Olongapo Earp (Tequila Vikings Book 2)

by J. E. Park

  Despite being in shock, I was able to understand the shouting in Tagalog breaking out down the street. “Bong! What are you doing?!?” one of the kid’s accomplices exclaimed. “You were supposed to wait!”

  “I couldn’t!” the boy screamed back as he fired off a couple more rounds. “They saw me!”

  “The girls and kids are still upstairs!” I yelled at Darrow. “We’ve got to get these guys away from the house!”

  My master chief nodded and looked around. His training and instincts allowed him to assess the situation in a fraction of a second. He spotted two men up the street running toward us with guns drawn to our left. The master chief did not like the odds of going that way. He decided it safer to take our chances with the kid wasting his ammunition. Grabbing me by the shirt, Darrow lifted me to my feet and we bolted toward a fork in the road ahead of us.

  Tejada did not follow. With his weapon finally out, he took aim at the men on our left. When they pointed their guns at Darrow and me, TJ squeezed off a round, catching one of our assailants at center mass and killing him instantly. In response, the other shooter shifted targets. He fired three quick shots at the policeman, hitting the sergeant at least once. The last thing I saw before running off of Harris Street was Rico Tejada spinning violently around before hitting the sidewalk. His pistol flew out of his hands and into the street. I then heard my girlfriend run out of our apartment after us, screaming my name.

  I wanted to yell at Tala to stay back, but as Darrow and I ducked into the alleys, I was too preoccupied. Not only was the kid and the man who shot Sergeant Tejada on our heels, but two new gunmen appeared out of nowhere to join the chase. Screaming at Tala to stay put would have wasted my breath and since the shooters were all following Darrow and me anyway, there was no real need to. As heavy smokers running uphill, both my master chief and I needed all the oxygen we could get.

  The trigger-happy youngster behind us squeezed off three more rounds as we bolted away from the scene. None of them came close to hitting the mark, but they were plenty enough to strike terror in us all the same. “We need to split up, to divide them,” Darrow gasped. We were running toward a fork in the alley made up of a narrow row of storage sheds. “You go left.”

  I nodded, unable to suck enough wind to answer Darrow out loud. When we hit the fork, I went one way, and my master chief went the other. I sprinted as hard as I could and worked on throwing garbage cans over behind me to slow the gunmen down. When it sounded like I put some distance between us, I dared to steal a glance behind me to see what I was up against. I was expecting to see two men chasing me but was shocked to find I had all four of them on my tail. That was when I realized that Olongapo Earp was not the hooligans’ intended target. I was.

  As I was trying to figure out what I had done to these people, the kid raised his revolver again and fired. After hearing a hollow click instead of another roaring gunshot, the boy cursed and stopped to clumsily reload his weapon. Two of the others fired, but I was already back on the move. Their shots went wide. Tala screamed loudly in the background, sounding as if she had watched me get my head blown off.

  I soon realized that I would not escape my attackers in a straight-up foot race. Speed was not one of my strong points. I knew that I had only made it this far because of the adrenaline coursing through my veins, and that was starting to wear off. I needed some instant strategy.

  As one of the men squeezed off another round, I spotted a narrow gap between two buildings and ducked into it, immediately regretting my decision. It led straight to the street but was full of trash and construction scraps that tangled around my feet and tripped me up. I landed on my face and had to scurry forward on all fours, clumsily trying to get to my feet again. When I did, I took only two steps before I rammed my head into something that knocked me right back onto my ass. With no time to recover and knowing how close the street assassins were, I had to keep moving. Fueled now by hysteria, I forced myself to push through the mess to get to the road.

  The advantage of moving through such a dark, congested passage was that I did not present a very identifiable target. That did not stop the people chasing me from taking their shots anyway. The first guy to reach the opening took aim and waited for me to rise. When he saw my silhouetted head poke up against the relative light of the street before us, he squeezed the trigger. Fortunately, there was a beam in the line of fire between the two of us. The bullet struck the wood instead of me, and I dove for the ground again, breaking forward with a renewed sense of urgency. Once more, I heard Tala scream out from somewhere that was far too close to be comfortable.

  When I finally broke out of the space between the houses, it was by barreling through a fifty-five-gallon drum full of metal scrap. I fell over it, dumping its contents out onto the sidewalk along with me. Between fear and exertion, I could barely breathe at all. I no longer had the energy to follow my flight instincts. I had to fight. Turning my head to the side, I spotted a heavy metal pipe among the refuse I had spilled. It was no match for a firearm, but it was better than nothing. With the club in hand, I used my last reserves of energy to bolt across the street, ducking between two houses and making my way into a brand-new alley.

  It took the men some time to follow me as they tripped, cursed, and cleared trash to continue their pursuit. Still, they knew I had dashed across the road. The houses on the other side of the street were built on top of each other. There was only one opening that I could have disappeared into, so the gangsters had little difficulty figuring out where I had gone. The first man across rushed into the same space I had with no hesitation at all. I made him pay for that when he came out the other end.

  I swung my pipe with every intention of killing whoever emerged from that space. Unfortunately, the close confines of where we were fighting prevented me from following through with the blow. The end of my club caught the cinderblocks of the far building before I completed my swing, absorbing most of the impact. Still, the punk I was aiming for got hit hard enough to fall right to the ground, cupping his bleeding face in his hands. More importantly, he dropped his gun.

  The second gangster was almost through the opening as I scooped up the revolver. The third was entering it. I caught them both in very cramped quarters as I squeezed the trigger. The man closest to me threw himself against the wall in time to avoid getting hit. The man farther back dove to the ground the instant he saw I was armed. The boy who fired on us back at the apartment was just coming into view from between the two buildings. I did not even see him when I fired, but it was the kid that got hit.

  The bullet struck him high upon the head. It split his crown from front to back and sent his brains erupting from the opening like some sort of macabre grey matter mohawk. He was under a streetlamp when it happened, and I could see the light go out of his eyes even from where I was at. That boy was the first person I had ever killed. Even in the heat of combat, I was struck dumb by it. He was young, no more than twelve or thirteen. He was still gangly and awkward, a skinny stick figure adorned with a mop-top of straight black hair.

  For a moment, I was paralyzed with shock over what I had done. The hooligan on the ground was not and fired from the prone position. His bullet let out a deafening crack as it passed by my ear, breaking me out of my reverie and startling me back into flight. This time I back-tracked, sprinting in the direction of my apartment. I looked back when I heard another shot ring out and saw one of the thugs get blown from his cover. When he landed on the ground, he was screaming bloody murder. It looked like someone misidentified his target in the dark and blasted a bullet into his buddy instead of into me.

  That could have presented me with an opportunity to go on the offensive, but I was not able to capitalize upon it. I was still too starved for oxygen, having never gotten the chance to catch my breath. My feet got away from me as I fled and I ended up wiping out across the gravel. Rolling over and surprised to find that I still had the revolver in my hand, I sat up and aimed at the opening into the alley.
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  The remaining hoodlum was expecting as much and must have gotten a running start. He passed through my line of sight far too fast for me to react. By the time I fired, he was already hidden behind a stack of wooden pallets on the other side of the alley. That was when we heard sirens approaching in the distance and realized that the momentum had shifted. Time was no longer on the side of the street punks. It was on mine. All I had to do now was hold out.

  The wounded gangster decided that the game was over and got up to flee. I let him go. I did not know how many bullets I had left and the last thing I wanted to do was waste ammo trying to hit someone who could not shoot back. The cops could deal with him. Still gasping for air, I forced myself back up to see if I could get a shot at the other thug. I came up empty. The man whose skull I cracked with the pipe was coming to life at that point. He was shaking and holding his hands up, begging me not to shoot him. Saving my ammunition for the bigger threat, I screamed at him in English to shut up, too scared to remember any Tagalog.

  Finally, my target emerged, but with his gun blazing. He was not attempting to hit me so much as force me to eat dirt, in which he easily succeeded. With me trying to get as low as I could, the hooligan made his getaway, firing wildly as he fled. I should have let him go. With anger overriding reason, though, I took a shot as soon as I got back to my feet and missed again.

  I stumbled forward. The guy I almost knocked out rolled into the fetal position and screamed out in fear as I passed, but I ignored him. When my target turned to see where I was, I fired again, missing once more. For my fourth shot at the man, I took my time. I went into a textbook firing stance with two hands on the revolver. I pulled the hammer back, lined up my sights against the target’s center, and squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  My eyes went wide. In panic, I turned toward the remaining gang banger and found him already in motion. The instant he heard I was out of ammo, he was on his feet with my pipe in hand, looking to return a favor. With nothing else at my disposal, I heaved my spent revolver at him. It was a futile gesture. The hoodlum batted the weapon away with a power that was impressive for a man unlikely to have ever heard of Ty Cobb.

  The punk tried to knock my block off with his next swing, but I was able to duck in time. I then scrambled about the ground looking for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. The alley was strewn with garbage, various odds and ends of every size, shape, and material. There was nothing, though, that was particularly lethal, or for that matter, even intimidating. What little was there was difficult to collect. Every time I paused, a large piece of heavy pipe came barreling at my head. Eventually, I did grab a jagged piece of wood near the stack of pallets the escaped gunman hid behind. Trying to brandish it, though, was laughably inadequate.

  I needed some relief. If I could have gotten an opportunity to catch my breath I could have escaped, but the hood trying to knock my block off would not give me that chance. I decided that if I could throw my adversary off of his feet, I might stand a better chance at running away again. I waited for him to swing one more time, and while he was off-balance, I charged.

  It was a desperate move and did not work out the way that I planned. Instead of bowling him over, all I did was push my attacker up against the wall. To make things worse, I also lost my balance and fell to my knees, putting myself in a fatally vulnerable position. My adversary now had the high ground. He raised the pipe above his head, and there was little I could do to keep him from bashing my skull in with it. But I had to try.

  I still had the jagged piece of wood in my hand. As the punk tensed up to bludgeon me to death, I used every bit of strength I had to thrust it into his left leg, below the back of his knee. It worked much better than I thought it would. The point punctured through his jeans and penetrated deep into his calf. The hooligan howled out in agony, but it did not keep him from bringing the pipe down. In fact, the adrenaline surge forced him to swing it even harder, but with a life-sparing lack of precision.

  My head avoided a direct hit. Fortunately for me, my shoulders and back stepped up to share some of the punishment. Still, that son-of-a-bitch nearly put me out. My vision started jumping all over the place, my ears rang, and I was suddenly too woozy to flee. I could not even get to my feet. All I could do was crawl away from the hoodlum and try to keep from losing consciousness.

  The gangster had no such issues. He was injured, but enraged. He was also no longer able to run. Having nothing to lose now, he wanted to finish me off before the police arrived.

  I had put a couple of houses between us before the derelict got the wood out of his leg. When he came after me again, he was limping hard and unable to put any weight on his injured limb. Even hobbled, the punk was moving twice as fast as I could, screaming curses at the top of his lungs. As I crawled through the alley, I hoped that the police, or at least Darrow, could use his voice as a beacon to find me. The last thing I was expecting was Tala to.

  My vision was blurry, and I was unable to focus anywhere but on the ground I crawled over. My ears were filled with the shrieking of the street hood. I never saw Tala coming. She was just suddenly at my side, almost as if by magic. “Get up, Doyle!” she cried hysterically. “Get up! Please!”

  I attempted to push her out of the way. “Get out of here!” I screamed at her. “Go find Master Chief! Now!”

  “No, Doyle! You need come wit’ me! You need come now!” Tala started crying harder as the gangster limped closer. “Please! Doyle! Please!”

  “I can’t!” By now, I was pleading with her. “You have to go! Go!”

  “No!” she sobbed. “No! No, no, no!” Tala paused for a second, and I felt her entire body tense up before she shrieked, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  I knew that the thug must have been on top of us. I pushed Tala out of the way and rolled over onto my back to face my attacker. Tala then leapt back on top of me, offering herself to the hooligan’s pipe, determined not to let him get to me. I was struggling to throw her off, but she was furiously resisting me. I ended up in the surreal position of fighting a woman who was hysterically trying to save my life. “GODDAMMIT TALA!” I screamed at her. “GET OFF OF ME! HE’S GOING TO KILL YOU!”

  He was. The gangster did not care if Tala was between us or not. He could bludgeon us both to death just as easily as he could one of us. He raised the pipe high into the air, intent on splitting both our skulls wide open. When he went to deliver the fatal blow, however, the pipe would not move. Master Chief Darrow was behind him, holding it from the other end.

  *****

  When I saw Darrow, my entire body went limp. It felt like I had fallen into my underwater world again, descending into one of my episodes. Tala had her arms wrapped around my head tight, though. She refused to let me go there. As police officers flooded the alley to stop Darrow from viciously pummeling my assailant, I was strangely calm. When I finally caught my breath, I was so relaxed that it felt like I was only falling asleep as I finally passed out.

  I was brought back by Master Chief Darrow lightly slapping me across my face. “Hey! Doyle! You with us?”

  I shot upright, very confused. As far as I knew, Tala had been there a split second before. Somehow, though, she had vaporized into thin air and was replaced by my boss. It was like dreaming I was being kissed by Marilyn Monroe only to wake up finding myself swapping spit with Marilyn Manson. “Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed. “Where’s Tala?”

  “Home,” Darrow answered. “Mari’s probably beside herself worried about the two of you, so I sent Tala back to let the girls know we’re alright. I told her to stay there. I don’t want her mixed up in any of this shit.”

  My memory started flooding back to me, and I recalled what had happened in front of the apartment. “TJ!” I exclaimed. “TJ got shot! Is he...?”

  “Oh, man,” Darrow laughed. “He’s not alright. He’s pissed!”

  “But he got shot!”

  “Yeah, he got shot, all right. Right through the collarbone and out the
back of his shoulder by the looks of it. He’s in a lot of pain, but I can guarantee you that he’s feeling a lot better than the fuckers that did this.”

  I looked around, trying to get my bearings. “Was I out?”

  Darrow shrugged. “Not all the way, but spaced out in some sort of twilight zone for a half hour or so. You should check out the size of the goose egg on the back of your head. You took a pretty good hit to the noggin. You feeling okay?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I'm just a little foggy. I’ve got a killer headache.”

  “I bet,” the master chief laughed. “Hey man, we need to get out of here. As far as these cops are concerned, this was a street gang hit against Tejada. They’re going to turn this whole city upside down, and if we want to keep our names out of it, we need to bounce.”

  That was confusing me even more. “Wait, keep our names out of it? How are our names not all over it already? Those guys weren’t after TJ. They were after me.”

  “Yeah, it certainly looks that way. Look, man, in a few days, the Navy will cease to be an entity in Olongapo for the first time in a century. Things are going to change big around here, and when things change that radically, there’s usually a reckoning.”

  Darrow waved his arm over the policemen working the scene. “You know, up until now, a lot of these guys were on the fence, not knowing which way the wind was going to blow. Some figured that with the Navy leaving, gangsters would fill the vacuum and turn this place into another Patpong, like in Bangkok. Whores galore. Others think Olongapo is going to go legit and pull in some real money by turning the base into a shipping hub. The cops weren’t sure which way to bend.”

  My master chief grinned. “Then this shit happened. The police identified these pricks as gang members from Barrio Barretto and they’re fucking pissed that they shot a sergeant in the Philippine National Police. It doesn’t matter that he wasn’t the target. This place ain’t like Mexico, Doyle. Most of these guys take money from the goons to turn a blind eye to their little rackets, but there is never any question about who’s in charge around here. Those poor bastards really fucked up. Even the guys leaning the gangsters’ way are heading over to Barrio Barretto to tear those punks apart.”