by Mike Cooper
“Alive.” I’d called, but of course they wouldn’t say anything. Total news lockdown. All we had was some skimpy journalism and a thousand online rumors. “I assume.”
“Soon as he wakes up, they’ll start asking questions.”
“He won’t say anything.”
“Nothing?” Dave sounded skeptical.
“Zeke’s been there before. Even if they prove he was at the mill, so what? The bad guys aren’t going to the police, and they’ll have removed any bodies. The prosecutor might get frustrated and file a few nuisance misdemeanors—discharge of unlicensed firearms, that sort of thing—but he’ll be fine.”
“Anyway,” Dave said. “I mean, I wish Zeke hadn’t got shot, but you know . . .”
“What?”
“Really.” He slowed, went through a turn, shifted back up. “When I wrote that letter I thought you might—well, I dunno what I thought. But this is a goddamn adventure.” He grinned.
Gunfights. Explosions. Men dead and hospitalized. Those killjoys always criticizing modern entertainment for brutalizing the culture—they might have a point.
“I don’t like to mention it,” I said. “But I need another vehicle.”
—
“What is this, number four?” Dave sat on the passenger side for a change, while I tried to slide the bench seat farther back. No luck, it was jammed in place.
“Five, if you count borrowing the Blazer.”
“You’re hard on cars, man.”
“I’m a very safe driver.”
He laughed. “Me too.”
It was an old Chevrolet single-cab pickup with a cracked windshield, no tailgate and a pronounced list to the right side. Reverse didn’t seem to engage, and smoke coughed from the pipe whenever I accelerated. None of the interior lights worked.
“This can’t be legal,” I said. “And I don’t see an inspection sticker.”
“Naw, you’re good.”
“Nice of him to leave the temporary plate on.”
“Yeah.” Dave grinned. “I think he done forgot, actually.”
I didn’t have enough money to buy another used car. But Dave, ever resourceful, knew a teacher who ran the high school’s vocational auto repair course. They always had a couple of vehicles to work on, given to the school by other charities.
Someone donates a clunker to Goodwill to get the tax deduction. Goodwill, not in the used-car business, simply sells it on. Sometimes the car is so pitiful that even bottom-feeding chop shops won’t take it, so Goodwill trailers it to the school for students to practice on.
Some money changed hands, but not much. I had a new ride, the teacher could buy a few tools the next time the Snap-on truck stopped by, and it was all subsidized by the federal tax code. Win-win.
“I know he’s your friend and all,” I said. “But it’s a school day, and it sure smelled like weed when he came out of the break room.”
“Probably.”
“Uh-huh.” I slowed for a traffic light, pedal all the way to the floor before the brakes grudgingly took hold. “I hope the kids learned something, putting this bucket of bolts back together.”
I wasn’t convinced the truck wouldn’t fall apart at about fifty miles an hour, but Dave said he was satisfied, so I drove back to the high school. I pulled up alongside the playing field, where we’d left the Charger. The truck’s engine promptly died.
“I need to end this,” I said.
“We can figure something out, though, right?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I didn’t feel like more get-rich-quick schemes. “How’d it go with the chief last night?”
“Gator? Aw, he was fine. Don’t worry, I ain’t mixing you into it. Far as he knows, complete strangers drove up to my garage and shot it up for no reason in the world. Since nobody got hurt, for Gator it’s the insurance company’s problem.”
The mill near Leechburg was out of local jurisdiction. The staties might put two and two together, but they were stretched as thin as anyone else nowadays. I figured the CSI van was the last official contact they’d have with Barktree.
Dave might actually be in the clear.
If I could finish off the Russians, that is. And Harmony, whatever she wanted.
“Wait a second,” he said, getting out. The door took a couple of tries to latch shut.
“What?”
He walked to the Charger, opened the truck and pulled out the plastic bucket that had carried his tools to the furnace demolition.
I turned the ignition while I was waiting.
Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-click.
Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-click.
“You should hold on to this,” Dave said. “Brendt didn’t want it in his car no more.”
“Is the dynamite still in there?”
“Yeah.” He put the bucket in the truck bed. “Don’t give it so much gas, you’re gonna flood it.”
“I don’t want the dynamite either!”
“Well, we can’t just leave it on the street for some kids to find.”
A reasonable point. “Yes, but—”
“Look, if anyone’s gonna need some unstable high explosive, it’s you, right? Keep it out of the hands of careless civilians.”
The engine finally turned over and caught, sputtering.
“This junker’s too unreliable,” I said.
“White smoke’s better than black.”
“It could break down and crash any minute, and then what? You’re the one with the tuned automobile and the high-end driving skills.”
We argued another minute before Dave grudgingly returned the bucket to the Charger.
“If there’s a bridge over a nice deep river, we can drop it in,” I said.
“Okay, I guess.” He closed the trunk. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Where will you be?”
He grinned. “Elsie said her car was all banged up, needs some repair. I thought I’d see what I can do for her.”
I shook my head. “She’s Brendt’s girl.”
The grin disappeared.
“Now, Silas, that ain’t your business.”
“You ought to think it through.”
“You got no right telling me what to do.”
“Maybe not, but—”
“Don’t be acting like my fucking case officer.”
Dave turned away and got in the Charger. The engine roared to life with more gas than seemed necessary.
I watched him go, the wheels spinning just enough to throw sand in my direction.
Being someone’s sibling was harder than it looked.
—
Zeke had a double room to himself, which was kind of nice except maybe he still should have been in the ICU. I looked at him through the room’s window to the hallway before I entered—the blinds were slanted open. Bandages across his chest, tubes and wires, the bed at a slight angle. The overhead fluorescents were off, illumination coming from cove lights along the wall.
His eyes were open and alert when I came in. Fortunately, the TV was silent.
“You look great,” I said.
“Fuck off.” His voice was attenuated and whispery, hard to hear. I guess you can’t put much air through with half your chest caved in.
“Okay, you look like shit.” I gripped one of his hands for a moment. “I’m sorry, Zeke.”
“Not your fault.”
He was hooked up to oxygen from a freestanding green tank on the floor. Old-fashioned—most hospitals have stopcocks right in the wall, connected to a central supply. No mask, just a nasal cannula, so he could speak okay.
I sat in the bedside vinyl chair. A meal appeared untouched on the little swing table, now pushed toward the monitor rack.
“There’s no recording,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I’ve been staring at the walls for four hours. Can’t see any microphone, or any obvious place to hide one.”
“How come everyone says I’m so paranoid, but they never talk about you?”
/> He ghosted a smile. “They didn’t handcuff me to the bedrail, either.”
“I noticed that. No restrictions on visitors, for that matter.” I’d left my weapons in the truck, expecting a police guard or at least private security, but the only barrier to entry was a harried triage nurse who just pointed me at the elevator.
“They let you in.”
At least his spirits were up. “I would have called, but I figured they wouldn’t let you have a cellphone in here.”
“Nah.” Zeke pushed down the sheet by his side, revealing his phone. “They don’t care. I’m keeping it for when I call a lawyer.”
“You haven’t yet?”
“No need.”
I wasn’t sure about that. “What do the police say?”
“They’re having trouble with the hunting-accident story.”
“I can see their point. Whatever’s in season now, I don’t think mortars and automatic weapons are on the permit.”
He started to shrug, then grimaced and went motionless for a long moment. When he started breathing again it was slow and labored.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said finally, his voice even hoarser.
“Don’t be ridic—”
“No.” Pause to breathe. “Serious.”
“What?”
“Been thinking, drugs make it hard. How’d they know where you were?”
“At the mill? Brinker called me, remember?”
“No.” Some color in his cheeks now. “At your brother’s garage. You lost the tail the night before. You didn’t do anything to surface, right? Cash, no bars, all that?”
“Yes.”
“So how’d they know you were at the shop the next morning?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
“That’s a good question.”
“Phone? GPS?”
“The phone’s not traceable. The GPS I turned off. No reason to let Alamo follow me around.”
A cart rattled down the hallway outside. Muffled alert tones beeped steadily from the nurse’s station. We could hear voices as people walked past, but the words were indistinct.
“You want that juice?” I took the pint serving of OJ from the dinner tray and stripped off the foil lid. “Been a while since I ate.”
Zeke shook his head slightly on the pillow. “Dumb.”
“What?”
“A rental? And they followed you in it?”
“I told you, I lost them. Checked about three times, too.”
“But they got the license plate. Easy.”
Oh. “Um, maybe.”
“Then they bribed someone at Alamo. GPS doesn’t matter. The big fleet companies, they’ve installed tracking in all their cars now. Saw it in the news.”
“Shit.” The juice stopped halfway to my mouth.
“Not LoJack but like that. Satellite transponders. Whatever. They always know where you are.”
“Okay, I fucked up.” My fault Dave’s life got blown to hell after all. “But at least they wrecked that car when they attacked us. They haven’t been able to follow me since then.”
“Don’t have to.” Zeke’s eyes were bright, and he lifted his head a little to stare at me. “Don’t you get it? They know where I am.”
I realized the hallway had gone silent. I turned, starting to rise, looking at the door.
It crashed open, kicked to the wall and bounced back.
“Umri, huesos!”
The seven-foot Russian came in hard, both hands inside his leather jacket.
Drawing weapons now because he had to keep them hidden in the corridor.
I flung the orange juice into his face, let the cup go, and dove forward. My head and left elbow struck his legs. He fell back, banging the door, and we collapsed onto the floor.
He brought one hand out empty and punched at my head. I ducked enough to take it on the skull, then jabbed him as hard as I could in the privates. A grunt, but now he had a gun in the other hand, bringing it around.
BLAAM!
The shot went into the monitor rack, smashing it against the wall. Sparks and pops. Zeke groaned and alarm beeps went off everywhere.
Another shot. Glass shattered into the hallway. Screaming.
I had to control his gun hand.
He brought his knee up. Weak leverage but it still almost broke ribs. I grunted, punched again and used the motion to rise up a bit. He twisted, swung his other arm—
—and I trapped it with my own, bringing my forearm under and locking his elbow. The pistol fired again, deafeningly loud. With a surge of terror and desperation I twisted, jamming his arm and trying to break the elbow.
No go, but it must have hurt. He dropped the gun. It clattered to the floor, knocked sideways by our struggles, and went skidding under Zeke’s bed.
He clouted me on the head and I rolled away. A split second to make a decision—fight or run?
As if. I pushed myself through the doorway. He must have gotten his other gun out because another shot smashed the wall above me, then two more. I kept rolling, scrabbling on the tile to get farther from the door.
A real alarm went off, fire maybe, a painfully loud blare synchronized with on-off red lights along the corridor. Nurses in scrubs and doctors in white jackets ran this way and that, mostly away from us. A patient down the hall peeked out a doorway, leaning on a walker.
“Gondon!” he roared, coming through the doorway. Good—to the extent I had any strategy, it was to draw him away from Zeke. I sprinted down the corridor, knocking a gurney into his path, dumping a rack of linens.
BANG! BANG!
Shots followed me. He wasn’t aiming high, either—another patient’s window shattered on one side, and the other bullet cracked so close to my head I could hear it pass. I grabbed the corner of the nurses’ station, almost tearing my arm off but using the pivot to fling myself around and into another corridor.
“Get down! Get down!” I yelled as I went, not that it did any good. Some people are drawn to explosions, some freeze in terror and only a few have the sense to cower. I ran square into a doctor coming through a door, knocked her flat and kept going.
Where was the fucking exit? I needed a fire door, an exterior window, a stairwell—anything. But there were just more blue cement walls and equipment carts and empty wheelchairs.
The fire alarm made it hard to hear anything, or even to think.
I turned another corner. Crashing behind me, and another shot.
I didn’t have my own pistol. The Russian was stronger, far better armed and either insane or fearless or both. “Fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-ck!” I let out a long wail of frustration and rage as I ran.
And then I saw my chance.
A steel cart against the wall held five oxygen tanks, just like the one in Zeke’s room. Green, three feet long, neatly racked on low, horizontal shelves.
No time to think it through. I grabbed the cart, my momentum spinning it around and into the center of the hallway as I slammed to a halt. I grabbed one tank—it was heavy, at least fifteen pounds— and pulled it out.
Empty, full? Probably there was a dial or something, but I couldn’t waste time checking. I hoped for full and raised the tank above my head.
The Russian turned the corner after me, thirty feet down the corridor. The rack was dead center in the hallway, the blunt bottoms of the tanks pointed directly at him.
He fired and I swung the tank down simultaneously. The bullet missed.
My tank struck the stopcock of the first bottle, knocking the valve clean off.
SS-S-S-SH-O-O-O-SHHH!
The tank exploded out like a rocket, propelled by two thousand PSI of pure, compressed oxygen. It shot down the corridor too fast to see and slammed into the opposite end. The wall disintegrated, blueboard and aluminum framing blown to pieces by the impact.
“Motherfucker!”
Missed, though.
I swung again and struck the second bottle, which launched with equal flare. This time the flight path was crooked, t
oo high. It went into the ceiling tiles, tearing a vast gash before banging into something and crashing to the floor. Shredded acoustic insulation and wires and a fat pipe fell from the ceiling, followed a moment later by a gush of water.
Oops.
The Russian crouched behind the far corner, leaning out to fire twice. Both shots went wide, so he wasn’t aiming very well. Between us the spray of water increased, cascading down.
Then I saw sparks. Some of those wires might have been 220 or even 440 volts. A hospital wasn’t a factory, but it had plenty of big equipment, like full-body scanners.
The sparks were closer to the Russian than me, on the far side of the waterfall. He had to be worried about that, but he showed no sign of retreat.
Hopefully all the patients had fled. I lifted my tank once more.
The next bottle struck the corner right above the Russian’s head—wish I could take credit, but it was dumb luck. He ducked out of sight. One tank remained on the cart.
What the hell. I smashed the last stopcock.
WH-O-O-O-M-M-PPP!
A fireball filled the entire end of the corridor, blasting in all directions. I heard a yell under the noise—the Russian, with luck. The explosion rolled forward and even pushed through the cataract coming from the ceiling, but the water diminished its force and I felt only a brief flash of heat as the compression wave blew past.
Pure oxygen + electrical sparks. There’s a reason those tanks had DANGER and NO SMOKING stenciled in big bright letters.
Debris continued to fall along the corridor, but I didn’t see any other motion.
Time to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Outside was confusion and crying and sirens and chaos. Emergency vehicles were just arriving, screaming up with lights and sirens. Not just regular police and fire but the volunteers, too—I thought I recognized the Blazer I’d borrowed, and there were others. I had no trouble slipping through the crowd.
I had to assume the Russian was alive. My improvised rockets had done some damage, but he seemed like the kind of spetsnaz ironman who’d shrug it off and come walking out through the flames, guns in both hands.
The hospital had two parking lots and a third area in front of the emergency entrance for ambulances and drop-offs. Lots of exits—and there was no reason to think the Russian had parked in any of them. I hadn’t; my rattleback pickup was by the side of the road, on a turnaround opposite a T-junction.
