by Matt Hilton
"I don't know, Rink. Could be something else."
The location wasn't sitting right with me. Okay, we were in a run-down area of town, but normally crack labs weren't as public as this. People didn't turn up in limousines to conduct a quality control inspection, even if a few of the local cops had been paid to turn a blind eye.
Something I didn't doubt: whatever was going on, it was something illegal. We'd be in dangerous territory. "Looks like your standard one-two assault," I said to Rink.
He nodded slowly.
Where only two soldiers are involved in infiltrating an enemy stronghold, we always used a strategy termed a one-two maneuver. Like the name, there's nothing fancy about it. Advancing single file, the first—or point—man would engage and take out the enemy while the second would move on to the next position. Roles would then reverse, and so on, until the high ground was gained and no enemy was left behind to cause further trouble.
Of course, there are inherent problems with such tactics. It leaves way too much to chance and the ability of the individual soldier to neutralize the opposition. If things go wrong, the mission has to be aborted in rapid fashion. In the past, I've had worse experiences gaining exit than I have in the initial assault. Because of this, I prefer the less formal sobriquet of "smash and dash."
It remained our choice of approach on this occasion simply because it was all we had the numbers for. Maybe I should've allowed Harvey Lucas to join us. With three men, it lessens the chance that the enemy can outflank you. But not by much.
"Where do you suggest we start?" Rink asked. His expression was flat, but this was a front. Lights burned behind his eyes, and I knew that he was anxious.
I pointed out the opposite end of the building from where the guards patrolled. "See the fire escape? I'm guessing that there are doors at each floor. We'll go in through one of them, huh?"
Rink inclined his chin in agreement.
On its lowest floor the doors were most likely locked as tight as a
miser's billfold. But the myriad broken windows would give us easy access.
It was a waiting game. The sun went down, and shadows moved in like furtive burglars in the night. The lights behind the plastic grew brighter. Like zombies from some B movie, the street people drifted from their daytime hideaways, moving off in search of what they needed to feed their vices. More vehicles arrived. From our position, we couldn't make out how many people arrived, but from the excited yapping, someone had brought a couple of dogs with them.
"You hear what I'm hearing?" Rink asked.
"Yup. But you didn't expect this to be easy, did you?"
"Easy ain't a word in our vocabulary, Hunter."
Maybe the dogs were extra security Siggy employed after dark. I severely doubted that he was conducting doggy obedience classes. Rink and I shared a glance. Dogs, large or small, always made extreme stealth an issue.
We waited another half hour before leaving. Rink went first, shambling out through the gap in the fence. His pace was that of a man addled with drink and with no firm destination in mind. When he was out of sight around the side of the building, it was my turn to follow.
I followed the same route, joining Rink in the deep well of murk at the side of the building. There was an overpowering stench of vomit and urine. Welcome home, Hunter. It doesn't matter where my work takes me, it's always the same. I was only pleased that I couldn't see what I was standing in.
"Ready?" Rink whispered. He had the shotgun out of its bag, ready for action. I pulled out my SIG, held it at my side.
"Ready," I said.
Mounting the first set of stairs on a rusted fire escape, my mission to discover the whereabouts of my brother was finally under way. Whether or not John was inside the building, I wasn't sure. Petoskey was, and he knew something about John's disappearance. Taking Petoskey was the order of the day.
Gaining the first landing, I laid a hand on the door. The locking bar, like much of the remainder of the building, was an item lost in the past desecration of this place. The door swung open at the slightest tug. Rink immediately stepped past me, sweeping the darkness with his shotgun.
"Clear," he whispered, and I entered.
We stood still, acclimating ourselves to the ambient light leaking in from outside and listening to the natural sounds of the building. Far above, voices formed a discordant chorus. Someone was laughing. Then there were the dogs. No longer were they yapping, but snarling and barking maniacally.
"Dogfights," I whispered.
"Son of a bitch," Rink snarled. In the half-light, I saw his face grow hard. "I'm going to feed the punk his own balls."
"Yeah," I agreed. For one instant my mind shifted half a world away and I saw my own dogs, Hector and Paris. The thought of their being forced to fight to the death for the sick pleasure of the likes of Petoskey was enough to sicken even the stone-cold assassin in me.
Shake the anger loose, Hunter, I cautioned myself. It was bad enough that we were going in outnumbered. Never mind doing it in the wrong frame of mind. Go in in a rage and we'd be dead before we reached the next floor. I reached out in the dark to grab Rink's forearm.
"Go easy," I cautioned him.
"I'm cool," Rink replied. And I knew that he was.
"Okay. You take point."
"You want I go up or across?" Rink asked.
"Across," I said. In all likelihood, this stairwell was used exclusively by the dropouts who squatted here during the daylight hours. We had to go up by the route Petoskey would take, to ensure that we took out any possible reinforcements.
The corridor could have been a set from a horror movie. Cobwebs brushed our faces. Dust sifted from above and clung to my lips. From behind closed doors, the specters of this place tittered at our bravado. They beckoned to us; come and join us in hell, there's plenty of room for two more.
The far end of the corridor didn't come too soon for me.
Rink was waiting in a vestibule area. A door that had once held wire-reinforced glass but was now blocked by a tarpaulin hung on bent nails, barred our progress. The faint buzz of conversation filtered from beyond.
"What do you think?" Rink whispered.
Ever the smart one, I made a quick calculation. Held up three fingers to Rink. Not that he didn't trust me; Rink placed his face at the edge of the tarpaulin to confirm the estimate. We moved back down the corridor a safe distance.
"Two guys on the stairs. Looks like another one sitting down in a chair to the left of the door, but I could only see his feet."
"Armed?" I asked Rink.
"Nothing I could see." Rink shrugged. "Doesn't mean anything. They could still be packing."
Armed or not, it didn't mean a thing. I could chew my lips all day, but it wouldn't change our options. "We treat them like they're armed. Okay?"
"Yup," Rink said, hefting the shotgun so the barrel was skyward.
It's not what you want—and to be fair, it didn't lie straight with either of us—because it meant we were going in with what's known in our trade as extreme prejudice. In layman's terms: shoot to kill. These weren't international terrorists or even enemy soldiers, just half-assed gangland hoods. Killing them was extreme. Maybe too extreme under the circumstances. As Rink had reminded me last night, we didn't have a license to kill anymore.
"No, Rink, we can't. You happy with defense only?" I suggested.
Talk about weight coming off shoulders. I'd swear we both grew a head taller.
"Okay," I said. "We only shoot when necessary. Otherwise it's hand-to-hand."
"I'm happy with that," Rink said.
Rink again laid an eye to the edge of the tarpaulin. His raised thumb showed no change to the tableau.
Okay, we're rolling. Action!
Rink ripped aside the tarpaulin and stepped into the hallway beyond. I was a fraction of a beat behind him.
Confusion is the result of prolonged inactivity dramatically kickstarted into life. The three men in the stairwell were caught catching flies,
with their hands in the cookie jar, with their trousers down, whatever your choice of metaphor. The sudden intrusion of two armed men in their midst caused shocked silence. But that was only one frame of the action. Time jumped to fast-forward.
To my left a man erupted out of a wicker chair. He had a sawed-off across his lap and was snatching for it. It was an easy decision for me. I snapped my left hand sideways. Put a back fist strike to the bridge of his nose. The man went down into his seat like the world champion of competitive musical chairs. The fact that his hands didn't reach for his broken nose in reflex meant he was unconscious. The shotgun slipped out of his lap onto the floor and I swiped it away with the edge of my boot.
Giving them their due, the other two had more sense than to challenge Rink's shotgun. They stood like mute statues until he ordered them to come forward. The one-two was on; I immediately mounted the stairs. From below me, Rink said something. Knowing him, it would be funny, but no one was laughing. The silence was followed by the thump and scuffle of feet, and I guessed my suggestion of handto-hand was being followed.
The second landing was devoid of movement. I crept forward,
stepping into dim light that leached from the floor above, bringing up my SIG to sweep the space before me. My darkness-adapted eyes sought the next flight of stairs. Below me, Rink mounted the stairs, and you'd assume that it was safe for me to go on. Bad move. You know what they say about assuming anything; it certainly made an ass out of me.
Maybe I'd grown a little rusty. I should have checked the corridor to my left before proceeding. As I committed myself to the stairs, a door opened behind me and a voice challenged me.
"The hell are you?"
Then a second voice shouted, "Five-O in the house."
I've undergone extensive hand-to-hand training in the Fairbairn method of combat. What I neglected to mention is that I've also trained in Fairbairn's armed technique known as Point Shooting. Like the hand-to-hand, it's based on the principle of immediate and reflexive action. Point. Shoot. Simple as that.
While the two men were stunned at my appearance, I could have spun and put a couple of rounds into their bodies. They would have been on their backs and I'd have been up on the next landing.
But as I'd so recently agreed with Rink, unless necessary this mission was to be carried out without lethal force. Shooting was out of the question. With that in mind, I'd no option but to turn around slowly, giving them ample opportunity to take stock of me on the stairwell. Not that I was about to give up an advantage. I kept my gun by my side, hidden from view by the angle of my body. If it came to it, I could shoot from the hip and take out both of them in a fraction of a second.
What is it with criminals? Both men were dressed in windbreakers and denims, both with the obligatory shaved heads that went with hired muscle. They could have been the American cousins of Shank's right-hand man. Perplexed at my appearance, they were caught in a limbo that stayed their hands as effectively as it did their brains. One of them had called out Five-O, street slang for police. That gave me a second advantage over them. Where they probably wouldn't hesitate to take out a rival, it wasn't okay to kill a police officer. Do that, and any agreement Petoskey had with the local police force went right out the window. When it came to avenging one of their own, the police would come down on them like a blue avalanche.
The disguise didn't fool them, but that was fine. They saw through the shabby clothes, but saw something that wasn't there. So let them think I was a cop. It's what would save their lives.
"Police," I said. "You're both under arrest."
A totally lame statement, I know, but something they expected nonetheless. They gaped at me, then at each other, before breaking into stupid grins.
"You've got to be jokin', man," said one of them.
"No," I answered. "I'm deadly serious."
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they again exchanged grins.
"What the hell you on, man?" Tweedledum asked. "You know you don't come here."
"Oh? You mean an officer of the law isn't welcome in your fine establishment?" I said. Any old nonsense was enough to keep their attention on me another second or so.
"No, you're not welcome," said Tweedledee.
"Ah, now that is a shame," I told him.
"Yeah, a goddamn cryin' shame," Rink echoed as he whacked the stock of his shotgun into the nearest man's kidneys. The man buckled to his knees.
The second Tweedle twin spun to face Rink, backing up against the far wall as he reached to his pocket for a concealed weapon. Rink wasn't a black belt for nothing. He lifted a boot and kicked the man in the pit of his stomach, then held the man with his foot, pressing him up against the rotting plaster of the wall.
"Go on up," he said. "Leave these two punks to me."
"They're all yours," I told him.
I was about midway to the next landing when the shooting started. Not from below, but from above. It's natural to throw yourself down when fired upon. What is equally natural is the way I brought up my hand and fired off a return shot.
Boom! There goes the neighborhood, you might've said. And you'd have been right. All hope of engaging the enemy without shooting was gone now. Any remorse about killing had to be put behind me, too. When fired upon, there was only one recourse.
The stairwell echoed with the thump of feet. It could only be Petoskey's men looking for cover. There were four distinct voices as they called out to others in the building. Confusion was the reigning order. Someone was shouting that the police were here, while another shouted that Hendrickson's men were in the building. It didn't matter who the hell they thought they were up against; panic had turned their response deadly.
To buy a little respite, I unloaded a clip toward the head of the stairs, following my bullets with a headlong charge as I pushed another magazine in place.
Rink was still below me, snorting like a bull as he finished off the two who'd tried to take me from behind. Undoubtedly eager to finish the fight and come to my assistance. Time to wait for him wasn't a luxury I possessed. I sprinted upward to a point where there was a turn in the stairs. Suicidal I'm not, but that's what I'd have been committing if I'd poked my head around the corner for a look. Unfortunately, I had to get some kind of bead on the men waiting to ambush me. Choice made, I thrust my gun around the bend, firing three rapid shots. Just enough to force my ambushers to dive for cover. I spun into the cordite cloud searching for movement.
No one in sight, I sprang up the remaining stairs and into a recess on the left. I run regularly, occasionally go to the gym, yet I was still blowing hard. I blame it more on adrenaline dump than lack of condition.
The wall next to my shoulder was holed by one of my own bullets. I quickly pushed myself deeper into the recess, firing off two more rounds into the quiet corridor. There were doors lining the corridor on both sides, and any one of them could be concealing an enemy shooter.
"Rink! Are you about done down there or what? I could do with that shotgun up here."
Rink appeared on the stairs below me. Blood was seeping from a shallow nick below his left eye. Other than that, he appeared unhurt.
"One of the punks thought he'd do me with a set of brass knuckles," Rink said. He dabbed away blood with the back of his wrist. "I soon knocked that silly notion out of his skull."
"Get yourself up here and give me some cover," I whispered to him. "Sounds like they're holed up in a room on my right."
Rink came up the stairs, feeding shells into his shotgun. There was blood on the stock. Thug with brass knuckles versus Rink wielding a shotgun like a club: no contest.
"I'm going to try and get by that door there. If it looks like it's about to open, give 'em hell."
"Leave it to me," Rink said. He moved to the head of the stairs where he could get a line on the door I'd indicated.
Cat-footed, I moved forward, my gun extended before me. The defenders behind the door had to know I was moving into the corridor, but there was nothing for it: I had
to go forward. We had to stop them and stop them fast. I feared the arrival of reinforcements who'd be able to pen us in from below. Then there was the other consideration. That Petoskey was making a quick exit by another route. If he got away from us now, it'd probably be impossible to get a second chance at him.
Passing the door on the right, I nodded for Rink to follow, and he thumped up the corridor like Frankenstein's monster. True to form, the door exploded into splinters. Even the wall opposite was shredded, the bullets continuing into the rooms beyond.
As the first barrage ended, I swung in front of the shattered door, emptying my clip through the wood. Men yelled inside the room, one of them making a series of gasps. I'd hit one of them at least. That left—what?—three more?
