by Sam Jones
He felt the anger beginning to well back up inside of him.
Use it.
He jutted his jaw, drew in a breath laced with so much tension he almost choked on it, and unzipped the bag and surveyed the contents: another Colt, gunmetal gray, attached to Billy’s hip for the duration of his tour in Vietnam, buffed, polished, and shined and sporting a kill count of about eight men. A Ka-Bar knife—every marine’s best friend, sharpened and tucked away in its sheath. Two frag grenades—don’t ask Billy how he found them. Finally, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun with three thirty-round magazines with a sling attached—again, don’t ask Billy how he got it.
Topping it all off, folded neatly at the bottom of the bag was an olive, high-collared M65 jacket that Billy had toted around the jungles of Vietnam. On the left side over the chest area his surname was stenciled in black:
REESE
Billy remembered the moment he had packed the stuff away, that moment when he had fooled himself into thinking the flashbacks, night terrors, and guilt-laced memories that used to keep him up at night would dissipate, stored away and hidden below with all the accessories that came along with it, never to be spoken of again.
But Billy should have known better.
Shit happens.
He took the Colt and grenades, loaded up the MP5, and starting shucking off his dirt-matted and sweat-stained clothes into a pile. He then stood in front of the full-length mirror near his closet, his sinewy body now a pulpy mess peppered with bruises and cuts that would no doubt add to his current collection of scars. His face looked almost as mangled. He was still Billy Reese, but the punches, kicks, and brute contact with blunt objects now had him looking more like something from the tenth round of the Balboa/Creed fight.
It didn’t matter—he figured the mortician could fix him up if the family decided to go with an open casket.
’Cause this is it. Either way.
I make it through this, I’m probably going to jail.
If I don’t, I’m dead.
But Sykes still had to answer for what he did.
Kruger needed to be held accountable.
Maria and Analena deserved their justice.
So do what you gotta do…
Billy put on a pair of jeans, slipped back into his Nikes, and chose the second shirt he came across in his drawer, a cherished little gem that he always wore during his (rare) moments off from work, when he lounged around, visited Naynay—Grandma—and ordered out food from the Mexican joint about four blocks away:
VAN
HALEN
If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die wearing what I like.
He donned his army jacket, popped up the collar, stuffed his artillery back in the duffel bug, splashed some water on his face, and went off to finish the job.
But not until he gave the boys chilling in his living room a heads-up first.
Russo was near the fireplace. Dyson was by the couch. Billy got down on one knee in front of Russo, who was struggling to slip out of his zip ties and rubbing his wrists raw from the effort.
“Cut that shit out,” Billy said.
Russo ceased the struggle.
“I need you to answer a quick question for me,” Billy said. “You cool?”
Russo took a beat.
Nodded.
Billy peeled the tape covering his mouth three-quarters of the way off.
“How’s it going, bud?”
“Fuck you, Reese,” Russo spit. “You better quit while you’re behind.”
“I think you’re saying it wrong…”
“You know what I’m saying. People are looking for you. If you don’t stop this—”
“And bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. I’ve heard all this shit before. Frankly, I could give a shopping cart full of fucks about what I should be doing right now. I’m going to ask some questions, and you’re going to answer them. If you want to keeping jamming me up, I’ll just knock you out and just ask Dyson. It’s not worth the hangover, man. Trust me.”
Russo said nothing.
“We good?” Billy asked, a man who no longer embraced the idea of mercy.
Russo saw the glaze in Billy’s eyes. The anger.
The war.
Billy asked him, “When are you supposed to check in with your office?”
“Half an hour,” Russo said.
A little too quickly.
Billy flicked him on the noise. Russo recoiled like a bee had tried to take a stab at his face.
“Don’t lie to me,” Billy said. “I’m going ask you once more, then I’ll have to do that James Bond thing to the back of your neck that knocks you out. You know that one move I’m talking about…” He flattened his hand and made a chopping motion. “Whatever that’s called.” Then he waved the Colt. “But I’ll use this instead of my hand. It sucks way worse.”
Russo’s shoulders slouched, and his gaze fell to the floor. “We’re supposed to check in at eleven p.m.,” he said.
Billy thought about it. “If you had something sharp,” he asked Russo, “could you cut yourself out of those zip-cuffs?”
Russo, for a brief moment, gave Billy a look like he had all the confidence in the world.
Billy pointed down the hall and said, “If you can shimmy your way to the bathroom, there’s a little jagged edge at the bottom of the doorframe. Nasty little sucker. I stub my toe on it constantly. I keep meaning to fix it, but I’m always on the move. The woes of the homeowner, am I right? Anyway, I figure it’ll take you a solid thirty to work your way over to the can, and another twenty to cut yourself loose. But you can do it if you try. I believe in you.”
He put the tape back on Russo’s mouth, took the keys to the Ford out of his pocket, grabbed his bag, and headed out. “Tell Ferris I’m going to Long Beach,” he said. “Alamitos Bay. There’s a few beers in the fridge if you guys are wanting to get a buzz going after all of this. Lock up when you leave, okay?”
Billy left the house, kept the door unlocked, and banked on backup arriving for Russo and Dyson in a little over an hour and then coming to his aid in Long Beach around and hour to an hour and a half. There was no way of timing it precisely. It all depended on how competent Russo was. It was a long crawl to the bathroom, based on the way Billy had tied him up, but Billy remembered from the ear-aching moments of conversations he had with the shmuck at the home office that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
He’s a complete idiot.
Billy rounded up his estimate and gave himself two hours until his brothers and sisters in arms came to his aid.
Or to arrest him.
Probably both.
But two hours was enough time for Billy. Enough time to get to Long Beach, find Kruger, and kill him.
But the moment that Billy saw the black van creeping up Perlita toward the house with two of Kruger’s goons inside, he knocked about an hour off of the timeline.
51
BILLY STEPPED ONTO the porch. The van was fifty yards away, give or take, and closing, headlights on and a foreboding vibe in the way it was inching toward Casa de Reese.
Kruger’s guys.
Billy knew it had to be. The sniper never checked in, and Kruger damn well knew where Billy lived from the time he spent on the couch in the living room.
The second the sniper didn’t check in.
Kruger sent the B-Team over here on a hunch.
Billy clenched a fist—Kruger knew him all too well.
He slowly reached for the Colt, tucked in the back of his waistband, his fingers tracing the metal like he was stroking a predator out of its slumber.
The van stopped sixty feet from the house with a quick squeak of the breaks, nothing but the rumble of its motor cutting through the silence.
Then Billy caught the guy in the passenger’s seat reaching for something at his side.
Slowly.
Really slowly…
Come on, asshole.
Do it.
Billy’s hand slowly molded around the grip of hi
s Colt, ready to attempt breaking the record for world’s quickest draw.
The passenger inside the van got a secure hold on whatever he was reaching for, his eyes glued to Billy as the driver next to him counted down from two.
Two…
One.
Billy dropped his bag.
The van accelerated toward the house with a wicked screaming, spinning, and burning of its tires as the passenger held an Uzi out the window, gritted his teeth, and curled his finger around the trigger.
But Billy drew first.
He unloaded the Colt into the windshield, all eight rounds, the shots ringing out like cannon fire. As the seventh and eight shots hit the windshield and drilled holes through the glass, the van then took a sharp turn to the right—straight on toward the front of Billy’s house.
Forty feet from the grill of the van, Billy stepped right, loaded a fresh clip, and took aim at the driver’s side. He then recalled the fact that his homeowner’s insurance didn’t cover bullets and head-on car collisions, so he yelled out like a parent to a child at the van, “Don’t hit my house, asshole!”
The driver of the van gave two shits.
Billy squeezed a final round at the windshield.
At the last second, the van jerked sharply to the right, barely missed Billy’s fence, rolled about twenty more feet and then crashed head first into the next-door neighbor’s Pinto, the driver’s body slamming into the steering wheel and ringing the horn out like a scoreboard buzzer.
Game over.
Billy hotfooted it to the driver’s side of the van, gun trained on the door, and closed in on the driver, who was hunched over the steering wheel as smoke began to billow out of the dented-in hood and lights around the neighborhood began to turn on like calls on a switchboard.
Billy knew his timeline had changed drastically.
It was now probably a matter of mere minutes before the 5-0 would arrive.
Fabulous.
The driver of the van moaned as he peeled himself off the wheel, a gunshot wound to his abdomen and a deep gash on his forehead. The passenger next to him was littered with bullet holes and soaked in his own blood, down and out for the count.
Billy checked out the damage, holstered his weapon, leaned against the door and said, “How you boys doing tonight?”
The driver continued to moan.
“Alamitos Bay Marina,” Billy said to him. “Where’s Kruger holding up there?”
It took the driver a moment.
“Which slip?” Billy asked.
The guy shook his head—he didn’t know.
“Which boat?”
The driver took another breath. “It’s called Ripley’s Run,” he said.
Billy checked his watch: 8:47 p.m.
Time to boogie.
“Okay,” Billy said to the driver. “You look like shit. You ready to pass out now? Call it a night?”
The driver nodded wearily, busted, bruised, bloodied, and in for a serious medical bill in his near future.
Billy nodded. “Sounds good, slick.”
He then took the driver by the back of the head and repeatedly slammed his face into the steering wheel—one, two, three, four, five, and one for good measure—the horn honking each time his head made impact before he collapsed against the door, the driver now even more bruised and bloodied than he was before with a smashed-up face any mother would now have a hard time loving.
Billy heard the sirens in the distance as he moved back to the porch, scooped up the duffel bag, and moved toward Dyson and Russo’s Ford as red and blue lights became visible just five blocks away.
All right, ace.
Time to finish this.
52
ELEVEN FIFTY P.M.
Alamitos Bay Marina.
Kruger was in the pilothouse of Ripley’s Run, a big-ticket and substantially grandiose luxury two-decker vessel that used to belong to a guy on Wall Street but was auctioned off after the government found out he was trading insider tips. The guy went to jail, the government took the boat, and Lou Prince—may he rest in peace—acquired it for Kruger through a third-party source so he could float the seas the rest of his life, exiled forever, sailing and bouncing from port to port like a captain of his own little fleet, a fugitive lunatic in the vein of L. Ron Hubbard.
But Kruger didn’t mind.
He won.
Done and done.
He was hunched over a map, charting the course for his journey to Montenegro with a compass and a pencil as three of his goons hauled in the last few bags of supplies down the stairs and into the galley. He was impatient, repeatedly checking the time as he tried to chart his course, a suspicious tingle tickling him on the back of his neck, and that tingle had a name.
Billy Reese.
Kruger smirked. He knew Billy was still alive.
He just knew it…
But it didn’t matter. Kruger got what he wanted. The deal in Bogota was done. The product had been delivered, the money was transferred, and he and Salazar had gone their separate ways.
Kruger had won.
Done and done.
But he knew Billy Reese. The man was a rabbit’s foot, and somehow, like a turd that wouldn’t flush, he always managed to find a way to stay afloat.
Kruger knew Billy was alive, but it all hinged upon whether Billy figured out where he was, and he deduced that the odds were fifty-fifty that Billy might actually figure it out and rear his head.
If he did, so be it.
Mr. Thompson entered the pilothouse. “Has my room been prepared?” he asked.
Kruger, his mind elsewhere, said, “You’re all set. Your toy was delivered about an hour ago.”
“Splendid.”
“I want it disposed of by the time we reached Montenegro. Agreed?”
“Of course. I can always find a new one.”
Kruger was lost in thought.
Something wasn’t right…
He took a quick tally of the men he had at his disposal: the thug stashing away food and supplies in the galley, the three men out on the slip keeping an eye on the docks, the overpaid sap driving the boat, and Mr. Thompson.
“Where are the guys we sent to Billy’s house?” Kruger said.
“They haven’t checked in,” Mr. Thompson said.
Kruger checked his watch. “Tell our little friend behind the wheel that we’re casting off early.”
“When?”
“As soon as we can.”
Kruger reached over and grabbed a Kenwood Radio handset off the polished wood countertop from a collection of four, switched it on, and handed it to Mr. Thompson. “Take the guys on the slip and do a quick walk around the marina in the meantime. Make sure no one’s here that shouldn’t be here.”
Mr. Thompson informed the guy piloting the yacht of their new departure time, rounded up the three thugs on the dock, and began patrolling the marina with his team, all of them embodying something out of one of those cheesy music videos a group like Tears for Fears would cook up—big hair, big shoulders, sour attitudes, and the hint of a strut in their step. The only two things that set the three men apart from the chart-topping pop rockers were the guns hidden in their trench coats and the forty years of military experience held between them.
Kruger turned on one of the handsets and pressed the transmit button. “Keep an eye out for Reese,” he said to his misfits. “He might still be alive.”
He clicked off.
Then he thought about it.
It wasn’t a possibility that Billy may have been alive.
It was a fact.
Kruger knew it.
He just knew it…
The radio crackled, then Mr. Thompson replied, “The boat will be ready to leave in ten.”
Kruger clicked the transmit button. “Copy that.”
He placed the radio down on the table. He walked a couple of feet into the dinette area, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a glass, and then took a seat in the breakfast nook near the starboard wind
ow behind his head that overlooked the marina to the east. He poured himself two fingers worth of booze, put the cap back on the bottle, removed his Glock from his waistband, and laid it on the table next to the upright walkie-talkie.
And then he waited. He knew Billy was on his way. The odds were that they’d be gone by the time he showed up, if he indeed showed up.
But still.
It was Billy Reese.
Kruger, his eyes on the radio and the whiskey in his hand, raised his glass in toast at the walkie-talking and said, “Come on in, you little prick.”
53
BILLY ROLLED THROUGH East Marina drive, the parking lot to the marina on his right, and past that the docks, Kruger’s vessel nestled somewhere inside. His eyes lit up the second he pulled into the entrance of the parking lot and spotted a certain pale-faced prick he had come to hate so well strolling along one of the slips about three hundred yards away.
“Good evening, shit head…”
I got here just in time.
Billy took a right into the lot and took a scan of the marina, the Ford now creeping toward a spot far enough from the actual slips to not be noticed. He made a quick and dirty mental map of everything around him, a basic and bare-bones layout of the area and broke it down to himself in an accessible way.
He found that the entire marina looked kind of like a tilted V-shape, almost like an arrow pointed slightly down and to the right. North, past the top of the arrow were the waterfront homes of Naples, situated on three islands that were tethered to the rest of the world via East 2nd Street. Further north was California State University Long Beach (CSU), proud home of their mascot, Prospect Pete.
Nice job, guys.
On the eastern and southern sides of Naples was the Alamitos Bay Marina, a slightly pretentious environment that a lot of pink-faced white dudes liked to call home.
To the south of the marina’s arrow-like shape was the San Gabriel River, cutting through from the east on the map before it spilled into the Pacific. Past the San Gabriel River, to the south, were Bridgeport and Seal Beach.
To Billy’s immediate right was the parking lot, a square area right up against the pointed tip of the marina’s arrow-shaped layout to the east. Six parallel parking rows. All the cars parked at an angle. Only half the spaces were occupied. Adjacent to the parking row closest to the water was a thin strip of concrete and a flimsy metal fence with useless warning signs adorned on it, a twenty-foot wooden ramp descending down from the lot and linking it to the docks. Past the lot to the west were the arrow-shaped marina and the boats tethered to it, and past all of that was nothing but free and open ocean.