by Joe Nobody
It was here, in a sea of old wood stacked in sloppy rows, that Dusty made his hide. Before the sun rose, he was concealed and comfortable under a makeshift pile of random pallets, the powerful optic of the rail gun scanning for the arrival of false-friend, the Russian, and foe, the FBI.
It all ends here, today, he determined. I might be dead, in handcuffs or free, but I won’t be a trapped, helpless rat in this city… this foreign place where I don’t belong.
After scanning the area for riflemen, observers or teams of law enforcement officers sneaking into position, he relaxed a bit. They’ll be here, he reassured himself. A watched pot never deploys its snipers.
Looking down at his pack, he decided to don the Resistol, the crumpled hat having made the journey with him, looking as though it had suffered nearly as much as he had. Wearing a western man’s hat just seemed proper, a fitting way to go down if it all ended badly.
Great, historical last stands filled his mind. The Alamo didn’t end so well for the defenders, but most of the time things didn’t work out. Places with names like Stalingrad, Bastogne and Thermopylae filled his thoughts. He wondered if any of the 300 Spartans had a favorite hat, pondered if any of the Airborne troops holding off the Germans at Bastogne were just sick of the whole thing and only wanted it to end – one way or the other.
Twice, he started to stand and leave – not sure if he had the stomach for the approaching confrontation, temporarily lacking the confidence he could pull this off. Movement caught his eye, grounding his retreat. A swirl of blue, out of place, rustled in the distance. Here they come, he sighed, his body locking into a motionless statue.
Dusty watched an FBI agent with an M16 rifle move along the edge of the access road. The man disappeared into a patch of waist high weeds, only the black barrel of his rifle visible from the hide. I hope that guy is laying on a fire ant mount.
A few minutes went by without seeing any other law enforcement. It was the glint of sun that exposed the next man – a Houston SWAT officer who hadn’t seen fit to remove his shiny sunglasses. He should get an ass chewing for that rookie mistake, Dusty mused.
Slowly, carefully moving his scope back into place – weary of flashing the sun himself, Dusty began studying his surroundings carefully. There, where the slope of the ground met one of the bridge’s support pillars, there was a sniper.
An empty semi-trailer was home to another. The black circle of the shooter’s scope was visible over the edge.
He almost missed the guy in the stack of discarded cardboard boxes. A clever fellow, Dusty scanned right over the top of him twice and would have never spotted him were it not for part of a rifle sling hanging over the lip of a box.
He found several more while he waited on the Russians to arrive. He was also fully aware that for every cop he could see, there were probably three more he couldn’t. Let the Russians deal with them, he thought.
The West Texan’s experience with hunting had taught him that movement draws the human eye. Forcing every move to be extraordinarily slow, Dusty managed a glance at his watch. The Russians should be here any minute, and they weren’t the only ones.
A steady stream of cars began entering the parking area, mostly visitors arriving for the free boat tour provided daily by the Port Authority of Houston. With the increase of incoming traffic, it would be difficult to detect the Russians until they exited their car. Dusty didn’t care. He’d spot them before they found him.
Movement on the water drew his attention, a small Coast Guard gunboat slowly patrolling up the ship channel. He couldn’t tell if that was part of the FBI’s dragnet, or just a coincidence – and again, it didn’t matter.
While he waited, he noticed the increasing traffic noise coming from the nearby bridge. Carrying six lanes of morning commuters, a background chorus of engine noise, singing tires and the occasional horn would continue to build as the day grew older. Dusty knew from his research that the crossing was called the Ship Channel Bridge by locals, its official title being The Sidney Sherman Bridge. Rising 130 feet above the water, the structure had been struck more than once by the cargo cranes of various ships. Two of these collisions caused the roadway above to be closed for weeks. Keep your mind focused, he chided. Now’s not the time to wander off on internet trivia.
And then they were there. Dusty recognized the Russian from their previous encounter in the parking lot. The female walking beside him, as well as the muscular man a few steps behind, were both strangers. All three wore FBI logos on their clothing. The burly guy carried a large duffle bag – no doubt full of either newspaper, if treachery was afoot, or currency. I didn’t realize that amount of money would take up so much space, he noted.
Dusty reached slowly for the Russian’s phone lying next to him. He dialed a memorized number belonging to his last no-contract cell, and waited for the connection to go through. Both he and the Russians could hear the ringing, the cheap phone lying nearby on a bench. The older man shook his head and moved to answer the phone.
“Da.”
“Sorry to be so dramatic, but I’m new to this game. Please bring the money and walk toward the pallets to the west. I’m waiting inside. Please come alone,” Dusty said.
“This is unnecessary… but… I will play along. However, I do need to bring the woman with me.”
“Why?”
“We are exchanging quite a bit of money, my friend. She is a doctor of physics…an expert. I want her to examine the goods I am buying.”
Dusty analyzed the request for a moment, finally deciding it was a bluff. No one could be an expert on a technology that didn’t exist. “No problem – bring the woman. Leave the big guy where he is.”
“Da.”
True to his word, the Russian turned and snapped an order to Mr. Muscles, taking the duffle and pulling it over his own shoulder. He then motioned with his head for Miss Big-boobs to follow.
Dusty slowly backed out of his hide, the toy rail gun in his grip.
One quarter of a mile away, on the roof of a warehouse, Monroe lowered his binoculars and turned to Shultz. “What the fuck is going on down there, Tom? Those people in the parking lot have on FBI uniforms. Are you sure we don’t have a team that didn’t understand their orders?”
“I don’t get it, sir. Everyone received the same operational orders. Yet, they look like our people.”
“Something’s not right,” judged Monroe. “Send in the teams. If our people have fucked this up, heads will roll.”
Shultz interrupted his boss – a large optic still focused on the ground below. “Wait, sir. Something’s happening. There’re moving out of our sight.”
As if on cue, both agents’ earpieces sounded with a chorus of “I’ve lost contact with unknown team,” and “They’ve moved off to the west; I can’t see them now because of the pallets.”
“Shit!” snapped Monroe. Keying his mic, he ordered, “All assault teams, this is Monroe. Move in. Move in now!”
Dusty let the two Russians walk right past him, the dense maze of stacked pallets impossible to maneuver in a straight line. He cleared his throat.
The older Russian jumped just a little and turned quickly. “Only in the movies do they do this sort of thing, Mr. Weathers.”
Dusty shrugged his shoulders, “That’s about the only example this old cowboy has to go by.”
“This is the weapon, da?” he inquired, nodding towards Dusty’s fake rail gun.
“That is the money and other items I requested?” Dusty replied, nodding toward the duffle.
Smiling, the Russian sat the sizable bag on the ground, tugging on the zipper and pulling apart the sides. He held open the edges so Dusty could look inside. It appeared to be a butt-full of money, complete with clear tubes of gold colored coins. “It is all here, including the passport. Our Canadian embassy assures me it is a real document, issued by a friend working in the government.”
Dusty approached the stoic woman and handed her the rail gun.
The Russian phy
sics expert hefted the weapon, appearing to examine the coils and other mechanisms. He then handed her two ball bearings, and answered her questioning look with, “The bullets.”
While the woman examined the gun, Sergei watched Dusty. The man seemed relaxed. “Your hat – it is a real cowboy hat?” He asked.
Grunting, Dusty nodded. What else would it be?
“I wish to trade you something for it. You have plenty of money now to purchase another. I would like it for a souvenir of my travels. My friends back in Moscow will be impressed.”
“What do you have to trade?”
The question seemed to give Sergei pause. He brightened after a bit, and pulled off his FBI jacket. “How about this coat? It is close to the real thing.”
An idea formed immediately in Dusty’s head. The jacket and its gold FBI letters might help if things got dicey during his escape. “Sure, he replied,” and took off his hat.
Sergei donned the cover, smiling at his companion who was still mesmerized by the rail gun’s configuration. “How does it function?” she asked.
Dusty opened his mouth to explain, but his words were interrupted by a gunshot ripping through the air from behind them.
Sergei and Dusty both uttered “What the fuck,” at the same time, the former doing so in Russian. Snatching the rail gun from the woman’s hands, the director began walking with purpose back toward the parking lot.
Dusty bent and grabbed the duffle, hustling away in a different direction.
More shots rang out, their report guiding Sergei back toward the parking lot. As he approached the end of the pallet-maze, he noted his captain prone on the pavement, his sidearm pointing toward an area of overgrown weeds nearby by. It quickly became obvious what his man was shooting at, as three uniformed Americans jumped up and scrambled a few steps closer to his position.
Sergei didn’t know what exactly was going on. His analytical mind quickly sorted through several possibilities, eventually settling with the logical assumption that the authorities had finally caught up with Mr. Weathers. He didn’t care.
Walking boldly from the stack of pallets, he brandished the rail gun for all to see, and then pointed the device at the Ship Channel Bridge. Yelling at the top of his lungs, “Cease fire and back away, or I will drop the bridge with this weapon.”
The law enforcement officers approaching the parking lot had been briefed on the rail gun’s potential – a few of the team having been eyewitnesses to the destruction at the Medical Center. The man in charge of the closest assault group keyed his mic. “Sir, the suspect is threatening to shoot the Ship Channel Bridge with the super weapon if we don’t back down. Instructions?”
Monroe was already on his way, the lead agent wanting desperately to be present when Weathers went down. The transmission reporting the huge bridge was now a hostage surprised him, the scenario not something they had anticipated. Now, as he sped across the parking area, it seemed so obvious. “Close down the bridge! Right now – both directions!” He ordered over the radio.
Dusty, still hiding back in the pallets, turned on the real rail gun, the glow of the green LED boosting his confidence. His angle and position provided a small window through the forest of pallet-stacks, enough where he could see the Russian who was now joined by his two colleagues. The trio of foreigners was retreating toward the cover of the pallets – probably not wanting to chance a sniper’s bullet. They came closer, slowly backing away from the visible cops, the rail gun steady and pointing at the bridge.
“Sir, where are we going?” asked the nervous SPETZ captain, his sidearm scanning in brisk motions trying to cover their retreat.
“Move toward the ship docked over there,” replied his boss, motioning with his head toward a tanker docked further down the shoreline. “We’re going to hijack that vessel. It will be our ride out of here. They won’t dare fire on it while it is so close to all of these people, the explosion would kill many innocents.”
Dusty had planned to appear with the real rail gun, holding the Russians off until Monroe’s men captured them. Using the bridge as insurance hadn’t occurred to him, but now that he saw the effect it was having on the pursuing lawmen, he conceded it wasn’t a bad idea.
He was just about to step out of his pallet-cover when a female voice rang out from the parking lot. “Dusty! Dusty!” yelled Grace, running to a man wearing the familiar cowboy hat. She didn’t realize the misidentification until it was too late. The meaty Russian intercepted Grace as she ran to Sergei, pointing his pistol at her head. “Insurance,” he announced to his boss.
Dusty stopped dead in his tracks, the whole situation quickly getting out of control. A low thumping sound bouncing across the channel added to the confusion.
The two Longbow Apache gunships pulled up and hovered just over the center of the channel, their undercarriages bristling with missiles and mini-guns. Looking like angry, giant wasps, each military helicopter carried more firepower than a World War II naval destroyer. The multi-barreled cannon under the nose followed the pilot’s line of sight, which at the moment was clearly focused on Sergei’s party.
“Surrender, and no one will get hurt,” sounded a loud speaker from across the lot. “This is Special Agent Monroe of the FBI, lay down all your weapons, and you will not be harmed.”
Dusty watched, the enormous firepower represented by the military attack aircraft freezing his soul. Even if he did step out to free Grace and show the FBI the real rail gun, the missiles under the wings of the two war birds left no doubt of the outcome of any gunfight. While he could knock down one of the gunships with the rail, the other would blast the entire area into oblivion.
It was a standoff. While Sergei had stopped his retreat, he still held the bridge and all the commuters on its surface hostage. The FBI was confused, not sure who the people were in their sights. Grace stood amongst the foreigners, a pistol held against her head while her body was used as a shield.
“Suspects have a hostage! Suspects have a hostage!” sounded the exited voice in Monroe’s earpiece. “Negative on that,” came another call, “That is an officer taking Grace Kennedy into custody.”
“Kennedy? Who’s the other woman if Kennedy is being held? I thought the lawyer was the first woman?” questioned one of the snipers.
Monroe looked at Shultz, frustrated at the obvious confusion surging through his teams. He clicked his mic to issue orders, but the words never left his throat.
From the water a horn sounded, the deep-pitched alert overriding the whining jet engines and rotor wash of the helicopters. A wall of steel appeared, a huge container ship barreling down the channel – the unaware Apaches directly in its path.
Again, the ship’s captain blew the ear splitting air horn, but the pilots couldn’t hear it. Dusty watched, stunned as the behemoth of moving steel raced directly at the hovering craft. The boat was attempting a turn, probably reversing its engines, but he knew it couldn’t avoid the choppers. Big ocean going ships required miles to stop, almost as much distance to turn. Even with emergency maneuvers, there was no way to avoid the collision.
The ship struck the closest Longbow, the hull of the juggernaut slamming into the tail rotor just below the vessel’s anchor chain. Everyone ashore watched in horror as the now-tiny looking war machine spun slightly before its fuselage was flattened against the ship’s hull like a bug on a speeding car’s windshield. A ball of boiling flame erupted, a deafening explosion tearing across the area.
Dusty was already moving, realizing the distraction caused by the collision might be his only chance to rescue Grace. Three steps to Mr. Muscles, the rail gun pointing right at the Russian’s head. His message was clear. Bewildered and distracted by the freighter, exploding chopper, and the approaching lawmen, the big Russian didn’t put up a struggle, actually shoving Grace toward Dusty like he was glad to be rid of her.
Dusty was pulling her back toward the pallets, screaming, “Run! Run! Run!” at the top of his lungs.
The remaining pil
ot saw the expanding ball of fire where his wingman had been just a moment before. Having been briefed on the power of the weapon he might be facing, the Army Warrant Officer was already on edge. Seeing the destruction of his friend pushed him over. He squeezed a button, launching a Hellfire missile just as the approaching freighter impacted his tail.
The Hellfire had been designed to kill thickly armored battle tanks. The 100-pound, rocket-propelled weapon jumped from its launch rail and wobbled for just a fraction of time before beginning its acceleration. The 20-pound, high-explosive warhead flew directly at Sergei’s chest.
Everyone was in motion.
The Russians were scattering, Dusty and Grace running away at full speed through the pallet-canyons. Monroe was trying to issue orders over the radio. None of them had much time. It took the Hellfire less than two seconds to travel the 600 meters to its target.
The warhead impacted four feet behind the Russians, the Centex core expanding at 8,000 meters per second. A ball of white-hot fire enveloped the SVR personnel, the heat killing Sergei and his team instantly, their bodies shredded by shrapnel and shock a microsecond later.
The blast wave slammed into the wall of pallets with enough force to shred internal organs and collapse lungs. Grace, motivated by Dusty’s push, hit the ground, and the whole world went black. She never felt Dusty’s body land on top of her.
For a moment, everyone watching the scene froze – the destruction and chaos of such a scale, the human brain struggled to process it all.
The silence was broken by the sound of the tanker’s horn thundering across the water, somehow resonating panic and desperation with its bellow. Again and again, the captain of the big ship let loose with his warning.
Dusty was pulling Grace up from the debris, pushing aside scraps of wood and kicking away pallets. He lifted the stunned woman to her feet, checking her up and down for injury. She appeared dazed, but unhurt.
Lifting the duffle with one hand, he began tugging her along with the other, “We’ve got to go. Come on, Grace. We’ve got to get out of here.”
