“As was part of the agreement. My partner is at the Alpha Point for Blue now.”
“I always keep my promises, Mr. Willis. So tell me why you dragged me out here to this filthy, dreadful little place.”
After all of this, Eduard Montalban was in the next room. He’d killed my friends, tried to kill me, and had threatened my loved ones. All thoughts of escaping quietly were dismissed. There was no way he was getting out of here alive. I looked to Jill, eyes wide, stubby machine gun shaking in her hands, and she understood. I pulled a frag grenade from my vest and put one hand on the door knob. “Get ready,” I whispered into the radio.
“This thief, Lorenzo, that you asked me to keep an eye out for—”
Eddie cut him off. “Lorenzo is why I came to America in the first place.”
“How much would he be worth if I was able to deliver him into your hands?” Gordon asked.
Eddie didn’t hesitate. “Though a challenging diversion, he’s worth nothing; But he has something in his possession, an antique piece of jewelry. For that, I’d give you ten million.”
“What if I told you that a person of interest we were looking for was picked up by facial-recognition software while passing through Las Vegas? Once flagged, SIGINT eventually pinpointed her in Quagmire. Surprisingly enough, under interrogation it turns out she’s friends with this Lorenzo of yours. My men will be picking him up shortly, right down the road. And for you, a special deal. I’ve neglected to mention any of this to my superiors.”
“Of course. But if your men screw this up and I don’t get my property back, I’ll hold you responsible.” A small dog began to bark in the next room. Who the hell brings a dog to a meeting like this?
“It’s already in motion,” the government man said. Somewhere, an armed squad was lying in ambush for us. They hadn’t the faintest idea where we actually were.
“I hope you realize who you’re dealing with, Gordon. Underestimating a man like Lorenzo can be fatal.”
Damn straight.
I opened the door.
VALENTINE
My blood had run cold when I’d heard Gordon’s voice. Then the Calm had washed over me, and suddenly I felt very detached. I couldn’t believe it. I had all but resolved myself to disappearing quietly. I had convinced myself that getting to Gordon was impossible, that it was just an angry fantasy. Now Gordon had been dropped right into my lap. He’d injected himself back into my life and screwed it up all over again. Beneath the Calm, at the outermost limit of my perception, I was seething with anger. He wasn’t going to get away this time. He wasn’t going to do this to me twice.
Reaper and I were in a shallow ravine that was about two-thirds of the way down the steep hill we’d come from. Hawk had crawled another twenty feet to a better position of cover. At the top of the hill was Bob with his rifle. At the bottom of the hill was the cinder-block building where they were holding Jill.
“Reaper, keep your head down,” I said. The nearest visible bad guy was far out of range of his stubby shotgun. “I’ll tell you when to move. Stay alert.”
There were two parties of men hanging around outside. One was presumably from Gordon’s group, since they had been driving the government Suburbans. Only three of them remained outside, doing a very poor job of keeping watch. The rest, more heavily armed in SWAT gear, had piled into a van and left. I figured that was the group that was supposed to be ambushing us at the arranged meeting point.
But several other cars that had just arrived, and these new guys were anxious. A handful of men got out and entered the building, including one of the biggest, fattest men I’d ever seen. This giant whale of a man was probably close to seven feet tall and had to weigh four hundred pounds.
“Who’s the fat guy?” I whispered into my radio.
“Unknown,” Bob tersely replied.
“Fat guy?” Reaper asked, suddenly sounding even more anxious. Before I could stop him, he poked his head over the ravine to see. A shocked look appeared on his face, and he immediately dropped back down.
“What is it?” I asked. But Reaper wouldn’t tell me anything. He just whispered into his radio that “the fat man” was here. Lorenzo clicked his microphone in reply.
Bob had said over the radio that these new arrivals were more alert, and that was definitely true. Compared to the government suits, the new guys looked like they belonged in a European fashion magazine, and they were all openly carrying weapons. Some had MP7 submachine guns, some had G36C assault rifles, and all were alert.
I was startled by the sound of a muffled explosion. The windows of the cinder-block building blew out, and the prison camp suddenly came alive.
The men outside were all startled by the blast. I put my aiming reticle on the upper chest of one of the new guys. He was hanging back by a sedan, his carbine shouldered, obviously providing rear security. I swiped my selector switch to the fire position and squeezed the trigger. I hit the man in the sternum, and blood from the giant exit wound on his back splashed onto the car door. He crumpled to the ground, landing in a small cloud of dust.
One of the others running full tilt toward the building caught a round in the chest and almost did a cartwheel into the dirt. With my hearing protection in I couldn’t hear the distant crack of Bob’s suppressed rifle, but I knew it was him. Another shooter, one of Gordon’s men, had drawn his pistol and was about to open the door to the cinder-block building. Before I could drop the hammer on him his head exploded into a red cloud, and down he went. Bob again. Damn. Dude knows how to shoot!
The others had turned around and were running back toward their vehicles. I fired at one of them and missed, leading him too much. But he froze when he saw the bullet impact the dirt, like a deer in the headlights. I squeezed the trigger again, and down he went. Scanning through my scope for targets, I lined up one of the new guys just in time to see a muzzle flash. Sand and tiny pebbles hit my face as his bullet impacted the dirt a few feet from me. I ducked back down into the ravine and was out of his line of sight, but more and more bullets snapped overhead and hit the rocks around us. Off to the side, Hawk slid into the gulley, calmly rocking a new magazine into his rifle.
Reaper was to my left, trying to become one with the earth. His already pale skin had gone white, and he had a death grip on his little shotgun. I could tell that this really wasn’t his cup of tea. Honestly? I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life, either, but there are worse ways to spend your time.
I got on my radio. “Bob, they got me pinned down. Help me out here.”
“Roger,” was all Bob said in response. A moment later, he spoke up again. “Hey, Nightcrawler . . . I got another one, but the rest are hunkered down pretty good. If you follow that ravine, it works its way down the hill and it’ll get you closer.” I signaled Hawk and used my hands to indicate for him to cover us. “It looks shallow as you get to the bottom, but there are some big rocks down there that’ll give you cover. You’ll come out pretty close to the corner of the building. Just make sure you watch both sides. Guys could come around the building either way. You up for it? I can’t get Lorenzo on the radio.”
“Roger. Moving.” I looked over at Reaper. “You ready?” He looked back at me, eyes wide but full of surprising determination. He nodded. “Alright, then. Follow me.”
Hawk popped back up, firing, trying to keep the bad guy’s heads down as Reaper and I moved. We snaked our way down the ravine, trying to stay out of sight. I could barely hear the occasional snap of a rifle bullet coming from Bob’s position, always followed by sporadic, sometimes automatic, weapons fire in response. They didn’t know where he was, and he was picking them off one by one.
We made it to the rocks at the bottom of the hill. We had to crawl from the end of the ravine, little more than a shallow gulley at this point, to the rocks. Reaper followed close, breathing hard and sweating heavily in his black trench coat. I crawled to the far left edge of the rocks, still in the prone. I was very close to the cinder-block building, and the
re was only one door on the side that was facing me. I also now had a clear view of the men taking cover behind the SUV, busily shooting at Hawk’s position.
I snapped off a shot, and one of the men fell. The other surprised me by how quickly he reacted and returned fire. I pushed myself back behind the rocks while he popped shot after shot off at us. He suddenly shifted his fire back toward Bob’s position after a near-miss from my sniper overwatch. I rolled out from the side of the boulder and fired twice. “He’s down,” I said into my radio.
I was about to make a dash for the door when one of Gordon’s men came around the corner of the building to my left. He fired a burst at me. The bullets impacted the rocks, sending dust and debris flying. I let myself fall to the ground and scrambled behind cover. A second burst narrowly missed me, and a third one peppered the rocks I was now hiding behind.
I moved to my right and came up firing. My rounds hit the ground and the wall near the government guy just as he disappeared back around the corner. I held my fire but kept my sights on where he was. He’d either come back out or circle back around the building. Hawk was covering my right flank, so I wasn’t worried about that. Sure enough, he did a quick peek, broadcasting to me where he was. As soon as he stepped around the corner, I opened up on him. At least three of my rounds tore through him.
I ducked back behind the boulder. “How are you doing?” I asked Reaper as I removed the nearly spent magazine from my rifle. He just nodded at me as I pulled another one from my vest and locked it into position. “Okay,” I said, “head for the door.”
I dashed from behind the rocks with Reaper right behind me, running so fast that we smacked into the wall. I pointed down the wall of the building, indicating to Reaper that he needed to watch that corner. Reaching down, I tried the handle. The old door wasn’t locked, but it was stuck.
Subtlety was never my strong point. I nodded at Reaper and kicked the door in.
LORENZO
I threw open the door, taking in the scene in an instant. There was Eduard Montalban standing in the filthy abandoned garage. Next to him was the hulking Fat Man, who looked like Moby Dick in his white suit. Eddie was wearing a silk shirt, Flock of Seagulls hair combed high, little yippy white poodle-dog under one arm, the smirk on his face turning to disbelief as he saw me. Gordon and one of his men had their backs to me and were just beginning to turn as they saw Eddie’s shock. Both sides had several goons arrayed across the room, but none of them would be fast enough to stop me.
The grenade left my hand, spoon popping off in mid-flight. “Hey, Eddie,” I stated as the grenade struck the concrete floor, bounced, and spun between Gordon’s legs.
“Bloody hell!” Eddie shrieked. The poodle started barking.
Chaos. The Fat Man was far faster than he looked. He spun about, one massive arm sweeping Eddie up, lifting his employer and shielding him as they dove away. Gordon acted in pure instinctive self-preservation, one hand coming up, grabbing the government man next to him by the necktie, and yanking hard. The man, taken by surprise, toppled over on top of the grenade as Gordon hurled himself into the old oil pit.
I ducked back around the corner.
THUMP.
I felt the pressure in my teeth. Gordon’s guard absorbed most of the blast and saved the others. The walls were sprayed like a red Jackson Pollock. Decades of dust and cobwebs were dislodged from the ceiling, obscuring everything.
Jill pulled her fingers out of her ears and actually smiled at me. I motioned for her to stay put before taking a quick peek through the doorway. The windows had all been shattered. Dust whirled. One of the goons was screaming. There was gunfire coming from outside.
Something moved in a pile of dust. The Fat Man. The back of his white suit coat was shredded and burned. Small spatters and trickles of blood covered his back. He pushed himself up with one arm, Eddie still held protectively beneath him. I raised my AR, taking the safety off, finger moving onto the trigger, red dot settling on the Fat Man’s back.
The wall next to me exploded in a shower of cinder fragments, and I jerked the trigger as I cringed, missing my target entirely. Something sliced hot across my cheek and I fell into the back room, bullets screaming through the doorway overhead. I scrambled to the side as the floor erupted into dust.
“Lorenzo!” Jill shouted as I rolled toward her. She raised the MP5 and fired out the doorway. A man cried out in pain.
Still prone, I leaned around the doorway and spotted a government man moving through the dust, firing his M4 at us. Jill shot again, and the man stumbled. “They’ve got vests on!” I shouted as I put the Aimpoint on him and cranked off several quick shots. Soft armor would stop her 9mm, but not my 5.56. He fell to his knees and Jill’s third shot hit him in the bridge of the nose. I scrambled farther out, searching for Eddie.
The spot where the Fat Man had fallen was empty.
“Shit!” I shouted. More shapes were appearing in the dust. I fired at anything that moved. That damn poodle was still barking. Bullets impacted our wall, digging fierce pits into the cinder-blocks, or skipped across the concrete and smashed our room into debris.
Flipping the selector to auto, I emptied the rest of my magazine into the confusion, then rolled inside, fumbling at my vest for a reload. There were a lot more bad guys than I had expected, but they were being hit from multiple directions. Jill was crouched behind me. I made eye contact and gestured violently toward the window. We had to get out of here. “I’ll cover you,” I said as I slammed the magazine home and slapped the bolt release.
“Quit shooting! Stop it!” Eddie was screeching. The random gunfire tapered off and died. “I need him alive!”
“Go!” I shouted to Jill, leaned out, and fired in the direction of Eddie’s voice. There was a rusted truck parked near the main door, and it sounded like he had come from behind it. I stitched a line of impacts across the truck body, the clang of hot lead on metal louder than my suppressor. Jill sprang up and pushed her way through the window. Within seconds, multiple rifles opened up on my position. I fired until she disappeared, going clear through my second magazine.
“Damn it!” Eddie shrieked. “I said quit shooting! Next one of you wankers shoots at him and I’ll slit your throat myself! Lorenzo!” I pulled back, reloading again. I could feel the heat rising from my rifle. “Listen to me carefully. I just want what’s mine. I don’t care about you.”
Red laser dots flashed on the far wall. Bright flashlights illuminated the doorway. If I tried to move, I was dead. Rather than fire and maneuver, I’d allowed myself to get pinned down. At least Jill had gotten out. “Bob, the hostage just went out the window. Cover her. I’m stuck,” I whispered. There was no response. I grasped my radio. The box had been smashed by a round. Damn.
“I’m listening, Eddie,” I shouted back. The gunfire outside continued. It sounded like the others were busy. “What’re you offering?”
“Give me the scarab, you and all your people walk, and I pay you double.”
“Sounds tempting,” I lied. We were dog food the second he had it. I didn’t dare stick my head around the corner, and I couldn’t try to move across the doorway. There was a large piece of broken mirrored glass on the floor. Grabbing it, I held it up and used it to peer around the corner.
“Yes, it is tempting. We both know you’re stuck, and it won’t take too many bullets to carve through that wall. My associate is setting up a belt-fed as we speak. . . .” There was a sudden burst of much louder gunfire, and the wall above me exploded into shrapnel. The sound was horrendous. The gun fired so fast it was like a buzzsaw. I covered my head and tried to make myself as small as possible as I was pelted with jagged bits. The poodle yelped. “Hush now, Precious, the bad man won’t scare you anymore,” Eddie soothed. “You’ve got ten seconds, Lorenzo.”
Moving the broken shard of glass, I scanned the garage. Multiple bright weapon-mounted lights shined back at me, and there was the Fat Man, a terrifying German MG3 machine gun on a bipod resting on the old
truck hood, pointed right at me. I coughed as more dust settled onto my face. Hopefully Jill and the others would make it out of here, because I didn’t think that I would.
But at least I could take Eddie with me. “I’ve got to know. What is it? Why is it so important?” If I could keep him talking, maybe I could figure out where he hiding.
“Is Willis around?” Eddie asked. “Or any of his men?”
“No, sir. He took off running into those old buildings,” a voice behind one of the bobbing weapon lights answered.
“Well, chap, you might as well know. Gordon and I may be from rival organizations, but I’m helping him accomplish something for his employers, and in turn he’s helping me get the position I so rightfully deserve among my peers. And you are going to help keep me there. The thing you stole? It isn’t even for me. There’s a certain individual, who even I am scared of, and he’d do anything to get that scarab. Now quit stalling. Time’s up, Lorenzo. Where . . . is . . . my . . . property?”
The scarab was sitting in a Velcro pouch on my armor. I held the AR tight and did one last pass with my makeshift mirror: three lighted weapons trained on my position, and a belt-fed machine gun. It was Butch and Sundance time.
Then there was another reflection shifting in the glass, the flash of a pink waitress dress creeping up behind the Fat Man.
Oh, please no.
No time to think. I sprang up, muzzle rising as I heard the brraaappp noise of the little MP5 in Jill’s hands on full-auto. The Fat Man jerked as her bullets stitched up his side. The MG3 fired wildly past me, tearing a gash of dust and pulverized cinder block up the wall. My Aimpoint settled on the first weapon mounted light and I fired twice, shifting immediately to the next light and firing again.
I was blinded by the scalding beams, burning bullets zipping around me, through my clothing, feeling them parting my hair, buzzing past like angry bees. There was the third light, dancing with muzzle flashes, and I pulled the trigger twice more. Jill was shouting as she fired.
Dead Six-ARC Page 54