by Matt Rogers
67
Petr’s car tore onto Washington Avenue, missing a white Tesla by inches.
Air hissed, tyres screeched, horns blared. The vehicle swerved violently and then slowed a touch, like the near-miss had truly rattled him. King watched it all play out and leant heavier on his accelerator, taking the same risk, if not greater.
He had to.
Miraculously he found a gap in the oncoming traffic and barrelled through into the other lane. It concerned him that the roads were still busy this late at night, but he guessed that in hyper-capitalist San Francisco, peak hour started earlier and finished later.
King’s guts twisted, but not from the avoided collision.
He didn’t know if he’d made the right call. He wouldn’t until it was too late. He couldn’t spin a U-turn and gun it back to the flood control channel, not now. If doubt made you change your mind in the heat of the fight, it usually led to you making two terrible decisions instead of one mediocre one. So he committed to the pursuit, but the possibility that Alexis was in danger gnawed away in the back of his head. Danny would do what King had asked. He’d bunker down and keep his head down until it was safe. But if Alexis saw an opportunity, she would’ve pounced. She must have. There was no other reason for Petr to be fleeing. The Russian hadn’t banked on another pursuer. He’d cut his losses and stolen Frankie’s car right as it pulled up before he noticed King careening toward it.
It might’ve been his imagination playing tricks on him, but as they roared into the loop that merged onto I-880, King swore he noticed Petr driving safer. Obviously the Russian was still dozens of miles per hour above the speed limit, but he wasn’t throwing his life into every turn anymore.
Either the near-collision with the Tesla had spooked him or…
King remembered what Alexis had said. He’s coked up, erratic. I could hear it over the phone.
She’d told him that maybe thirty minutes ago.
So the cocaine in Petr’s veins could be fading, dissipating, its effects wearing off.
King processed that, then reduced his own level of risk in turn. He didn’t slow down, but he checked the interstate traffic before he surged forward across three lanes to stay on Petr’s tail. He could’ve nearly broken the old car apart in an attempt to close the gap, but he held off. It went against all his programming. Intuition told him it was the right call.
He kept the speedometer at a hundred miles per hour and hoped the engine didn’t give out on him. At this speed the interstate lights were a golden blur, the road a treadmill cranked up to maximum. Petr held the same speed in Frankie’s car, maybe a couple of hundred feet ahead. Neither of them swerved into other lanes. Theirs was clear, and they whipped by staggered traffic on either side, travelling nearly double the speed of every other car on the road.
King bided his time.
Took no offensive action.
His brain screamed to get this done, that the longer he dragged out a high-speed vehicular pursuit, the greater the chances he’d end up smeared on the side of the road in a puddle of goo.
But he ignored it, and waited for the inevitable to happen.
It happened.
Maybe two minutes after they merged, Petr’s car jolted like its chassis had been electrocuted. The untrained eye would merely find it odd, but King knew what it meant. Petr had jerked the wheel in a frenzy, because the chemical top-up had just hit his bloodstream. King knew if the old dog used cocaine to amplify his jobs then it’d be ingrained into habit, and he wouldn’t be able to function in combat without it.
All King had needed to do was wait for Petr to take another hit.
Then Petr started taking risks, just as King imagined he would. The Russian swerved the car across two lanes, climbing to nearly a hundred and ten miles an hour, and whipped by a couple of vehicles travelling the speed limit. He deliberately attempted a close call to lose King in the rear view, but King didn’t need cocaine to take the same level of risk.
Putting his life on the line was as simple as clockwork these days.
He climbed to a hundred and ten too, giving the engine all it had, and mirrored Petr’s actions by crossing the lanes. He avoided the same two cars by a hair and then pushed faster, refusing to accept any slack. He maxed the speedometer by keeping his foot crushed against the pedal. He fought to keep the rattling vehicle on the road, let alone travelling in a straight line.
But he closed in on Petr.
The Russian panicked, but had to touch the brakes when a semi-trailer and its cargo loomed to their left, travelling under the speed limit. Its right-hand blinker flashed as they both surged toward it, a precursor to sliding into their lane. At the speeds they were doing, the driver might not see them coming, might trundle over just in time for both of them to rear-end its bumper and disintegrate into nothingness.
King thought, Now or never.
He didn’t brake.
It was a wild guess, but sure enough the truck stayed in its lane, the driver drifting slightly right and then snapping back into position when he saw the encroaching headlights coming toward him at a hundred and ten miles an hour.
If he’d been wrong, and had been forced to swerve, the speed would’ve sent him flying off the edge of the interstate.
Petr hadn’t wanted to do that, so he’d braked slightly.
King whipped into the right-hand lane, gaining on Petr’s car in a screaming flurry of noise, so now the three vehicles were lined up abreast for a fleeting moment: the semi-trailer, then Petr, then King.
Now travelling twenty miles per hour faster, King jerked the wheel to the left and tapped the side of Petr’s rear bumper with the left-hand corner of his hood.
Then he swerved back.
The backend of Petr’s car skidded out and he lost control completely, smoke screaming off all the tyres at once. The vehicle spun recklessly and the momentum carried it to the left, directly under the trailer.
The rear wheels flattened the vehicle into a pancake, sent steel shards flying in all directions.
King ducked as a couple of them scratched his hood when he flew past the wreckage.
Then he was clear.
Slowing closer to eighty, he spotted an exit looming ahead and veered onto it, rocketing off the interstate only a few minutes after he got on.
There’d be nothing left of Petr.
Yet another reason not to succumb to a drug habit.
King figured out where he was and, barely slowing down, gunned it back to the San Lorenzo Creek.
No knowing whether he’d make it in time.
68
They formed a chain, three in a row, beginning to end.
Heidi aiming her gun at Alexis’ face.
Frankie aiming his gun at the back of Alexis’ head.
Alexis facing Heidi, aiming at her forehead.
It was only a stalemate if Frankie cared about Heidi making it out alive, and evidently he did. He wanted to get paid, after all. Alexis assumed he didn’t have any men left, but she also assumed he’d go after all seven employees himself if it meant making life-changing money. He’d kill anyone for Heidi Waters; she could sense it. Now, the sheer pointlessness of her struggle ate away at her. She’d surged with hope when Petr fled, but one goon had simply been replaced by another.
It proved to her what she’d known all along.
That someone with money would always have people begging to serve them.
For noble reasons or monstrous ones, it really didn’t matter.
Frankie didn’t get a response and told her, again, to lower her gun. Heidi tried to look over Alexis’ shoulder and snapped, ‘You really think she’s gonna do that, you dumbass?’
Frankie said, ‘Woah…’
Well, Alexis thought. At least they’re bickering.
Heidi was flustered, starting to panic. ‘She’s gonna keep this gun in my face until she gets tired. How is that not crystal fucking clear?’
‘Cool it,’ Frankie said. ‘I’m here now.’
‘Great. That
’s great, Frankie. You’re here now.’
‘You know something I don’t?! I just lost all my men, you good-for-nothing—’
‘Good for nothing?! I’m a businesswoman. I don’t do this shit. I run a company. But I still did a better job than you of getting this story straight, working out who’s a rat and who’s not. You’ve been floundering around in the dark, trusting anyone who smiles at you. You’re a moron.’
Frankie said, ‘Then I’ll walk away.’
That shut Heidi up. She was so used to the power imbalance hanging over every conversation with her employees. She could say basically whatever she wanted, because if anyone snapped back, she’d fire them on the spot. She hadn’t done it often, but they knew what she’d do. And she was paying Frankie, of course, so wasn’t he just another grunt working for her?
No.
He was an independent contractor, not an employee, and the power imbalance was gone. He knew she was operating on borrowed time, and he was capitalising on it. She had no one left and nothing she’d be able to hold onto, and there was a gun in her face. A world away from the woman who’d graced the cover of Forbes a couple of months back.
Heidi said, ‘Please don’t.’
Alexis saw the effort it took to get those words out, the way it went against every fibre of her being. It was odd circumstances, being able to stare into her eyes as she talked to Frankie. It seemed almost invasive, both their gazes penetrating.
Frankie sighed. ‘Who’s this I’m holding at gunpoint?’
Heidi said, ‘The one who’s been killing all of Petr’s crew.’
‘Where is that cokehead?’
‘He ran off.’
‘Of course he did.’
Heidi ignored the barb, kept her eyes on Alexis. ‘She spoke about buddying up with a couple of high-level operators a while back. Two guys. Apparently the three of them are a crew. You know anything about that, Frankie?’
Alexis heard air whistling through teeth behind her. The sound of barely repressed fury.
Frankie said, ‘I made a bad call.’
‘You’re goddamn right you did. All your men are dead because you trusted those new guys, because they lied to your face and you believed it. You’d believe anyone.’
‘I’ll make this right.’
‘How are you gonna get this gun out of my face, Frankie?’
‘I’m gonna—’
Frankie didn’t finish the rest of the sentence. There was the sound of air bursting from his mouth, a gargle in his throat, and the clatter of gunmetal against concrete. Then, maybe six feet away from Frankie’s original position, the noise of a life-or-death struggle.
Both Alexis and Heidi heard the choking and spluttering and clawing at the same time and their ears pricked up simultaneously. Alexis saw the strain in Heidi’s eyes, the desperation to see what was happening, but Alexis’ body was blocking her view. Alexis couldn’t see anything either.
They came to a silent agreement.
Gently shuffled around in a half-circle, taking small and measured steps as the gasps and grunts rose in intensity nearby. Neither of them shifted their aim but they managed to work their way round so they were side-on to the noises, then they both glanced over.
A young man in his early twenties had seized Frankie from behind, locking in a textbook rear naked choke, and had jerked him backwards in the same motion so the gun fell from his grasp. One sinewy forearm was around Frankie’s throat and he used the crook of his other elbow as a hinge to wrench the choke back, squeezing the neck tighter and tighter.
Frankie’s face was purple, like an overripe fruit set to explode.
He clawed at the forearm, fingers scraping skin, but it was like trying to pry away a steel two-by-four attached to his windpipe.
Alexis had to check back on Heidi to make sure nothing had changed, and Heidi did the same. It freed them both up for a second glance, which they took in unison. Alexis noticed further details. The young man was missing an earlobe, blood crusted all over one side of his face. His teeth were bared, his wide eyes locked on the back of Frankie’s head.
But his eyes were wet with tears.
Frankie managed to splutter some garbled words. ‘Danny…please…it’s me.’
The rear naked choke was perfect. Flawless technique, zero room for a reversal. Alexis knew enough jiu-jitsu to understand when a position was final. If this truly was Danny, the young man King had told her about, then Frankie had taught him the very technique he was using.
Hence the tears.
Frankie got that look in his eyes, that faraway stare as the world starts to roll back into darkness, as the lack of oxygen to your brain reaches crisis point and your body starts to shut down to keep you alive. If Danny kept on squeezing, Frankie would go out and then thirty, forty seconds later would be unrevivable.
There was nothing Heidi could do but watch.
Nothing Alexis could do, either.
If Frankie died it’d terrify Heidi into submission. Alexis was sure of it. She’d put the gun down, beg for mercy, ask for anything but a repeat performance. Frankie’s eyes were bugging out of his head, his face dark purple now, saliva spraying from his mouth as he gasped…
Heidi let out a small whimper.
Frankie only managed a single last word, practically whispered. ‘Danny…’
Danny let the choke go.
Alexis shouted, ‘No,’ but there was no stopping Frankie falling forward, onto his hands and knees, free from the hold. He gasped and blinked hard four or five times in a row, staring vacantly at his own fingers splayed on the concrete. Blood from where he’d scratched Danny’s forearm coated his fingernails. He probably couldn’t see, needed time for his vision to return, for his face to return to a normal colour.
Danny stood over him, trembling.
Alexis said, ‘Danny, he’s nothing to you.’
Frankie kept blinking, mouth wide. A long strand of spit fell from the corner of his mouth.
Alexis said, ‘He’s poison.’
All Danny could do was shake his head, squeezing his own eyes shut.
You can’t shirk conditioning.
Not all at once.
She watched Frankie’s gaze suddenly focus, latching onto a singular point between his spread fingers. He could see again. He looked all around, somewhat surprised he’d remained conscious, then picked his gun back up. There was nobody to stop him. Heidi and Alexis were locked in a stalemate.
He sighed as he got up and turned around. ‘Danny, Danny, Danny…’
‘I’m sorry.’
Frankie shrugged, started to raise his weapon. ‘Won’t miss this time, at least.’
69
King made it back to the dead-end street in record time.
He screeched to a halt, decelerating from nearly eighty miles an hour to zero in the space of a few seconds, the momentum throwing his weight against the seatbelt. He parked where Frankie had parked.
No one left to fight.
No one but the main players.
He pulled Carter’s Glock as he threw the door open and forced his way out of the old car. Under the hood, the engine groaned. It had done its job, served its temporary owner’s every need. King ran to the tree line, silencing his footsteps as best he could. He forced his way under the foliage and burrowed through the undergrowth, batting leaves and branches and twigs aside in his haste to make it through to the San Lorenzo Creek.
Halfway through, he heard someone choking.
It was faint, but in the hushed night the sound carried easily.
He crawled harder, practically bursting out the other side of the bushes, and the stretch of flat dirt came into view, bordering the manmade valley of the flood control channel.
King soaked it all in.
The scene was a snapshot in time, shrouded in darkness, like a grotesque Renaissance painting.
Alexis facing off with a small woman who could only be Heidi Waters, both pointing gun barrels at each others’ heads. In front of the
m, Frankie on all fours, hunched over, panting like a dog. Danny standing above him, also panting, his shoulders heaving like he was sobbing.
It took a moment to compute.
King missed his window.
He could’ve fired between Danny’s legs and hit Frankie in the back of his head as he was hunched over, but the scene was so strange, so macabre, that he needed time to process it. Only a couple of seconds later Frankie was upright, twisting on the spot, a gun in his hand. The barrel drifted from Danny’s stomach to his chest to his head. King heard something like, ‘Won’t miss this time.’
He thought about trying to get a beat on Frankie or Heidi, his trigger finger twitching against the Glock.
But what was the end result?
If he shot Frankie, Danny would die, and if he shot Heidi, Alexis would die.
An impossible puzzle.
Only one solution for these sorts of situations.
Chaos.
Frankie circled Danny around so the kid’s back was to the lip of the flood control channel. It made sense if Frankie didn’t want to waste needless energy dragging the body to the edge of the slope, sending it tumbling over. But it put Frankie’s own back to the tree line.
King made sure he was clutching his Glock tight.
Then he rose up from the shrubbery and took off like he was coming out of the starting blocks.
He was two hundred and twenty pounds of fast-twitch muscle fibre, and if he needed to condense all that power into a single explosive burst, he absolutely could.
Frankie heard something coming, but he wasn’t going to turn around in a hurry. He was holding Danny at gunpoint, after all, and had no idea where the kid’s allegiances truly lay.
But he looked over his shoulder just in time to see King barrelling out of the night like a bullet.
His eyes widened.
King dropped his shoulder low and braced for impact.
He didn’t slow down at all.
In fact, he pushed faster.
He crashed into Frankie’s upper back at top speed, sending the gangster hurtling forward into Danny. King and Frankie together topped four hundred pounds, and Danny was lean despite his strength, maybe one-sixty at best. There was no way the kid was stopping the oncoming freight train of mass. He flew back off his feet and fell in between Heidi and Alexis, knocking both their gun arms. Miraculously, neither of them impulsively fired, and they managed to half-catch Danny so he didn’t tumble off the slope.