Soul Survivor (A Leo Waterman Mystery Book 11)

by G. M. Ford

He motioned us forward. We followed him to the rear of the truck, where he pulled open the doors and stepped aside. I walked over to the right-hand door and peered inside. Just what you’d expect. The interior was filled with packages, many of them carrying the FedEx logo. Envelopes and smaller packages up on the shelves, bigger stuff on the floor.

  “What’s in the boxes?” Ben inquired.

  “Four hundred fifty pounds of plastic explosive,” the guy said in a tone that made it sound like he was talking about nothing more important than lunch meat.

  Instinctively I started to backpedal. Overalls read my mind and grinned.

  “Completely harmless until you flip the switch. You could shoot bullets through that stuff and it wouldn’t go off. You could get T-boned out on the highway and nothing would happen; but you flip the switch, and you’ve got six minutes to get as far away as you can get, boys . . . and I mean hotfoot it the hell out of there. This baby’ll wipe out the whole damn block. Vaporize the fucker from head to toe. You don’t want to be nowhere in the vicinity when this baby touches off.”

  He started around to the passenger side, or what would have been the passenger side, except the steering wheel was over there, which, when I thought about it, made sense . . . you know . . . so the driver could get out on the curbside.

  “Who’s gonna drive the truck?” he wanted to know.

  I raised my hand. He slid the door open and motioned that I should get in.

  Musta been a midget in the seat last. I had to motor the seat all the way back before I could stretch my legs out.

  “Look over on your left, on the floor,” he said.

  I did as I was told, and there it was. A red handle like an old Castle Frankenstein circuit breaker, with a metal band over it that you’d have to take off before throwing the switch. No way was anybody going to kick it into the “On” position by mistake.

  “This here’s a pretty simple operation, boys,” the guy said to all of us.

  Took twenty minutes for him to spit it out. The longer he talked, the straighter our spines got. These yodels had this thing planned out. They’d been working on it for months. They’d Google Earthed the whole damn thing too, so we’d have firsthand visual experience with the street scenario. Sort of a terrorist PowerPoint presentation.

  The plan went like this: About seven thirty tonight, with Gabe and me in the FedEx truck and Ben following in the rent-a-car, we were to leave the compound and start driving toward Boise on a predetermined route. One stop in Oregon for gas and sustenance. Bogus credit card provided. Just over five hundred miles. Which ought to put us in the vicinity of Boise at four or five in the morning, at which point we were to drive to 1363 Stafford Street, a tumbledown garage in the south part of the city. We were to unlock the garage with a brass key we’d also been provided, and then drive both vehicles inside and lock the door. He told us the building had once housed a trucking company, so there were half a dozen sleeping cubicles behind the office area where tired truck drivers used to get a little shut-eye and that we should feel free to avail ourselves of the accommodations, so’s we’d be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the next morning’s festivities. Like it was the first day of school we were planning for or something.

  Listening to this guy was like watching a bad horror movie, where the suspense builds and builds until the heroine makes that fateful decision to look in the basement, carrying a single wavering candle, while wearing thirteen-inch heels and a worried look.

  The only thing we were tasked with until the next day was wiping down the rent-a-Lexus for prints and then power washing the inside and outside of the vehicle with a mixture of bleach and hydrogen peroxide designed to effectively eliminate biological evidence. Tools provided. No assembly required.

  At eleven fifteen the following morning, the real fun would start. All three of us were to put on our FedEx uniforms and hats, get into the FedEx truck, drive down to Champion Cable, and park the truck under the porte cochere. Once parked, Ben and Gabe, carrying our civilian clothes in a shopping bag, were to let themselves out the rear doors, which they would then lock. One standing on each side of the truck, like outriggers, while I locked the truck doors, and then finally, when I was certain we had everything together, I was supposed to throw the big red switch, and walk away. After that, the instructions were the same as they had been for the trip from Conway. Anybody stops you, anybody gets in the way . . . kill ’em. If, anywhere along the way, it looks like there’s no way out, throw the switch. Get the hell away from the truck. Maybe get a few first responders that way. If you can’t put serious distance between yourselves and the truck . . . well then . . . He grinned again.

  “It won’t hurt a bit,” he promised.

  Provided we got to the point of walking away from the FedEx truck, the key concept became six minutes. We had six minutes to put as many street corners between us and that delivery truck as possible. A car would be waiting for us in the middle of the 400 block of Sawtooth Avenue. West side of the street. Keys in the ignition. Get in. Go east or south. Get the hell out of there. Change out of the FedEx uniforms on the fly. Find a place to hole up for the night. Split up next morning. Disappear into the ozone. Stay way under the radar until the whole thing’s over, about this time next week. Await further orders.

  We went over it four times, playacted the whole thing out, until he was satisfied we had it down. “Well, boys,” he said as he turned off the TV. “Back here ready to go at nineteen thirty hours. Get whatever personal stuff you need for the trip and bring it with you. Won’t be no coming back here again. By the time . . .”

  Then he stopped talking and brought a finger up to press his earpiece deeper into his ear. Didn’t move a muscle for a minute and a half. Just stood there listening to his earpiece, looking over at us occasionally, nodding his head.

  “You all stay right here,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He left us standing there with our jaws on our shirtfronts, watching as he and his blue overalls traipsed off through the trees and disappeared from view.

  Nobody said a word.

  When I looked over at Ben, he was the color of day-old oatmeal.

  “What are we going to do?” he finally asked in a low voice.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re not gonna do,” I whispered. “We’re not going to drive this rig to Boise, park it in front of a local cable TV company, and blow the hell out of downtown Boise. That ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Four hundred–some pounds of plastique.” Gabe made a dubious face. “This fucker . . . that time of day . . . this thing could kill thousands of people, man . . . thousands.”

  “If Tim’s info is right, that’s only half the plastic explosive missing from the armory,” I said.

  “So there’s at least one more bomb truck.”

  “And there’s fourteen or so other teams headed God knows where to do God knows what,” Ben threw in. “We gotta do something,” he said. “We can’t let this happen.”

  “Try your phone,” I said to Ben. He gave it a go. Shook his head.

  “No service. Nothing.”

  The white race are God’s chosen people. Our innate qualities separate us from all other races and make us superior. RAHOWA is upon us.

  I looked over at Gabe, who was doing the same thing. “No bars at all,” Gabe said.

  “Then we gotta get the hell out of here and tell somebody what’s going on,” I said.

  “It’d be real helpful if we could get ahold of that list Bickford had in his pocket. It’d go a long way to putting a stop to this whole shit storm.”

  “And then what?” Gabe demanded. “We off Bickford and whoever’s there and in the way. Suppose everything goes right and we get ahold of the list . . . what then?”

  “We jump in the Lexus and run,” Ben said.

  Gabe’s head was already shaking. “Running the Clint Eastwood gauntlet in the Lexus ain’t gonna float, kid. That’s swiss cheese time right there. Too many idiots walking a
round here with full autos. They could put a thousand rounds into whatever we were driving before we ever got out the damn gate.” Gabe waved the possibility away. “We gonna have to put our tails between our legs and sneak the fuck outta here on foot.”

  “What about the FedEx truck?” Ben asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe they’d be less inclined to shoot at us if they thought the thing might blow up and take them with it.”

  “And then what?” Gabe scoffed. “We outrun ’em in a delivery truck? Some kinda Mad Max road scene, with them chasing us in pickups and Harleys?”

  “This whole thing feels like a bad movie,” Ben muttered.

  “That’s what makes these assholes so scary,” I said. “They talk about blowing thousands of people to dust . . . reducing city buildings to rubble . . . they talk about it like it’s nothing. Just the price of returning them to their rightful place in the universe. Like it’s a movie or something. Like somehow it just needs to be done, so things can return to their normal order.”

  “Because God is on their side,” Ben muttered.

  I walked over to the corner of the building and peeked around. .Overalls had found himself some friends: the curly-haired cutter, Blondie, Phil Hardaway, and a half dozen guys with assault rifles. They were about a hundred yards away, moving through the trees at a dogtrot.

  I pulled my head back in. “We been made,” I said. I pointed in the opposite direction. “That way,” I hissed.

  Gabe was off and running. Ben stayed put, as usual, wanting to ask a question. I limped by him as I headed for the cover of the trees. When I took a quick peek back in his direction, he’d closed his mouth and was tottering along behind me.

  I had no idea what, if anything, was on this back part of the property and at that point didn’t much care. We needed to be someplace else. Right now.

  A hundred fifty yards into the bush, Gabe took cover behind an enormous cedar tree. The chrome automatic was out, pointed straight up. Ben and I fell in behind the tree, breathing heavy. I pulled out the Smith & Wesson, checked the load, and then patted myself down for the box of ammo I’d brought along.

  I squatted and then duckwalked around the forest floor until I found a line of sight through the tangle of branches and bushes and leaves. They were moving in for the kill. Slowly working their way around all four sides of the building, guns at the ready, using hand signals to move people around. I looked over at Ben and pointed deeper into the woods. “Let’s go,” I mouthed.

  No stragglers this time. Single file, me in front, we picked our way through the dense undergrowth. The sound of shouts and curses spurring us along, making it clear they knew we were gone and weren’t real happy about it.

  Somebody decided to vent his frustration by spraying the surrounding forest with gunfire. Then another one joined in, and then a third.

  As we crouched in the underbrush, the air was suddenly alive with bullets. Ticking this, tearing that, thudding into trees, ricocheting off rocks. Sounded like we were inside a beehive. Instinctively, we all got down and crawled on our bellies, found the nearest big tree, and got behind it. The storm of lead continued to shred the shrubbery like a giant Weed Eater. Over on my right, a sapling scrub oak took a high-velocity round about three feet up from the ground. Slowly it began to lean toward the missing chunk, bending double until its leaves came to rest on the pine straw.

  Shouting suddenly rose above the gunfire. Somebody blew a whistle. The onslaught petered to silence. Tense seconds passed before we began to hear the sound of people thrashing through the undergrowth in our direction.

  No strategy session required. We crept backward, stayin’ low, tryin’ to make as little noise as possible. The vegetation was jungle thick; the going was slow. No telling what was in front of us, the only comfort being that whatever was out there couldn’t be any worse than what was behind us now.

  Ben took a tumble over a root, went down hard, lost his pistol. Gabe yarded him up by the collar, reunited him with his weapon, and then plunged off through the thicket.

  The forest speakers began assuring us that the holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy designed to make whites strangers in their own homeland.

  And then, midsentence, the electronic voice crackled to static, and the speakers began to fill the forest with a screeching electronic alarm signal. Security Alert, security alert. Every ten seconds or so. Ten bleats and then another Security Alert echoed among the trees.

  We kept moving. Inching our way through the tangle. Toward what . . . we had no idea. Just toward something else. Somewhere else. Security Alert. Screech, screech, screech . . . crawl . . . keep moving . . . head down . . . keep moving. Security Alert.

  That’s when I heard the rumble of an engine. Not far either. I silently cursed.

  There obviously was a road not far ahead, in front of us. They were coming at us from both directions now.

  I pointed off to the left and then began to veer that way. Up and running now. Not worrying about making noise, just trying to be anywhere other than where we were. Gabe’s bad ankle was beginning to give out. Limping now, laboring. Ben ran smack into a giant spiderweb and was trying to wipe it from his face when the first Blackshirt showed up unannounced.

  The guy must have been a faster runner than his friends. He was holding his weapon vertically, so’s he could fit between the trees when he popped into view and slid to a stop six feet in front of me. I was in the process of bringing the Smith & Wesson to bear when Gabe shot him just below the right eye. The impact blew him completely off his feet and spay-painted major portions of his cranium all over the rough gray bark of a thick Douglas fir tree. I sucked in some air and watched as the bone and gray matter began to slide down the side of the tree.

  Gabe grinned my way. “Ain’t hide-and-seek no more. It’s on now, baby,” Gabe yelled. I took off running, gun waving like a conductor’s baton as I loped through the forest. All around me, I could hear people breaking trail through the dense underbrush. Curses, orders, the sound of breaking branches. A shot rang out.

  Somebody screamed, “Hold your fire, goddamn it. Hold your fire.”

  I stopped, stood still, and listened for a minute. I could hear an engine running. The tick tick tick of a loose valve. I put my head down and drove through the nearest bush, with Gabe and Ben hard on my heels.

  I could see light ahead. Sky. I took off running, dodging left and right around trees and rocks like a halfback.

  Security alert. Security alert. Screech, screech, screech.

  I burst from the bushes. Damn near ran into the front of a blue Chevy pickup standing there with both doors wide open and the engine running. Seemed likely the truck’s owners had jumped out and gone off into the wilds looking for us.

  Funny how fast a situation can change. In the space of ten minutes, the idea of making a run for it, of driving through a hail of gunfire to get out of here, had gone from a dumb-shit idea to what now appeared to be the best chance we had.

  I crawled up into the driver’s seat. Gabe limped over to the passenger side and got in. I yelled out the window to Ben, “Get in the back. Stay low.”

  Ben must have been a high jumper somewhere in his younger days. At a full gallop, he hoisted a leg high in the air and flopped into the bed of the truck with a resounding thud, rocking the Chevy on its springs.

  Before I could stomp the accelerator, a volley of lead came roiling out of the darkness, gouging jagged holes in the front of truck. The radiator began to belch steam. I threw it in reverse and put her all the way down. The truck jumped backward like a scalded cat. I swept the wheel back and forth, trying to create a zigzag pattern, making us harder to hit. We went swerving backward across the small meadow, throwing a thick rooster tail of dust and debris out in front of the truck, kinda like an inadvertent earthen smoke screen.

  A round shattered the windshield, blew off half of Gabe’s headrest, sending Gabe scrambling for the floor, filling the air with airborne bits of padding. I jam
med the truck into drive and floored it back the other way, fishtailing across the grass toward the woods, just as our pursuers were stumbling out of the thicket and into view.

  I veered hard left, nearly putting the truck up on two wheels. In the back, Ben was bouncing up and down like a Ping-Pong ball, airborne at every big bump, pinballing around as centrifugal force shoved him from one side of the bed to the other.

  Another round shattered the back window, taking out the rearview mirror on its way by, sending a spray of shattered mirror shards into my face.

  I was trying to drive with one hand and wipe the glass from my face with the other, so I didn’t see the other truck until half a second before it T-boned us.

  The impact tore my hands from the wheel. Next thing I knew Gabe was on top of me. I could feel the truck losing its battle with gravity. We rolled once . . . and then again. Everything inside came loose, filling the cab with more snow-globe debris.

  My body had reached its limit. My back was nearly immobilized with pain. My legs ached liked bad teeth. At that point it would have been easier to list what didn’t hurt.

  Funny how the mind works too. The thing I remember most vividly was a single petrified french fry, musta been at large under one of the seats for years . . . I remember it floating by my face in the seconds before the Chevy came to a rest on its roof and how bad I wanted to snatch it from the air and eat it.

  Gabe managed to get one foot on the steering column, trying to relieve me of most of the extra weight. I heard a voice say, “Gonna have to rock it back onto the wheels, if’n we’re gonna get ’em outta there.”

  “Fuck that shit,” another voice said. “I say we off ’em right here and now.”

  “Brass wants ’em alive,” the first voice said. “Needs to know what they know.”

  Somebody snickered. “That fucker over there . . . he ain’t tellin’ nobody nothin’ no more. Not ever.”

  Gabe groaned. “The kid.”

  It took them about five tries to roll the truck back onto its wheels. After that, things got a bit hazy. I recall somebody with a skull ring on his middle finger reaching in the partially collapsed window frame and cutting my seat belt with a sheath knife. Then a multitude of hands squeezing me out through the narrow opening in the broken glass. By the time they got all of me hauled out, I’d already seen Ben. And wished I hadn’t.