But for Gil, she would wait forever.
I parked three blocks away, which was a gamble since it meant that’s how far we would have to travel if flight became a necessity, which was very possible. I’d brought my Zeiss binoculars, two pair of night-vision goggles, three bullet-resistant vests, an SBR (short- barreled rifle), two ARs, five hand guns (with suppressors), two flash bangs (no suppressors for those bad boys), assorted knives, and bullets… lots of bullets. I’d also stopped at a local hardware store and picked up a few items we’d need along, with a backpack to stow it all in. Jerome wore the backpack.
Before we left our motel, I made a last call to Ziggy. The call went straight to voicemail, like I’d expected, so I left a message telling him we found his note and that we’d meet him at the apartment at 2000 hrs. (8:00 pm).
Being white in this part of town was a definite disadvantage to moving about unnoticed. If it had been winter, I could have gotten by wearing a full ski mask, but since the temp hovered at a mean ninety-two degrees, that wouldn’t cut it. The only thing saving me in this neighborhood, was having Bigfoot and the Werewolf acting as a deterrent. Even so, we had a group of five utes (ala Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny) approach us in a classic attack pattern. It was just dark enough for them to think they might have a chance, until Max forged ahead, sensing blood and liking it. He didn’t bark, but his tail was straight and his eyes locked in hard. All five stopped dead still, which gave them time to note the giant of a man standing next to me and the arsenal of guns strapped to us. They scattered pretty quick then.
Jerome, for as slow as he could seem in most things, had an incredible mind for battle. He laid out a near perfect blueprint of the project building and surrounding areas. Now that we were close, I saw he’d been dead-on about every outlying aspect, which gave me confidence in his layout of the interior. This would be vital once the shooting started. We had no way of knowing how many there would be, or if they would be Bloods, mercenaries, Secret Service Agents or all three. Being an optimist, I figured all three.
Scouting the perimeter, we marked two cars of Bloods on guard duty; one on the northwest side of the building, the other on the southeast. Between the two, they had the building locked down. Checking closer with the binoculars, I made out at least two guards at each entrance on the visible sides of the building. The cars were far enough down the blocks so as to be invisible to the guards inside the building. We decided to approach from the northwest. We would have to work quiet and fast. The one thing in our favor was the noise of the city that seemed to push in from every possible angle. Compared to Colorado, it sounded like a war zone, with echoing gunfire and sirens and yells and honking and crashes erupting every few seconds and often overlapping. The suppressors should help out here since what they were really capable of was more of a blunting of the exploding gasses rather than a silencing, like you see in the movies. Still, we were a block or so from the actual building, so the hope was that their lessened report would blend with the other killing going on in the gun-free zone of the city with America’s strictest gun laws.
The plan for this phase was simple and it worked nicely.
Jerome walked toward the guard car with Max by his side, like he was out for a stroll. Just a boy and his dog. While their attention was diverted on the giant with the pup, I snuck up from behind.
The Blood from the passenger front seat opened his door and stepped out, maybe taking note of Jerome’s size or maybe sensing something not quite right. Either way, his hand slipped down the front of his pants and Max launched, catching him by the throat and chin and taking him to the asphalt where his head hit with a loud crack. He didn’t get off a scream, let alone a shot. The two other Bloods, the driver and the one backseat passenger, both pulled out guns. Jerome took the driver out with two shots to the chest through the windshield and I put one round through the temple of the guy in the backseat, through the open rear window, as he was sighting in on Jerome. Blood sprayed back on me, freckling my cheek and forehead. I scanned the area around and behind me before wiping as much of it away as I could with a forearm. I called Max off and saw that he had destroyed the man’s throat. Blood pumped from the guy’s carotid in spraying arcs and the pool under his head didn’t leave much chance for him making it without immediate medical attention. And this wasn’t the time for that. We grabbed hold of his body and shoved him in the car with the other two, then ran for the cover of the building next to the one where we hoped Ziggy was waiting as bait. Once there, we did another scan, but no one seemed to have noticed the commotion. The area was strangely devoid of people. In fact, other than the guard cars, we hadn’t seen anyone since the five by my SUV. The word of the trap must have gotten out. That was both good and bad. Good in decreasing the chances for collateral damage, bad in the fact that we would stand out as targets.
Jerome said the woman was on the eighth floor… eight out of ten… that was a lot of floors. Too many floors to make it unnoticed. But of course, we had a plan.
38
Clyde threw the skinny little man across the room. Ziggy smashed against a dresser and bounced into an old tattered love seat that sat in the middle of the room.
“Sit,” said the Secret Service Agent. Two other SS Agents stood in the room, their faces straight and hard.
Ziggy righted himself and sat in the chair. Rockeeta and her pimp sat across from him on a sunken, broken-looking couch that rested against a wall. She smoked a cigarette, a little smile curving her still attractive lips.
“You should have let me give you that freebie, old man.”
“Yes, ma’am, Ziggy says it sure do look that way.”
“How many of you are there?” asked Clyde. His voice was even and calm. Almost gentle. That scared Ziggy a little.
“Ziggy says it’s just him, that he surely do.”
Clyde cocked his head, like a dog hearing something far off. He pulled out a black semiautomatic pistol with a silencer and shot Rockeeta’s husband-pimp through the forehead. The man’s head snapped back and forward and he fell to the side, leaning against Rockeeta who shoved him away. She started to scream and Clyde pointed the gun at her and she stopped, covering her mouth with her hands. The cigarette still poked between the index and middle finger of her left hand, sending tendrils of smoke toward the ceiling.
“How many?” repeated Clyde, as if he were asking for directions to the corner store.
Ziggy didn’t want to see Rockeeta’s brains on the wall, oh no that he did not want to see, so he nodded once and then spoke. “Ziggy says there’s me, a private investigator from Colorado and that girl you stoles, father.”
“Where?”
“Ziggy say we staying at The Chester Motel, down on…”
“I know where it is,” said Clyde. “Why are you here?”
“To get the little girl,” said Ziggy looking surprised.
“Any other reason?”
“What other reason would there be?” asked Ziggy, perplexed.
Clyde shot Rockeeta through the upper nose. What came out the back of her head made Ziggy recoil.
“Oh man,” said Ziggy. “You didn’t have no call to do that. Old Ziggy was telling you everything he done know. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Any other reason?” repeated the giant man.
Ziggy just stared at him..
Clyde held out his hand.
“Phone.”
“No, sir. Ziggy say he ain’t helping you no more. You gonna kill him anyhows, and you already killed the girl. So no, sir.”
Clyde put his gun away. He retrieved the phone from Ziggy’s pocket. He tapped the screen once and it opened up. Ziggy had never been able to remember codes very well, so he had no lock on it. One message appeared. It was from Gil Masson. Clyde listened to the message and nodded to himself as he clicked it off. He dropped the phone onto Ziggy’s lap.
Turning to the lead Blood’s member, an OG called Bad Blood, he said, “Zip tie him to the chair and gag him. You know what
to do after that. They’ll be here by eight. Be ready.” Bad Blood nodded and started getting his boys in place.
Clyde turned to his second in command. “Start setting up the C4”. He pointed to several spots around the room. “There, there and there. Also both stairwells. And put the heavy loads in the apartment directly below here.” Clyde thought for a moment and then smiled. “And a good chunk under our friend here’s chair. I want this whole room to drop down into the fire.” He looked the man in the eye. “No screw ups.”
The man nodded and started setting things in motion.
Clyde’s phone vibrated. “Go,” he said.
“They here,” said the Blood on the other end.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yeah. They done kilt three of our boys already. I seen it all from up here. I woulda warned ‘em, but you said to just keep quiet and watch and let you know if they showed up, so that’s what I did.”
“How many?”
“Three. A white boy, a brother near as big as you, and a big bad dog that done took out Shiny Grill all by his own self.”
“You did good. Where are they now?”
“They going into the building to the north. I can’t see them anymore.”
“Stay put. I’ll call you when I’m ready. You have the gun?”
“Yes, sir. I have the gun.”
Clyde clicked off, allowing himself a smile. Everything was going according to plan.
“I want all my men out of here in ten minutes. No exceptions. Only Bloods stay.” Clyde gave a last look to the bound, gagged old man and left the room.
At twenty minutes to seven, we cautiously entered the building and made our way to the tenth floor via the elevator which amazingly worked. We located the roof access stairs and made our way up to the metal door, secured from the inside with a big padlock. I snapped the lock with a pair of small bolt cutters from the backpack. I sent Max through first to scout the rooftop and he padded silently along the perimeter until I gave him the down command. He downed and waited.
Looking across, we had a clear view of the building next door. We took turns peaking over the five foot retaining wall that bracketed the roof, scanning for the best place to make entry.
Night fully descended, leaving the area dark and humid and hot, with the Chicago evening sounds of misery and death echoing around us like some kind of vampire or zombie movie.
No one showed on the roof next door, which meant I might not need the short commando rifle with the collapsible stock and scope I’d brought for just that reason. Still, better to have and not need than to need and not have. Noting where Jerome had seen the men and woman earlier, we pegged them for being on the eighth floor, about midpoint to the northwest end. We duck-walked to the farthest southern point and I took out the grappling hooks, ropes, carabiners, and harnesses.
“What’s all that?” asked Jerome.
I spoke as I worked, setting up the gear. “This is how we get across.”
He looked from the building to the ropes to me and back to the other building, his usual blank expression stamped to his face. “No,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry, it’ll be easy.”
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s perfectly safe… well… as perfectly safe as swinging through the air, ten floors up, with guys who want to kill you, armed with lots of guns, can be safe.”
I looked up at him, grinning.
He didn’t grin back.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Do you want to save Keisha?”
He stayed quiet long enough for me to finish rigging the equipment and harnesses.
“Wait here,” I said. I pointed toward the target building. “Make sure they don’t shoot me.”
Each building had a fifteen-foot sheet metal structure that housed the elevator gears and motors and pulleys and electrical stuff. I climbed to the top of ours, and using a battery-powered drill, attached the linkage for the ropes which would be connected by carabiners. I attached the mountain climbing ropes, both lines, hopped back down and waddled in a crouch back to Jerome.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I don’t like heights.”
“I don’t either, but it’s the job and the job has got to be done, so… yes.” I held a harness for him to step into.
Jerome looked at me, blank… but not completely blank now. I saw a twitch in his lower eye lids that I hadn’t seen before. Pretty tame for fear, but that’s what it was. Good to know he could feel fear, because I sure could. Jerome stepped into the harness and I hooked him up. I called Max over and strapped his K9 harness, which I always keep with me in the car, around him; making sure the Velcro straps were snug around his chest and under his legs. He would be riding with me, just like my days in the Corps when I’d parachute in, holding my dog.
We walked back a good five feet and I pointed to where the rain squares were located on our wall at the bottom edge. There were five, evenly spaced the length of the barrier.
“If you look across, you’ll see they’re in about the same location over there. You don’t have to hit right on, just get close then we can drag the hooks over till they’ll lock in.”
I hooked the looped climbing rope through the carabiner, and rope attached to the top of the elevator shaft, and ran them through our harnesses.
“I don’t know how to do this,” said Jerome.
“There’s an app for that,” I joked.
Jerome didn’t get it. He gave me pure blank.
“I’m going to show you, don’t worry. It’s easy. But first you get to throw that hook over there. Chuck it hard. If you miss, it’ll make noise and they might notice. That would be bad.”
“Bad for them,” said Jerome. “I would kill them.”
“You know, you remind me a lot of Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy,” I said.
“I don’t know that either,” he said.
“Throw,” I said. “Hard.”
I was going to tell him to give it a good wind up first, but before I could, he swung the pound and a half three-pronged hook in a single graceful loop and let her fly. The roped barb zipped across so fast I heard it zing. It landed just across the wall and clinked on the floor of the roof about two inches from the portal. Jerome pulled back and its prongs sunk perfectly into the little one-foot square perfectly.
I gave the line a tug and it held fast, not even budging.
“Pretty good,” I said. “For a first try. Of course it was probably beginner’s luck.
Jerome tossed the second line and it landed and locked in as perfectly as the first. I looked at Max. He looked back, unimpressed. I shrugged… pretty impressive actually.
“Good,” I said. “Yeah, good.”
I gave Jerome the crash course on riding a zip line, mostly consisting of holding on and braking with the correct hand at the right time.
Now for the hard part.
“You have to go first,” I told him.
He gave me blank again, only this time it somehow seemed darker.
“You go first.”
“I can’t,” I told him.
“You go first,” he said.
I shook my head. “No, you have to go first. If I go, you might chicken out, and once I’m over there, I can’t get back up here to make you go. Not from over there. The difference in height won’t allow for it.”
He looked at Max. “Him first.”
Again I shook my head. “He’s riding with me. No opposable thumbs to use to brake the rope at the end of the ride.”
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “and no argument. We’re wasting time we don’t have.”
I pointed to the elevator shaft and cupped my hand into a foot hold. “Let’s go, now.”
Jerome hesitated, and for a second I thought he was going to back down, but then he stepped forward and put his considerable weight into my hands. I hoisted and he made the top easil
y. I climbed up beside him and stretched the lines tight; so tight they vibrated like guitar strings as I tied them down. I hooked the saddle rope over the zip line and through the harness.
Below, beyond the safety of the roof and the wall, lay the depth of the darkness. I showed him one last time how to hold and brake and patted his shoulder, telling him it was time to go.
He looked at my hand on his shoulder and for the first time, he didn’t look at me like something he was fixing to kill. He didn’t look scared, not like a normal human anyway, but he looked different.
I had him sit on the edge of the little structure, told him to hold tight and pushed off all three hundred pounds of him into space. The rope took his mass, barely sagging. He flew down that zip line fast as a bullet. Too fast. He’d forgotten everything I told him about braking.
39
I couldn’t afford to yell at him and chance letting the guards below know what we were up to, so all I could do was watch and hope the crash didn’t break anything major in his body…or the wall itself.
About ten feet out, he must have remembered, because I saw his right hand shoot back and start the breaking procedure. The move came late, but just soon enough to save him. He hit hard, his feet smacking the wall and slipping to the side, making room for his body to slam into the side of the building. The impact stunned him and he stayed there, swaying back and forth, holding onto the rope for dear life.
With no time to waste, I picked Max up and hooked his harness to mine. I threaded my own line and off we went. This wasn’t my first rodeo, of course, and I stopped with my feet barely tapping the wall. Max never moved or made a sound. I used the rope to straighten my legs and climbed up to the little window at the bottom of the retaining wall and wedged my feet inside. I took my weight off the rope, popped the carabiner, and hoisted Max and myself up and over the top. We landed almost soundlessly on the roof. I disengaged Max and ran over to Jerome’s window. I looked over the top of the wall and saw him dangling there.
Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set Page 41
