Chasing the Captain

by Terry Shepherd

  “No. Marie first. And I want to do it.”

  There was another voice. Very different from what she’d heard. But the accent was unmistakable. The Captain was in the room with them.

  “Let the professional do his job. You can watch.”

  Even with the headphones on, the sound of the “flash-bang” was unmistakable. The device cops used to shock perps before overwhelming them turned everything white. There were gunshots everywhere.

  And then the screen went blank.

  47

  So, I have to save you again?

  “So, I have to save you again?”

  Jessica Ramirez knew the voice as well as she knew her own. How did Ali end up in London?

  A hand ripped the VR headset and headphones off, and Jess could see.

  The place was windowless but large, capable of purposing as a private conference room. A long table lay on its side, ten yards from where she sat. The chairs and a small desk with a pile of electronic gear on top were the only other furniture. Wires snaked from the back of the equipment racks to the two dental chairs that restrained them. A green screen like the meteorologists used to display weather graphics hung on a wall. A camera and tripod pointed at it.

  “Behind the table!” The voice belonged to Liyanna Evans.

  “I saw them when we came in,” Ali yelled back.

  Their repartee was like rifle fire.

  Lee: “Then why are there still four of them shooting at us?”

  Ali: “I’m just off an eight-hour overseas flight after forty-eight hours of zero sleep.”

  Lee: “And you think I’ve had any rest the last two days?”

  Ali: “I held two uncooperative boys at bay for you…”

  Lee: “While I called Maddox and got the permissions we needed to come save your partner’s arse.”

  More gunfire.

  Jess knew what was happening. Ali and Lee were flirting. She needed them to focus.

  “If you two would let me out of this chair, I might add some value.”

  Jess could feel the proximity of a bullet close to her left ear. It was too close.

  Lee ran behind Ali’s covering fire and unstrapped her American partner.

  Marie was motionless. Jess could see the two syringes jammed into her IV port. The plungers were fully depressed.

  Lee did a barrel roll to get closer to the conference table. She continued firing as Ali dropped her clip and reloaded.

  Jess was on her feet. Her eyes scanned both girls to see if they had any additional weapons. “The entire London Met is on this case and all they send me are you two?”

  Ali was firing again. “There are others here, including your boyfriend. We’ve been going room-to-room for the last ten minutes. A pretty fast response time.”

  The distinctive sound of an AK47 erupted from behind the conference table. They aimed the hail of lead in Lee’s direction.

  “A little help here,” Lee said.

  Ali tapped the guy in black that was guarding the syringes. His head snapped backward, and he dropped his gun. Jess recognized it. The RSH-12 cannon that shot Lee on the train.

  “Thank you,” Lee sang out, knocking over the equipment table for protection and moving ever closer to the bad guys.

  Jess dove for the cannon.

  “Looks like Ali took out that fucker who tried to pop your Kevlar,” Jess said to her British partner as she grabbed the hot iron. There were four shots left in the chambers.

  Ali sounded impatient. “Do I have to save everyone’s life here?”

  The door behind them burst open again, and the cavalry arrived, led by a sexy FBI hard body and some Greek-looking dude Jess didn’t recognize.

  “We want them alive,” Michael yelled.

  Lee looked at Jess. The two shook their heads and charged the table.

  Crawford and another man bolted for the far door, leaving one soldier with an AK to take on the advancing horde.

  Weapons unloaded on him. He danced in death like a piñata, but not before knocking several SWAT types backward, the full force of his bursts slamming into their vests.

  Crawford and the man Jess now knew to be The Captain made it through the door.

  “Let them go,” Lee commanded. “There are sure to be friendlies on the other side of that door.”

  Jess was on a dead run. “But what if there aren’t?”

  “Wait, Jess,” Michael barked.

  Ali was laughing. “Go get ‘em, partner,” she yelled. “You’re all clear.”

  48

  Shot

  Ali wondered how four men could shoot over a hundred rounds each and not hit anything.

  Well, not hit anything important. Except for the SWAT boys who were on their backs catching their breath. Michael, Commander Anastos and Ali emerged from the firefight unscathed.

  Or so she thought. As the adrenaline tapered off, she felt a sting in her left shoulder. There was blood coming out of it. Ali could see a red boot print that tracked toward the back exit, too. Lee must have taken a round in the leg.

  She didn’t like that at all. Liyanna Evans was growing on her.

  “Follow them,” the MI6 agent commanded. What seemed like an unending stream of guys with guns poured in one door and out the other.

  When these people got permission, they got permission.

  “What’s this,” Commander Anastos said, looking at the one remaining chair with somebody still in it. “No bullet wounds, but this one isn’t breathing.”

  Ali saw the two syringes. Arizona memories came rushing back. Michael Wright, lying naked on his condo bed, loaded to the gills with Bergulon. Total sensation, but no ability to move or breathe.

  Ali ripped off the headset. Marie’s dilated corneas looked beyond her into the next world.

  Just like my nightmare. It wasn’t Jessica’s face that I saw, after all.

  “One hundred to one, you’ll find Jack Crawford’s prints on those needles,” Ali said. “There’s enough poison in her to stop a horse’s heart.”

  She felt a pair of firm hands on her shoulders.

  “You’re a little unsteady, Alexandra. Looks like you’re leaking.”

  It was Michael. Ali stopped long enough to scan her body. But her eyes wouldn’t focus. The voices seemed farther and farther away.

  Michael Wright’s arms slid beneath her own.

  Was that boy trying to feel me up?

  “Breathe,” he said. “You’re in shock. You’re going to pass out if you don’t.”

  Darkness was enveloping Ali. The last thing she saw was Liyanna. The scene was her apartment back home. Lee’s naked body straddled Ali. It was not an unpleasant sensation.

  49

  Lee on the Roof

  Lee was having trouble keeping up with Detective Ramirez. It felt as if her own reserves of energy were deserting her.

  But she wasn’t stopping. That one man was Jack Crawford. Just as Jessica had described him. The other man could only be one person. And Lee couldn’t let that person escape.

  Why are there always stairs?

  Jessica had no problem scaling them two at a time, the big Russian revolver dangling in her right hand. Lee was finding it harder and harder to put one foot in front of another.

  Out of the darkness, she could see a light appear and disappear ahead of her. The sound of a turbine whined. That had to be the exit to the roof and a helio pad.

  Lee stumbled through in time to see the chopper lifting off. Jessica ran toward the edge of the building after it. It made little sense. She had no way of catching up to it before the helicopter cleared the roof and was airborne.

  But, again, Lee discovered how little she knew about this Latina spitfire.

  Jessica jammed the revolver down the rear of her pants and lunged for the left landing skid, snaking an arm around it as the helicopter drifted clear of the rooftop.

  She gripped a long steel stanchion like a vice, swinging back and forth until she could get a leg on top of it.

 
The skids were just wide enough to provide an excellent view of the cabin and the churning blades above it.

  Lee could see Jessica reach for the cannon with her left hand. She pointed it toward the motor and pulled the trigger.

  The recoil alone should have ripped the weapon from her single grip. But whatever was flowing through Jessica’s veins must have been rocket fuel. The gun pulled her arm backward, slamming it against the skid.

  She didn’t drop it.

  Lee’s bullet-proof vest might have stopped one of those huge lead rounds, but the aluminum engine cover didn’t. She could hear the turbines scream in protest, smoke instantly billowing out of the exhaust port.

  Lee realized she was standing on the large white H that marked the dead center of the helipad. There was a widening pool of red at the base of her left leg.

  Bloody hell. They shot me.

  She could see the entry and exit points. It must have just missed the femoral artery, or she would be dead. Lee ripped off her shirt and made a makeshift tourniquet, cinching it tightly above the wound as she sat on the cement.

  She looked at the departing helicopter. It was fighting to gain altitude as it dipped toward the Thames.

  50

  The London Eye

  “Damn, that hurt,” Jess muttered to herself. “Remind me never to fire an RSH-12 revolver with one hand ever again.”

  And what was wrong with her? Jumping onto a moving helicopter at the edge of a damn skyscraper? Jess’s mind was in full fear-of-heights terror. Dropping 557 feet with a rappelling rope felt like an elementary school playground compared to this insanity.

  But the man who ordered her father’s murder and the man who contributed to Vincent Culpado’s death were inside that cabin.

  Jess intended to make them pay.

  Her shooting hand was still numb but managed to slide the cannon back into her pants. She intertwined her arms and legs around the skid, holding on for dear life.

  It occurred to Jess at this moment that putting a bullet into the engine of the only thing keeping her from falling to her death might not have been the wisest move. She didn’t like the sounds of shattering metal and the black smoke that vomited out of the back of the enclosure.

  And what if the bad guys knew she was right below them? Jess was a sitting duck.

  One poor decision after another, Jess. When you make it personal, you make mistakes.

  As the terror swirled around Jess’s insides, the outside world snapped into focus and she beheld the sight below.

  London at night was a picture postcard on its worst days. A carpet of stars painted a ceiling above the city lights. The full moon cast the dark concrete silhouettes below into stark relief. It was breathtaking. Whatever building Jess had been in was perched on the edge of the Thames. She didn’t know enough of the city yet to pick out landmarks, except one.

  The London Eye was dead ahead.

  “Don’t call it a ‘Ferris wheel,’” Lee had warned her. “You’ll make the locals think you’re a tourist for sure.”

  The gargantuan trademark stopped taking passengers at 9pm. LED lighting covered its spokes in blinking dot matrix, painting pixilated scenes throughout the night that resolve into pictures at a distance.

  Jess could see a colorful depiction of the Union Jack as the aircraft approached it.

  They were losing altitude.

  Jess’s consciousness flipped back to survival mode. The distraction of the scenery vanished into what she tried to imagine were possible landing sights.

  Jess didn’t like any of the options.

  The uppermost gondola pods of the London Eye drew ever closer. There was some question in her mind if the chopper could clear them. Above the piercing whine of the turbines, she heard a door swinging open above her. Voices were yelling.

  “She’s here. She’s right below.”

  A fist appeared with an AK47 in it. The prop wash caught the shower of bullets, throwing them back behind Jess as she clung to the skid below. She knew the shooter would adjust for the slipstream the next time.

  An idea came to her, and Jess calculated the odds. They weren’t good, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  The hand with the rifle appeared again, and Jess made her decision.

  A pod loomed large directly below. It was now or never.

  Jess unhooked her legs. A single appendage was all that separated her from a five hundred foot plunge to the unforgiving concrete below. Jess’s right hand gripped the landing skid. The cannon was in her left.

  The helio cleared the London Eye with ten feet to spare. Jess fired a single shot at one of the pod’s skylight windows. It shattered into a million safety glass shards that littered the floor of the gondola.

  Jess let go of the chopper and thought of her father.

  51

  On the Roof

  Alexandra Clark was thoroughly enjoying her dirty dream when somebody stuck the smelling salts under her nose. Seeing Commander Anastos’s face was a big disappointment.

  “The medics are on their way, Officer Clark.”

  “The roof,” Ali croaked. “Get me vertical and point me toward the roof.”

  “They shot you. You need to wait here until ambulance services arrive.”

  She was still unsteady, but Ali was angry. She channeled her anger toward her legs and stood. “Are you going to help me get up there, or am I going alone?”

  A phalanx of SWAT boys surrounded Lee in the center of the helipad. Michael was with them, attending to her. Ali didn’t like the red pool Lee was sitting in. She knew what that kind of blood loss could do.

  “She’ll be all right, Ali.” Michael was trying to soothe her. She hated it when he did that.

  Lee was breathing hard. Ali deduced that the blood loss made her metabolism speed up to keep things functioning.

  “Over there.” Lee’s voice was hoarse but still strong.

  Ali was falling for her more by the minute.

  They turned toward the Thames and saw the chopper barely clear the top of the London Eye. Ali could see a flash just beneath it but nothing more.

  “There was a machine-gun burst,” Lee said. “I could see it. I hope they missed her.”

  Moments later, the SWAT radios came alive. “Shots fired at the London Eye.”

  Ali’s cell phone rang. She knew the number by heart.

  Her own ticker was pounding, but Ali tried to sound calm when she answered the call. It didn’t work.

  “I guess you must still be alive, partner.”

  Jessica’s voice was faint but sturdy. “You want to send somebody to this fucking Ferris wheel to get me down?”

  52

  Yeah, It Hurt

  Yeah, it hurt. And thanks, Dad. You still look out for me, no matter how many bad decisions I make.

  The pod was dark; Jessica Ramirez sat in a pile of safety glass debris. Her ass hurt like hell.

  But she was alive.

  The silence and the starry night outside were a strange contrast to buffeting downdrafts of the helicopter blades, the scream of the dying engines and the cacophony of point-blank AK47 gunfire.

  Anyone else would have been a messy puddle after barely escaping a half-dozen methods of death, all gruesome.

  But after a decade in law enforcement, Jess knew cops’ minds work differently. She was already past it all, thinking about how to catch the two men who had so profoundly changed the direction of her life.

  For the moment, she didn’t have the strength to stand and see if the bad guys got away or crashed and burned. She remembered her ride along with the Life Flight team at Paloma General and the pilot’s description of what happens when a helicopter loses power. It was in what he called auto-rotation when Jess let go. No lift power. Only the sweep of the rotors to bring the crippled aircraft down to earth with any semblance of safety. Jess couldn’t see any place where they could have landed the thing. But pilots train for this all the time. They likely had one of the better ones.

&nb
sp; Jess assumed that Crawford and the second pocked face she barely glimpsed were still alive.

  And at last, she had seen The Captain face to face.

  Beyond the bad complexion, he was a square-shouldered fireplug of a man. Jess’s height, all muscle, exuding an intimidating visage that she imagined had frightened much taller, more terrifying men. He obviously knew technology and had resources. What he was doing and why was still unclear.

  Whatever it was, it was bad.

  Jess’ iWatch told her it took an hour to roust someone who could fire up the London Eye. And even then, its glacial pace couldn’t be sped up.

  A dozen cops ringed the entry queues. Fifty feet away, the remains of the chopper curled tendrils of smoke into the night sky. It was still relatively intact and empty.

  Besides a uniformed London Eye employee, only one other man waited to greet Jess.

  Michael Wright.

  The doors to the pod slid open. Michael was just standing there, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “You, Ms. Ramirez, are a lot of trouble.”

  “If that’s a romantic opening, it isn’t working.”

  Michael took a step forward. He fingered the golden star that still hung from her neck. “Are you okay?”

  Jess stepped back, keeping her distance. “Yes. Did you get the two bad guys in that helicopter?”

  “Nope. Long gone. Just a dead pilot with a single bullet in his brain. I guess the Russians have little patience for failure.” Michael cocked his head toward the still-smoking wreckage. “But we know who they are. Hopefully, between MI6 and the Met, they will be caught.”

  Jess was instantly disappointed. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Michael pointed to a couple of suits standing next to a jet-black government vehicle. “The Brits want to debrief you. I told them it traumatized you, and they would have to wait until morning.”