by Eric Beetner
Dale unslung the machine gun from his shoulder and slid his hand over the grip. Already his other hand slipped on the cables, inches at first. He began firing as his slide down picked up pace. Falling away into darkness Dale emptied the clip at the open door. One man slumped and fell, his head and arm hanging over the edge. The rest of them, and Tat, pulled back for cover. Dale’s shots pounded into the doorframe, the ceiling outside the door, the walls of the shaft. He was spraying bullets as he slid backward in a controlled fall.
He hadn’t realized it, but he was screaming while he fell. A war cry he’d never heard before from some place primal inside him. He fell away from the light spilling in to the shaft and all details of his body were swallowed by darkness. Only the orange flashes of his gun lit the walls of the shaft.
The scream ended when he ran out of bullets, which he did at the same time he landed on Lauren’s head.
CHAPTER 32
“Last chance, lady. You sure you want to do this?”
Dahlia wasn’t sure at all. All she knew was that for some reason, she needed to see Dale. She needed the protection of her husband. She’d taken it for granted, him being a cop. She hadn’t realized how much she depended on it.
It wasn’t the guns, or the extra patrols the local uniformed guys did around their street at night. It was Dale. He was a protector. He enjoyed it. And she felt safe. So safe she started to ignore it.
When he fell silent, went on his weird jags of not communicating, she decided two could play at that game. She mimicked him, unconsciously. They’d forgotten all the things that brought them together, and now she wanted it back.
Dahlia set a hand on her stomach. She knew she’d need to reschedule the appointment, and still felt fairly sure it was the choice she was going to stick with. But it was the other reason she needed to see Dale. To know for sure.
She’d made the choice without him. Her body, her choice. She didn’t feel like the argument, either. But she never looked him in the eye and thought the thought. You’re going to end this baby. His baby. Our baby.
She needed to see him and then she’d know. And maybe then he could explain all this craziness.
Her knees were propped up on the seat in front of her. The driver surely felt them dig into his back. Dahlia kept her head hunched down into her shoulders like a moody teenager getting a ride from Mom to the mall, only with a gun.
“Yeah.” She sat up straight in the seat. “I’m sure I want to do this.”
CHAPTER 33
The city slid past and into the rearview. O’Brien crossed out of city limits and into a fringe land as lawless as the Wild West, because he allowed it to be so. Whoever made up the expression “crime doesn’t pay” surely meant it to apply to the criminals. They obviously had no idea how well crime paid for the officials who kept it in business.
He checked the dashboard clock again. Same time as his last glance. The digital numbers hadn’t even clicked over yet, so frequent were his compulsive time checks. Seconds counted in the life of his daughter.
O’Brien composed the first draft of a resignation speech in his head. He’d have to keep this one for himself, the speechwriters could stay out of it. Made him realize how shitty he was at writing speeches.
Maybe he’d do it through the media. Line up some exclusive interview with a TV anchor and let them film the train wreck. But no, that would undercut Lauren’s story. And if anything good could come out of this, at least he could give his daughter a leg up in the journalism world. She was pretty enough for cable news, opinionated enough for sure.
A dip in the road sank the shocks almost to the pavement as he rocketed along. No radio, no distractions. A time check. One minute had passed. O’Brien hoped it wasn’t one minute too long.
A whoop of sirens sounded behind him. He checked the rearview and saw a police car with lights on. He checked the speedometer. Seventy-two. He hadn’t looked, but no way this road was more than a forty-five speed limit. He slowed.
The car idled on the shoulder, the engine panting deeply after such a workout. The damn cop was taking his sweet time getting to the window. When he did, O’Brien already had it rolled down and turned his face to the officer, offering himself up as his own ID.
“License and—” The officer stopped. He took at the sight of the city’s mayor behind the wheel, let it process, then dropped his tough guy behind the badge stance. “Sir?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Officer…” The man’s badge read Burkes. “Burkes. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Yes, sir. You were speeding.”
“I know and I’m sorry. Official business though.”
Burkes shifted on his feet. “You were going really fast though, sir.” He sniffed the air by habit as he leaned in to rest an elbow on the window frame. He got a whiff of what he didn’t want. Alcohol. The stress pushed sweat out of O’Brien and it carried the stink of his slow but steady visits to the in-office bar that morning.
“We can discuss this with Chief Schuster together, but tomorrow. I really need to get somewhere now.”
“Where are you headed to, sir?”
O’Brien balked. He couldn’t explain. Didn’t feel he needed to, and goddammit this was taking too long. “Look, Burkes, I don’t want to pull rank or anything—”
“Have you been drinking today, sir?”
Son of a bitch. This guy…
“Son, you really don’t want to do this.”
The thing O’Brien didn’t know about Officer Burkes, the thing he wanted least of all in the cop who pulled him over, was that Burkes was a third-generation cop. A rule follower. A by-the-books man.
Burkes pulled on the door handle and the door opened. “I need you to step out of the vehicle, Mr. Mayor.”
O’Brien sighed and put his face in his cupped hands. “You don’t understand.”
“I need to administer a field sobriety test, sir. If you pass it, I’ll let the speeding go. Please step out.”
O’Brien unbuckled his seat belt. He felt Lauren slipping away. He put a foot out onto the gravel of the soft shoulder. He saw Roy aiming a rifle at his daughter, the crosshairs fixed between her eyes. He stood up and watched Burkes square off against him the way he would with any drunk who came down his stretch of road. He watched Lauren fall, her lovely face a smear of red and her hair floating behind her in blonde and blood streaks.
He whispered, “My daughter.”
“What’s that, sir?”
How could this kid understand? And if he explained, wouldn’t the cop be obligated to run him in for a host of other offenses? A drunk driving rap would be a footnote at the bottom of the report.
“Sir, please stand with your feet together and your arms outstretched like this. I’m gonna need you to touch your nose with the tip of your index finger like so.”
Burkes demonstrated what he wanted. He went from his Jesus on the cross pose to touching his nose first with one finger and then got half way to touching his nose with the other when O’Brien hit him.
O’Brien nearly fell over on top of the cop as he tipped forward after his haymaker shot to Burkes’ chin. He missed most of the punch but landed enough so the cop fell backward. O’Brien straightened and looked at his fist like he’d only just found it there at the end of his arm. Had he really punched a cop?
He had, and there was no coming back from that now. O’Brien dove to the ground and on top of Burkes. He wrestled the gun off his belt and tossed it behind them into the ditch on the side of the road. He went next for the handcuffs. Burkes gathered his senses enough to slap a hand over his pepper spray, where he thought the mayor was headed.
This had to be beyond anything the officer had planned on for the day—the mayor assaulting him on the side of the road, whiskeyed up and itching for a fight like a weekend bar patron.
Seeing Burkes back in fighting form, O’Brien punched him again. With the advantage of hovering directly over his target, O’Brien landed a much
better shot and Burkes went foggy. O’Brien slipped the cuffs from the leather holder on the cop’s belt and clamped them onto his hands.
O’Brien rolled off when it was done and looked back at the man. Burkes was back from the stun of the last punch and looked at his hands, then angrily shot a look to O’Brien.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I told you. I need to get some place right away.”
Taking Burkes’ own cue, O’Brien reached over and grabbed the pepper spray and blasted Burkes in the face. The cop screamed and threw his cuffed hands to his face. O’Brien stood and pulled Burkes by the scruff of his jacket along the gravel toward the police car. O’Brien reached into the driver’s door and unlocked the back. He dragged the angry and cursing Burkes to the door and tried to haul him inside. Like an angry drunk or a kid high on meth, Burkes refused to get inside his own vehicle.
O’Brien stepped over Burkes, straddling him over his shoulders as he stood at the door and grabbed hold with both hands. He pulled sharply out and clipped Burkes in the head with the heavy door. Burkes tilted and went down to the gravel.
O’Brien slid into the backseat and pulled Burkes inside before backing out the other door. He shut the cop in and made sure to lock the doors again.
He went around to the front of the cop car and bent over to suck in air for a moment. What a stupid thing to do, but what else is new? And if it helped Lauren at all, it was worth it. All apologies to Officer Burkes.
As he straightened, O’Brien noticed a small red light. The roof lights were off and Burkes was still in a ball on the back seat. O’Brien had to look closer at the black square in the window of the police car, but he knew what it was. He’d signed the bill to make it a requirement.
A dash-mounted video camera. His assault had been captured on video for all to see on the nightly news, or in the courts when the time came. His shoulders slumped in defeat.
O’Brien turned to the camera and decided to turn it into a confessional.
“Look, I’m sorry for what went on here just now. If anyone is seeing this, then you know the truth of it. I’m going to try to save my daughter’s life and I hope I’m not too late. If I am, I don’t blame Officer Burkes. He was doing his job. I blame myself for not doing mine. I’m a fuck up. Everything you’ve read about me is true. But I deserve to pay for it, not my daughter.”
He turned and the camera watched him climb back into his official city Town Car and spit gravel as he peeled away.
BASEMENT
Death couldn’t be any blacker. The bottom of the elevator shaft, the basement level, sucked all light from the world and swallowed it into the bottom of the pit as if it were the center of the earth.
Dale felt around, his body aching and his foot on fire with pain. He wanted a drink of water. He needed to know if Lauren was alive. “Lauren? Are you all right?”
A low groan off to his left. “You fell on me.”
Good. Not dead. “Sorry. Is anything broken?”
A pause while she evaluated the stabs of pain and dull aches throughout her body. “I don’t think so.” Didn’t sound like she felt good, though.
From above, echoing through the shaft, came Tat’s voice. “I’m coming for you, motherfuckers.”
A tiny light sparked overhead and fell. The lighter tumbled in the darkness, illuminating the sides of the shaft as it spun. The flame whipped in the wind of the descent but never went out. An endorsement to the brand.
The lighter landed next to Dale and the bottom of the pit was lit with a dull glow. Bullets followed the flame down into the shaft. Dale rolled and squished his body against the wall as shots exploded where Tat’s boys could now see them in the firelight.
Lauren shrugged off where she had landed and finally noticed what broke her fall and probably saved her life. Elton’s body was sprawled like a half-deflated airbag across the gear-driving mechanism of the elevator.
Bullets punched the ground, spun off the giant spool for collecting the cable. Dale reached out a hand and put it over the lighter. His hand burned as his palm covered the flame, then he closed his fist around it and shut the lid, plunging the bottom of the pit into blackness again.
Above him, Dale saw shadows move away from the open door where Tat and his men had been. He knew that meant they were on their way down the stairs.
“We gotta move.” He got to his knees, the machine gun he had slung over his shoulder lay on the blank bottom of the pit now, cracked and useless. Empty of ammunition anyway.
Another grunt from Lauren said she knew, but she wasn’t happy about the need to move quickly. In the brief firelight, Dale noticed he was against the door and he pawed at the backside of the opening in a blind man’s search for a finger hold. “Over here. Help me get this door open.”
Dale wedged his fingers in between the two doors and tried to pry. The exertion in his muscles screamed rage at his entire body. The fall hadn’t been too bad. He’d gotten almost even with the first floor before he lost his grip on the cables, and even then, his legs never came loose from being wrapped around. And Lauren held on like a bull rider, trying her damndest to slow them both down with Dale sitting on her head.
Landing on Elton helped, too. His girth cushioned the impact.
Lauren climbed over Elton’s crushed body and shoved off, shivering as if a tarantula had crawled over her bare skin. She joined Dale at the doors and got her fingers in the slot. She pulled left and he pulled right and the first sliver of light broke through.
Dale urged them on. “Keep going.” They tugged again and the gap widened. Dale knew every quarter inch they opened the door was another step downward Tat and his boys took. They would meet them there in the basement and this thing would finally be over, but not the way Dale wanted.
He and Lauren both let out grunts of pain as they pulled the elevator doors open and got their first glimpse of the basement. Dale put a hand on her shoulder. “Go, go, go.”
Lauren squeezed through, widening the gap a little more with her body as she slid through sideways. Dale followed, pushing the doors open with his hips and arms when he was half way through.
The basement was a storage facility, that much became obvious. Rows of crates and stacks of boxes made a maze of thin footpaths between the inventory. As Dale tried to examine the maze for a solution that would get them out of there, Lauren noticed something else.
“Uh, Dale.” She pointed to the side of a stack of boxes and the stenciled letters there. “Look at this.”
Mario was two steps behind Tat, keeping pace. A dedicated servant to Tat for six years now, he felt he’d earned the right to speak up.
“We’re gonna take them on down there?”
“Yeah.” Tat sounded annoyed already.
“I mean, with all those—”
“Yeah, with all those.” Tat hit the landing for the first floor; he turned and continued on down the stairs toward the basement, a tank with no brakes. “Anyone else got a problem with that?”
Several of them did, but no one said a thing.
“Then hurry the fuck up and it won’t be a problem. They’re probably too dumb to figure out what they’re in the middle of anyway.”
Dale and Lauren stood in the middle of a stockpile of weapons enough to start a small war.
Crates of AR-15 machine guns. Boxes of hand grenades. Rifles, pistols, ammunition by the crate. Three long wooden boxes with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and the RPG ammo to go with it.
“What the hell was he planning?”
Dale looked around at the boxes blocking his every move to get out of the basement. “I don’t know, but he’s serious about it.”
Lauren stopped. “It’s this.”
“What is?”
“This is what he’d been planning for. An invasion. A breech of his compound.”
“Don’t you think this is a little overkill for just you and me?”
“Obviously he didn’
t think it would be just one guy and a girl reporter he kidnapped.”
Dale took a quick inventory of only the boxes around him and felt scared shitless at the explosive power of the contents. “Looks like he thought it would be the entire U.S. Marine Corps.” Sales was more likely, Dale thought. Why settle for dime bags of drugs when you can take in a few grand a pop for a crate of machine guns sold to a South American cartel?
“Look.” Lauren drew his eyes to a box in front of her. The lid was off and neat rows of two dozen Desert Eagle .44 magnums showed themselves. Full clips were nestled next to them in form-cut foam holders.
Unarmed since the fall, Dale picked up a gun and two clips, loaded one, and put the other in his pocket. “You should get one, too.”
“I’m good.” Lauren reached around her back for her gun. She paused, patted the small of her back where it should have been, then sheepishly brought her arm back around to her front and dipped into the box to get her own Magnum.
A loud bang, duller than gunfire, sounded across the basement. A door being kicked in. Tat had arrived.
Dale heard the sounds of men spreading out, though he could see nothing past the rows and angles of the crates stacked head high all around them.
“Tat, I know it’s you.” Dale held his new gun according to police academy regulations for entering a fire fight. “It would be really dumb for you to start shooting right now, considering where we are.”
Dale waited for the bullets to fly anyway. He got silence.
“Tat? There is some serious shit in these boxes. Stuff you don’t want to hit with a bullet.”
“So what do you suggest?” He sounded pissed, but Dale expected that.
Dale looked at Lauren who shrugged. “Don’t suppose letting us go is on the list of options?”
“Let me ask you this, Burnett, did you punch my mother in the face?”