Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Three minutes behind.”

  “Go.” We had to count on three extra minutes not being enough variance from the route to catch anyone’s attention back at HaverCorp’s central office. The two guards might not be fully informed of the millions they were carrying, but sure as hell management was. Somebody would be watching.

  Leo shifted into drive and accelerated fast enough that I rocked to one side as I pulled on the hopper’s uniform jacket. I was sweating from more than the layers of clothes on a warm day. Missions were like lengthy boxing matches, rapid bursts of intense activity that jacked the heart rate, followed by abrupt drops. Over and over.

  I found the satchel tagged for the Chinatown branch of Prime Bank. A heavy one, twenty-five pounds of hard currency. I threw it toward the front.

  It might have been imagination, but I could swear I felt a kind of heat coming off of the hoard of cash that filled both sides of the armored car. Like the sheer mass of all that money created its own energy. I pocketed my surgical mask and wiped my face on my sleeve.

  Leo juiced the gas to beat a yellow light. I climbed into the passenger’s seat with my rucksack.

  It would take at least nine minutes to reach the International District branch. I pulled out two comm headsets and handed one to Leo. He waited until the next light, doffed his HaverCorp cap, and slipped the headband on to adjust the earpiece. I was already radioing Fain.

  “We’re in motion,” I said.

  “Crossing Holgate Street now,” Fain said. “Clear on Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.”

  Holgate was five blocks ahead of our current position. No sign of any trouble. Alpha was Jaeger, our primary objective. Bravo was any sighting of Jaeger’s men or the skinhead vehicles I’d described. Charlie was police. Romeo and Sierra Teams were the respective call signs for Fain’s car and for Zeke and Rigo, whose car was coming behind us.

  “ETA seven,” I said.

  “Seven,” he repeated back. “We’ll be ready.”

  This plan counted on Jaeger showing up in person for the score. And four enemies, or more, was tough odds, even if we had the advantage of surprise. I unpacked Leo’s grenade launcher and set it within his reach.

  Corps Fourteen, radio check, the truck’s speaker intoned.

  Leo looked at me. “Should we answer?”

  I spared a glance at the interior camera. The blacked-out lens might have alerted HaverCorp to something off, if headquarters could tap into that feed. We’d known it was a risk.

  I exhaled and grabbed the mike. “Corp Fourteen, copy.”

  A few seconds passed. Leo changed lanes quickly to merge onto Dearborn.

  Corps Fourteen, proceed, said the dispatcher.

  Was that all? Proceed to next stop? Or did proceed mean to repeat a code word that meant the situation was normal? I cursed not having time to fully prepare. Cowboy work, Dono would have derisively called it. Yelling yee-haw and racing in with guns blazing.

  I hung the mike back up. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Nothing for us to do but keep rolling.

  From my ruck I removed the green nylon bag with Jaeger’s shearling coat and the drugs wrapped snuggly inside it. I wedged it between the seats.

  My mind was rerunning our game plan once the armored car touched the curb. The strong bet was that Jaeger wouldn’t delay until the cash was dropped off inside the branch, sacrificing a second half-million dollars after letting the first drop go at Rainier. His team would aim to hit the truck the moment that our door opened.

  Or, more accurately, the moment that I opened the door. I would be front and center when it went down.

  “Take a right on Maynard and circle around,” I said to Leo.

  “Already there,” he said, as cool as if he were running errands on a Sunday afternoon.

  Jaeger’s two hulks would be the muscle, taking down the guards and unloading four hundred pounds of cash. I’d have to contend with them first. Either Jaeger or the peroxided guy would be the driver. That meant at least three men on the truck—the hulks unloading the heavy satchels, with a third acting as lookout.

  All of that conjecture depended on Jaeger only bringing the three men I’d seen at the cabins and at Aaron Conlee’s. He could have more. We didn’t know how many skinheads the First Riders still counted in their ranks, or how many Jaeger would trust with a job like this. Would he keep the score and its millions for his inner circle? Or would he want safety in numbers? I hoped he was greedy.

  I pinged Fain. “Any change?”

  “No. Alpha may not be here.”

  Too many unknowns. And our primary target still missing. I could hear Dono’s teeth grinding in my mind.

  Corps Fourteen, hold and await instructions, said the radio.

  Bad on bad. No stopping now. Our truck was barely half a block from the bank.

  We turned, drifting slowly past the Japanese bookstore, past an empty lot on the other side of the street.

  In the dirt lot, two painters wielded rollers on ten-foot extension poles, putting a fresh coat of taupe on a cinder-block wall. White overalls and caps and masks swathed their nearly identical brawny shapes. They’d shaved the distinctive long goatees, but it was unmistakably them. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

  “Made them,” Leo said without glancing toward the cousins.

  I got on the comm to Fain. “I got eyes on two Bravo. White painter’s clothes. Across and three doors north from the bank. Where are you?”

  “Past the bank at the courtyard,” said Fain. “No sign of Alpha.”

  Where the hell was Jaeger? And what was Fain doing, that he hadn’t ID’d the two cousins? They were right out in the open.

  “Silver Cherokee directly across,” I said to Leo and Fain, nodding toward the parking lot. The same Jeep I’d seen the peroxided skinhead get into while casing the bank. The Cherokee was already out of its spot and pointed toward the lot exit. With the glare off the glass, I couldn’t tell who the driver was. “Acknowledge.”

  “Roger that,” Fain said. “We’re on it. Sierra Team has the two Bravo in sight.”

  Corps Fourteen, hold position where you are. Come back, said the radio.

  The cars in front of us moved. Leo pulled up in front of the bank, filling the short stretch of curb before the stop sign.

  To our left and across the avenue, the parking lot with the waiting Jeep. Behind us, four stores down from the parking lot, the two cousins in their painter outfits.

  We watched the mirrors. The cousins didn’t appear.

  I pinged Fain. “Any change?”

  “No,” he said. “Alpha may not be here.”

  “Are they waiting for us to crack the door?” Leo said.

  Jaeger might have another lookout, watching this side and signaling them when to move. We couldn’t wait. I grabbed the satchel containing the cash for this drop and cut the security strap holding the zipper closed. My mini-shotgun fit well enough atop the stacked, plastic-wrapped bricks of fifty-dollar bills.

  I gave the street one last check. None of the people on the sidewalk looked remotely like a white power thug. I couldn’t see Fain or Zeke or Rigo, either.

  Corps Fourteen, do you copy? the radio insisted.

  Shit. We’d have to be satisfied with leaving Jaeger’s prints at the scene with his soldiers. Maybe one of them would give him up for a reduced sentence.

  “Ready?” I said to Leo. He was focused on our left side, watching the Jeep Cherokee, waiting to see if the painters appeared in his mirrors.

  “Go,” he said.

  “Romeo and Sierra, we’re rolling,” I said, signaling Fain’s teams that it was time to take down the targets in sight. My left hand held the satchel containing half a million dollars. I popped the door latch, readied the shotgun, kicked the door open, and jumped out.

  Thirty-Eight

  No one approached me. Nothing happened. Jaeger’s team must be waiting until I made the drop.

  As I turned to close the truck door, a tire shrieked on pavement in front of the armored
truck.

  “Contact, on your three,” Leo said, his voice over the headset even as I spun right and crouched low behind the truck’s fender. A man with a chin-strap beard came running onto the sidewalk from the street, the pistol in his hand seeking a target. I shot him dead center from ten feet away with the shotgun still partly in the satchel, the rubber slug rebounding in a barely visible flash of orange off his chest. The muzzle blast threw green confetti into the air. Shredded bits of fifty-dollar bills. He crumpled to his hands and knees, his pistol skidding away, and I kicked him in the head.

  He wasn’t one of the skinheads I’d seen before. Jaeger had brought reinforcements.

  I shouted to the handful of people on the sidewalk to run.

  Goddammit, where was Fain?

  From down the block, there was a chatter of an automatic weapon, and throaty booms of grenade launchers. A voice on the headset—Rigo or Daryll—called out, Contact-Eyesontwo-IntersectionSixthandLane. Where I’d seen the silver Jeep.

  Leo’s grenade launcher banged, firing out of one of the armored truck’s gun ports, and I heard the snap of small-arms fire on the other side of the truck. I slammed the passenger door closed. At least Leo and the guards would be safe.

  The hulks were coming, thundering up the sidewalk in their painter whites and masks. I dropped prone, rolling off the curb and halfway under the truck. A shot whanged off the side of the truck where I’d been standing. I aimed and fired from the gutter. The round took the first hulk between the eyes, snapping his head back like a heavyweight punch. He collapsed on his face. His cousin dodged left to take cover behind the armored truck. I aimed under the chassis and shot him in his thick ankle with my last round. It may have been illusion that I heard bone snap. His scream wasn’t imaginary. He fell, and I crawled quickly under the truck toward his writhing form.

  More sounds of fire from Fain’s team, and the snaps of small arms, too. I couldn’t worry about that now. I reached the burly cousin. He was howling through the pain of his shattered ankle but reached to claw at my face. I clubbed him into unconsciousness.

  I was exposed here. I fished the surgical mask out of my pocket and scrambled to put it on. My fake eyeglasses had fallen off when I rolled under the truck.

  Movement to my right, across the street. I was cold meat. I dropped the empty shotgun and scrambled to reach the Beretta in my ankle holster. A skinhead with a black overcoat and facial tattoos running up the street spotted me, and I ducked back behind the truck. He raised his pistol and Leo popped out from the driver’s door and shot the skinhead like some deadly jack-in-the-box.

  Jaeger. There he was, jumping up from where he’d taken cover, sprinting between parked cars, a pistol in his hand. He had shaved his head and mustache since Portland, but it was him.

  “Shaw, position.” Fain, on the headset.

  “Eyes on Alpha, middle of the block. Where the fuck are you?”

  “Contact to the north. Hold.”

  A sedan coming from the far side of Lane Street screeched to a halt, blocked by vehicles abandoned in the chaos. I saw Peroxide at the wheel.

  Jaeger yanked a teenage girl lying on the sidewalk to her feet, curling his arm around her and shoving the pistol up under her chin. He hauled her toward Peroxide and the sedan, a clumsy four-legged creature scrambling sideways across the intersection. Getting away.

  Leo tossed me his grenade launcher as I ran past him to try for a clear line of fire. Halfway to the waiting sedan, the girl tripped and fell. Jaeger left her in the middle of the street and sprinted away. I was forty yards from the sedan. My first shot cracked the windshield. The hard rubber projectile bounced high into the air, even as my second grenade caught Jaeger in the shoulder, knocking him partway onto the hood of the sedan. The launcher clicked on an empty chamber.

  A thick-muscled skinhead leaned out of the passenger window of the sedan and I dove behind the nearest car as his pistol snapped twice. Jaeger pushed himself upright and off the hood. The girl was still lying in the middle of the intersection, completely exposed to fire.

  Zeke and Rigo came running from the north, low and fast behind the parked cars toward the armored truck, carbines with their under-barrel launchers at the ready. In their black body armor with full-face motocross masks and goggles, they looked like giant poisonous insects.

  “There,” I shouted, pointing out Jaeger. The skinheads’ leader almost fell into the open rear door of the sedan as his men continued to shoot wildly, Peroxide joining the fight by firing from the driver’s seat. I was pinned halfway between the armored truck and Jaeger. Who was escaping even as I watched.

  Rigo aimed but was forced to move as a Toyota pickup with Daryll behind the wheel sped past them. Daryll swung the pickup ninety degrees to the left and reversed with a screech of rubber into the gap behind the HaverCorp truck. The muscled skinhead’s pistol cracked again. Glass from a car window over my head rained to the pavement.

  “Pop the back door,” Zeke called to Leo, motioning to the armored car. His voice hollowed by the hard plastic mask. Leo had retrieved one of the guards’ pistols and ignored Zeke to begin laying down suppressive fire at the sedan.

  “Go after Alpha,” I said over the headset, as the sedan’s engine roared into reverse.

  “I’m set,” Daryll fairly screamed. Not to me. The men converged on the HaverCorp truck.

  Fain appeared from behind the pickup, the second big grenade launcher in his hands. “Jaeger’s gone.” He reached into the driver’s side to press the release button. The door’s lock made a vibrating clunk as it surrendered its hold. Zeke scrambled up onto the bed of the pickup and disappeared into the back of the HaverCorp truck.

  Past where Jaeger’s sedan had fled, I saw the silver Cherokee, front bumper crumpled against a lamppost and a skinhead in surplus Vietnam-era fatigues lying on the ground next to it, one leg still inside the vehicle. The small-arms fire had quieted. I risked running into the open, past the block to where the teenage girl lay.

  She was in shock, her face more blank than distressed. I didn’t see any signs of injury. It was only the fear keeping her frozen in place.

  “Let’s get you safe,” I said to her. She shrank from my touch. My appearance—masked and intense—wasn’t any comfort.

  No time to argue. I scooped her up with both arms and carried her at a near-run back toward the parked cars opposite the armored truck. The closest cover. Sheltered from Fain’s team in case the bullets started flying again. Leo covered me from the opposite side of the avenue.

  Sirens now, echoing from the canyons of downtown to the north. More from the east. Zeke threw one of the cash-heavy satchels out of the armored car onto the bed to land with a boom.

  “Time to leave,” I said. Leo raced across the street to join me.

  “No,” Fain said. “Help unload.”

  He raised the launcher and laid down three shots in rapid succession to land thirty yards up the road. White smoke burst and bloomed from each impact. The grenades continued to jet thick streams into the air that obscured any view of the street to the north.

  Fain turned and fired another three smoke rounds in the direction of the bank, shouting between the shots. His eyes behind the motocross mask were wide and unblinking. “Three, cover the south sector.” Using Rigo’s call sign. He spun to face Leo. “You, work with Two to unload the bags.”

  “I’m with him,” Leo said, nodding to me.

  “Get the fucking bags,” Daryll shouted.

  “No time,” I said. I put the sirens at six blocks away, closing fast. “The cops will have us trapped in thirty seconds.” Another bystander, a middle-aged man, stumbled dazedly off the curb. Behind him, the skinhead with the facial tattoos that Leo had knocked cold with the sponge grenade stirred, got one knee underneath him. His pistol lay within reach. I ran toward them.

  “Shaw,” Fain shouted, abandoning call signs as he reloaded the launcher with expert speed. “Goddammit, we need you.”

  “Take the bike,” I said
to Leo as I grabbed the skinhead’s pistol off the pavement. “I’m right behind you.”

  He hauled ass south through the oncoming tendrils of smoke, toward the bronze sculpture and its stairs leading into the belowground level of the Uwajimaya parking lot. We had left two motorcycles on the far side of the upper lot the night before, as our contingency. The underground level would allow Leo to sprint directly across and resurface near the bikes.

  I punched the rising skinhead so hard that my own teeth rattled. He collapsed.

  “Pak,” Fain shouted after Leo. I grabbed the bystander and hauled him to sit near the stunned teenager. Thick white clouds billowed over the entire block. Fain shouting for Leo, for me. Darryl and Zeke arguing as I left the civilians and hurried across to the armored truck.

  The sirens howled, not just north and east now but all around. Any control of the situation we’d had was gone. I turned to urge Fain one last time to get his men the fuck out of there.

  Fain shot me.

  The impact was an ax, swung full force into the center of my chest.

  I fell to the pavement.

  Somewhere Rigo shouted and was answered by more voices. Light flooded into me. A brightness so all-encompassing that it banished everything else in the world, even color, even sound.

  I felt as peaceful as I’d been in a long time.

  A long time.

  Thirty-Nine

  Sharp and familiar crackling sounds popped me back to the planet, like a bubble surfacing in water.

  M4 carbines. Two- and three-round taps. Multiple weapons. All this I knew before my thoughts had coalesced. The sound of the gunfire moved farther away.

  I looked toward it, still without any conscious brain activity that might command my head to turn. Half a block from where I lay, Zeke and Rigo were moving in the opposite direction in a bounding assault between parked cars, covering each other and firing bursts in practiced synchronization.

  Firing bullets, not rubber grenades. At a cop car, barely visible behind the curtain of white smoke that had only begun to dissipate.