by Sam Jones
“Come out, come out…” Pete taunted.
Billy made the call.
He raised his Colt.
Pete caught him rising up out of his eye and turned to fire.
But Billy answered first—BAM! BAM! BAM!
Two rounds hit Pete in his right side and the third one went into his neck. He spun around, trigger finger slipping and firing off the Uzi in a half circle. First the floor was shot up, followed by the hot dog cooker on the counter, and finally the ceiling above, Pete slumping over on his side as chalky pieces of tile rained down on his lifeless body and delectable convenience store hot dogs were tragically laid to waste.
“Motherfucker!” Chaz bellowed as he took aim at Billy and squeezed the trigger.
Billy dropped.
Chaz began screaming at the top of his lungs as the bullets from his Uzi demolished the top part of the shelving. Billy dropped onto to his stomach just before the first shots hit the shelving, crawling faster than he ever had in his life back toward the refrigerators.
His drill sergeant in boot would have been proud.
Very proud.
Billy was scurrying like a damn lizard.
Chaz strafed his fire to the right as Billy crawled away. Cans of coffee, baking soda, pancake mix, salt, pepper, and bags of flour and sugar were chewed up, chunks and remnants of the now-expired inventory scattering and flying through the air like rice at a wedding.
Which, ironically enough, was the second thing on the shelf that the Uzi tore apart when Chaz opened fire.
Chaz went dry as Billy made it to the end of the aisle, his back now toward the fridge. He got up and perched on one knee, Chaz closing in on him from about fifteen feet to his left as he ditched the empty magazine from his Uzi and began to load up another.
“I’m gonna blow your fucking brains all over the wall, bud!” he yelled to Billy as he began to move.
Billy stood up and fired off four shots in Chaz’s direction—but Chaz had ducked down and to his right just in time, Billy’s rounds hitting nothing but the bottles of booze still standing on the shelves behind the register as Chaz found cover behind the second aisle in from the entrance.
The potato chip aisle.
“Shit,” Billy said as he ejected his empty magazine and fished around in his pocket for a new one.
“You missed, bud!” Chaz cheered.
Billy loaded in a fresh magazine and moved left in a crouch to the next aisle up, third one in from the entrance, one aisle away from Chaz.
“You’re going to have to try harder than that, bud!” Chaz shouted.
Billy readied himself and his Colt and yelled back, “Stop calling me ‘bud,’ you fuckin’ loser.”
Chaz was pissed.
The last time someone called him a “loser” was when his rich parents cut him off for lacking any shred of self-motivation.
Billy went to stand—and then the bathroom door to the right and behind him flew open. He turned his head and saw Yurek standing half in, half out of the bathroom with a .38 special in hand, aimed right at Chaz, currently exposed and out in the open at the head of aisle number two.
“How’s it going, asshole?” Yurek asked right before opening fire.
Luckily for Chaz, Yurek was a better pilot than he was a marksman, and the three rounds he squeezed off ended up going over Chaz’s head and shattering one of the front windows as Chaz ducked down again behind the potato chip aisle. Yurek fired off the last three rounds but hit nothing but shelving.
Click.
Out of bullets.
Chaz lifted his Uzi with one hand and sprayed wildly over the shelving in Yurek’s direction. Yurek dove back inside the bathroom just as a few rounds were drilled into the door and tore up the frame.
The rest of Chaz’s sporadic shots were fired in Billy’s direction, demolishing more food and supplies as well as a couple of sections of the refrigerator, the doors breaking apart and showering glass all along the floor.
By now, the entire convenience store was starting to look like Beirut.
“You fucks!” Chaz yelled as he reloaded, his nasal-based tone an octave higher from the stress. “You’re fuckin’ dead!”
Billy gripped his Colt and thought of what to do.
Come on, man. Put this prick in the ground.
For a quick second, Chaz grew a brain.
With a fresh magazine in his Uzi, he stood up and began firing off short controlled bursts in Billy and Yurek’s locations, alternating between their positions as he moved out of the chip aisle and to his left while firing in a kind of ninety-degree angle—He fired a few shots at Billy, then a few shots at Yurek, moved a couple of feet, and repeated the process. Billy and Yurek were now suppressed into their hiding spots without a chance of defending themselves or moving out their positions, Chaz closing in on them one booted foot at a time.
“You’re finished, bud!” Chaz yelled, confident that he was about to shut the situation down.
He popped off two shots at Billy.
Then two shots at Yurek.
He was now about fifteen feet away Billy’s hiding spot—ready to close the deal.
Billy looked around for an out.
There wasn’t.
He was fucked if he tried to move, though he still searched around frantically for any glimmer of a solution.
“Come on, come on…” he hissed through his teeth.
Then he saw it on his left on the shelves: a can of red spray paint.
And then, in typical Billy Reese style, a silly idea crept into his brain and convinced him to do something that would (most) likely end up with negative results.
“Fuck it,” he said with a sigh.
Still crouched, Billy snatched up the can of spray paint, shook it, and coasted it to his right down the linoleum floor in Chaz’s direction as Chaz took his final steps toward Billy’s position.
Billy raised his gun, aimed it at the traveling can, and started to squeeze the trigger.
“Work, baby.”
BAM! BAM!
The bullets struck the can, penetrated it, and caused the thing to begin spurting out a stream of red paint all over Chaz and the counters like a ruptured artery, the can spinning and flipping wildly as Chaz’s torso and eyes were doused with red.
“Fuuuuck!” he screamed, blinded and disoriented.
Billy was elated at the results.
He stood up, raised the Colt, and fired off the last six rounds in his gun.
One—Chaz took it in the chest.
Two-three—another two in the chest. Billy kept his groupings tight, and each round hit Chaz milliseconds apart like a hard punch to the sternum as he stumbled backward toward the entrance.
Four-five—Chaz was ready to call it a night.
With one shot left in his gun, Billy stepped out of the aisle, raised the Colt a little higher, took a split second to aim, and fired off the final fatal shot into Chaz’s forehead.
Six—Chaz’s head cocked back, a red mist rising from the exit wound before his body crashed through the glass and steel doors behind him and completely fucked up the front of the store, his corpse landing hard on the concrete outside as sheets of safety glass rained down on him and the door chime overhead inappropriately let out a ping-pong good-bye.
Billy waited for the smoke to clear, still in a shooting stance, his weapon empty and slide locked back.
He was pissed—once again—that someone had the stones to shoot a fucking gun at him.
He looked at Chaz’s body lying on the pavement outside, covered in glass and blood, unflinching and lacking any signs of life. With his best nasally impersonation of Chaz’s voice, Billy said, “Later, bud…”
The clerk behind the counter stood up, hands in the hair, drenched with all varieties of mid- to top-shelf liquor and tobacco leaves. He took a scan around the store, equal parts impressed and horrified. Then he looked at his TV and discovered that Chaz and Pete had managed to shoot that up too.
“Oh, man…” he said
, “the owner’s gonna be piiiissssed.”
Billy took a survey of the damage and saw that Chaz and Pete—as well as he himself—had obliterated a good chunk of the overall inventory.
Most of the refrigerators were toast.
The floors and walls looked like Swiss cheese.
Man, Reese thought. Someone’s insurance company is about to bite the big one…
He took another look around and saw that some stuff had managed to make it though. “Hey, check it out,” he said to the clerk as he pointed toward the back. “Slushie machine made it out alive. You’re not completely fucked.”
A groan came from the bathroom.
Yurek’s.
Billy holstered his Colt and hustled toward the bathroom. “Hey,” he called out. “You okay?”
Yurek wasn’t—he had taken two rounds in his chest from Chaz’s Uzi.
And Billy, having seen enough guys suffer from the same kind of wounds far too many times, immediately knew that the injuries were a death sentence.
38
LARRY YUREK DIED thirty seconds later, his final words to Billy Reese as he held his hand limited to two: “My…family…”
Billy saw the pleading in Yurek’s eyes, the holding out for assurances from Billy as he drew his dying breath to look after those dearest to him.
Billy would.
Whatever it took.
Ten minutes after Chaz’s body got sprawled out on the pavement, around 5:20 in the p.m., two police cruisers rolled up to the convenience store to find Billy Reese sitting on the sidewalk outside, a raspberry-flavored slushie in his hand and a dour expression on his face. He held his badge out, the headlamps from the cruisers hitting it like a spotlight.
“FBI,” he said solemnly, tired of every criminal asshole on the planet trying to dick with his day.
Maria and a couple of her colleagues from Vice rolled up about another ten minutes after the first responders. Billy was still on the sidewalk sipping at his (technically stolen) slushie. He sat there as EMTs, detectives, and other uniformed officers began canvasing bodies, snapping off pictures, and cordoning off the area with yellow tape, his eyes fixed on something across the street and his arms resting on his legs in a seemingly inconsolable stupor.
But he wasn’t sulking—he was thinking.
Maria, already caught up on the situation from a radio call, approached him with a morose look on her face. “Some night, huh?” she said as she crouched down.
Billy held up his slushie in a toast. “Some night.”
Maria waited.
Billy kept sipping his drink.
“What’s going on?” she asked him. “Talk to me. You look like you’ve given up or something.”
“I’m just trying to figure something out.”
Maria looked around. “Figure out what?”
Billy jutted his jaw toward the other side of the street. “Who those guys watching us are…”
Maria turned her head and saw a Lincoln sedan parked near the curb on the opposite side of the street with three men inside.
“Kruger’s people?” she asked.
“No,” Billy said as he stood up and tossed his slushie in the trashcan a few feet away. “But I think I have a pretty good idea who they are.”
He made a beeline for the Lincoln.
“Hey,” Maria said. “Hey, Reese…”
She followed after him. He was about ten feet from the driver’s side when the doors opened and three men in polo shirts and jeans got out. They were big guys. Two of them had thick moustaches. All of them had thick necks.
Billy said, “You guys better start telling me why the hell you’re camped out here like a bunch of creeps; otherwise I’m just going to shoot you.”
The three men were unfazed.
The guy who got out of the driver’s side, the blond one, nodded over his shoulder. “Get in the car.”
No choice.
No negotiation.
Billy was concerned but not the slightest bit scared.
He wanted to know what the hell was going on.
He moved toward the vehicle, Maria following suit.
“Not you,” the redheaded meathead said as he held a hand up to her face.
“Get that goddamn bear paw out of my mug or I break it,” she said.
Billy, halfway into the car, stopped and said to the redhead, “Let it go, man. It’s not worth the bone fractures. Trust me.”
The redhead thought about it, lowered his hand, and moved aside.
Billy slid inside the car, Maria slid inside the car, and all the doors closed. The redhead and the blond sat in front. Billy and Maria were next to each other in the back alongside the raven-haired guy in the middle who sat with his hands folded neatly in front of him.
Stoic. Unmoving.
The blond started the car and began driving the block in a circle. Seconds later, Billy pulled out his Colt and pressed it into the back of the seat in front of him.
All the men in the car continued to remain poised.
“That’s not necessary,” said the redhead with the gun pointed at his back.
“Guy I knew in high school,” Billy told him, “said the same thing to me about condoms, and he ended up with the clap.”
He cocked back the hammer until it made a metallic click, all of it for the sake of showmanship. “Start talking…”
The redhead looked at Maria. “Your buddy here is about to get you killed,” he said.
Maria took out her Beretta and aimed it at the raven-haired guy sitting to her right. “You get used to it.”
Billy held back a grin.
“We’re not here to kill you,” the blond one said. “We would have done it already.”
Billy pressed the gun harder into the seat. “Comforting. Now who the hell are you? DEA? NSA? ATF?”
“I think you already know, Billy…”
Billy did. He’d met and worked guys like these before. They were ghosts. Spooks. Masters of espionage.
The motherfuckin’ CIA.
“All right,” Billy said to the spies. “What do you want?”
“What did Yurek tell you?” the blond asked.
“Why does it matter to you?”
“He was working with us.”
“In what capacity?”
“Tell us what he told you.”
“Tell me why you’re here first.”
“This isn’t going to be a conversation or negotiation, Reese,” the blond said. “You know who we are. You know the implications that come along with that. So just answer our questions, we’ll drop you off, and you two can back off this entire situation for good.”
It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even an order.
It was a straight-up threat.
“You know me, right?” Billy asked them.
“Anything and everything,” the redhead replied.
Billy was unconvinced. “I’m pretty sure you haven’t gotten the full scoop about me,” he said. “I’m like a variety box of See’s Candies in that everything about my ‘presentation’ looks appealing at first glance. Most of the time you get a good flavor. But sometimes, every once in a while, you end up taking a bite of one of the lousy pieces. Point is I get a little too antsy occasionally, and before you know it—”
Billy balled up a fist and raised it.
He punched the roof of the car.
“You end up with a sour piece.”
The redhead clenched his teeth when Billy hit the roof, convinced, for a split second, that the gun pressed into his back had gone off.
“I don’t give a flying fuckin’ hootenanny who you rep,” Billy said to them. No fear. No concern. “And I’m two seconds out from blowing a hole in this guy’s kidney.”
The redhead gave a look to his blond partner, a tad bit nervous that Billy wasn’t bluffing.
“Tell me what you guys want,” Billy ordered them, “and what it has to do with me. You’re right when you say that this isn’t a negotiation. I’m here only by my own f
ree will. So…” He leaned forward, his face in between the blond and the redhead. “Quid pro quo, meatheads. Start telling me what I want to know and maybe I’ll cooperate. Otherwise, we can all just kill each other.”
He looked at Maria. “You good with that?”
“Most definitely,” Maria said, eyes still on the black-haired guy next to her with her Beretta aimed at his dome.
The trio of agents in the car kept quiet for a few moments.
Billy noted the redhead and the blond glancing at the raven-haired man in back for some kind of approval.
Ah, so.
The man in charge.
The raven-haired man turned to Billy. “Remember when you came home from the war, Special Agent Reese?” he asked.
“August 29th, 1973,” Billy said. “Damn good day.”
“Well,” the raven-haired man said, “your friend Andrew Sykes stayed behind awhile before he came back.”
“I’m aware.”
“Well, Agent Reese, the part that you’re not aware of is the role that Andrew Sykes played in the war after your departure. It’s why we’re here, and it’s the reason that Andrew James Sykes decided that a career in breaking the rules rather than enforcing them was a more appealing and lucrative enterprise.”
Billy waited a beat.
Thinking.
“Keep talking.”
The raven-haired man looked at the driver. “Pull the car over.”
The blond man pulled to the right in front of a twenty-four-hour Laundromat in a quiet part of the town were most of the lights had already gone out. Very few people. Very dark alleys.
A no-man’s-land.
“Let’s take a walk,” the raven-haired man said to Billy.
Billy looked at Maria.
She gave him a wink—I’m good.
Billy holstered his Colt, opened the door, and followed the raven-haired man for a stroll along the wet pavement, the glow of the streetlamps overhead illuminating the entire sidewalk with a blue phosphorescence that made one feel like Michael Jackson would pop out at any moment and start moon dancing to “Billie Jean.”
“I’m going to be blunt with you, Reese,” the raven-haired man said, his voice low enough that only Billy could hear it. “I want you to understand what’s happening here because I’m about to let you in on information you don’t possess the pay grade or talent to be privy to on any other occasion.”