by K. W. Jeter
“We’ve got this!” Feldman lifted the cylinder higher. “They’ll bargain for it! We can still get out!”
Richter turned around toward him. That was when both Feldman and I were able to see what had happened to his face. The fire burning through the big rig’s wreckage lit up the black fluid streaming from Richter’s nostrils and the corners of his mouth. I didn’t know what that meant, but Feldman seemed to. As he stumbled backward, his own face wide-eyed in horror, Richter grabbed the cylinder from Feldman, then knocked him down with a roundhouse backhand. Feldman landed sprawling across a twisted piece of the big rig’s rear bumper.
“No!” Richter shouted down at the other man. “Nobody leaves!”
“Wait –” Raising himself on his elbows, Feldman stared at the blackened, rage-contorted face above him. “You . . . you bullshitted us! You never planned on getting us out of here!”
“That’s right.” Richter’s voice was a fiercely clenched growl. “You don’t matter.”
Feldman’s eyes went even bigger and rounder as he saw Richter digging his gun from inside his motorcycle cop jacket. That was the last thing he saw. Cradling the cylinder in the crook of his other arm, Richter put a bullet right into Feldman’s forehead.
What the hell did that mean? I had no idea, except that this whole situation was falling apart in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing – if Richter was crazy enough to start drilling his own guys, then anything could happen. With a really small chance of it being survivable.
Somebody else was having doubts about Richter’s sanity. His second-in-command Mozel had stationed himself farther down the lanes, bracing himself with his assault rifle in his arms to keep any of the screaming chaos swarming across the freeway from overwhelming their command post. But when the scene between Feldman and Richter went down, he’d been looking back over his shoulder at them – and he’d heard every word.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mozel came stomping toward the smoldering big rig. “What’s that crap about nobody leaving?”
“None of your business.” With his jacket sleeve, Richter wiped the black fluid streaming across his face and down his neck. “If there was anything you needed to know, I’d tell you –”
“You’re telling me now.” Mozel lifted the rifle in his hands, swinging its barrel toward the other man. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull –”
“All right.” Richter stepped back, holding up his free hand. “Take it easy. There’s been a change of plans. That’s all –”
There’s something about a high-powered weapon being pointed right at your chest that makes even somebody like Richter turn all reasonable. Or at least pretend to be. Watching these two guys from under the car, I could remember all the other times I’d seen it happen. Some of those times, I’d been the one holding the gun.
Maybe that’s why I wasn’t fooled by Richter this time. Mozel shouldn’t have been, either.
“Look over there –” Richter pointed behind himself, up into the night air. “There’s our ride out of here.”
Mozel lifted his gaze and saw the same thing I had just spotted. The lights of a jet liner were just visible in the distance, heading toward the freeway.
† † †
Somebody else had seen it as well, down at the police command post.
MacAvoy pointed to the approaching plane. “That’s how they’re getting it out.”
Glover turned from him and gestured at one of the SWAT guys. “Tell the snipers to open fire on that jet! Make it sheer off!”
“Don’t bother.” MacAvoy shook his head. “They don’t have a chance. Not with Cray piloting it.”
† † †
Mozel shouldn’t have taken his eyes off Richter standing in front of him. The lights of the plane were the last thing he saw.
In one quick move, Richter brought his free hand down and into his jacket. He came up with his pistol and fired just as Mozel looked back toward him. Mozel dropped with a single bullet hole bursting red between his eyes, his rifle clattering on the freeway pavement beside him.
As far as I was concerned, that just made my job easier. One less of these people I’d have to deal with.
Unfortunately for me, the main one left was Richter. And he was the smartest.
I’d been figuring that I’d pulled something over on him, or at least knocked him off his game, rattled him by blowing up the big rig right behind him. Flames and smoke were still pouring out of the wreckage as he reached down to pick up Mozel’s rifle –
Then dived hard onto one shoulder, ripping off a burst from it. He swung the rifle around in a horizontal arc, the bullets stitching underneath the nearest vehicles.
Including the one I was hiding under. I was barely able to crawl back in time, bits of concrete spraying into my face from the bullets striking just inches away.
He must’ve figured it out. With my heart pounding in my chest, I curled myself into as tight a ball as I could, my own weapon clutched tight. The police wouldn’t have lit up the big rig like that, so it had to have been done by somebody right there on the freeway, close by him. And if it wasn’t somebody visible up above, then they had to be underneath the cars. Like me.
“Whoever you are – whatever you’re trying to pull off –” Richter stood back up, the assault rifle cradled in his arms. “It didn’t work.” He turned slowly, his voice raised loud. “You’re just lucky I don’t have time to screw around with you right now.” A smile showed on his black-smeared face. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”
Behind him, the lights of the approaching jet liner were larger and brighter. I figured he must have been completely crazy by that point; there was no place for that thing to land. How did he figure he was getting out?
Whatever Richter’s plans were, he wasn’t taking any chances on getting nailed from behind. With the HoBo cylinder tucked in the crook of one arm and the assault rifle poised to fire in the other, he backed away from what had been his command post. The light from the flames flickered across the wet black stuff leaking down across his face and neck.
He’d left me still alive, but that didn’t solve my problems. The whole freeway was still lined with explosives and I didn’t know where my brother Donnie had gotten to. I had to find him and get both of us out of there before Richter pushed some other button.
When I couldn’t see Richter’s motorcycle cop boots anymore, I inched forward and peered out from under the car bumper. He was nowhere around, at least as far as I could see. I crawled out and stood up with my own rifle in my arms.
“Donnie!” There was so much screaming and shouting farther down the freeway lanes, I didn’t figure it mattered much if I added to it. “Where are you?”
No answer. Damn – the one time he listened to me and did exactly what I told him to, it had to be now. I’d instructed him to set up the acetylene bomb under the big rig and then get as far from it as possible – and he had, apparently.
I took a chance and clambered up on the hood of the nearest car, then up onto its roof. Maybe from up there, I’d have enough of a vantage point to scan along the lanes and spot some sign of where he was hiding.
As it turned out, I didn’t catch sight of what I wanted – but somebody caught sight of me, instead. No sooner had I gotten up to the car roof, than the windshield exploded into glittering pellets, a rifle burst hitting the spot I had been a split-second before.
I dove flat, then rolled to one side on the roof, bringing the Tavor up and aiming toward the spot where the burst had come from. I spotted one of Richter’s crew there – he didn’t know what Mozel had figured out, that the whole bunch of them had just been screwed by the guy they’d been working for. He wouldn’t get to find out, either. I squeezed the trigger and nailed him, his body flopping and splaying against the fender of the SUV behind him.
Getting to my knees, I kept my head down as I scanned across the freeway. Still no sign of Donnie. With my stomach against the top of the c
ar door, I slid down to the concrete –
And felt the hard jab of a pistol barrel in the small of my back.
“Thanks –” Mozel reached around me and grabbed the assault rifle in my hands. “I need this more than you do.”
I looked over my shoulder at him. He was in bad shape, the front of his jacket soaked in his own blood, but still managing to stand upright. He was even able to throw an ugly smile as he raised the pistol up to the corner of my brow –
I heard the impact, but didn’t feel it. And it wasn’t a pistol going off, but the torn-up piece from the big rig’s rear bumper, that somehow had just come swinging through the air and clobbered Mozel across the back of his head, hard enough to send him sprawling behind me.
Turning around, I saw Elton standing there, now using the piece of bumper to keep himself from collapsing. He was in even worse shape than before, his face and clothes blackened by the explosion that had taken out the panel truck, with him trapped beneath its smoldering wreckage. The hand holding onto the twisted bumper fragment was bloodied raw from all his scrabbling back up onto the freeway, then crawling along the guardrail toward Richter’s command post. His other arm dangled uselessly at his side.
Right then, I was just amazed that he was still alive – I only found out later about all the broken ribs and snapped collar bone, plus the ruptured spleen. Somebody gets a whole panel truck slammed down on top of him, he’s bound to be a little dinged up.
There was business to take care of, though, before I could say anything. I swung the assault rifle barrel down toward Mozel, as he heaved himself over onto his back. Before he could raise the pistol gripped in both his hands, I squeezed off a single round. The back of his head bounced off the concrete, blood trickling from the hole between his eyes.
Metal clanged as Elton dropped the bumper piece, slumping hard against the fender of the car across from me.
“That’s . . . about it for me . . .” His voice was an exhausted wheeze. “Least . . . I got this far . . .”
“Yeah, that’s great.” I knelt down in front of him. “Did you see my brother Donnie anywhere?” There might have been a chance of that, I figured, with whatever route Elton had laboriously taken to get to this spot. “He’s got to be somewhere around here.”
“I thought . . . he was on that school bus . . .”
“He got out.” I could tell that Elton was just about ready to go unconscious on me. “Then I had him come up here and set up the acetylene bomb.”
“Huh.” Elton managed a slow nod of appreciation. “Some kid . . .” His eyelids started to flutter closed. “Nope . . . didn’t see him . . .”
That was all I was going to get from Elton. And all the time I had for him – I had to get moving.
“Listen –” I grabbed his shoulder and rattled him hard, trying to get through. “Just stay here, okay? Don’t do anything more. I got this.”
“Sure . . .” His eyes didn’t open, but the corner of his mouth lifted in a weak little smile. “I know you do . . .”
Nice that he was so confident in me. I was still improvising like crazy here, without a clue about what to do next. The only thing I was sure of was that there was some kind of a clock ticking down somewhere, maybe clutched in Richter’s hand, with a nasty surprise wired to it when it hit zero.
There must’ve been some huge rush of adrenaline surging through my body, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to drag Elton over to the side of one of the cars, as far away from the burning wreckage of the big rig as I could get him. He was probably as safe there as anywhere right now. Then I straightened up and scanned across the freeway lanes, trying to spot where Richter had gotten to. If I couldn’t find Donnie and pull him out of this mess, then the next best thing I could calculate would be screwing up whatever Richter’s plans might be.
What I didn’t know was that there was somebody else up there, working on exactly that.
TWENTY-TWO
I WISH I knew what it is with guys and the whole payback thing. Maybe it’s the testosterone or something with the way their brains are built. Even my old buddy Cole, who was just about as hard and businesslike as a killer could be, had a vengeful streak – I mean, he’d go out of his way to get back at somebody he figured had screwed him over. With me, I knew it was different – if the dollars and cents don’t add up, I’m not likely to risk getting killed over the small stuff. And they say women are so emotional – go figure.
It must be a gender thing, and not just genetics. Because Donnie and I had the exact same ethnic background going for us, being siblings and all. But sure enough, instead of being smart and hunkering down in some hiding place like I’d told him to, there he was, crawling across the bottled-up freeway with a gun in his hand, intent on getting his own little payback. And I’d thought he was smart enough not to go in for all that dopey guy stuff.
Not just any gun, either, but a full-on assault rifle like the one I was carrying at the moment. Just his luck – and mine – that it’d come skittering across the concrete toward him when one of Richter’s crew had gotten blown onto his face by the bomb going off under the big rig. Donnie had been hiding beneath one of the cars near the front of the bottle, close enough so that he could see the results of all his hard work, when I got around to igniting it. He probably would’ve stayed there, out of harm’s way, if getting his hands on an ugly rock-’n’-roll piece like that hadn’t suddenly put ideas in his head. Every boy’s dream – and if you couldn’t put the hurt on somebody in a situation like this, with all sort of gunfire and explosions going off, then when could you?
So instead of just staying put, the way his big sister had told him to, or giving me some sign as to where he was, he headed off on his own self-appointed mission, crawling with the rifle toward the freeway center divider. Meantime, I was still over by the messed-up big rig, worried sick about him. If I’d known what he was up to, I’d have been more concerned about kicking his butt when I eventually got hold of him.
I couldn’t see Donnie, of course, because he was making his way underneath the trapped cars, same as when he’d been dragging the acetylene tank up toward the front of the bottle. He’d already gotten far enough way from the spot, that he didn’t see or hear any of what went down between Richter and the other men. So he had no idea that right at that moment, Richter was heading for the same spot he was.
Which was the Claw, that enormous piece of heavy equipment with which the various burning wrecks had been tossed over the side of the freeway. That’s who my little brother was going after – that guy Scavulos, the one operating the Claw, moving it back and forth on its tank treads on the freeway’s empty side so it could reach over and grab whatever car had just had a thermite grenade tossed in on its out-of-luck driver. The guy who’d also made the mistake of yanking on the Claw’s control levers so that its steel talons had come over and clanged shut just inches away from the school bus window that some kid in a wheelchair had been looking out of.
“That pissed me off,” Donnie told me later. “He didn’t have to do that. It was just mean.”
I tell you, it’s all the same with guys. Even one as smart as my little brother. You cross them, even just for fun, and they’re going to come after you. Even if it means getting themselves killed. Girls’ brains don’t work like that, at least most of the time. We’re meaner, but in a different way. Not so emotional.
Actually, Donnie was smart enough – or at least thought he was – that he figured he could take a shot at that Scavulos guy without getting himself killed. With all that chaos over on the bottled-up side of the freeway, Scavulos wouldn’t be expecting somebody to draw a bead on him from underneath one of the cars stuck there in the left-hand lane. He’d be dead before he knew it.
Which was an okay plan for Donnie to have come up with – I didn’t have any better one, right then – if it hadn’t been for somebody else stepping into his action.
“What the hell’s going on?” That was what Scavulos shouted, from up in the cab
of the Claw, when he saw Richter climbing over the center divider. Scavulos spotted the HoBo cylinder cradled in one of Richter’s arms, with an assault rifle slung at his other side. “We gotta get out of here!”
That showed that this Scavulos guy wasn’t as smart as Mozel had been – he hadn’t figured out that the guy they were working for was screwing them over.
“Don’t worry about that –” Richter dropped the cylinder into the back seat of the Mercedes convertible, the one that he’d ordered Scavulos to pluck out of the bottle when it had first been set up. He came back over to the Claw. Standing beside the machine’s treads, Richter used the rifle muzzle to point toward where the approaching jet liner’s lights were visible in the night sky. “Cray’s almost here to make the pickup.” He lifted the cylinder up higher. “Once he’s got this loaded up, the police will do anything we tell them to.”
