I made it over the fence, ducking and dodging the long, gnarled witch fingers of rebar jutting up from the ground and clawing at the cold black sky. Twenty yards out from the loading dock of the building, I stepped on something ribbed and soft. Something that gave a final discordant wheeze: The body of a pit bull issuing the last gases of its mortality.
Clearing the last hurdle of rubble and clambering onto the factory’s crumbling loading dock, I gave very brief thought to today’s date: November 1: el Dia de Los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. A time Mexicans commemorate the lives of loved ones who had shed their mortal coil.
In the core of Mexicantown, a thousand candles would light up the cold, dark night. Skeleton marionettes and people costumed as skeletons would dance. On this first night, mothers and grandmothers would cry and share stories of the lives of children lost. And tomorrow evening, children would hear stories of their forefathers, stories of the mothers of their blood. There would be sounds of traditional Mexican folk and mariachi music echoing in the cold air. The comingling aromas of pan de muertos, roasting chili peppers, grilled beef and chicken, seasoned beans, rice and tortillas.
Any other time, I might have joined in these celebrations. I would have celebrated the lives of my mother and grandmothers. I would have toasted tequila to the spirits of my father and his fathers’ fathers.
This was not any other time.
Tonight, I was the sword in God’s left hand. And soon there would be blood on the blade.
I brought out the walkie-talkie.
“I’m here,” I said into the walkie-talkie. “No more marathons. Let’s get this done.”
I hoped God was watching over me.
And if not God, then Tomás and Frank.
Brewster radioed the directions I was to take through the abandoned building and I made my way cautiously through the dark cavern of the forgotten factory. Somewhere was the sound of gushing water. A busted water main. No telling how long city water had been rushing in unabated, further weakening an already crippled structure; a day, a year, a decade.
I came to a stop at a large open area next to a toppled forklift: someone was sitting thirty yards away in the center of the floor, breathing hard, hands tied behind their back. There was enough light to see that it was a young black man. He was wearing one lime-green Nike running shoe. Standing next to the man was someone dressed in tactical black and holding what could have been a machine pistol.
“They killed her, man,” Skittles said, his voice low and quivering. “Shot her. Like she was—was nothin’, man. They shot Jersey Girl—”
Before he could say anything else, Brewster’s man brought a quick, decisive fist to Skittles’s jaw.
“Let’s get to business, Mr. Snow, shall we?” Brewster’s voice came through the darkness without benefit of the walkie-talkie. In the dark echo chamber of the building, it was difficult to pinpoint exactly where his voice came from. My best guess was it came from behind Skittles and maybe at the ten or eleven o’clock position.
“You okay?” I called out to Skittles.
“I’ve been very patient with you, Mr. Snow,” Brewster’s voice echoed. “Far more than I should have been.”
Four red dots appeared on Skittles’s chest, the red laser trails streaming down from the open second floor.
“You know it’s over, right?” I said. “Your friendly neighborhood FBI dropped in on the bank this afternoon. It’s done, Brewster. You and your boys probably have less than an hour to find a small, safe corner of the world.”
“For the life of me, I can’t figure out why you persist in being such a pain in my ass,” Brewster said. “There was never anything in this for you. Why, Mr. Snow?”
Instead of a clear head, my mind was on fire with the image of the dead girl at the Rocking Horse building. And from within the flames I heard Rose Mayfield’s voice: How could a benevolent God just sit back and watch the horror of what people go through every day? “You know what I can’t figure out?” I finally said. “I can’t figure out why Eminem isn’t the fucking mayor and why there aren’t statues of the Supremes, Four Tops, Marcus Belgrave and George Clinton on Woodward Avenue. I can’t figure out why there isn’t a statue of Aurelio Rodriguez outside Comerica Park or why Moby’s such a big fuckin’ deal and Juan Atkins and Derrick May aren’t. And I for damn sure can’t figure out why I’m paying for basic cable but I’m getting premium digital cable plus streaming channels I didn’t sign up for—”
“Tha’d be me,” Skittles said, his words slurring. It was a sure bet his head had been rocked around by a few brutal punches.
“Insolent to the very end,” Brewster said. “Here’s my last, generous offer to you: I make you watch while I riddle the young man’s body with bullets. Or you die first so you don’t have to watch me riddle the young man with bullets.”
“How’s this for a counter offer, Brewster?” I said. “How ‘bout you eat a steaming bag of dicks?”
Then I heard it.
Second floor. Three o’clock. A gurgling sound. The sound of a man’s throat being cut and the opened trachea flooding with blood.
One of the red laser dots quivered erratically then disappeared from Skittle’s chest.
From the second floor two small fireballs arched down, smashing on the floor, the flames fanning out near Skittles and the man with the machine pistol.
Sticky bombs.
I brought up my Glock and fired three times in quick succession as I ran toward Skittles. I hit the man guarding him twice, knocking him back seven or eight feet. He was wearing a vest. Jesus. Everybody’s got a goddamn bulletproof vest these days.
Gunfire erupted overhead. Bullets chipped into the water-logged concrete floor, sending chunks flying.
The man guarding Skittles regained his bearings and fired the machine pistol at me, missing by inches. I fired again twice and he went down, this time for good. At my heels machine-gun fire continued to blister the concrete. Five single quick succession gunshots from the second story. A man’s black-clad body tumbled from above, crashing decisively to the floor behind me.
Skittles had taken one in the forearm and one in the thigh. As I ran I fired my own succession of shots to where I believed Brewster had hidden in the shadows. I reached Skittles in time to yank him out of the chair. The two of us tumbled behind a large concrete column.
I dumped a spent clip and slapped another one in the Glock.
Five more single shots rang out. A blast from a shotgun. More machine-pistol fire chipping away at the column Skittles and I huddled against. I quickly checked Skittles’s forearm and thigh wounds. Not bad, but if this wasn’t done soon, he would bleed out. Most of the firefight was on the second level, the one-o’clock position on my right, two-o’clock on my left. I ripped off a part of his shirt and tied it around the thigh wound. Sporadic gunfire. More machine-pistols erupting. Then I said, “Stay here.”
Skittles nodded anxiously, eyes wide with fear and pain.
Since I hadn’t returned fire in the time it took to tie off Skittles’s wound, two of Brewster’s men got brave. They ran, firing their weapons at the column we were huddled behind. Bravery is often just stupidity, though; I dropped both men fifteen yards out, one bullet for each.
Echoing footfalls. Running. Someone to my right. I spun out from the concrete column and saw him: another shadowed figure with a machine-pistol. Four shots from my Glock. He fell.
“How many?” I yelled. I was cautiously confident the balance of power was about even. I needed to hear the voices of my friends to make sure they were in good standing.
“Three,” came Tomás’s echoing voice. Second floor.
“Four and a half,” Frank’s voice joined. Behind me, twenty yards at the four-o’clock position.
“Half?” I said.
“Still alive, but ain’t too happy about it,” Frank said.
I was pretty sure there were two more inside.
And Brewster.
I ran to another concrete column
about twenty feet away. Bullets from another machine-pistol cut into an already weakened and collapsing column. One more hit and the column would go, along with a large portion of the second floor.
The unmistakable click of a magazine being changed out.
I spun out from behind the column just in time to see the man slap in another clip and bring the machine pistol up.
Three shots from my gun and he was dead.
More gunfire from the second floor.
“I could use a little help up here!”
Tomás.
I ran up a flight of steps. Some of the steps crumbled beneath my feet as I pushed forward.
“Where?” I shouted.
“Here.”
A familiar voice.
I spun around.
A man dressed in tactical black had Tomás on his knees and was pointing the barrel of his gun at the top of Tomás’s head.
Dax.
“Qala Sarkarit, Afghanistan,” he said. “Is it true you had a kill four hundred yards out with a five-kilometer-an-hour crosswind, Lance Corporal? That the shot that put you up there with Lyudmila Pavlichenko? Or is that just more jarhead bullshit?”
If anything was going to grab and twist my guts it was hearing this bastard address me by my old marine rank. And reminding me of the one shot I should never have taken.
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Dax snapped. “What does matters is you and your friend walk away right now or more people than you can possibly imagine will die. Drop whatever artillery you’ve got and I promise—you and the Cisco Kid here can walk away.”
“Let my friend go now.”
“Not until you agree to walk away,” Dax said.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re betting your friend’s life on which of us is the better shot.”
“My money’s on the home team,” Tomás said.
“Mine, too,” I said just before the two of us leveled our guns at each other and fired.
I felt the impact of a bullet punch into my upper right rib cage, taking my breath away and knocking me off my feet. I lay on my back trying to force myself to breathe, listening to the echoes of gunfire and thanking God for my bulletproof vest. Then I heard footsteps approaching me. The shadow of a man standing over me. A hand reaching out.
I took the hand, pulled on it and struggled to my feet.
Tomás.
“I get him?” I said, fighting through the pain.
“One in the throat,” Tomás said. “I knew you were good, but damn, amigo.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Tomás it was a blind-as-a-bat lucky shot.
From the back of the building we heard more gunfire. Tomás called out for Frank and got no reply. Only more automatic weapons fire.
And that’s when we felt it. Heard it.
The second floor groaning. Buckling beneath our feet. Concrete snapping and popping. It was seconds away from collapsing, threatening to bury Tomás and me beneath several hundred tons of rubble.
One option.
Run.
Tomás gathered up his shotgun and we ran through the opaque grey. Beneath us, the floor was giving way, buckling, shattering, exploding. We made it to another set of stairs at the back of the building. The second floor came crashing down just as we made it to the loading dock. Plumes of grey concrete dust and shards of debris buffeting against our backs. I hoped—prayed—Skittles had the strength, speed and good sense to make it out of the collapsed building.
The cool and persistent November winds quickly swept away the cloud of concrete dust. Beneath a now brilliant moon, Tomás and I scanned the field between Rocking Horse and the abandoned factory for any signs of Frank. In the middle of the rugged debris field was the last of Brewster’s men.
The man had his machine pistol leveled at a collection of boulder-sized concrete chunks.
“Come and get some, sugah pie!” the man cackled. “You know you want it!”
“Frank,” Tomás said under his breath.
We jumped down from the loading dock and navigated our way toward the man. Tomás may have been almost thirty years older and a good twenty pounds heavier than me, but his surprising speed and agility over the rugged landscape left me outpaced by at least fifteen feet.
Twenty feet away from the man, Tomás stopped and leveled his shotgun.
“Drop it and turn around!” Tomás yelled.
The man whipped out a .45 and pointed it at Tomás, keeping his machine pistol aimed at the concrete slab that Frank was huddled behind. The man was wounded and bloodied. The “half” Frank had shot earlier.
“I know you,” Machine Pistol Man said, squinting at Tomás.
“My home,” Tomás said. “You and your partner.”
“Oh, yeah,” the man said. “Nothing personal, amigo.”
“My granddaughter was there—”
“Now you hold on, amigo!” the man said, rocking on his heels. He was losing a lot of blood. “I don’t do no kids, border-babies or no, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” The man cut his eyes to me and a smile formed beneath his droopy mustache. “I hear you gave my old partner quite a what-for.”
The Russian thug with star tattoos on his knees.
“I did,” I said.
“Don’t like workin’ with no Russians anyway,” the man said, wavering on his feet. “Unpredictable. Got that meat-on-the-hoof attitude. And that boy, he wasn’t half right, bless his heart.”
“Put your weapons down,” Tomás said. “Easy.”
“Well, now, that just ain’t gonna happen, is it?” The man laughed.
“You got three seconds before you die,” Tomás said. “One …”
The man leveled his .45 for the shot, but it was too late; the blast from Tomás’s shotgun echoed through the night, lifting the man off his feet, throwing him ten feet back. His airborne body came to an ugly end, landing hard and twisted on a pile of concrete rubble.
Tomás walked to the body and gave the man’s head a nudge with the still smoking barrels of his shotgun. “Viva Zapata, motherfucker.”
Frank emerged from behind the concrete rubble.
“You just made my Christmas list, dude,” Frank said extending a hand to Tomás.
“Next time, cabron,” Tomás said taking Frank’s hand and shaking it, “don’t kill someone halfway. Kill them all the way.”
Behind us was the sound of a man struggling to breathe, clambering over the wreckage of the field.
Brewster.
He was running as best as a wounded man could, falling several times as he tried desperately to escape the debris field.
I got to him after his last spill to the hardened ground.
He was bleeding from the hip. After a right cross to his jaw, I patted him down, stood, pointed my Glock at the bridge of his nose and said, “It’s over.” Then I made a quick call to O’Donnell and told her part one of our agreement was in hand.
“It was business,” Brewster said, his voice trembling. “That’s all it ever was!”
I thought about Ray Danbury, Mariana Spiegelman, and Vivian and Colleen. And Skittles’s friend, Jersey Girl.
It would have been easy to squeeze one last shot. Very easy. But killing him would have killed a large part of the signed agreement I had with the FBI.
Through the cold moonlit wasteland a voice said, “I would very much appreciate your moving away from Mr. Deubel.” A quick-clipped voice. German? Eastern European?
Tomás, Frank and I brought our weapons up and crouched, not knowing where in the soupy darkness to point our guns.
“Please,” the voice said. “There isn’t much time for any of us.”
In the northeastern distance was the growing sound of sirens.
I lowered my weapon.
“You sure?” Tomás whispered to me.
I didn’t reply. Following my lead, Tomás and Frank lowered their weapons. The figure of a man emerged from the darkness. He
was dressed in what appeared to be a black wool car coat and black fedora. It was hard to tell where the perimeters of his body ended and the night began. He was holding a long-barreled automatic pistol with suppressor and laser scope.
“Please,” Brewster said, twisting his body to get a look at the man. Brewster knew the voice. It was the voice of his death. Brewster writhed in pain, but it was more than his gunshot wounds. It was knowing he was at the precipice between what his champagne life had been and the final void he was seconds away from being jettisoned into. He was crying.
“I’ve done good things! Boston! Nashville!”
The man dressed in black flicked his gun at me. “Please move away, Mr. Snow.” I took two steps back from Brewster and the man said, “Thank you.”
“You can’t do this!” Brewster shouted.
The man in black pointed his gun at Brewster’s head and dispassionately fired two bullets. Calmly, the man collected up his shell casings, then casually leveled his weapon at me. He scrutinized me from head to toe, smiled, lowered his weapon, then turned to walk away.
“You work for these people?” I said to the shadowed man.
In the darkness behind me Frank harshly whispered, “Dude! Just let him walk!”
“An independent contractor,” the man said, turning slightly to me. “I have no vested interest in the dealings of the organization.” The man paused, then said, “Michigan is such a beautiful state. I especially like Traverse City. You were quite effective there, Mr. Snow.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Were you there for me or the women?”
“Neither,” the man said. “Merely an observer fascinated with your—how shall I say?—obsession with this whole matter. You have certain rare talents, Mr. Snow. Gifts. I admire them.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”
The man paused again for a second before continuing, “This is the most conversation I’ve ever had on a job. Thank you for that.”
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