, I gasped, seeing Georgie leap. She hit the ground hard and smacked down onto all fours.

  Rio made a beeline for her, planning either to grab her, throw her in Christian’s path, or use her as a human shield. Jesse was driving toward her from an angle, trying to get between her and the forklift. Christian was aiming to run Rio down or gore her with one of those giant tines, and he didn’t care that Georgie was in his way. All Jesse could hope to do was block him, and perhaps get Georgie in the truck in time to escape. I ran as hard as I could, but with inadequate speed, no breath, and the sound of screaming inside my head.

  They were almost a hundred yards away from me, and Georgie was still on all fours. She had hurt herself in the fall.

  Behind me, Dad shouted, “Kit.”

  He ran toward me, limping heavily, face torn. I slowed and he caught up.

  “We have to do
something,” I said.

  Jesse saw Georgie struggle to stand up. Rio and the forklift were coming full steam from the right. Georgie was ahead on his left. He hit the brakes.

  He slammed forward against his seat belt, the ABS shook the wheel, and the truck shrieked to a stop. Georgie was on the ground directly to his left, shielded. Rio was sprinting from the right.

  “Get in,” he shouted.

  She pushed to her feet, took a step, and stumbled, eyes jerking wide with pain. She stammer-stepped toward the truck and opened the back door.

  “Come on,” he said.

  She climbed in, pulled the door shut, and yelled, “Jesse!” He looked. Rio was heading for him. The forklift was right behind her.

  “No. Oh, God,” I said.

  Rio ran toward the pickup. It looked as if she were planning to jump in the cargo bed and ride to freedom as Jesse hauled Georgie clear. She turned and looked back over her shoulder.

  “Holy living Christ,” Dad said.

  Christian rammed her.

  The force of the blow threw her backward. She flew against the side of the pickup. The forklift plowed forward and, with the sound of tearing metal, the tines impaled Jesse’s truck.

  Christian bashed the truck into a container, and the whole package stopped in a heap. Dad and I ran toward it. Sirens were audible behind us. A higher-pitched sound poured out ahead. Rio, screaming.

  She was pinned against the cargo bed of the truck. Christian put the forklift into reverse, backed up, and simultaneously raised the lift. The truck rose in the air. Rio dangled, legs kicking. Christian put the forklift in gear, swung it clear of the containers, and rumbled across the tarmac toward the dock.

  Jesse felt the truck lift into the air. The frame groaned as Christian swung around the containers and accelerated across the tarmac, carrying them along ten feet off the ground. Getting smashed against the container had bent the frame of the truck, meaning it was impaled at an angle, one tine six feet through the cargo bed, the other four feet through the back door. It had come halfway across the cab and nearly gored Georgie. She was scrunched in a ball on the backseat, staring at it.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I think so.” Her voice was tiny.

  He looked through the back window. Rio was plastered against the side of the truck, hair snaking in the wind, ribs smashed, fighting with her bare hands to rip free from the forklift.

  In the cab Christian’s eyes were dry, as though everything inside him had been consumed to dust and the only thing holding him together was his frenzy at the woman writhing in front of him.

  Rio threw back her head and screamed. Georgie’s chest heaved.

  “Don’t look,” Jesse said. “Climb up here.”

  She scrambled into the front seat. Her face was pale, her eyes eerily big. He held out his arms and she fell into them, shaking.

  He couldn’t hide the urgency of their situation. If Christian couldn’t crush his mother to death, he’d drive off the dock and drown her. They had to get out before he pitched them straight into Los Angeles harbor. But if they tried to go out the front doors they’d die under the wheels of the forklift.

  “We have to get through the back window and jump off the tailgate,” he said.

  “How are you going to do that? Do you need help?”

  Oh, God bless this child. He hugged her tight.

  “Go,” he said.

  “He’s going to drive off the dock,” I said.

  Dad was breathing as if he’d run a marathon. He was dry as a bone, face gray, eyes pinned on the awful spectacle a hundred yards ahead. With every step he took, he grimaced.

  “Evan,” he said, his voice rasping, “I didn’t mean to keep Georgia’s existence from you. I didn’t know about her until last year.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  I seemed to watch this as if in a dream, where I tried to run but my legs fought through waist-high sand. Behind me came the wail of a police siren. I glanced back. At the container stack, the forklift driver was waving down a squad car. Ahead of us, there were two hundred yards of open ground between Christian and the edge of the dock, where gantry cranes were loading a cargo ship. He was pulling away from us. Dad and I weren’t going to make it.

  Georgie climbed into the backseat, fighting the increasing tilt as Christian raised the truck higher on the lift. The pickup bounced, squealing like a stuck pig. She squeezed around the steel tine that had pierced the back door.

  “That’s it, you got it, now slide the window open,” Jesse said.

  Rio was flailing, hair flying, screeching like nothing he’d ever heard. Georgie bit her lip and pulled on the window.

  “It’s stuck,” she said.

  “Keep trying.”

  She hauled on it, small hands digging into the latch. He saw that with the frame of the truck bent by the impact against the container, the window frame was out of true.

  “Hang on.”

  He hauled himself between the seats and tumbled into the back. He reached down to the floor, trying to grab the tire iron, and couldn’t stretch far enough.

  “Georgie, under the seat there’s a tire iron. Get it. I have to break the window.”

  She squirreled her arm under the seat and came up with it. They were a hundred yards from the edge of the dock.

  “Turn away and cover your face,” he said.

  She curled up, hands over her eyes, and he began hacking at the window. It was thick automotive safety glass, tougher than hell. He hammered, two blows, three, and only chipped a hole in it. The dock was fifty yards away. Dockworkers shouted at Christian and dashed out of their way. The massive cargo ship loomed off to one side. Beyond it, the water pinged with sunlight. He hacked harder, saw the hole enlarge, kept whacking. Looked again, and his hopes crashed.

  They were at the dock.

  38

  I felt it as if I had vomited up all my nightmares. Rio screamed. Dockworkers scattered. Going full steam, bearing the truck in the air like a grotesque sacrifice, the forklift hit the heavy wooden bumper at the edge of the dock. It bucked upward, its front wheels leaped over the bumper, and with an enormous crash it slammed down again.

  Stopped dead.

  The back end sat on the dock, tires hard against the wood. The front end hung over the water, wheels spinning madly. The engine screamed. Dad and I ran toward it.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Front wheel drive,” Dad said. “And the forklift’s so damn heavy that all the weight’s in the back end, even with the truck . . .”

  I nearly peed my pants. Even with the truck sagging over the water on the tines. The force of the sudden stop had twisted it so that the front tine was through the door only by a few inches now.

  Sirens blared behind me, lights a red pinwheel across the wet ground. Out on the water, a police boat cut a white wake across the harbor. In the backseat of the truck, Jesse was hacking at the window with what looked like the tire iron.

  I ran, heedless, toward the forklift. Fifty yards from it Dad yanked me to a stop.

  “Christian’s armed,” he said.

  “With a jammed gun and a bum hand.” I tried to shake loose.

  He held me back. “No, Evan. Don’t count on him getting it wrong again.”

  “We can’t just stand here.”

  Trapped near the rear tine against the cargo bed of the truck, tangled in the machinery of the forklift, Rio had stopped screaming. She was clawing at her own body, as if hoping to tear out enough chunks to give herself room to breathe. Blood coated her chin and soaked her chest.

  Above on the deck of the ship men rushed along the railing, pointing and shouting. Christian gunned the engine, overrevving it, and kept working the lift. A couple of longshoremen ran down the dock in his direction.

  Dad put up a hand. “He has a gun.”

  The men stopped. They looked across the tarmac at the police cars and backed away, one calling, “What can we do?” The other ran back up
the dock, shouting at other workers who were hustling this way. “Get a hoist. And chains—we gotta tie down the back end of the forklift.”

  Dad stared at the truck. “We don’t have time.”

  “What?”

  He pointed. “The truck’s not stable.”

  As if to confirm that, the pickup creaked on the tines. Christian worked the lift, lowering the truck and then jerking it up, fifteen feet off the ground, trying to pitch it into the murky water far below. The truck moaned and tilted farther in the front. Georgie squealed.

  Jesse dropped the tire iron and began trying to shoulder the window loose from the frame. Finally he slammed it so hard the whole thing fell out, crunching into the cargo bed.

  Rio moaned and kicked, head lolling. “Help me.”

  Christian threw open the door of the cab. “Why won’t you fall?”

  He jumped down and ran to the front of the forklift. Seeing the gun in his hand, Jesse pushed Georgie down out of sight.

  Christian waved his arms. “What is wrong with me? You won’t die; that’s what’s wrong.”

  Rio stopped kicking and hung limp, staring at him. He jammed the gun in his belt, climbed on the front of the forklift, and jumped into the bed of the truck. The pickup groaned at his weight.

  “Oh, Christ,” Dad said.

  Christian bent over Rio, snaked his hands into her hair, and pulled her head back, forcing her to stare up at him. “I’m dead. That’s what’s wrong with me.”

  Feebly she raised her hands, perhaps to fend him off, perhaps in supplication. He bent over her, teeth clenched, gripping her hair. Though he moved his lips to speak again, all that emerged was a moan and a long thread of drool.

  I stepped toward him. Dad grabbed my arm, but this time I shook him off.

  “Christian,” I said, “they’re coming for you. You only have two choices.”

  He looked at me, his face stricken, and then at the police cars driving across the tarmac and at the longshoremen lining up at a safe distance. He shook his head. And he heard a sound in the cab of the truck. It was the click of a gun being cocked.