by Dan Simmons
Five of the gang members blocked the car’s path while Malcolm stepped up to the driver’s side. The frightened-looking woman looked around and then rolled down her window. Her voice had a strange, sleep-walking quality to it. “You boys will have to move. I must get by.”
Malcolm glanced into the car to make sure no one else was in it; there was only Miss Bishop. He lowered his automatic and leaned closer. “Sorry, but you can’t go nowhere until . . .”
Anne Bishop’s hands shot straight out, fingers hooked into claws. Malcolm would have lost both eyes if he had not instinctively thrown his head back. As it was, the white woman’s long nails left eight bloody streaks on his cheeks and eyelids. Malcolm screamed and the old car leaped ahead with a roar, knocking little Jefferson into the air and crushing Jamie under the left wheel.
Malcolm cursed, felt around in the cinders for his pistol, dropped to one knee when he found it, and squeezed off three rounds at the disappearing car before someone shouted at him to look out. Malcolm whirled, still on one knee. The telephone van that had been parked at the end of the alley was roaring directly at him. Malcolm brought the pistol around and realized that in so doing he had wasted his few seconds on the wrong motion. He opened his mouth to scream.
The FBI van was doing at least sixty miles per hour when the front bumper caught Malcolm in the face.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” shouted Tony Harod as something struck the left skid of the helicopter with a thunk and a flash of sparks. They had been hovering sixty feet over a flat-roofed building while Colben blazed away with his Star Wars rifle, all the while keeping a huge, stupid grin on his face. Hajek, the pilot, obviously agreed with Harod since he had the chopper banking right and clawing for altitude before Colben turned away from the window to give a command. Richard Haines sat stoically in the copilot’s left seat, watching out his window as if they were on a nocturnal sight-seeing tour. Maria Chen sat on Harod’s right with her eyes tightly closed.
“Red Leader to Control,” called Colben. Harod and Maria Chen were wearing earphones and microphones for internal communication amid the roar of wind, engine, and rotors. “Red Leader to Control!”
“Control here,” came a woman’s voice. “Go ahead, Red Leader.”
“What the hell’s going on? We have spooks all over Castle Two.”
“That’s affirmative, Red Leader. Green Team confirms contact with an unknown number of armed blacks attempting a B and E at Castle Two. Gold Team is in pursuit of Target Two in a 1953 DeSoto, heading north parallel to Queen Lane. Teams White, Blue, Gray, Silver, and Yellow all report contact with hostile unknowns. The mayor has called twice. Over.”
“The mayor,” said Colben. “Jesus Christ. Where’s Leonard for Chris-sakes? Over.”
“Agent Leonard is outside investigating a disturbance at the construction site. I’ll have him get back to you as soon as he comes in, Red Leader. Over.”
“Goddamnit,” said Colben. “OK, listen. I’m going to put Haines on the ground to supervise things at Castle Two. Get Teams Blue and White to seal off the area from Market to Ashmead. Tell Green and Yellow that no one is to get in or out of Castle Two. Got that?”
“Affirmative, Red Leader. We have a . . .” There was a loud scraping noise and the contact was broken.
“Shit,” said Colben. “Control? Control? Haines, switch to Tactical Two-Five. Gold Team? Gold Team, this is Red Leader. Peterson, do you copy?”
“Affirmative, Red Leader,” came a man’s voice under stress. “Where the hell are you? Over.”
“Going west on Germantown in pursuit of Target Two, Red Leader. Over.”
“The Bishop woman? Where is she . . .”
“Ah . . . we need assistance, Red Leader,” broke in the same voice. “Two vehicles, Hispanic males, ah . . . We’ll get back to you, Red Leader. Over.”
Colben leaned forward and shouted at the pilot. “Put it down.”
The cool man in the baseball cap was chewing gum. “No place open, sir. I’m holding it at one triple zero.”
“Fuck that,” said Colben. “Put it down on Germantown Avenue if you have to. Now.”
The pilot glanced to his right, rotated the he li cop ter, and nodded. Tony Harod almost screamed as the machine dropped like a cableless elevator. Streetlights seemed to rush up at them, there was a glimpse of something burning a block to their left, and the helicopter flared out and settled gently onto brick and asphalt in the center of the street. Haines was out immediately, running toward the sidewalk in a graceful crouch.
“Up!” shouted Colben and jerked his thumb at the pilot. “No!” shouted Harod. He nodded to Maria Chen and both of them fumbled at their lap straps. “We’re getting out too.”
“The hell you are,” said Colben over the intercom.
Harod pulled his headset off just as Maria Chen brought the Browning out of her purse and leveled it at Colben’s chest. “We’re getting out now,” shouted Harod.
“You’re a dead man, Harod,” Colben said softly.
Tony Harod shook his head. “Can’t hear you, Chuck,” he shouted. “Ciao!” Harod jumped out the left door and ran for an alley in a direction opposite of that Haines had gone. Maria Chen waited another thirty seconds and then slid toward the door.
“You’re both dead,” said Colben and smiled. He glanced at the rifle set in clips on the starboard bulkhead and then relaxed.
Maria Chen nodded, jumped out, and ran. “A hundred feet,” Colben said into the microphone.
The helicopter cleared the wires and rooftops, rotated left, and hovered ten stories above the Avenue. Colben slid the .30 caliber Colt rifle into the firing brace and swept the alleys with the nightscope. Nothing moved. “Too many fucking overhangs,” muttered Colben. The tactical channel filled his earphones with urgent chatter. He heard Haines’s voice demanding a response from the sniper team at Green One.
Colben shook his head. “Back to Castle Two,” he snapped. “We’ll deal with this shithead later.”
The helicopter spun and pitched forward as it gained altitude and headed east.
THIRTY-THREE
Germantown
Thursday, Jan. 1, 1981
Natalie Preston lay on her back, hands raised against Vincent’s knife, when something exploded against Grumblethorpe’s front door six feet down the hallway. Splinters flew into the confined corridor. There was a second explosion and Natalie looked left, through the doorway to the small parlor, to see a street door shatter and fly open.
In the sudden silence, Vincent’s head went up and back, swiveling like a poorly programmed robot’s. The knife glinted in his right hand. Natalie did not move or speak or breathe.
There was a second series of explosions, more distant this time. Suddenly a dark figure came hurtling into the parlor, rolling once into the wing chair by the fireplace. A shotgun skittered across bare boards and clattered against the legs of a table.
Vincent stepped over her and strode into the parlor. Natalie caught a glimpse of Marvin Gayle’s wide, blue eyes as Vincent lifted him, and then she was scrabbling on her knees toward the rear of the house. She almost screamed at the pain in her ankle, but she bit her lip until she tasted blood and stayed quiet. There were more shots from outside the front of the house, and she heard crashes from the parlor as Marvin and the honky monster struggled. Natalie pulled herself up to stand on her left leg at the entrance to what must be the kitchen. The long room had shuttered windows, a huge fireplace, two candles burning on a long table, and a heavy bolted door. There was a pump shotgun leaning against the wall by the door.
Natalie let out a soft noise and hopped toward the weapon. She was almost to it when three blasts in rapid succession slammed into the door from the outside. The fourth and fifth explosions shattered the iron lock and wooden bolt, sending splinters into her left leg and arm. Natalie jumped aside, put her weight down on her right foot, and tumbled into the table, pulling it over and hitting the stone floor hard. Two more blasts hit the door, kno
cking it visibly inward. Six feet in front of Natalie, the door to the pantry where she had been imprisoned gaped open, offering some concealment. She scrabbled forward, tumbling into the darkness just as someone kicked the kitchen door in from the outside.
A boy whom Natalie recognized as one of the twins in Marvin’s gang came in fast, followed by another youth. Both carried shotguns. Both jumped behind the overturned table.
“Don’t shoot!” screamed Natalie. “It’s me!”
“Who’s that?” shouted the twin. He rose swinging the shotgun in short arcs.
Natalie slid back into the pantry just as Marvin Gayle staggered into the kitchen. His arms and chest were streaked with blood and he dragged the stock of his shotgun along the floor as if he was too tired to lift it.
“Marvin! Fuck, man, how’d you get in here?” The twin stood up and lowered his weapon. The other boy raised his head from behind the table.
Marvin swung the shotgun up and fired twice. The twin was knocked backward into the cold fireplace. The second boy rolled into the corner, shouted something, tried to rise. Marvin swiveled and fired from the hip. The boy struck the wall, tumbled forward, and simply disappeared into a hole that had been invisible in the shadows.
Natalie realized that she was crouching, still holding her torn bra in place. She peered through the crack in the pantry door and saw Marvin walking woodenly to the fireplace to inspect the twin’s body. He turned and strode over to stare down into the entrance to the tunnel. Then he lowered his shotgun into the hole and fired again.
Natalie hopped quickly down the hallway, letting the bra fall and feeling the goose bumps break out all over her upper body. There was a tremendous sound of firing from outside.
This is all a bad dream, thought Natalie. I will make myself wake up. The intense pain from her broken ankle told her otherwise.
Vincent stepped into the hallway, legs apart, the long knife held loosely in his right hand.
Natalie stopped, holding on to the wainscoting for support. The steep stairway to the second floor rose to her left.
Vincent took a step toward her.
Natalie jumped to the left, screamed as her ankle struck a step. Sobbing, she pulled her way up the stairs even as she heard Rob Gentry’s voice calling from the kitchen.
Saul Laski had proposed the idea of the strike at the control center as a harassing raid, hit fast, cause as much confusion as possible, and get out. Ideally there would be no casualties, preferably no shots fired. Privately, he hoped to find Colben or Haines there. Now, as the bulldozer covered the last twenty yards to the trailer, he wondered if his theory made any sense.
There was a sudden concussion to his left and flowers of flame blossomed twenty feet into the air as Taylor and the others tossed their Molotov cocktails into the parked cars. The field was briefly illuminated by the flames as a man in a white shirt and dark tie stepped out of the door of the main trailer. He stared at the flames and then at the two advancing bulldozers, yelled something inaudible, and pulled a pistol from a small holster on his belt.
Saul was ten yards from the trailer. He elevated the blade as a shield and realized that it effectively blocked his view. He did not hear the shots over the engine noise and the sudden krup of another Molotov cocktail, but something dinged against the blade twice and a louder thump came from the grill. The bulldozer did not falter. Saul raised the blade a foot and peered through the crack in time to see the man dodge back into the trailer.
“Here where I get off!” called Catfish and jumped over the right tread, rolling away in the darkness.
Saul considered jumping, shrugged, and grabbed metal to brace himself. He pulled the blade up another foot.
The last ten feet to the trailer were slightly uphill and the bulldozer blade went into the trailer about eight feet above the ground, just to the right of the doorway. The wooden entrance platform splintered and twisted aside as Saul bounced forward, bit his tongue, and settled back in the thick seat as the treads dug in to the real business of toppling the long mobile home.
The entire complex shuddered and then shuddered again as Jackson’s bulldozer made contact about twenty feet to the left of the door. The thin aluminum twisted and tore away in strips. An entire window assembly popped out and was ground under the tread of Saul’s machine. For several seconds, Saul was sure that the blades were going to plow straight through the trailer, but then the steel blade contacted solid metal, both bulldozers strained, and the center trailer separated itself from the other two with a great screeching of flanges as the long box began to tip backward.
The main door opened a few feet from Saul’s left shoulder and a man’s upper torso emerged, a revolver swung searching for a target, and then the trailer found its center of gravity and went over. The arm stuck straight up, fired two shots into the air, and fell out of sight.
Saul put the bulldozer in neutral and jumped down. Jackson was walking away from his machine and the two looked at each other in tired silence as they crouched behind the fender of one of the FBI vehicles.
“What now?” asked Jackson after a minute.
Men were crawling out of the tumbled wreckage of the torn trailer. Saul saw a woman being helped through a rip in the roof. Most of them acted dazed, sitting on the cold ground or moving directionless like victims in the aftermath of an auto accident, but a few had drawn pistols. Saul knew it would be foolish to remain where he was. Taylor and the others were not to be seen and Saul assumed they had returned to the truck. “I’m hunting for someone,” said Saul.
Saul waited until the last of the agents crawled from the trailer like ants boiling from an overturned anthill. There was no sign of either Charles Colben or Richard Haines. Saul tasted the disappointment like bile in his mouth.
“We better move,” whispered Jackson. “They’re beginning to get it together.”
Saul nodded and followed the bigger man into the shadows.
Leroy saw G. B.’s body lying on the curb and caught a glimpse of muzzle flashes from the third floor across the street before he had to drop and roll right toward the gate. High velocity bullets tore through the fence to his left. It sounded to him like some of the brothers were returning fire from the west side of the house and from down the avenue, but he knew that their assortment of handguns and few shotguns would be no match for the rifles that the federal pigs were using. Leroy pressed his face to the cold ground as more shots tore through the fence. “Fucking wild, man,” he whispered.
There was a body lying next to the stone wall ten inches from Leroy’s right arm. He rolled the heavy form over, hearing bottles clinking in the cheap thrift store rucksack. There was a sharp smell of gasoline.
It was Deeter Coleman, a junior at Germantown High and a new member of Soul Brickyard. Deeter had dated Leroy’s sister a couple of times. Leroy knew the boy had been more interested in the school drama club and computer lab than in the street, but he had begged Marvin for years to get a chance at joining the gang. The gang leader had given him a chance only a week earlier. The high velocity bullet had removed most of the boy’s throat.
Leroy pulled the corpse back over and tugged at the backpack straps, all the while muttering to himself. “You’re just fucking dumb, Leroy babe. Stupid shit, man. Always doing the dumb stuff.”
He pulled the straps tight, felt the gasoline from the broken bottle already soaking his back, and shook his head. He tucked the useless little.25 caliber pistol in his belt, and without giving himself time to think about, swung the gate open and ran hard.
Two shots rang out and something tugged at the heel of his sneaker, but Leroy did not pause. He crashed through a row of garbage cans at the entrance to the alley and then was jumping for the fire escape ladder. “Goddamn stupid idea to start with,” he muttered as he clambered up the fire escape.
There were no windows on the alley side of the third floor, only a locked metal door without an outside handle. “Stupid, stupid,” whispered Leroy and crouched to the right of the door. H
e patted his pant and coat pockets. He had no matches, no lighter, nothing. He was laughing out loud when the three shadows ran into the alley from the rear of the building. From his vantage point thirty feet above them, Leroy could see their white faces and hands as they looked up at him, weapons raised. “Nowhere to go, man,” he muttered.
He pressed his face and stomach tight against the brick wall as the first bullet screeched through the grating with a flash of sparks. The second one tore through the sole of his right sneaker, kicking his leg a foot into the air. Leroy felt the sudden numbness and stared at the black exit hole in the top of his white sneaker. “You shitting me?” he whispered.
The steel door opened and a man in a dark suit stepped out onto the fire escape. He was carrying a weird-looking rifle. Leroy took the rifle away from him and hit him in the throat with it, bending him backward over the railing, using his numb right leg to keep the door from swinging shut. There were no shots from below, but Leroy could see white faces moving to get an angle of fire. The man squirmed and sputtered under him, one hand clawing at Leroy’s face, the other pulling at the rifle breech embedded in his throat.
Leroy got his weight and shoulder into it, pushing the man farther over the railing. “Got a match, man?” he whispered. There were footsteps in the room behind them. Leroy got his left hand in the agent’s suit coat pocket and came away with a gold cigarette lighter. “Thank you, Jesus,” Leroy said aloud and let the man drop, rifle and all, to the alley thirty feet below. He stepped into the room just as the shooting from below started up again.
“Did you get . . .” began another honky with a drawn pistol. Three others stood by the window where fancy rifles and telescopes were mounted on heavy tripods. Leroy caught a glimpse of folding chairs, card tables with food and pop cans, and a bunch of radios against the wall.