by Sean Black
Lock reached down and relieved Brody of his weapon.
One of Brody’s colleagues stared at him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Lock checked the weapon. ‘Deputizing myself. From here on in, you do what I say.’
30
‘You don’t have the authority to do that,’ the Marshal said.
‘Listen, Sparky, we’re immobile and surrounded by a hostile group of heavily armed combatants. Now, I could go hide under one of the seats if you like. Or I can try to get us all out of this alive.’
Lock looked quickly out of one of the windows. At least three heavily armed individuals, including the woman. He checked his watch. They were five minutes into the contact already. No matter how gung-ho the ambushers were, they weren’t going to be able to stick around indefinitely.
Lock looked at the escort who was with Reaper and jerked his thumb in the prisoner’s direction. ‘Get him on his feet. Whatever anti-ballistic gear we have spare, put it on him.’
‘What are you gonna do?’ he asked.
‘Test a little theory I’ve been chewing over.’ Lock paused, then looked directly at Reaper. ‘It strikes me that if the people outside with all those heavy weapons wanted Reaper dead, then right about now they’d be filling the fuselage with a lot of holes. Which means they want him alive.’
‘So why does he need the body armor, then?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Lock as the Marshal hauled Reaper to his feet.
‘Got it all figured out, don’t you, Lock?’ Reaper sneered.
‘You tell me. Are they here to kill you or help you escape?’
Reaper fell silent.
‘Yup, thought as much,’ Lock said.
Chance was beginning to worry. There seemed no clear way into the aircraft. She yanked at what she thought might be a baggage hatch, but it wouldn’t budge.
They should have brought tear gas, she thought. Something to flush the Marshals and Reaper out with.
She kicked out at one of the tires, then crouched under the body of the plane and shouted up at the door, ‘You have ten seconds to hand him over. Do you understand?’
The woman’s voice was muffled by the fuselage, but the words were audible.
Reaper was having an anti-ballistic helmet screwed on to his head by one of the Marshals. It was like fitting a baby bonnet on a linebacker.
Lock crossed to the door. ‘OK, but you have to give us more than a ten-count.’
The woman’s reply was curt and to the point: ‘Ten… nine…’
The Marshal suited Reaper up as the countdown continued. When the woman hit zero there was silence. Then a volley of automatic fire burst through the undercarriage, ripping out the stuffing from one of the seats at the rear of the plane. Everyone froze.
‘So if they want him alive so much, what was that about?’ the Marshal asked.
‘It’s called playing the percentages,’ Lock said, grabbing Reaper and frogmarching him towards the door at the front of the plane. ‘OK, no more firing, I’m bringing him out,’ he shouted, jabbing a finger at one of the Marshals to open the door. ‘But you have to move back from the aircraft. Right now.’
‘We’ll pull back, you send him out.’
Lock stayed with Reaper and motioned for the two Marshals to get their weapons and move to the exit-side windows.
‘OK,’ he shouted. ‘As soon as we see you move back, I’ll send him out.’
Chance pulled the patrol car away from the plane. Every second that passed, their options were narrowing.
The door of the plane juddered open, the stairs unfolded, and there stood Reaper in all his glory. It was enough to make Chance catch her breath.
But then, as Reaper took the first step, she saw that he wasn’t alone. There was a man with him. The man produced a Glock, shoved it in Reaper’s face, and with his free hand pushed the cuffed Reaper down the rest of the stairs. At the bottom, he stopped and pressed the gun hard into Reaper’s mouth.
‘You seriously think I’m going to hand you this piece of shit?’ he shouted.
Behind Chance, Cowboy and Trooper had fanned out, trying to find an angle, but Reaper’s sheer size precluded a clean shot at the man who was now propelling him across the runway.
Then the man stopped.
‘You want him so bad, you come and get him.’
Lock had to concede that Reaper made for one hell of a human shield. It was like standing behind a Stryker armored vehicle.
One of the attackers, a man wearing a cowboy hat, darted out from behind the hijacked police cruiser. Lock flicked his borrowed Glock away from Reaper’s mouth and let off a single shot which bounced off the runway three feet to the guy’s left, then put the gun back to Reaper’s head.
‘Come on, you pussies, come and get him. I can do this all day.’
Another male attacker with long blond hair appeared, this time from the other side. Lock hauled Reaper in closer to him, pivoted round and got off a shot which went high and wide.
In the distance, a symphony of sirens could be heard, getting louder.
‘The question is, how long you got?’
Chance could hear the sirens too. She could even pick out the trail of flashing red lights. She clenched her fists, furious. They could stay, fight their ground, but ultimately they’d be overwhelmed, and the mission would be a failure. Or they could walk away now, and try again.
She took a deep breath, filling her lungs. She exited the patrol car, grabbing the grenade launcher on her way out.
Cowboy and Trooper screeched to a halt next to her in the black SUV they’d jacked from the Marshals. They screamed for her to get inside as she raised the launcher and sent a final defiant message roaring towards the JPATS plane.
Lock pushed Reaper down on to the ground as the RPG round whistled over them. A wall of fire soared into the sky as it made contact with the plane, the fuel tank engulfing the entire fuselage in flames. He hated to think what it was doing to the men inside.
Looking up, Lock saw the jacked SUV slamming out on to the service road beyond the perimeter of the airfield. He pulled Reaper back to his feet and smiled into his stony face.
‘Looks like you’re gonna have your day in court after all.’
31
The police cruiser edged its way slowly down the street like a Halloween-styled homecoming parade float. Rorschach-style blood spatters patterned the windshield. The bodywork was peppered with shrapnel and bullet holes. One of the tires was shot out so badly that sparks were flying from the rim. Behind the cruiser followed, at the same funereal pace, a convoy of police and Emergency Medical Service vehicles.
With no view through the windshield, Lock hung out of the driver’s window to get a better view of the terrain ahead, his right foot alternating between the gas pedal and the brake. He brought the car to a halt beside the steps of the Medford courthouse and got out, his randomly purloined body armor and smoke- blackened face giving his appearance a post-apocalyptic makeover.
‘All ashore that’s going ashore,’ he said.
He opened the rear door and hauled Reaper out, shoulders first. In addition to his usual restraints, Reaper was sporting the previously threatened piece of cloth jammed into his mouth to stop him from talking.
Reaper hit the sidewalk like a sack of potatoes. Lock put out his hand and helped him to his feet. A couple of Medford cops went to help Lock but he waved them away with a gruff ‘Back the hell off.’
He shoved Reaper hard in the back, propelling him up the stone steps. At the top, Jalicia stood among the open-mouthed crowd with the rest of her prosecution team. Lock kept Reaper moving until the final step, when the front of his right foot happened to clip the back of Reaper’s left foot and he sprawled face first directly in front of Jalicia. As Reaper tried to look up, Lock placed his boot on the back of his head, forcing his face back down on to the stone.
‘Everyone else who was on the plane is dead,’ Lock said. He glanced down at Reaper. ‘All apart from me and t
his piece of shit.’ He dug into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys for Reaper’s cuffs and leg restraints, and handed them to Jalicia. ‘Here’s your witness.’
The shock was etched on Jalicia’s face. ‘Everyone’s dead?’
‘There was a welcoming committee waiting for us at the airfield.’
‘How the hell could they have known where he was coming in?’
The question had crossed Lock’s mind ever since he’d spotted the assault helicopter. There was only one answer: they had someone on the inside.
But who? One of the Marshals? A guard back at Pelican Bay? Someone in local law enforcement? It was a pretty wide field. Without knowing who the group who’d ambushed them were, narrowing it down was going to prove next to impossible.
‘I don’t know, but they were well prepared.’ Dust caught at the back of his throat. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, turning his head in Reaper’s direction and spitting some of the runway grit from his mouth. ‘One more thing you should know. I gave them ample opportunity to kill this piece of shit, and they didn’t take it. For whatever reason, they wanted to take him alive.’
Two cops rushed in to scoop Reaper up from the ground.
‘Now,’ Lock said, ‘if you’ll excuse me…’
Carrie was standing ten yards away, in a knot of other media people, with her cameraman. Lock looked at her as she brushed back a strand of blonde hair from her eyes, which were blue and earnest as she talked to another reporter. She turned and saw him. Her features softened as she made her way towards him.
As she reached him, she raised an eyebrow. ‘Straightforward mission, huh?’
Lock shrugged. ‘It was when it started.’
He reached out and placed his hands either side of her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks.
She smiled. ‘It always is with you.’
He leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. It felt fantastic.
They walked slowly back to the mini-van Carrie’s network had provided. Lock took her through the whole story, starting with the conference room in San Francisco. She’d already heard about Ty and had good news for Lock: ‘They’re moving him down to a hospital in San Francisco later today.’
Lock felt the slabs of tense muscle in his back and neck ease a little. ‘That’s good.’
They both fell silent for a few seconds. Lock was anxious about what was coming next. He’d taken on what had proved to be a near-suicide mission, and kept Carrie out of the loop. The guilt about it had weighed on him all the while he’d been inside the prison, only outweighed by the dour determination he’d felt to bring the killers of Ken Prager and his family to justice.
‘Ken Prager was my friend,’ Lock said. ‘I had to do what I could to help bring these guys to justice.’
‘Loyalty’s a fine quality,’ Carrie said, avoiding eye contact.
Lock’s heart sank.
‘I don’t know, Ryan. I mean, if I had a great story to chase, I wouldn’t want to have to ask your permission. That’s one of the things I like about you. You’re not threatened by my career. You respect my independence.’
That much was true. In his downtime between jobs, Lock was quite content to walk Angel in Central Park, hit the gym, then shop for groceries and cook dinner. Carrie often teased him that barring his adrenalin junkie tendencies, he’d make someone a great wife one of these days, and he laughed along with her. Maybe it was a generational thing but he’d never bought into any macho bullshit about a woman’s place being in the kitchen. He was happy to be with a woman who didn’t take any crap, and who’d built a life for herself.
‘I’m sensing a “but” here somewhere,’ he said.
‘I just don’t know if this is working out between us,’ Carrie said.
Lock sighed. He wasn’t about to plead for another chance. Not because he was too proud, but because, in his experience, once a woman had made a decision about a relationship there was rarely any going back. They were harder than men in that respect. Yet he wasn’t quite ready to give up on what they had.
‘Does it change anything if I say that I don’t think I’ve ever missed anyone before like I missed you these past five days?’ he asked.
Carrie looked away again. He could sense her softening.
‘How do I make it up to you?’
‘There is one thing,’ said Carrie, watching as Reaper was finally bundled from view by a phalanx of law enforcement.
‘Name it,’ said Lock.
‘Help me get an interview with Reaper.’
32
The guard opened the holding cage and Reaper stepped out. Jalicia nodded for him to free his shackles. Layers of body armor, some of it still slicked with the blood of dead US Marshals, jutted out from his bulky frame. He looked, thought Jalicia, like a cross between the Terminator and a Kevlar-encased Egyptian mummy.
‘Get him out of that stuff,’ she said, holding up a black plastic Nordstrom’s suit carrier. She unzipped it and held it up for his inspection. ‘A lot of people died to get you here, so you might want to make the effort to look presentable.’
Knowing that an inmate in prison blues was already a couple of credibility points behind a witness who was dressed in civilian clothes, Jalicia had brought Reaper the change of clothes: a single-breasted dark grey suit, a crisp white shirt still bearing the crease marks from its packaging, and a suitably conservative blue tie.
‘Thank you,’ Reaper said, showing no after-effects of the events surrounding his transfer.
‘I hope it fits you.’
Reaper checked the label on the collar. ‘Should be fine.’
Jalicia cleared her throat. ‘Lock thinks those people back at the airfield were trying to free you from custody. He says this whole thing with you agreeing to testify is a sham.’
Reaper ran his fingertips over the silk of the dark blue tie, then tilted his head down so that he was looking straight at Jalicia. ‘Lock thinks a lot of things,’ he said, sounding world-weary.
‘Is it true? Once I get you on that stand out there, are you going to punk me, Frank?’
Judging by how his mouth folded in on itself, the use of his first name seemed to pinch Reaper. Maybe it was a long time since he’d heard it. His pupils shrank to pinpricks of black. ‘I could tell you “no”. Or I could tell you “yes”. But we all know that convicts lie, right? So the only way you’re really going to know is when you start asking me questions in front of that jury.’
Jalicia stepped back, determined not to let him see that he was getting to her. ‘That’s not much of an answer,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t much of a question,’ he fired back.
‘I’ll see you on the stand. Remember to speak nice and clearly.’
Jalicia turned and walked out of the holding area. In the corridor, she leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and counted to ten, slowly. She was going to get through this, she told herself. This case was going to make her career.
The voice of the Aryan Brotherhood’s lead defense attorney snapped her back into the present.
‘Are you praying, counsel?’
Judging from his broad grin, he seemed to have recovered his composure after the bombing at the courthouse in San Francisco.
‘What do you want, Gross?’
‘I was going to offer you a final opportunity to save your blushes.’ He moved in closer. ‘My clients are prepared to name the individuals who killed Agent Prager and his family.’
It was Jalicia’s turn to smile. ‘They could have done that right at the start and saved us a lot of grief. Not to mention dead bodies.’
Gross shrugged. ‘It’s how the game gets played. You wait for the clock to run right down.’
‘What are they looking for in return?’
‘You drop the death penalty,’ Gross stated.
‘Let me get this straight. First, your clients order the murder of a federal agent and his family. Then they bomb a Federal Courthouse to stop their trial. And, finally, when they’re out of chances to t
ake out the main defense witness, all of a sudden they want me to show mercy. So they get to go back to what they were doing anyway, and all of this was for nothing?’ She took a step forward herself so that she was inches from Gross’s smug features. ‘No deal.’
‘You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgement,’ said Gross.
He had a point, but Jalicia wasn’t willing to concede that to his face. Deals like this were the currency that kept the conveyor-belt of what passed for justice in America oiled and operational. Of course, Gross had a reputation for using last-minute carrots like this to put prosecutors off balance, but she was minutes away from testimony that had the potential to bring the Aryan Brotherhood to its knees. No, this was too big a win for her. There would be time later to hunt down the people who pulled the trigger on Prager and his family.
If Gross sensed her initial doubts, he was careful enough not to press too hard. ‘Think about it, counsel,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t want to pass up an opportunity you might regret later.’
Inside the courtroom, Lock, a protective hand on the small of Carrie’s back, found a couple of seats near the front. After the massive adrenalin rush from combat at the airfield, he was on the inevitable comedown. His concern about Reaper’s true motive and a grilling by the FBI hadn’t helped his mood much either. The only ray of light was that he seemed to have gone some way towards patching things up with Carrie.
As they took their seats, she touched his hand with hers. The tenderness of the gesture gave him reassurance that he hadn’t blown it entirely.
‘You think he’ll testify?’ she whispered to him.
‘Oh, he’ll take the stand. The guy’s got an ego to make Simon Cowell blush. It’s what he’ll say that worries me.’
‘You know, since the bombing in San Francisco I’ve been doing some checking into these white supremacist prison gangs. Nazi Low Riders. Aryan Brotherhood. Texas Circle.’
