by LC Champlin
“We’re aware, sir. Move back from the perimeter.” Carp held out an arm to emphasize the border. And to block the escape route.
Stout, Italian ancestry, stern faced, middle-aged. Probably twenty years on the force and he hadn’t made rank beyond corporal. That meant he liked the beat, he didn’t have the brains for promotion, or he’d screwed up royally
“No, Officer, you’re not aware.” Calm but firm. “The St. Regis on Third and Mission was attacked an hour ago. They plan to attack the Hotel Vitale as well, if they haven’t already done so.”
“We’ll take appropriate action. Step back.” Carp glowered, looking for the world like his namesake. “Now.” He made no move to radio the information to his colleagues. Why the fucking delay?
Nathan hesitated, then stepped back a foot. Maybe they did know, but he needed to double check. “I should speak with your sergeant.” The beat cop had enough on his mind. “There are at least fifteen gunmen there. They’ve already killed—”
“Back up, Jack.” Carp’s AR muzzle climbed.
“I only want to help law enforcement.” Keep the hands visible, and off the arrogant bastard’s neck. “Aren’t you supposed to protect us?” The bastards wanted to give him orders? After he’d done more of their job in an hour than they’d done all night? I don’t think so.
Carp’s twenty-something protégé, a rookie by his fit build, approached with AR ready. “What’s the problem here?” White lettering across his vest read Officer Ben Barrett. Don’t fuck this up, Ben. If they had to share names, even if only a middle name, the boy needed to act worthy of it.
“There’s been a terrorist attack,” Nathan began. Maybe Ben would—
“I already told you,” Carp interrupted, stepping closer, “we’ll address it.”
By now, people nearby had begun to take notice. Smartphones crept up for a better view. Nothing like the threat of publicity to rein in law enforcement. Officer Barrett shifted his weight, attention to the gawkers.
Jaw pulsing, Nathan shook his head in disgust. “Then it’s on your head when more people die.”
Get out, get somewhere safe to rendezvous with Albin. Maiden Lane ahead on the left would do. Nathan backed up another step, then angled left and strode toward Maiden. Falling into NYC mode, he maneuvered through the crowd without breaking stride.
“You, stop!” Carp’s yell.
The idiot had experienced an episode of rational thinking. Excellent. Nathan turned.
“Didn’t you hear the instructions?” Carp approached, trigger finger tapping the AR’s frame. “You were told to proceed to the safe zones and stay off the streets. That means you stay here.”
“You want to protect us.” Nathan glanced around at the bystanders, whose numbers increased by the second. “But I have to leave because I have a friend out there who I need to bring here.” Warning bells louder than the St. Regis fire alarm rang in his mind.
“It’s for your safety, sir,” Barrett assured him. Shit, the rookie really believed the party line.
Murmurs rippled among the audience. Lights, camera, action.
“Give me their location and I’ll send an officer if possible.” Poor Carp. Judging by his smirk, he thought he’d won. His wife must have a ball when they argued.
“Like you helped that girl I brought in?” Nathan jerked a thumb toward the ambulance, which was crawling through traffic behind him. “You wouldn’t help even when I told you she was dying. I’ll go myself and save you the trouble.”
“Let the towel guy get his friend. He just saved a woman, for Chrissake!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“Disperse immediately!” Carp’s AR muzzle climbed. “You are obstructing law-enforcement activities!”
Shifting amid the crowd, but no dispersing.
“You’re supposed to protect us, not point guns at us!” from another onlooker.
Now, with feeling! “Please, just let me pass so I can—”
“Shut up, asshole!” The rifle barrel stared Nathan in the face. Carp glared at him from the other end. Beside the corporal, Officer Barrett looked torn, though he kept the AR ready.
“You gonna shoot us all, cop?” a crowd member called.
Taking the idea, Carp held the AR on the crowd. “Barrett, get that weapon up!” He spared a hand from the AR to key his mic and call for backup over the sound of growing unrest. “Now everybody back the fuck up! I will use force.”
With two automatic weapons in their faces, the crowd’s yells turned to grumbles. Fear dropped the fire of the people’s outrage, but cameras recorded, witnesses gawked, rumors spread. In the confusion, they wouldn’t notice a lone man wander off.
“One side! Clear a path!” A male, plowing through the crowd toward the epicenter.
“What’s going on here!” Female, indignant.
Two officers pushed through the throng that stuck together like dog-herded sheep at the back of a pen. As they emerged, Nathan submerged in the mass of humanity.
Chapter 21
Rolling Stone
Blame It on Me – George Ezra
“I said stop!” Carp again.
Nathan pushed deeper into the crowd, elbow out like a prow.
Then the ground shifted with a tremor, drawing cries from the crowd, which staggered against him. He caught the nearest two civilians and shoved them in Carp’s direction. While the confusion escalated, Nathan slid through the herd, toward the rear.
When he burst from the sea of humanity, he gasped for breath. “Albin,” he panted into the shoulder mic as he removed the tape from its button, “where are you?”
“This is why we can’t have nice things, sir.” Directly on his left.
Nathan grinned at his friend. “You didn’t want to stay here anyway. Where’s the car?” Then they could find a roof suitable for chopper landing.
“O’Farrell and Stockton.” The adviser inclined his head southward. He handed his employer a long object in a towel. The AK. “Did they dispatch officers to the St. Regis?”
“Let’s just say the motto Protect and Serve falls flat at times.”
He and Albin began threading through the crowd. Behind, raised voices blended with the general din of idle vehicles, bullhorn orders, and nervous humanity.
Another ambulance pulled up where the last one had received Kate. Overworked medics attempted to triage the wounded and the stupid.
“You were successful, I assume?” Albin asked at the sight of the rig.
“It’s done.”
“You’ve never looked more heroic, Mr. Serebus.”
The key word: looked.
“A momentary lapse, I assure you.”
Albin raised a brow in skepticism.
Geary Street opened before them, awash in headlights, mad with horns and shouting drivers a second away from full road rage. Traffic jams worked wonders when you wanted to cross the street.
The men darted between stalled vehicles, Nathan sliding Dukes of Hazzard-style across the hood of a Civic as it cut him off. Albin skidded around its rear, toward Louis Vuitton’s marble façade ahead.
More clots of people clogged the sidewalks, but they gave little resistance to the duo swimming upstream.
Helicopters thrummed, distant lights over the sites of destruction. The eyes in the sky relayed scenes of chaos that would loop on news networks for decades to come. No doubt talking heads in a studio thousands of miles away opined on the images with vicarious sorrow. All the while, feeling relieved that their own city remained intact.
Nathan and Albin trotted through glass shards as they passed storefronts. Mannequins, stripped and tipped in their caves, looked with flat eyes through remnants of plate glass. Looters worked fast at Macy’s. In the shifting headlights the plastic faces looked far too much like the cannibals’.
O’Farrell ahoy, dead ahead. Albin nodded to the right. They hugged Macy’s until they came even with the white-on-black Ellis-O’Farrell Parking sign, which j
utted from its six-story namesake across the street.
“There.” Albin pointed toward the garage’s mouth. “Just inside, sir.”
“Perfect.”
Glass from Grace Jewelers beside the garage exit crunched under their steps, glittered like diamonds. To the right, Coffee Central had suffered similar vandalism.
Voices and shuffling emanated from both stores. Nathan deployed the pistol, Albin following suit with his own. Flashlight beams flickered across Coffee Central’s back wall. Two teens with cloth bags over their shoulders scrambled out the smashed window.
“Hey,” Nathan called, weapon sight on the closest kid’s head.
The punks froze. They turned, eyes round as ping pong balls and faces just as pale, about to shit themselves.
A humorless smile curled Nathan’s lips. “Drop it or spend the rest of your short lives regretting being thieves.”
Bags hit concrete.
“Run along home while you still can.”
The kids fell over each other as they fled.
“That was fun.” Looting would get the dumbasses killed if they didn’t take care. He turned to Grace Jewelers, but the bastards inside knew enough to shut up. “Coffee, Albin? No, I suppose not; it’s not green bean.”
“Our standards define us, sir,” Albin responded as he led the way into the garage.
Nathan advanced, 1911 sweeping. “No compromises, no mercy.” Good luck to anyone who attempted to defile Albin’s standards.
E lighting every twenty yards cast the concrete cave in hellish crimson. The men rounded an Odyssey that had decided to get intimate with a pillar. Relief warmed Nathan’s chest at the sight ahead: the Bentley, waiting like a stallion ready to gallop. Tension seeped from his neck, and with it went the stirrings of a headache.
Headlights flashed in greeting. Unlocked. He trotted to the driver’s side, swung into the cockpit, and belted in. “You made it here in record time. Did you use the Force?” Six twin turbo-charged liters of W12 engine thrummed to life.
Albin settled into the passenger side. Half smile with a glint of satisfaction in the ice eyes. “I suppose I did use the force, but in the form of radio waves.” He held up the EMS radio. He switched the Bentley stereo off and the HT on. ERT transmission crackled, clipped and professional.
“Excellent.” Nathan threw it in drive.
“There’s an exit on Ellis Street”—Albin gestured over his shoulder—“that will provide a direct route to your high ground.”
“And that would be?”
“The nearest is 5th and Mission Parking Garage.”
Google Maps satellite view was a godsend. Albin’s habit of familiarizing himself with new locations was more so. Nathan preferred to memorize Street View or topo options.
Bi-Xenons overwhelmed crimson as Nathan navigated through the tomb toward the Ellis exit. Windows and chrome glinted as the Bentley passed lonely vehicles awaiting owners who might never return. Chop-shop vultures would arrive soon enough.
Ahead, beyond the exit’s smashed barrier arm, the E lights gave way to moonlight. Next stop, 5th and Mission Garage. Its roof would make an excellent helipad. He spun the wheel as he piloted around a reef of barrier fencing and torn asphalt.
Brights illuminated a white delivery truck wedged across the street. “Nothing can ever be easy.” He executed what would have been a three point turn if not for the cramped confines. It required six. Back westward through the obstacle course, past Ellis-O’Farrell Parking again.
Albin monitored the EMS frequency in silence.
Powell Street approached. Its silver streetcar tracks snaked south, but stalled streetcars blocked the route. Nathan eased the Bentley through a bottleneck. Flares blazed across the Cyril Magnin Street intersection ahead. What in the—? More lit the far side of Cyril in front of two cars parked across Ellis in a roadblock. In the middle of Cyril Magnin, two figures in reflective vests aimed flashlights up the street.
Nathan slowed the Flying Spur and cut its lights as the intersection brightened under another vehicle’s high beams.
Chapter 22
Block and Tackle
Roads Untraveled – Linkin Park
“No police cruisers, sir.” Albin adjusted his wire rims, an arm between thumb and fourth finger.
Five miles per hour. “Let’s see what they’re up to. Bring my pack to the front.”
Albin hefted the RUSH72 over the seat.
Ahead at the intersection, a Nissan Altima slowed, halted as the men in vests signaled it to stop and then flanked it. Worst-case scenarios clicked past Nathan’s mental eye: arrests, shootouts, vehicular homicide. The neon-vested man on the Altima’s driver’s side spoke with the occupants, then pulled the door open and motioned the driver, a female, out.
On the other side, the partner yanked open passenger and back doors. Two males emerged. The passenger-side “attendant” motioned them to walk ahead of him to the building on the Ellis-Cyril corner to Nathan’s right. A vertical sign outside the door bore the words Hotel Fusion. Light bled through the blinds.
Albin uncovered the AK. “Sir, I highly doubt they are law enforcement.”
“The only laws they’re enforcing are their own.”
Meanwhile, the first man slid into the Altima and began a three-point turn that would aim its headlights and the driver’s attention . . . straight at Nathan. Shit!
“Get on the floor and cover up.” Albin complied as Nathan rammed the stick to R and hit the accelerator. Too late. Point two of the Altima’s turn brought its brights across the Bentley. No evasion now.
Behind the Flying Spur, a knocked-in Buick squealed into the bottleneck, cutting off the exit. “Idiot!” G-forces yanked Nathan into his chest restraint as he slammed the brakes. “Definitely not police. Get ready.”
In the intersection, the man in the Altima leapt from the vehicle, brights blazing down Ellis on his “victims,” his car blocking most of the street. He trotted toward the Bentley.
Nathan’s grip on the wheel tightened. “The ‘valet’ can take it to the middle of the intersection.”
“Yes, sir.” Albin crouched on the passenger seat floor, a towel over his head, VTAC on the seat, jacket over the AK.
“Not my Bentley, dumbass,” Nathan murmured. Click. Naim’s Premium Audio System blared Disturbed as Bi-Xenons awoke to stare down the foe, blinding him for a moment. Nathan released his seatbelt.
Ready . . .
One, two, three, four. Hold. Five, maybe 10% chance of this bastard actually working for Caltrans, and even less of a chance of this being a legitimate checkpoint. Good odds for a raffle, but not for a shoot-first reaction. Even better odds for the three thugs having friends. Friends of GTA-committing kidnappers held weapons, 100% guarantee.
Get set . . .
Dead meat ahoy, off the port bow: skinny, camo fatigue pants and gray T-shirt, stringy hair dangling under his United States Army cap. Age thirty? He slouched to Nathan’s window and tapped the glass with a knuckle. Eyes like an eel’s tried to squint through the tint.
Knock, knock. Who’s there?
“U.S. Army! Roll down your window.” Cigarettes rasped in his voice.
U.S. Army who? U.S. Army marksmanship target material.
The window lowered two inches as the subwoofers thrummed. “What?”
“We’re gonna take you to safety and park your car!” Private Faker yelled.
“You’re going to drive this? I don’t think so. I’m perfectly capable of reaching Union Square on my own. Now move your vehicle so I can pass.”
“General’s orders, buddy.” The thug shifted his weight from foot to foot as he spoke. “We drive. Don’t want ya to get hurt.”
“I’m only going to tell you once more: move your vehicle, soldier.” The pistol grew heavier in its holster. Nathan could almost feel the .45’s recoil, smell the gun smoke.
Private Faker glowered. “Out, civilian!” He grabbed the door handle. The
door flew open, Nathan timing his push to the pull, unbalancing the punk. Nathan rode the momentum out and around. He could get the scumbag into a control position now, but the snipers wouldn’t appreciate his Krav maneuvers. Instead, he slammed the car door.
Staggering, the kid regained his land legs and started to reach for the lump at his right hip.
“Calm down.” Nathan raised his hands and tried to look innocent. “You said you wanted me to get out.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the thug muttered, pulling at his T-shirt’s neck. “I did.”
The opponents cast long shadows down the asphalt under the Altima’s brights. The army brat squinted at the bloody Red Hand on his “prey’s” face. Calm, relaxed, and in control, Nathan stood to his full height, five inches above Private Faker.
Light spilled into the intersection as Hotel Fusion’s door opened. Ah, the other bastard. Faker reverted to his slouch at the arrival of his accomplice.
Slam. Behind them, the Buick’s door closed as another thug stepped out. Two on three, still good numbers.
“The keys are in the ignition,” Nathan addressed the Army impostor.
Footsteps sounded from behind. A twenty-something black male in a reflective vest and dark cargos hanging halfway down his ass swaggered up. The idiots couldn’t even scrape together enough gear to maintain a believable façade.
The kid waved to his cohort at the Altima. “Sergeant Hulka, get that car out of the way! Gotta get this man’s Bentley parked.
“Private Brown will take you to the safe zone,” Faker continued as he sidled past Nathan, toward the Flying Spur.
Nathan turned to face Private Brown the Gangsta. “Shall we?”
“Yeah, sure.” Brown looked him up and down with a cocksure sneer.
Slam. Hostile #1 had entered the trap, aka the Bentley. Hostile #2 moved the obstructing vehicle. Hostile #3 awaited apprehension.