They didn’t get close.
Bullets cut the tires out from under them, three of the four gone quickly, booming one after the other.
The car jostled, sank, deflating. Spinning out of control.
They whipped back toward the line of police cars, rocking up on two wheels.
Healey strangled the wheel. Wrestled it. A string of bellowed profanities streaming from his lips as though he could insult the car into obeying his command.
And then one of the mafia cars bashed into them — another sedan turned into a missile.
It joined the force of their skid to send them toppling.
And the whole world rolled over.
Tilting, tilting.
Gravity dropped out from under them. No longer made sense.
Weightlessness.
Darger’s stomach floated up to try to touch her sinus cavity.
Chapter 61
And then the car bashed down to the earth. Gravity seemed to overcompensate all at once. Throttling them. Smashing out the windows. Pelting them with glass shards. Caving the roof in toward them.
They rolled twice, the second impact lacking the violence of the first though they skidded a ways upside down after it.
Darger’s thoughts jumbled for a moment. Scrambled. Shaken up and ready to foam out everywhere like a bottle of soda. But she was OK physically. Not a scratch.
The airbags inflated at some point in there, punching her in the face, filling her vision with a bubble of white nylon, though Darger couldn’t quite sequence this event in her memory, couldn’t remember exactly when it happened.
The driver’s side took the brunt of it, both the initial impact of the collision and the two landings, but she couldn’t see to check the extent of the damage yet.
She beat back the airbag, clubbed at it until she got it out of her face.
Then she swiveled her whole body to the left and recoiled immediately. Nauseous. All of her hair standing on end.
Healey lay crushed to the driver’s seat. The metal of the roof and door and frame bent impossibly to twist around him. Contorted. Obscuring his head and most of his torso. Wrapping him in steel. It pressed close enough to the seat to make his survival impossible.
She stared into the little gap a moment, the too small space where his head should be, where she could see one tiny swath of his neck skin, and it looked strangely cracked. Fissures opened up red. Like the places where the ground split during an earthquake.
She pivoted to face the back seat, finding Jaworski unharmed.
“You OK?” he said, brushing glass out of the folds in his pants and shirt.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Deputy Healey. The driver. He didn’t make it.”
“I see that.”
She turned back to the body. The last thing she wanted to do was touch this broken corpse, but her hand shot out anyway, snatched the keyring from his belt. She flicked through the metal bits for the right one.
The gunfire seemed to pick up again outside. Had it really slowed? Or had the shock blocked out everything outside this car for a moment there?
Now she unhooked her seatbelt, braced herself to fall the few inches to the ceiling, a disorienting process that wrenched her lower back a little. Nothing serious. Just a twinge of pain.
She leaned into the back, working quickly at the metal wreathed around the hitman’s ankles. A hushed moment passed between them as she inserted the key. No words.
This could be a mistake, she knew. Unlocking a psychopath — a murderer of countless victims — turning him loose in this chaotic moment. But he was no use to them dead. That was for sure. Better to take the chance. To hope that Huettemann’s death wouldn’t end up being entirely meaningless.
Jaworski’s shackles popped off, and she yanked the chain free from where it wrapped around his cuffs, tossed it aside.
Now it was his turn to unbuckle himself and fall to the ceiling. His spine arced when he hit, eyes going wide for a second, lip curling. Must have jolted his bum leg.
“I’d get the cuffs, too, but…” she said.
“No time. I get it.”
“Now you can run, at least. Try to keep up.”
He looked at the bundle of bandages swaddling his knee.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
They crawled out the passenger side window, an opening which was just big enough to accommodate Jaworski’s width.
Darger ducked behind the upturned car, Jaworski settling in beside her. She drew her weapon, surveyed the scene.
The driver of the car that struck them was dead from the looks of it. His bloody head pressed to the inside of the windshield, smashed like a Halloween pumpkin.
Beyond the wreckage, the firefight continued. Mobsters vs. SWAT doing machine gun battle out in the open like this was Baghdad instead of Detroit.
She scanned the fallen bodies, happy to find neither Loshak nor Luck among them, at least so far as she could tell.
But then her eyes did a double-take. Returned to a face. Stopped. She sucked in a cold breath.
She found one person she recognized after all, making out just enough of his profile to be certain.
Agent Costello sprawled in the gutter, upper body atop a pool of blood as though floating on it. The exit wound formed a fist-sized cavern in the back of his skull, red and angry and wrong.
The gunfire sounded louder now that they were out in the open. Violent percussion all around them. Piercing cracks and pops. A rhythmic clatter. Most of it oddly high-pitched the way assault rifle fire always was.
They needed to move. Get out of the open. The empty buildings were their best hope, Darger figured.
The car’s cover really only worked in a visual sense. If no one knew they were there, they wouldn’t shoot this way. A bullet from an assault rifle would pass right through it, however. Barely slowing. With Jaworski being the prime target in all of this, someone would come gunning their way sooner than later.
A SWAT dude shuffled into the open just beyond them, squatted, aimed his gun at one of the shooters above. Fired.
Headshot.
The mafia gunman slumped forward from his spot along the roof’s edge, spilled over the cusp, tumbling, the AR-15 twirling out of his hands to fall next to him. He splatted to the ground maybe forty feet in front of Darger.
It seemed like a sign. Here was an empty building, most likely — a safe haven, or at least their best hope of one — and she could scoop up a weapon upgrade along the way.
She squeezed Jaworski’s shoulder, and he nodded, thinking the same as her.
Darger scrambled into the open, staying low. The first ten yards zoomed by without incident. They were close now. Perhaps ten paces from the doorway.
Just as she squatted to retrieve the assault rifle, the shot rang out.
Pain.
It slammed into her chest with the force of a sledgehammer. Sucked the air out of her lungs.
Sharp pain.
Sweet Jesus, it hurt.
And her lungs were frozen. Wind knocked clean out of her. Shocked by the bullet’s force.
She couldn’t breathe.
Darger fell, off-balance, bashed her head and shoulder on the sidewalk.
Confused. Tried to suck in a breath but her chest wouldn’t obey.
And her gun. Gone. Hands patted around for it. Knowing it must be close.
Heard her heartbeat. Felt the blood thudding in her eyes.
She scrabbled to prop herself on her elbows. Looked up.
Saw another body flop to the ground, another SWAT guy shot dead, helmet popping off when he hit the blacktop.
She tried to breathe, tried to force it, but her chest could only shudder. Unable to expand. Muscles hardened and stuck.
She rolled over to see Jaworski scooping the assault rifle, hunching over her, a murderous look on his face. Eyebrows crushed together. Lips sneering. Locking eyes with her.
The gun pointed her way.
Chapter 62
With t
he AR-15 pinned under his armpit, Jaworski slung Darger over his shoulder, her waist folding over the slab of muscle there. She seemed a light thing. Soft. Fragile like a frail cat.
The bullet had blasted her vest. It didn’t penetrate the body armor from what he could tell at a glance, but it’d taken her wind from her.
He moved now, surprised to discover he could run a little — could put a little weight on the bad leg, though the knee was too swollen to bend. All tight and hot and strange.
He pressed it. Pushed himself. His choppy strides lengthened, approached a loping sprint thanks to the adrenaline rush.
Weird crackly feelings erupted in his head, strobing his vision with flashes of light and dark like the wiring in his cerebral cortex was going faulty, his body freaking out over jostling the injured place even if he couldn’t feel it. He ignored the crackles. Pushed himself even harder. No choice.
The concrete grid of sidewalk slid by underneath. Gray squares seamed with cracks. Rolling like the frames on a busted TV.
And he broke into the open, striding those final paces to the building.
And nothing hurt now. Nothing at all. Not the wad of swollen hamburger he called a knee. Not the red patches on his head where hair and scalp used to reside.
The adrenaline pumped painlessness back through his system. Liquid energy gushing through his veins. A rush of euphoria, too. Like fifty shots of espresso and a couple of Oxycontin hitting at the same second, all of it crashing into his head like a fucking tidal wave.
And his heart hammered in his chest. He felt awake. Alive.
He lowered his empty shoulder and pressed through the door into the empty apartment building ahead, stumbling over the threshold before finding his feet again.
The apartment looked gutted. Vacant. A blown out shell. Much of the drywall in the lobby lost to water damage so the studs stood bare and filthy — the building’s ribcage still holding it upright, if barely.
He didn’t slow down. Some irrational force pushing him forward, some primal impulse firing in his head, an absolute need to move away from the front door, get as far away from it as possible.
His footsteps clapped and echoed over the terrazzo floor. Thudding steps, slightly off-beat because of his limp, heavy from the extra weight of the federal agent slung over his back.
All he could think was that it would be better to get off the ground level. Put the two of them up a floor or two to get a better vantage point, get that little bit further away from the front door. Hide themselves on the vertical plane as well as the horizontal.
He gutted through two flights of stairs, those crackles and pops in his head intensifying, his vision strobing all the way to black a few times. And now beads of sweat protruded from his skin all over, and his jaw was clenched shut so hard it was quivering.
He needed to pull up, he knew. Find a place to hunker down for a while. A place to hide.
He veered down a hall. Kicked open an apartment door. Scanned it. A studio apartment. Small and empty, but it would work.
Darger groaned as he set her down. He planned to sit next to her, their backs up against the wall so they could see anyone creeping up. His automatic rifle ready to cut them in half.
But first he wanted to get a closer look at where the slug hit her.
“You OK?” he asked.
He knelt over her. Held his breath as leaned close.
“Can’t… fucking… breathe,” she wheezed, then tried to smile. “Other than that… great.”
He tugged at the strap of her body armor, got enough of a look to confirm that she wasn’t bleeding. Probably bruised as hell, though. The vest had stopped the metal, but it hadn’t stopped the kinetic force from battering into her ribcage.
She let her head droop forward, eyes squeezed tight against the pain of breathing.
He picked at the flattened bullet. Pinched it between his fingers. The slug had spread out against the Kevlar, half-flattened. It looked like a penny smashed flat on the railroad tracks.
That strobe effect still flickered in his head, made him feel close to passing out. He sucked in a few deep breaths and let them out slowly. It seemed to help.
Now he crept to the window. Settling his back alongside it so he could peek out without leaning into the opening, without exposing himself, hopefully.
Droves of dead cops and mobsters lined the streets. Bodies sprawled in various poses among the wrecked cars. Blood pooled around them, little rivulets of red trailing away like rivers.
All of the car doors stood open, the dome lights shining bright. This detail almost made it seem like they’d wandered into the post-apocalypse instead of the outskirts of Detroit. Maybe that gap wasn’t so big.
A few of the men were down but still alive, screaming their heads off now and then as they fell in and out of shock. To Jaworski, it almost seemed like the wounded were taking turns yelling, making a child’s game of it.
The current screamer called out for his mother over and over. Sounded scared and small.
“Mama please… Mama help me…”
The lilt of his voice gave Jaworski goose bumps, it sounded so much like a damn kid. Poor bastard.
And then he realized that he recognized the voice. It was Big Joe Carlo, for fuck’s sake. A tree trunk of a man — a cold-blooded killer — crying for his mom in a child’s voice.
He scanned the street for him. Found him draped over a section of sidewalk. His guts all opened up. Blood everywhere. Fingers clutching at the wounds. Writhing like fat worms.
Still, he called out over and over for his mother. Mournful cries.
Finally, a mobster poked his top half out of a window two stories above the fallen figure. A small man in black flashing into the open for just a second. It was Sal Lombino. He fired one shot into Carlo’s skull to put him out of his misery.
And the cries cut out, the ensuing beat of silence somehow more uncomfortable.
But the quiet didn’t last. The clatter picked up again, the bullets still flying. The start-and-stop rhythm of the machine gun fire was hypnotic.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK
Beat.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK
Beat.
The repetition lulled Jaworski into watching the world out there. The dead gone totally still. The wounded floundering and suffering. The crack of weapon fire reverberating off the concrete, a ringing tone that shivered in the air around them.
Mesmerized by the massacre still unfolding, he forgot all about his plan to watch the door, his back wedged in the corner. Forgot about most everything but the bloodbath below.
They’d have to wait it out, he figured. Hope to stay hidden for a while.
Eventually backup would arrive for one side or the other and finish it. He just hoped it was the good guys.
Movement caught the corner of his eye. He looked over to see Darger’s eyes open wide, blinking, looking terrified at something across the room.
He wheeled to see Rocco Battaglia in the doorway, his weapon raised, that sadistic smile curling his lips.
And that red tide surged in Jaworski’s skull again. Hatred flowing through his body.
He reacted within a fraction of a second. Training the gun. Squeezing the trigger. The world moving in slow motion once again.
The first wave of bullets cut Rocco down at the knees. A bloody spray where his legs had been. His figure toppled over like a dead tree.
And the gun felt right in Jaworski’s hands. The bolt pounding again and again. Firing hot nails into Rocco Battaglia’s limbs and torso and skull.
He just kept squeezing the trigger. Even after the body slumped to the ground. He fired again and again into it. Watched it squirm on the floor, the bullets making it twitch and dance.
Chapter 63
The bullets shredded the body into something resembling ground meat as Darger watched, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. She wanted to close her eyes, but it was as if horror had frozen her eyelids in the open position. She couldn’t look
away.
Finally, Jaworski released the trigger. Lowered the barrel of the gun. The world seemed oddly silent then, and she knew part of it was that her hearing had been totally fucked by all the close-range gunfire.
Jaworski stared at the mangled corpse in the doorway for a few more seconds before springing into action.
“We should move,” he said.
He spun toward her, squatting down and extending his hand.
“You think you can walk on your own now, or should I carry you again?”
Darger opened her mouth to answer, but before she could get a word out, Jaworski’s head exploded.
Blood and brain matter and little shards of bone slapped against her face, in her mouth, coating her like someone had hit her in the face with a cream pie made of Dominik Jaworski’s insides.
The hitman’s bulk fell forward onto her legs, his dead weight pinning her in place.
She gasped and sputtered, and then through the blood in her eyes, she saw Agent Price standing in the doorway, his AR-15 still trained on Jaworski.
He turned away from her then, back toward the hallway.
“Over here! I’ve got an agent down!” he shouted.
Half in shock, Darger stared down at Jaworski’s body and realized with horror the mistake. Price had seen him looming over her with a weapon in his hand and thought he’d been attacking her. Price thought he’d saved her.
The fact that Jaworski’s bodily fluids were still streaming down Darger’s face seemed to strike Price just then.
“Aw Jesus, Darger.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
She wiped her mouth first, spitting something chunky to the floor. Then she dabbed at her eyes.
“Can you help me up?” she asked, gesturing at the giant corpse holding her down.
“Christ. Yeah.”
He set the assault rifle down and offered her his hands before realizing they’d have to move the fallen body pinning down her lower half first.
Price seemed equal parts amused and horrified as he nudged Jaworski’s corpse with his foot. Finally, they were able to roll the dead hitman off of her. The corpse flopped face up, revealing the massive exit wound of ragged flesh that used to be Jaworski’s right cheek and eye.
Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood Page 28
