Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Lots of exits, too. The freeways are right over there.”

  “And the train station.” I nodded in the opposite direction. “But the biggest reason I like this branch is that when the armored car rolls up Thursday morning, most of these shops will still be closed. Including this one.” I glanced at the old lady as she bustled about behind the serving counter, clinking plates. “Fewer bystanders.”

  “That’s why you like it. Will Jaeger care if the street is quiet?”

  I shrugged. “We can hope.”

  “Like they say, hope ain’t a plan,” Leo said.

  “Yeah. I’d stake out this branch all day tomorrow if we had the time, on the slim chance I could catch sight of Jaeger or one of his grunts and confirm my guess. But there’s too much to do.”

  “I see somebody else,” Leo said, and I glanced behind me as the familiar apelike figure of Hollis Brant hurried across the street, waving an apologetic hand at a car who’d stopped for him.

  He arrived at our table at the same time as the venerable server, who set down a tureen full of what looked like darkly refried beans, garnished with pine nuts, and a plate of golf-ball-sized spheres of rice.

  “Timing is everything,” Hollis said, beaming at the server.

  Leo spoke to her, and she quickly fetched a third bowl as Hollis settled in. “Pat jook,” Leo told us. “Red bean porridge.”

  “Thank the gods,” Hollis said. “Your man here has had me running all over town since the cock crowed.”

  “Which you’ve heard when?” I said.

  “I’ve not spent my entire life on city streets, you know,” Hollis said, as we tucked into the porridge. It was surprisingly sweet, less like curd than like sugared oats. “The Brant family home near Cullybackey was a long stroll from anything resembling civilization. We kept animals.”

  “I take it back. You’re a man of the soil. Did you find the clothes we need?”

  “After three stops”—he frowned—“and after spending all morning drying the . . .” He spared a glance for the server, who was at the other end of the shop talking on the phone. “The salt water off three thousand tubes of glass.”

  “What about the detour signs?”

  “Curse it, man, I just sat down. I’ve a fellow to see about the signs later tonight.”

  “Detours?” Leo asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said. “Right now I have to call Fain and schedule a dry run for us tomorrow morning. We’ll drive the same route, at the same time of day, and see what that tells us.”

  “Thorough.”

  “No rest for the wicked.” I stood up and put two twenties on the table. “Leo, I’ll be by the apartment tonight. I’ve got a couple of tasks for you and Dez to handle tomorrow.”

  “You know, your grandfather was like this before a job,” Hollis said, in no seeming hurry. “Out-and-out churlish. You would have thought he was angry at the whole world.”

  “But it was when he was happiest. I remember.”

  “Of course you do.”

  I walked outside, sunglasses on despite the overcast day, the brim of my Mariners cap pulled low. I knew what Hollis was getting at. That, like Dono, I was more focused, more myself, when working a score. He wasn’t wrong.

  But I knew something that Hollis didn’t. I’d felt the same precision of thought and action while leading fire teams and entire platoons on missions. It wasn’t committing a crime that brought on that feeling. It was the degree of difficulty. The highest possible stakes. That more than anything made me sharper. Better.

  The idea made me wonder if it might have been the same for my grandfather, if our lives had been reversed. But then Dono could never stomach authority. One of his earliest arrests, at fourteen, was for punching a garda who was giving him shit for loitering outside a pub in Belfast during school hours.

  I was so amused by imagining Dono suffering through basic training that I nearly missed catching a yellow flash of badly peroxided hair, as its owner disappeared into the Prime branch.

  I jaywalked across the street and pretended to browse a selection of Zen garden manuals in the window display of a Japanese bookstore. The block was clear of rusty blue Camaros or two-toned Chevy Tahoes. No burly hulks with goatees, either. And no Jaeger. Had it been someone else with a tragic dye job? I watched the bank at the end of the block out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t want to risk getting closer. They’d seen my face, and they would sure as hell remember it.

  A blond head attached to a tall skinny frame came out of the bank branch and jogged through the crosswalk to the pay parking lot. Gotcha. Even with his jacket zipped up to hide the neck tattoos, it was undeniably the asshole from Jaeger’s crew. He got into a mud-spattered silver Jeep Cherokee and the car pulled out of the lot and up Lane Street before I had a prayer of reading the license plate. The person driving cut a big enough shape that I guessed him for one of the two hulking cousins. Maybe the one with a bruise on his gut from when I’d kicked him down the stairs at Conlee’s townhouse.

  I grinned. Jaeger and I were on parallel tracks. While I’d been scoping out the Prime branch from the comfort of the teahouse, his boys were doing the same from the parking lot. Peroxide had probably gone inside to check out the camera and the guard on duty.

  They were picking their target, and I was willing to bet heavy that Jaeger liked the look of this branch as much as I did.

  Welcome to Seattle, you son of a bitch. I’ll throw you a party you won’t forget.

  Thirty-Seven

  Dawn began to warm the back of my neck through my apartment window as Leo and I laid out items on the dining table. Our PCI—pre-combat inspection. Most of the objects and equipment in front of me would be packed into my ruck.

  The largest item by far was a zippered green nylon travel bag, stuffed so full that its seams showed with the strain. It held Jaeger’s shearling coat, wrapped around a mass of Trumorpha vials. I’d buttoned Jaeger’s fake driver’s license and other personal effects safely in the pocket of the coat. Ready for the cops and their fingerprint analysis, if all went to plan.

  I didn’t have much more to carry, but what I had was ominous. A multi-tool with a three-inch blade. A stun gun about the size of a large remote control. Cable ties. Two black hoods, made by sewing the eye holes shut on ski masks.

  And one of the weapons Leo had liberated from Big Daryll’s arsenal. A Serbu mini-shotgun. Seventeen inches long and loaded with twelve-gauge rubber rounds. The Serbu only held three shots, but I could carry it inside my coat in a makeshift sling without being obvious. My tiny Beretta Nano would be my emergency piece, tucked into an ankle holster.

  Leo’s ruck would hold something more intimidating. He’d opened Dez’s battered roller bag to reveal one of Daryll’s Milkor grenade launchers—insisting with a shrug that the team had a spare—and loaded its six chambers with forty-mil sponge grenades. He’d carry his own small shotgun as well, not that he was likely to need a backup to the giant-bored launcher.

  “The HaverCorp trucks have gun ports,” Leo said with a mean smile. “If one of those shitheads gets within twenty yards, I can put him on his ass.”

  If all went to plan, there wouldn’t be a shot fired. Fain and Daryll would be our advance guard, reconnoitering the streets and banks ahead on our specific route. Rigo and Zeke Caton would tail us. The Chinatown branch of Prime was the likeliest point of engagement, but we couldn’t rule out the possibility that Jaeger would hit us elsewhere, maybe even between banks if he had the means to blow the armored truck open. I didn’t want to be inside that big steel box if Jaeger detonated shape charges on the doors. Fain and his team would close in the instant that the skinhead leader raised his head.

  But before all that, Leo and I had a truck to hijack. Hollis would pick us up in half an hour. By then, we’d have eaten and gone over the contingency plans one last time. Leo had spent part of Wednesday arranging our backup plans.

  He finished his packing, and sat down on the floor to stretch his leg
s while I filled skillets with eggs and bacon.

  “Did you throw in with Fain for the action?” I said.

  He looked at me.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “I know you’ve missed this. Doing what we do.”

  “Kinda. It’s more about having purpose. That’s the real thing, man. It’s not like we’re thrill-seeking. Well, Rigo, maybe. He ain’t happy unless he’s in motion. Daryll, he’s a team player, wherever Fain goes he goes. And Zeke . . .”

  “Zeke likes money.”

  “Yeah. Most of the cash goes to the Rally, but the general gives us a cut from each job if we want it. Zeke always wants it.” Leo leaned to one side, popping his shoulder. “For me, it’s what I can do to give back. If you hadn’t helped me a year ago, I might be dead now. Sure as hell I wouldn’t have found Dez.”

  “I’m glad you did.” Dez had gotten even less sleep than either Leo or me the night before. She’d excused herself before sunrise, saying there was too much energy in the apartment and she would be better burning some of it off. I gave her directions to Top Pot a few blocks away, which would be the day’s first batch of donuts out of the fryers.

  “Damn,” Leo said. “Luce. I saw Luce in the courtroom before they pulled me back to the jail. All this shit happened and I forgot.”

  “Ganz thought having her there might help your case. That was before you went batshit.”

  “Yeah, well. I have to thank her. Are you and she—”

  “No.”

  He grunted. “Okay. Least you’re sure.”

  I dished up the eggs and put the bacon on paper towels to soak up the grease. I put the pan in the sink and filled it with water. Drops hissed and popped into instant steam as they hit the hot metal.

  “She’s getting married,” I said.

  Leo was silent as I wrapped up the bacon, pressed it, unwrapped it again to put the strips on the plates. We ate the food quickly. Our eyes roamed over the gear and weapons, checking and double-checking. The preparations distracted me just fine.

  “Maybe Luce didn’t come to Mercy River only for me,” Leo said at last.

  I’d chased that same thought a dozen times in the past few days. Chased it, batted it around, and finally let it run free. It might be true. It wasn’t going to change anything.

  “Time to go,” I said.

  Rainier Avenue South became a sluggish tributary at a quarter to nine in the morning. I’d heard once that the stoplights were timed to let the north- and southbound vehicles flow at a steady speed, all the way from the valley to Beacon Hill. It never worked out. Too many bus stops that took extra time, too many illegal left turns.

  And occasionally, an armored car about to park where the right-lane traffic had no choice but to go around it.

  Leo and Hollis and I watched the dark blue hulk of the HaverCorp truck wait at the stoplight, a long block south of the Rainier branch of Prime Bank. We waited until it had passed us. Leo and I got out of the Nissan SUV that Hollis was driving. He popped the trunk for us to retrieve our rucks.

  “All set,” Hollis said, mostly to himself.

  “See you soon,” I said as I clicked my ruck into place and tightened its straps. Ready to move very quickly.

  We left him. Leo and I were dressed the same, thanks to Hollis’s shopping trips. Thick navy-blue trousers with matching blue baseball caps and black rubber-soled work shoes and long-sleeved button-down shirts in a neutral brown. Not a precise match for HaverCorp colors, but close enough. If anyone examined us that closely, we had bigger problems than our fashion sense.

  Over the shirts we wore plain coyote-brown windbreakers which Hollis had acquired at a military surplus store. The windbreakers concealed the little shotguns, slung under our left arms for a right-hand draw. I’d taped the stun gun to my belt on the other side. Our clear latex gloves were the only visible giveaway of bad intentions, but those couldn’t be helped.

  Leo had clippered his hair, short enough that his scalp showed pale on the sides of his head. He wore wraparound sunglasses to hide the obvious cast of his eyes. I had glasses as well, but mine weren’t nearly as cool. The overlarge horn-rims would distract from my facial scars. Just two guys off to work.

  Except today’s work required us to assault two security guards who were doing their jobs. Even if our actions would put them out of harm’s way, this was the part of our plan I liked least. The part Dono would have despised.

  We stepped around the long metal sidewalk barrier. Hollis had placed it there before the sun had risen, and another far at the opposite end of the block. The barriers redirected pedestrians to the other side of the five-lane thoroughfare. Not that there were many people walking on these streets, but every edge helped.

  The HaverCorp truck had parked in front of the Prime branch. A line of cars was already jammed up behind it and slowly working their way around. Roughly half the size of a railroad boxcar, the massive truck was too wide for drivers stuck behind it to easily see what might be happening around the sides.

  “Remember the cameras,” Leo said.

  I had. The trucks had exterior cameras that allowed the driver to watch the blind spots to the sides and rear. While the cameras didn’t record what they saw, it would be better not to be spotted approaching. We edged to the right, strolling along the metal-gated windows of a cash-for-jewelry outfit.

  We had covered more than half of the long block between us and the truck. No sign of the hopper, who should be returning to the truck after dropping off half a million in fifties from his first heavy satchel of the day. Where was he? Was there some bureaucratic mix-up? Or was the first drop of the day always this slow?

  “We can’t dawdle,” Leo said, reading my mind.

  “I know.”

  A husky young guard in his HaverCorp blue zip-front emerged from the branch with an empty black satchel gripped in one hand. Thirty paces from us. He glanced our way and saw two blue-collar guys engrossed in conversation, the one in ugly glasses apparently texting away. Keys tapped glass as the bank employee relocked the branch door.

  I saw the rest as if it were in slow motion. The hopper moved to the truck. He reached up and paused while his partner inside pressed a button to unlock the passenger door. He pulled the latch to swing the high door open. We tracked his progress out of the corner of our eyes. Fifteen paces. I pressed send on a text message to Hollis I’d prepped. The hopper lifted the satchel up, and the driver reached across to pull it inside.

  Leo and I pulled the surgical masks from under our baseball caps down over our faces. The hopper was too busy climbing into the truck to notice, turning sideways to awkwardly shuffle his bulk onto his seat.

  The high blare of an air horn from a block away pierced the air like a lance. So loud it verged on painful even at this distance.

  Leo moved. Three lightning steps, leaping up and into the cab of the armored truck through the open door, right over the legs of the hopper and onto the driver. I was right on Leo’s heels, shoving the startled hopper with every ounce of strength I had. He tumbled and fell heavily between the seats with a grunt of surprise. I forced my way inside and lunged to grab the passenger door and shut it behind us. Outside, the air horn was still blaring.

  Leo was practically in the lap of the driver, the muzzle of his mini-shotgun pressed into the man’s neck.

  “Keep your hand off the fucking button,” he said.

  The driver seemed too stunned to even blink. The hopper was less cooperative. He fought to rise from his awkward place, on the floor between the seats, unable to reach his sidearm.

  I planted my knee between his shoulder blades and held the stun gun in front of his face. A tap of the button, and sparks arced across the prongs with a nasty ripping sound.

  “Stay down,” I said.

  He opened his hands wide and eased all the way to the floor. Stun guns were crappy choices for personal defense. But they were fantastic for making people compliant.

  I stripped him of his gun and reached over to do the same
to the driver. Then I stuck the piece of duct tape that had attached the stun gun to my belt over the watchful eye of the truck’s interior camera.

  Less than thirty seconds had passed. I scanned the outside. Our sidewalk was clear. Nobody on the opposite side of the road was taking any interest in our newly acquired truck. Hollis’s symphony on the air horn had drawn their attention long enough for us to get this far.

  Four bodies crammed into the front of the truck’s cab was about the closest that close quarters could get. I left Leo to keep the driver immobile while I climbed over the prone hopper into the back of the truck.

  Open compartments along each side were stuffed full of black canvas satchels, each tagged with the name of the receiving bank. Over ten million in recirculated fifty-dollar bills.

  I grabbed the hopper by his collar and hauled him into the back. He didn’t protest this time. I unzipped his HaverCorp uniform jacket and rolled him onto his face to finish stripping it off. I kept one foot on his neck while I unstrapped my rucksack.

  “Stay cool,” I told the hopper.

  I quickly zip-tied his wrists behind his back, and his ankles, and his legs above his knees. Rangers got a lot of practice in capturing and detaining targets. The hood would be last. People tend to panic when their vision is obscured, and a panicky person is harder to secure. Sure enough, the hopper twisted his head around, trying to evade the black ski mask.

  “Run for it. You can still get away,” he sputtered.

  “Another word and I’ll gag you,” I said, pulling the makeshift hood into place.

  Leo had forced the driver down between the front seats. He was a slimmer build than the hopper. It was easy work to drag him into the back. While I secured him next to his partner, Leo hastily unstrapped his own rucksack.

  “Time?” I said, tossing him the driver’s HaverCorp jacket and cap. He’d already removed his surgical mask.