Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set

by Gordon Carroll

  Majoqui felt the sliver of metal begin its sway back, as though of its own accord. The target was there, big and getting bigger by the second. So easy. He could not miss, not here, not now. His blood surged through his veins, his heart a mighty drum as he stopped his breath, with half of it trapped in his lungs. The heavy copper-jacketed bullet would destroy her beauty, disintegrate her teeth, crush her bone. Her blood would vaporize, her flesh turn to liquid and her light would go out and be gone forever and ever more. And the man would know—the man would know it was Majoqui and that Majoqui had triumphed over him and that he had failed—failed his wife, his child, his own sense of justice, his job, his fellow officers, and most of all, himself. And he would know the cost, the price, the pain and horrible emptiness that even death could never hope to still.

  Majoqui wanted this for the man. He wanted it more, perhaps, than anything he had ever wanted in his life. But Majoqui was no fool. He was wise. He was disciplined.

  The minivan had reached a speed of about forty-five miles an hour and was less than a hundred yards away. The man turned his face back to watch the road and Majoqui moved his sight picture from the woman to the man, centering the cross on the bridge of his enemy’s nose. There was an instant of elation and Majoqui felt the heavy thud against his shoulder as the deadly missile left the weapon to fly to its target.

  26

  I turned from Jolene to look back at the street, when something flashed from up on the bridge. My combat brain instinctively took over. I punched the gas pedal and hard steered to the right, sending the van into a skid, over corrected, as I heard the tinkle of glass from the bullet passing through the windshield, past my cheek and though the side window, blowing the safety glass into a million splinters and sounding like a bomb.

  The Beetles played on as the back end of the van fishtailed and we almost went over. I snapped the wheel back to the right, turning into the skid, and then quickly to the left, praying to find just the right touch to keep us on all four tires, but then we hit the curb. There was a massive jar and then that eerie feeling of weightlessness as we flew up and over, the van starting its roll. Everything went light — CDs, a pen, Jolene's sunglasses, Marla's sippy cup — as though the laws of gravity had ceased to exist. And in that instant, everything went silent, completely silent, and time seemed to slow as we finished the first roll through the air and began the second. But then the passenger's side tires touched pavement and sound returned, as well as actual time, and it was like being inside a tornado, a deafening roar of grinding metal and snapping struts. Rubber screamed as it shredded away, glass shattering everywhere as the terrible power of centrifugal force had its way with our bodies and limbs. Airbags exploded, smashing into our faces as the seat belts and shoulder restraints crushed us into our seats. I heard Marla cry, even through all the insanely loud destruction that was closing in on us, I heard her.

  I thought it would never stop, but then it did, as abruptly and brutally as it started, with an incredible jolt that almost stole my consciousness.

  The van lay on the passenger’s side. The airbags had deflated and I saw her look at me. There was blood on her forehead and in her hair, but she was awake and alive. And then I heard Marla from the back. She screamed, "Mommy, Daddy!" in her little baby voice and I gave thanks she was alive.

  My seatbelt held me tight. I punched at the release with my thumb, but there was too much weight for it to let go. I dug my pocketknife from my pant’s pocket, snapped it open and sliced through the lap portion in one easy stroke.

  I had to push myself into an upward position, one knee against the center console and one foot wedged against the center floorboard divider.

  And then I heard the motorcycle as it grumbled up to us. It sounded like a crotch rocket and something in my subconscious told me it meant danger. In war, you learn to trust that inner feeling and I trusted it now. I reached down and drew my Smith and Wesson from its holster.

  I eased my head up through the shattered window and saw him. It was Stitch. He looked different. Blond spiked hair, eyeliner, a ring in his cheek where the stitches had been. But it was him. And suddenly I realized I'd seen him before, at the nightclub, and even before that, in the yellow VW.

  In that instant of clarity everything came together. He'd been following me — hunting me. Tracking my patterns. And I'd been too oblivious to notice, so wrapped up in my life and job that I let my guard down and now it was time to pay the price for my weakness. He was here to kill me. Me and my family.

  As if in slow motion, I saw him pull a black semi-auto from his waistband and point it at the passenger side windshield.

  He looked up at me, that one eye drooping and lagging behind the other, and grinned.

  My gun was up and firing before he could twitch. Two bullets into his face. Two in the chest and two more back into his face. He flopped to the ground in that unique way that the dead do, his gun still in his hand.

  I was out and over the side of the van in a second. I kicked the gun from his lifeless fingers and stared down at him. His face was a mess, unrecognizable. The chest shots were perfect and bloody. No medal or charm was going to save him this time.

  Marla continued to cry as I took her from the car-seat. Then she hugged me and said that she loved me, which seemed strange, because she couldn’t really talk yet. Getting Jolene out was a little more difficult and the first of the patrol cars and rescue units were pulling on scene as I helped her through my window and set her feet on the ground. I crushed the two of them to me, so thankful they were alive and unhurt. I squeezed them so tight and held them so close that golden sparkles danced behind my eyes and I felt like I might pass out.

  I closed my eyes, feeling a strange click in my neck, and when I opened them I was in a dream on a gurney being rushed down a corridor, the overhead lights slapping past overhead. But why? I wasn't hurt. Or was I? Had I been shot? Or maybe I'd broken something in the crash and just been too amped up on adrenalin to notice until the action had stopped? I tried to raise my right hand, but it wasn't there. I tried my left, but it was gone too. There was nothing. No feeling, no pain, no weight, nothing. I tried to talk, but nothing came out. My lips wouldn't move. I tried to blink… those lights overhead were blindingly bright… but again I couldn't.

  Lord-Lord what was happening to me? Jolene! Jolene! Marla! Where are you?

  I turned from Jolene to look back at the street when something flashed from up on the bridge. Light refraction from a telescopic sight! But that was silly, this was Colorado not Afghanistan. There was no war here. But some inner sense told me it was war and I torqued the wheel to the right as something punched hard and fast through the windshield, spraying me with glass dust. I felt a sting on the side of my neck as the high velocity bullet singed my flesh and exploded the window to my side.

  But I'd swerved too hard and now had to jerk back into the skid before it was too late. Only the van wouldn't respond and we hit the curb going too fast. There was an instant of weightlessness, like in the movie Superman Returns when the jet gets too close to space. Things floated — Marla's sippy cup, a pen, CD's, a pair of sunglasses — and then gravity came back to life and there was a terrible jolt as we touched down. Glass detonated, metal screamed as it tore apart, rubber shredded and melted sending its horrible stench at us in a wave.

  The Beetles were still singing about how their world would never change — as my world was coming apart.

  The van somersaulted — once, twice, three times — before smashing down on Jolene's side and grinding to a halt against a light pole.

  I shook my head, glass fragments flying from my hair like sparkling droplets of water. I looked at Jolene, there was blood on her forehead, but she looked at me, her lips trembling into a hesitant smile. Marla cried from the back, letting us know she wasn't hurt too badly, which was lucky because the back half of the van had been ripped open right behind her seat. If she'd been one row back…

  The high pitched whine of a crotch rocket raced t
oward us and a sudden feeling of all consuming fear swept through me. I tried to push myself through the window, but the seatbelt held me in place. I slipped my pocketknife out of my pocket and tried to cut through the belt only it wouldn't cut. It was as if the blade were dull or the material of the seatbelt too dense to slice. The motorcycle came closer — closer.

  Frantically I sawed at the belt, that feeling of absolute dread pushing to near panic. The edge of the knife caught in the material and frayed it down a notch.

  The motorcycle screamed to a stop a short distance from us.

  I ripped the knife back and forth, snapping and tearing a strand at a time.

  Jolene looked at me, her eyes big and glassy with shock and fear. She turned to the windshield, watching as something approached.

  My fingers felt numb and clumsy and I almost dropped the knife, but I held on and with all my strength sliced through the last of the cloth.

  Dropping the knife, I catapulted myself up through the windshield just as Stitch pointed the gun at Jolene's face.

  A horrible feeling of guilt crushed at me as I recognized the man from my dream. The man in the VW. The man from the nightclub.

  I fired. Round after round after round. His face and head exploded in a red mist, and still I fired, on and on until there could be no mistake this monster from Hell was dead. Until I was certain his evil was obliterated from the world and there was no chance that he could take them away from me again.

  When the slide locked back, I dropped the magazine and slid in another so fast most people wouldn't be able to tell there had been a lapse in gunfire. I emptied three magazines into his wretched face and body, standing directly over him for the last nine rounds.

  Jolene was standing beside the van holding Marla when I turned back to them. Marla had a strange dimple in the center of her forehead with just a tiny drop of blood at its center, but she was smiling and holding her arms out for me to take her and hold her. A fragment of safety glass must have nicked her, but for some reason, seeing it made me feel hollow inside. It must be the thought of how close we had all come, how close to losing each other.

  I grabbed them up close and cried into their hair telling them how sorry I was — how very very sorry. I kissed Jolene on the lips and tasted blood and when I pulled my head back I heard a strange click in my neck. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I was in the dream again. I saw people moving quickly, back and forth above me. I couldn't tell what they were doing, but whatever it was, it seemed urgent. And then I realized they were wearing blue masks over their mouths and noses and I understood they were doctors and nurses. But why were they here and what were they doing working on me? I wasn't hurt. I wasn't the one that needed help. They should be working on Marla and Jolene… I tried to talk to them, to beg them, but nothing came out. I couldn't move… couldn't speak.

  Jolene looked at me from the passenger seat. So beautiful, so full of life and love. Marla sat behind me, sleeping peacefully. Something caught my attention from ahead, a flash, a spark, a reflection of light. Nothing big, nothing to capture ones attention. Not here, in the USA, in America, where there was no war and people were safe and secure and you didn't need to be on constant watch — constant guard.

  But there was something, that inner voice that I knew better than to ignore, that pulled at my mind, warning me that something wasn't quite right. Like something wasn't right about the yellow VW or the man from the club that got on his motorcycle. Things that I should have paid attention to. Things that could mean the difference between life and death.

  I cranked the wheel hard to the right and saw the hole blow through the windshield. Something hit me in the throat, a piece of glass maybe. I felt it for an instant and then it was gone and the van was tipping. I ordered my hands and arms to steer to the left, but they wouldn't move. I tried to force my shoulders into action, but they rebelled. I felt the passenger's side wheels leaving the ground and in a last ditch effort tried to shove my body to the left, hoping it would drag my hands in that direction through sheer momentum, but there was nothing and the van continued its tip as it hit the curb and bounced up in the air and over, so slowly. A pen danced weightlessly up from the center console, as did CD's, Marla's ballerina sippy cup and a pair of sunglasses. They were Jolene's and she looked like a movie star when she wore them and I would tease her about it and she would slap me playfully on the arm laughing. And then we were spinning and slamming against the hard asphalt, the centrifugal force ripping one of the sliding side doors off and away. Glass shattered as metal contorted and ripped apart. The rubber of the tires was shorn away and the rims and axels dug jagged groves through the blacktop of the street beneath. The sound was horrendous and came from everywhere at once. A cacophony of impact and whirling missiles and flying glass. Punctuated by the sounds of grunts and moans and small cries from the fragile bodies of flesh that were held helplessly captive, along for the ride. John and Paul singing through it all that nothing was gonna change their world.

  And then it stopped. We must have hit a light pole along the way because the van was ripped apart. I was lying on the asphalt. I'd been torn from my seatbelt and shot through the windshield. I could see the remains of the driver's seat in my peripheral vision and it was destroyed. There were several small fires, where puddles of gasoline had ignited. And straight ahead I saw into the van. The metal roof was peeled back like a can of sardines and there was Jolene. Strapped in her seat, blood running down her face from her forehead and nose. The airbag had deflated. As I watched I saw her stir. She shook her head slowly and I wanted to scream at her to stay still and not to move her neck, but the words wouldn't come. And then I heard Marla cry for her mommy and I saw that she was still in her car seat, strapped tight and sound.

  I was so glad, so thankful. But then I heard the motorcycle and an overwhelming panic sucked all the heat from my body leaving me numb and frozen in terror. I tried to move my eyes so I could track his movements but they were locked like the rest of my body. And still the Beetles sang.

  The bike stopped behind me, so close I could hear the crunch of the gravel as though it were inside my head. The monster dismounted and came around and knelt in front of me so that he could look into my eyes.

  It was Stitch.

  He cocked his head, first this way and then that way, like a dog hearing a strange sound. He nodded slowly and stood up. He pulled a gun from his waistband, pointed it at my head.

  I tried to move. I poured every last ounce of willpower into the attempt, but it was like trying to move the ocean. There was nothing even to hold onto.

  "Leave him alone!" screamed Jolene.

  Stitch turned. He started walking toward her.

  I tried to scream, to shout, to make any sound. But there was nothing.

  Stitch walked right up to her, pointed the gun. He looked back at me. He grinned.

  I heard a click and closed my eyes. When I opened them I was awake and the nightmare had just begun.

  27

  Majoqui took the corner at ninety miles an hour, almost losing it, but managing just barely. The sound of squad cars, wailing too close behind him, encouraged a bump and the speedometer needle passed a hundred and kept going.

  He was on Alameda heading east now, being tailed by at least three Lakewood Police cars. But this was a long straightaway and no cruiser was going to keep up with the rocket. The speedometer pegged at one-eighty, but the wind rushed faster and faster past his face and when he hit two hundred, reality seemed to change. It was nothing he could ever put into words; more like a religious experience than an event. The world changed, or at least his perception of it did. His vision sharpened in the center, blurred at the edges. Details sprang to life, colors vibrated their brilliance, reality rushed past on the sides like a raging river.

  And then he saw the stop sticks.

  The cop was ridiculously far away, and with the incredible maneuverability of the motorcycle, Majoqui would have no difficulty avoiding the trap. Only, as the
thought crossed his mind, he heard the pop of the tires as they exploded and saw the police officer as he passed him by.

  Impossible that he had been moving so fast.

  But he had been, and now the bike was rip-sawing back and forth, the handlebars ripped from his grip, and he was flung through the air as though he held no weight. There was time for him to reach out to the Mother with his prayer and then his body struck something and something else and something else. Branches slashed at his face and hands, tore at his arms and legs and body, snapped and splintered as his momentum carried him on. He lost consciousness for an instant, but then shot up to a sitting position, amazed he was still alive.

  The sirens told him the police were almost on him and he reached for his gun, even as he saw the destruction his wild flight had wrought on the long row of hedges he had passed through. It was a miracle. He touched his talismans with his left hand as his right continued to search for the gun.

  It wasn't there.

  He'd lost it in his wild tumble. But there was no time to morn its loss or try and find it. He had to escape.

  Majoqui pushed himself up from the thick Evergreen bushes he sat in and ran to the northeast. The street sign ahead said Harlen St. but Majoqui had never heard of it. He kept running, trying to get close to buildings so he could be lost in shadow.

  A stream of police cars were pouring into the area, their red and blue strobes splashing across the night and searching him out.

  Majoqui dove behind a thin screen of bushes as a patrol car raced past. He stayed there, catching his breath and trying to think out the best rout to freedom. Overhead came the whopping thud of monstrous blades as they beat at the air. He chanced a look up and saw the powerful beam of the helicopter's search light stabbing at the ground, looking for him. Majoqui knew there was power in a stare; that some men could feel when they were being looked at. He himself had this ability and so did not question it in others. He turned his face to the dirt and waited for the horrible insect to fly away. But it did not fly away and suddenly he heard cars screeching to a stop close to him. The sun went supernova, blinding the area around him, sending its awesome rays through the scant bushes so that he became visible for anyone to see.