The Outside Man

by Don Bentley

Vaulting onto the car’s hood, I did just that, firing from the high-ready position. I no longer bothered with aimed pairs. Instead, I sent a constant stream of lead into the windshield while advancing. The driver jerked, an HK MP5 falling from his hands.

  I centered the Glock’s front sight post on his forehead and pulled the trigger twice more. He’d started the fight. Now was not the time for mercy. His body spasmed as my hollow points tore through the bridge of his nose and right eye socket.

  Then he slid forward.

  The entire engagement had lasted maybe fifteen seconds, but it had felt like fifteen years. As my brain finally recognized that the threat to my life had been eliminated, my other senses came back online. I could feel the Glock’s pebbly grip beneath my fingers and smell the coppery scent of blood mixed with the acrid smell of gunpowder.

  But it was my sense of hearing that really brought things into perspective. Over the gunfire-induced ringing in my ears and the gasps of the wounded cop, something else demanded my attention—squealing tires and crashing steel as a pair of SUVs battered their way through the traffic jam. One swung up on the curb to my right while the other rolled over the sidewalk to my left.

  Both were heading straight at me.

  FOUR

  In my line of work, training is great, but nothing beats experience. As the two SUVs careened toward me, my experience in shitholes the world over allowed me to process several things at once: One, my Glock’s slide had locked to the rear, revealing an empty chamber. Two, my spare magazine was in the truck’s glove box, which meant, at this moment, might as well have been on the other side of the earth. Three, the two men driving against traffic on opposing sides of the street were probably not on the side of the angels.

  The assassin’s help had just arrived, and I was outgunned, outmanned, and out of ammunition.

  In other words, just another day at the office.

  I vaulted off the Honda’s hood, and landed next to the fallen police officer as squealing brakes and opening car doors announced the arrival of bad-guy reinforcements. The cop was a big ’un, probably tipping the scale north of two twenty-five with all of his gear. Dropping my pistol, I hooked both hands through the fabric loop at the top of his tactical vest and began dragging him toward my truck to the accompanying pop, pop, pop of multiple suppressed weapons firing on automatic.

  Rounds snapped past my head like rabid hornets, but I kept pumping my legs until a ricochet slammed into my right calf muscle, causing an instant charley horse. Thanks to equal parts adrenaline and grit, I finished dragging the cop behind my truck’s front tire. Then physics took over. I collapsed next to the ninja mom and her toddler, working the cramp from my leg. Once again, her eyes widened at my unexpected appearance, but this time she didn’t try to punch me.

  Things were looking up.

  “I thought you were ending this,” she said as my truck rocked under the onslaught of automatic weapons fire.

  “Working on it,” I said, reaching to unholster the cop’s pistol.

  Like many law enforcement officers, this cop seemed to believe that bigger was better. He was wearing a customized Springfield 1911. It was an extremely accurate pistol chambered in a man-stopping .45 caliber, but it held only seven rounds in its single-stack magazine, plus one in the chamber. This was a problem. In gunfights with multiple opponents, more bullets were always better.

  Still, a Springfield .45 with eight rounds was a hell of a lot better than a Glock with zero. Squeezing the checkered walnut grip with both hands, I leaned against the truck’s frame and popped up to have a look.

  What I saw took the proverbial wind out of my sails.

  Two teams of two shooters were advancing toward me with textbook precision. The gunmen were working the street from opposite sides, one member of each team advancing while his partner laid down suppressive fire in short, controlled bursts.

  These guys knew their business.

  Sighting down the Springfield’s narrow barrel, I fired an aimed pair at the advancing shooter on the left before doing the same to the shooter on the right. The .45’s cannonlike report echoed across the street, nearly drowning out the HKs’ suppressed pops. Both my opening volleys missed, but the advancing shooters still paused, reassessing the tactical situation.

  Score one for the good guys.

  Unfortunately, that single engagement had also cost me half my ammunition.

  Not so good.

  Ducking behind the truck’s hood, I reached for the leather magazine holders attached to the cop’s patrol belt and then stopped midmotion as my eyes settled on the radio on his chest. Goddamn it, but I was smarter than this.

  Ripping the radio from the cop’s bloody shirt, I smashed the transmit button.

  “Shots fired, corner of Congress and Chavez Street. Officer down. Multiple gunshot wounds.”

  I released the transmit button, and the radio exploded with voices. Voices I didn’t have time to answer. Instead, I grabbed two magazines from the cop’s belt, combat-reloaded the Springfield, and popped back over the hood.

  The team of four shooters was now even with the gunman’s Honda. As police sirens wailed, one of the men freed the dead shooter from the car. The second tossed something about the size of a Coke can into the backseat.

  My sudden appearance brought another onslaught of bullets from the shooters pulling security, sending me diving to the pavement. Leaning on my side, I stretched past the front tire, edging around the bumper. My front sight post found one of the gunmen. I snapped off a shot and was in the process of firing a second when the Honda exploded.

  The concussion smashed me into the ground just as a hubcap scythed past my face in a blur of steel. I grabbed onto the bumper for support, and hauled myself into a seated position as the hit team moved back in short, disciplined bounds.

  The professional part of me admired the team’s tactical soundness. Their break-contact maneuver was textbook, like something out of the movie Heat. I was still alive only because of the legion of converging police sirens. A few minutes more and the team would have flanked me. I know that some folks claim that it’s better to be lucky than good, but I’ll take an M4 equipped with an EoTech reflex sight and a tactical harness full of spare magazines over luck any day.

  Which was exactly what the cop rounding the building on foot was carrying.

  FIVE

  Good cops are absolutely fearless. They charge into banks mid-robbery and run toward the sound of gunfire. The stud who careened around the building as the hit team was piling into their SUVs was no exception. His eyes found me, then my gun, then his blood-soaked brother.

  He never hesitated.

  The M4 came up to his shoulder in one smooth motion, and he began taking the slack out of the trigger. He didn’t yell freeze, didn’t tell me to drop my gun, and didn’t call for backup. He saw a threat, and moved to eliminate it.

  But he didn’t see the shooter to my left hesitate as he climbed into his SUV. I might have been the target, but that was before the op had gone sideways. Now the bad guys were in break-contact mode. My hiding behind my T-boned truck wasn’t going to stop that battle drill, but the cop was a different story. If he transmitted their description, there wasn’t a wheelman alive who could outrun the radio waves.

  Which meant that the cop had to die.

  So I shot him.

  Actually, the three of us fired our weapons almost simultaneously. But I shot first. My slug caught Austin’s finest squarely in his chest plate, and as big as he was, the hit to the body armor still staggered him. Which meant that his round zinged across my shoulder instead of drilling me in the chest, and the burst from the shooter’s HK cratered the wall above the cop instead of his forehead.

  Hot damn.

  Ignoring the line of fire etched on my shoulder and the throbbing in my calf, I squeezed off another series of aimed pairs at the shooter. I didn’t
hit him, but he got the message all the same. Rather than finishing the cop, who was on his hands and knees dry heaving, the shooter jumped into his SUV and slammed the door. The SUV reversed course, smashing over a newspaper stand before squealing down a side street, the second SUV in trail.

  Now shrieking sirens seemed to be coming from everywhere. Half a dozen emergency vehicles converged on the burning Honda from all directions. A police cruiser rolled up behind me, and another hero vaulted out of the driver’s side.

  “Drop the gun,” she said, the muzzle of her pistol rock steady, despite her adrenaline-soaked voice.

  I did as I was told, placing the Springfield on the pavement in slow, exaggerated motions. After releasing the pistol, I started to get to my feet. I needn’t have bothered. A sea of blue uniforms smashed into me, driving me to the ground. For once, momma bear seemed to be on my side. I could hear her screaming that I was the good guy, but the cops were having none of it. Metal bit into my wrists as someone snapped on a set of handcuffs.

  Then the blows began in earnest.

  I suppose that I should have been mad about taking an ass kicking after just saving a cop, but I couldn’t blame them. The police officer with the tricked-out M4 and plate carrier was still alive, but the youngster who’d responded first was lying unmoving in a pool of his own blood. Someone had been trying to kill me, and one of Austin’s finest had been in the way. Now a kid who looked barely old enough to shave was dead.

  And the kick in the balls was that I didn’t even know why.

  SIX

  You’re like herpes. You just keep coming back.”

  I didn’t dignify the comment with a response. At least not right away. The beatdown I’d received from the police officers had rung my bell more than I cared to admit. Consequently, I was still having trouble putting together a worthy comeback. I hoped that’s what was causing the fogginess, anyway. Unbidden, the image of the doctor’s report lying on my truck’s floorboards came to mind.

  And then the shakes began.

  “Hey—what the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  The tremors normally started small, originating in the minor muscle groups of my extremities before progressing to the major ones in my chest, back, and arms. But not today. Today, my shoulders and hands were already jittering like a tweaker’s.

  “I’m just excited to see you again,” I said, my teeth chattering. “Agent Rawlings, right?”

  I could no longer control my hands, and the handcuffs and metal chain binding them together rattled like a Gypsy’s bangles.

  “Are you seizing?” Rawlings said.

  “No. Maybe. It’s complicated. It’s either a physiological reaction to a previously experienced psychosomatic stressor or the side effects from an experimental chemical weapon. The doctor wasn’t real specific.”

  “You need a medic?” Rawlings said.

  “I need you to uncuff my fucking hands,” I said, holding my manacles across the IKEA-quality table separating us.

  The trembling had turned the handcuff chain into a blur of metal vibrating like a tuning fork. Still, I could see the indecision written across Agent Rawlings’s face. Based on the accounts of the ninja mom and other bystanders, he had to be ninety-nine percent sure I hadn’t instigated the shootout on South Congress Avenue. But that other one percent was a bitch, especially since the last time we’d been face-to-face, things had turned a wee bit physical.

  Time to address the elephant in the room.

  “Look, you know who I am and what I do. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, but we both know you had it coming. Now, uncuff me before things become unpleasant.”

  Rawlings hesitated another long second, but then he reached into his coat pocket and fished out a handcuff key, just as I knew he would.

  Our history was limited to a scuffle in the Austin airport, so I didn’t know him well. But I did know the type. Today, like the last time we’d met, Special Agent Rawlings was wearing a sport coat, slacks, a button-down shirt, and lace-up dress shoes. His brown hair was stylishly cut, and he had the earnest face of someone you’d trust.

  Rawlings was an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This was an important distinction because the FBI was first and foremost a law enforcement organization. Unlike me, Rawlings was answerable to lawyers and judges who took a dim view of handcuffing people posing no threat. Especially people experiencing a poorly defined medical episode.

  Contrary to what you might think, I love the Constitution. I just don’t love it when we try to apply our founding principles to the world’s scumbags. American exceptionalism is driven by America’s values, and these values fundamentally differ from those held by much of the rest of the world. The sooner we quit pretending otherwise, the sooner we can get about the business of addressing the world’s problems as they really are.

  Grabbing the chain with nicotine-stained fingers, Rawlings inserted his key into the locking mechanism and twisted. The metal restraint opened with an audible pop. He did the same with the second handcuff, and just that quickly, I was free.

  Balling my hands into fists, I closed my eyes and dropped into the first song that came to mind.

  During my self-imposed sabbatical, I’d begun taking guitar lessons in earnest. As the calluses on my fingertips could attest, my skill had progressed beyond simple G-C-D chord progressions. Even so, I still heard Glenn Frey’s haunting voice singing the first verse of “Take It Easy.” I pictured myself strumming along, my left hand forming the chords on my battered old Gibson knockoff while the fingers on my right tapped out the strum pattern. Once I reached the chorus, I no longer felt tension gripping my shoulders and back. By the start of the bridge, the tremors had stopped altogether.

  For now.

  I inhaled deeply, and hung on to the breath until my lungs started to burn before exhaling in one continuous stream. Then I opened my eyes.

  “What was that?” Rawlings said.

  “I already told you,” I said, resting my newly liberated hands on my knees. “So what’s this about?”

  “What’s this about?” Rawlings said. “Seriously? Who were the shooters?”

  “No idea.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Are we really going to do this?” I said. “A team of military-quality gunmen just shot up Austin, and you want to play bad cop?”

  “You weren’t exactly an innocent bystander.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They were targeting you,” Rawlings said.

  “Agreed. But how exactly does that make me complicit?”

  “A team of professionals tried to assassinate you in broad daylight. You’re not a cartel member or a mafioso—I’ll give you that. But you’re also not a schoolteacher. You’re a Defense Intelligence Agency Intelligence Officer. Your chosen profession probably has something to do with South Congress becoming the OK Corral. I’ll bet that you might even have an idea or two as to why.”

  Rawlings leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smile, like a lawyer who’d just given his closing argument. Which he probably was, since the FBI was positively lousy with lawyers. Still, just because he’d had the poor judgment to go to law school didn’t mean that Rawlings was wrong. In fact, I did have thoughts on why.

  The assassination attempt hadn’t been a shootout between two gangs. Those men were professional shooters targeting a single individual—me. And since I’m not a terribly interesting person, their attention probably had something to do with my line of work.

  Or ex–line of work.

  As of late, that distinction was becoming increasingly unclear. But since I was a spy, not a cop like Rawlings, I did what spies did best. I answered his question with a question.

  “What do you know about the shooters?” I said.

  “Nope,” Rawlings said, shaking his head. “That’s not how this is gonna
work. You’re in my house. I get to ask the questions. Tell me what you know, and I’ll reciprocate.”

  “Okay. This is gonna be fast, which is good, because I’m late for a date with my wife. I don’t know anything. Your turn.”

  For the first time, I could see the stress Rawlings was under break through his carefully cultivated blank face. What had happened on South Congress was clearly bigger than anything the FBI’s tiny Austin Resident Agency had seen in a long time. Maybe ever. My shootout must have already gotten headquarters’ attention. Judging by Rawlings’s reaction, they weren’t happy.

  “Listen to me,” Rawlings said, leaning across the table. “I’m the only thing standing between you and a building full of cops convinced you’re responsible for a police officer’s death. I say the word, and two of them give you a ride downtown to a holding cell. Trust me when I tell you that ride won’t be pleasant. If you don’t want to spend the next forty-eight hours making friends with MS-13 cellmates, you’d better start talking.”

  “Agent Rawlings, I really did think you were smarter than this. They do still teach Investigation 101 at the Academy, right? So investigate. What did I have in my hand when I was taken into custody?”

  “A pistol.”

  “A bit more specificity, please,” I said. “It was the patrolman’s sidearm. Why did I have his sidearm?”

  “Because yours was out of ammunition.”

  “Exactly. And that’s because I had one magazine in my Glock and zero on my person. Please put the Bureau’s legendary investigative training to work for a moment. Do I strike you as the kind of person who would be out and about with a Glock and a single magazine if I knew a team of hitters was stalking me?”

  Rawlings stared at me for a long moment, trying to come up with a scenario in which I knew more than what I was saying. Unfortunately for him, facts were stubborn things. Exhaling a sigh of defeat, he slowly shook his head.

  “No, you don’t,” Rawlings said.