4 Real Dangerous Place

by K. W. Jeter

  That sight convinced me even more that the guy was up to something weird. Nobody goes to that much trouble just to give himself a nice view of the city.

  “So what’re we going to do, Kimmie?”

  That was my brother on my case again, now that I had crawled back face-to-face with him.

  “Let me think . . .”

  Actually, I’d already been doing that, my brain working the whole time I had been scoping out the scene around us. The difference in my calculations being Donnie himself. Without him as part of my plans – not much chance of pulling anything off. With him – maybe a chance. Maybe.

  “Okay,” I said. Keeping my voice down to a whisper – the last thing I wanted right now was for any of Richter’s thugs to discover the two of us hiding under the car. A single burst from one of their assault rifles would hose us both out of there. For as long as possible, I wanted these people to be completely unaware of our existence, to go on believing that I’d been inside the panel truck when it had gone up in flames. Eventually, they were going to find out different – but if everything went right, then it would be too late for them to do anything about it. “Here’s what we’re going to do –”

  It was easy for Donnie to hear everything I said. We were practically nose to nose, sharing the same breath, the car’s suspension pressing against the side of my head.

  “I don’t know . . .” He frowned when I finished giving him the details. “You really think that’ll work?”

  “Give me a break. Got a better plan, Einstein?”

  “No,” he admitted. “That’s kind of your department, Kimmie.”

  “Then just let your big sister do her thing, okay?” I squiggled away from him a bit, so I could reach down and pull the other acetylene tank up between us, along with the empty plastic bag that Elton had duct-taped to it. “Pretty soon, you’ll have all the rock ’n’ roll you could want.”

  † † †

  Somebody else – not Richter – decided to do his thing right about then.

  The traffic reporter in the news copter was right to be worried. Since coming back to the freeway bottle, after getting refueled, the pilot had been spookily quiet, with a dark, brooding expression on his face. Menard kept edging the copter farther down over the freeway lanes, away from the main action they should’ve been keeping the camera on, and toward the sleek, black limo trapped near the school bus. The one with the pilot’s old boss Karsh stuck inside it, grumbling because all his money didn’t seem to be enough to buy him out of this tight situation, the way it had every time before –

  Including that time years before, when Karsh had been out here in Los Angeles, playing at being a movie producer. And he had screwed up a low-budget film shoot, screaming at the director to bring the stunt helicopter in lower and tighter, right into the special-effects explosions going off. It’d been some kind of war zone scene, with one end of a river gully in Ventura County standing in for generic Southeast Asia. And the copter pilot had been stupid enough to do it, because Karsh had promised him an under-the-table bonus if the shot came out dramatic and scary enough. Which would’ve been good money if one of the pyrotechnics canisters hadn’t been loaded way beyond what the film commission’s safety regulations allowed – more of Karsh’s slippery money at work – and the blast’s shock wave hadn’t torn off one of the copter’s rear rotor blades, sending it spiraling out of control and finally crashing on top of two of the actors in the scene, a former big name who Karsh had managed to get cheap, and a little Cambodian-American girl from Westminster, who was so young she shouldn’t have been on the set at all, especially one with that much dangerous stunt work going on. There are actually rules about that sort of thing.

  Which all came out in the trial that followed, with the lawyer for the little girl’s parents coming after every dollar in Karsh’s pockets – which they would’ve gotten, if Karsh’s team of legal sharks hadn’t been able to foist all the blame onto the copter pilot. Not enough for the pilot to wind up doing jail time, but enough to wipe out his little one-man company and all its assets. Even if he had managed to hang onto the helicopter he’d been using for film work, it wouldn’t have done him any good. After a high-publicity trial like that, with his name getting dragged through the newspapers every day for a month, there had been nobody in Hollywood who would hire him for even an hour’s worth of filming. It’d taken years – long, ugly, starving ones – for people’s memories to fade enough that he’d finally been able to land even this crappy gig, taking some local news station’s leased helicopter up into the air for the evening commuter traffic coverage.

  Other people’s memories might have faded – but Menard’s hadn’t. Back at the hangar where he kept his stuff from the old days, there were tattered manila envelopes stuffed with evidence photos and transcripts of testimony from the trial. And photos from after the trial as well, like that one he’d dug out and looked at while the news copter was being refueled. The photo that some newspaper cameraman had gotten, that had shown up on the front page, of Karsh on the courthouse steps with his retinue of briefcase-toting attorneys, all of them smiling and shaking hands with each other. And Karsh smiling the widest, arms up in the air in triumph, like he’d just broken the Olympic record for the 100-meter dash.

  Remember that bit I said at the beginning, about why your job and everybody else’s jobs are so crummy? Because your boss sucks? There’s a real good chance that if things ever got to that point, your boss would be just as happy, smiling away in public for the whole world to see, to stick it to you the same way Karsh had stuck it to the copter pilot. That’s just the way they are. And of course, in the meantime, you’re supposed to act like you don’t know that the guy you’re working for wouldn’t throw you under the bus just as soon as look at you, if it would save him a few dollars. And that’s just reality, baby.

  “Maybe we should go back a little bit.” The traffic reporter was getting even more nervous, looking over at the pilot. “Over there –” Holton pointed to the rear of the freeway bottle below them. “Just in case something else goes up.”

  The pilot didn’t answer. He’d taken the copter to right over the limo, where he could keep a close eye on whatever was happening with his old boss Karsh, no matter in which direction the camera might be pointed.

  That was what was making the traffic reporter nervous. He knew about the whole business that had gone down years before, with the helicopter accident at the film shoot, with the little girl and the former big-name actor getting killed. He’d even seen some of the photos from the trial, that he’d dug up from the news station archives, back when he’d first started working Menard. So he knew there was some major bad blood between the guy and his old boss Karsh – somebody doesn’t get screwed over like that and then just forgets about it.

  And then to have it turn out that Karsh was right there among the hostages in the freeway bottle – and the helicopter pilot had even spotted him there in the limo, like he had some kind of telepathic radar locked on the sonuvabitch – that was even creepier. Looking over at the pilot beside him, Holton had to wonder what was going on inside the other man’s head. What kind of scheme the guy might be cooking up.

  He wasn’t going to have to wait much longer to find out.

  “We’re going in.” Menard didn’t even look over at the reporter. He just kept his narrow gaze focused out the side of the copter and down at the shiny black roof of the limo below. “Now’s the time to do it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” The reporter’s eyes went wide. “Go in where?”

  “Down there.” The copter pilot pointed straight toward the limo. “We’re going to pick up that Karsh fellow, pull him out.” He nodded toward the stuff piled up behind the seats. “That’s what the gear’s for, that I loaded up when we were refueling.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re talking about rescuing him, right?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You are crazy. You really are.” Holton stared at hi
m. “You’ll get us killed!”

  “That won’t happen,” said Menard. All cool and calm. “It’ll be over before you know it. We’re in, we’re out – these guys with the guns won’t even know what’s happened until it’s all over. We’ll be miles away before they can get a shot off.”

  “Yeah, right. If we’re lucky.” The reporter shook his head. “Look, I know that’s the guy you used to work for. And I know he’s loaded and all. But I still don’t think it’s worth taking a chance for it. However grateful he might be afterward, or how much he’d pay us for getting him out of there. What good’s the money if you’re not alive to spend it?”

  “You worry too much. I’ve done this kind of job before. Piece of cake – even with live rounds going off at us.”

  “Like I said –” The reporter picked up the microphone and reached for the radio controls. “You’re insane. I’m calling the station manager.”

  “No, you’re not.” The copter pilot plucked the mike out of the other man’s hand. “This is going to happen whether you’re along for the ride or not. If I have to, I’ll dump you out right now. You’ll be face-down on top of those cars in thirty seconds.” He gave the reporter a weird smile. “Then you’ll really be on location, won’t you?”

  “You wouldn’t –”

  “I thought you said I was insane. So do you want to find out if I really am or not?”

  Holton drew back in the seat, scrambled thoughts racing inside his head.

  “Are you in or not?” The pilot studied him. “Because I can do it without you. Trust me on that one. I just don’t want to have to go to the bother of explaining to everyone about why you jumped out on your own.”

  “All right . . .” Barely able to breathe, the reporter gave a slow nod. “I’m in. Whatever you want to do . . .”

  “That’s good.” Menard tilted the rudder, banking the copter away from the freeway. “Think about it this way. It’ll be a lot better story than you would’ve had otherwise.”

  The reporter felt sick, stomach flipping at the thought of whatever was going to happen next. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Maybe . . .”

  “Just do what I tell you,” said the pilot, “and everything’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t get it, though.” The reporter was still trying to figure it out. “This is the guy that screwed you over, right? I mean – all that stuff from a while back. I know all about that –”

  “Not as much as you think you do.”

  “Okay, fine. But he’s still the guy, right? That you used to work for. And he let you take the blame for everything that happened on that film shoot – the one where that little girl got killed, and the actor who was with her. They both got it. And this Karsh guy made it look like it had all been your fault.”

  “That’s right.” Menard nodded, his jaw set grim. “That’s exactly what he did. Right there in court. And in the papers. I took the rap for it.”

  “So why are we doing this? I mean – why are you doing it? Going in there and saving his ass – it can’t just be for the money.”

  “Figure it out.” The darkened horizon, out by the edge of the Pacific, tilted as the pilot swung the copter around in a wide circle. “Let’s just say I liked flying for the movies better than staring at traffic jams on the freeways every day. And if Karsh owes me a big one . . .” He shrugged. “I’ll be back in the game.”

  The reporter’s brow creased as he listened to the other man.

  “Think about it,” continued Menard. “You want to be a traffic reporter for the rest of your life? Sitting up here, telling people on the radio to take an alternate route, like there even was one? The same pileup, every day? Because that’s what you’ve got to look forward to.”

  Holton didn’t reply. It was starting to all sink in.

  “What’s the point of being in L.A. if you’re not in the movies?” The pilot watched him, looking for a response. “Karsh can do it for you – just like that.” He took a hand off the rudder and snapped his fingers. “Especially with the screenplay you’ll be able to give him, when this is all over. You can throw away whatever one you’re probably working on and start over with this. First person account of pulling a VIP right out of the biggest, most public hostage situation to ever hit L.A. Tell you what –” He smiled again. “I’ll even let you take the credit for the whole thing being your idea. Tell it however you want – like you had to talk me into it. I don’t care. Just as long as Karsh knows that I came and got him out of there – that’s all I’m asking for.”

  “Huh.” The reporter slowly nodded. “Maybe . . .” Either it was all starting to make sense – or he was going just as crazy as the pilot already was. “Maybe it’ll work . . .”

  “Oh, it’ll work, all right.” The pilot banked the copter, swinging it back across the surface streets below and toward the freeway again. “You’ll see . . .”

  TWENTY

  “YOU READY?”

  I looked my brother Donnie straight in the eye.

  “Sure.” He nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  In the cramped space underneath the car, it’d been hard to get set up, the way my plans called for. Especially with having to keep an eye and ear out for any of Richter’s crew walking beside where we were hiding. This close to rolling out our operations, I didn’t want any of those bastards finding us there. Keeping watch had been Donnie’s job, while I rigged up what we needed.

  And found out what men seem to be born knowing – there’s just no limit to what you can do if you have enough duct tape.

  I tugged on the silvery metallic harness I had made by putting strips together, one sticky side to another. That stuff’s strong – no wonder guys like it. Good for anything from fixing cars to patching Boulder Dam. And definitely sturdy enough for Donnie to be able to drag an acetylene tank behind himself, as he crawled from underneath one vehicle to the next.

  I’d looped one improvised strap around his waist, then ran another couple from that over his shoulders. A couple of long silvery tails stretched back to the tank, wrapped up in my jacket so moving it would make less noise, and the duct tape I’d secured it with. When he got the whole package delivered to where we wanted it, and set up the way I’d told him to, all he’d have to do would be to slip out of the straps and get his butt out of there.

  “Okay –” I gave him a final check. He had the other plastic bag, the rest of the duct tape roll, and the little wrench for the tank valve, all tucked inside his shirt. “You know that bit where the other guy I was working with, he blew up that panel truck, only he was still there underneath it?”

  That got a nod from Donnie. “Yeah . . .”

  “Here’s the deal. Don’t do that. All you have to do is get this stuff into position. Set it up, then scoot. I’m the one who’s in charge of blowing it up. Got it?”

  “But . . .” He frowned. “How you going to do that?”

  “Not your problem,” I whispered. “Like I said – I’m the one who’s taking care of that part.”

  I was keeping my brother Donnie on a strict need-to-know basis. Long before now, I’d learned how his mind worked. His idea of being helpful could get us both killed. If I gave him all the details of the plan, that would’ve just seemed like more ways for him to do more than I needed him to.

  Squirming away from him for a moment, I looked out from underneath the car. None of Richter’s crew were nearby.

  I looked back over at Donnie. “Let’s roll.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just ducked his head down, dug his fingernails into the concrete, and started crawling, dragging the acetylene tank along behind him.

  † † †

  Up above us, other people were also getting their plans in gear.

  “Are you sure about this?” The knots in Holton’s gut had grown to the size of bowling balls. “I mean – those guys down there – they’ve got guns. Big ones . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” said Menard. “They’re not going to use them. Not on us.”

  �
��How do you know that?”

  “Figure it out.” The pilot looked out the side window, scoping out the terrain as he spoke. “They’re in a tight layout – last thing they’d want is to bring some helicopter crashing down on their heads. They’ve got no place to run to, except for jumping over the side of the freeway. And that’s not even counting the explosives they’ve got the place wired up with. They really don’t want to risk bringing us down on top of that stuff.”

  “Yeah . . . I guess . . .”

  “Plus, we’ve got a huge surprise element going for us. They think we’re just some news copter hovering up here –”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “Not now.” The pilot smiled. “Not with what I’m going to do. Which is nothing that they’re going to be expecting. We’ll be in and out of there before they can even figure out what’s happening. That guy who’s running the show – he’s keeping the rest of them on a tight leash. None of them are going to do anything about us until he tells them to. And he’s a smart guy – he’s not going to risk his whole operation just because one hostage managed to get plucked out of there. Why should he even care? He’s got a hundred more, just sitting there. Better he should just let us fly away with our prize, than screw up his whole deal.”