by Jordan Cole
Riley stared at it. It was the same one he’d purchased at a markup from Murray’s electronics, a few weeks ago. The one he gave to Dallas as joking gift, deeming it useless. Dallas must have agreed. He’d likely thrown it in his trunk and forgotten about it. Riley looked at the box in disbelief. He figured his odds of surviving the night had just increased exponentially. They’d jumped to 1 in 500.
Riley bent his arms around painfully until he could grasp the box in his curled hands. Was able to tear through the packaging, and the red knife fell into the trunk. He scooped it up with his fists and used his fingernail to flick out one of the blades. A pointed corkscrew, like a wine opener. No good. He pressed it back into place with his thumb and tried the next one. A small penknife. About the size of his pinky. Not at all a decent cutting tool. Useful for stabbing the top of a can, maybe. But he had no other choice. He clutched the handle of the knife between his index and middle finger, taking great care not to drop it. Bent forward into a V, raising his bound legs into the air. Bolts of pain in his midsection as he flexed. He spit blood from his mouth and brought the knife down against the duct tape. Started to work at it.
Another rifle shot, another flat crack echoing across the grass. Riley heard the bullet whizzing overhead. The sound of bark snapping, like it had chipped off a tree branch. He didn’t have much time. Sooner or later, Metzer and Kovac were going to realize the shooter wasn’t hitting anything. They would flank around the tree line and hunt him down, or come back for Riley and regroup. Kovac seemed to have a better understanding of the situation. He wasn’t just going to let Riley run off into the forest.
Riley sawed at the duct tape, his back against the bumper of the Town Car. Hands slicked with sweat. Twice he nearly dropped the knife before managing to reposition it. Like a clumsy, half-witted magician twirling a quarter along his knuckles. The first layer of duct tape peeled away. The thing was cutting, but agonizingly slowly, as if the blade was dulling with every swipe. He could hear Kovac shouting, somewhere along the side of the farmhouse.
“Metzer! Where are you? Get over here and help me!”
Riley kept going, his arms pistoning back and forth like a jackhammer. Ignoring the growing pain in his gut. He could deal with nausea and bruising, compared to being buried alive. Another layer of duct tape burst open and fell away. He felt the pressure around his legs loosen. Almost there. Sparks flaring in his neck and shoulders. No rifle shots in the last minute. Just the husky sound of the knife working its way through the tape. Riley cut through the final layer. The tension loosened enough that he was able to jerk his legs. They came apart. The remnants of the tape fell away. He tilted forward onto his feet.
Footsteps to his left. Someone running across the grass. Either Kovac or Metzer, circling back around after a lull in the shooting. Making sure Riley hadn’t wriggled off somewhere. Whoever it was moved frantically. Nobody strolls when there’s an active shooter in the tree line to your back. They’d either taken out the shooter, or they realized he couldn’t hit anything and were doubling back to take care of Riley. Neither outcome was very good.
Riley tried to maneuver the Swiss Army knife to cut his zip cuffs, but it was hopeless. His fists were turned upward, like a palsy victim. Impossible to position the blade against the material. He tried holding the knife in his teeth. Which caused him a lot of pain, considering several of them were newly missing. It wasn’t working. His mouth was slick with blood, and he couldn’t clamp the knife with enough pressure to cut into the nylon. Then he tried smashing the zip tie against the curved piece of metal where the trunk opened. Brought his arms down in a glancing blow, like he was trying to break a stack of bricks. No good. The zip-ties were heavy duty things. A steel spring ran through the nylon to prevent exactly this type of tomfoolery. Riley tried one last time, using all the strength in his upper body. The zip-tie cuffs bounced back, unharmed. He heard someone curse.
It was Kovac. Probably had just returned to the would-be burial site to find Riley missing. Wouldn’t take him long to spot the path of trampled grass and blood leading to the trunk of the Town Car. Riley figured he had about twenty seconds.
Riley circled around to the rear passenger’s side door. He crouched down against the frame, his arms still rigid and useless in front of him. Footsteps approaching quickly, heading for the trunk, yawning open wide where it hadn’t been before. He weighed the possible options, in fractions of a second.
He could make a beeline for the forest. Run for his life and hope to reach the tree line. But an MP5 was accurate out to a hundred yards. Kovac would turn and fire and spray a full magazine into Riley’s back before he made it ten steps. Would barely even have to aim, at that distance. Running wasn’t much of an option. Which left attacking.
He’d have one shot at it. Meet Kovac head on as he approached the trunk, surprise him, and get him on the ground somehow. No going for the balls this time. It had to be a disabling kick, the femur or the shinbone. Painful and crippling and quick. If Kovac stayed on his feet after the first blow, it would be over. The last thing Riley saw would be the H&K, swinging toward him.
He took a deep breath. Then another. Time slowed and collapsed to a single point. Like everything was happening underwater. The footsteps grew louder and louder, until they were nearly upon him.
Riley made his move. He darted around the rear of the car, and his heart sank. He realized immediately it wasn’t going to work. Kovac was too far away. Just a step or so in the wrong direction. Riley watched, helpless, as Kovac’s eyes widened in recognition, the submachine gun rising slowly from his hip as if it were drenched in molasses. There was no way Riley could clear the distance in time. He was going to die.
Then the long gun fired again.
The bullet passed over them, maybe five yards above their heads. Riley actually saw it tunnel into the ground, a few hundred feet beyond. Kovac’s eyes darted up and to the left, instinctively tracking the muzzle blast. He hesitated for an infinitesimal moment. In that smallest instant, his gun stopped rising. A pause consisting of microseconds. But maybe long enough.
Riley sprang forward. Flexed his right leg and kicked as hard as he’d ever kicked anything. He was wearing the same boots as the first time they had tangled. But this kick made that one look like a polite nudge. Like a ballerina’s flutter. If Kovac’s shin had been a football, it would have gone fifty yards in the air, easy. But it wasn’t. It was skin and muscle and bone, and when Riley heard the impact, he knew he had shattered it. Kovac screamed. A scream of a kind Riley had heard, a few times before. It was a significant vocalization. That kind of scream meant you were finished.
Kovac’s shinbone snapped like a fresh stick of celery. No way he could stay upright, even if he wanted to. The laws of physics wouldn’t allow it. He fell onto his side, still screaming, desperately grappling for the H&K, which swung out in front of him. Riley kicked him in the face, just under the chin. Kovac’s arms went limp. His eyes rolled up to their whites. He sprawled onto the grass and lay unmoving. Riley stuck a boot through the H&K’s strap and lifted the gun off him. Then Riley stomped on Kovac’s head as hard as he could. Stomped again, then once more, until the crushed thing beneath his heel no longer resembled a human face in the slightest. This asshole already had his second chance. Riley wasn’t about to let him hang around for a third.
He leaned against the side of the town car, hyperventilating. Sweat and blood in his face. Kovac’s crumpled body. The H&K lay on the ground in front of him. Useless, while Riley still had the zip cuffs on. He supposed he could try holding it sideways, curling his fingers around the trigger. He might hit something the next county over. Riley craned his neck and looked up at the sky. Then someone came running toward him, from the east.
Not Metzer. Not unless he had somehow doubled back from the farmhouse in a strange manner. Which Riley doubted. Especially considering the look of panic in his eyes when the long gun started shooting. Little chance Metzer would go running back into the line of fire.
> It wasn’t Metzer. It was a short black woman, running toward Riley at quick pace, holding a small dark Beretta in front of her. She looked familiar and his mind whirred and he realized that it was Ramirez’s partner, the one who had shot at him when he was fleeing from his cabin. What the hell she was doing out here, he didn’t have a clue. Riley backed against the Town Car and waited. If she was going to shoot him, there wasn’t much he could do about it. The submachine gun was on the grass, unfireable in his current state.
But she didn’t shoot him. She ran up with the Beretta still extended, her eyes dropping down to Kovac and his crushed skull.
“Riley,” she said. Lowered the pistol back down to her waist.
“Throop, right?” Riley said. Every syllable kindling flares of pain from his busted mouth. “Detective Throop. Ramirez’s partner?”
“Good guess.”
She was wearing a dark-green windbreaker above jeans. Not exactly the best attire for a stealthy assault. Her face a mixture of confusion and adrenaline.
“I told you I didn’t shoot Ramirez.”
Throop didn’t reply. Looked down again to the corpse at her feet, then back up at Riley.
“Your mouth is bleeding,” she said.
“Everything’s bleeding. I’ll live.”
“Where’s Metzer?”
Riley stretched out his arms, pointing to the farmhouse.
“He ran off in there once the shooting started. Seems like he’s still holed up inside. Who’s behind the rifle?”
“Friend of mine. I’ll explain later. We need to go after Metzer.”
“You want to cut me loose first?”
Throop paused. Like she knew empirically Riley was innocent but had a hard time bringing herself to believe it. Finally, she spied the Swiss army knife in the dirt. Grabbed it and started sawing through the zip-tie cuffs. The nylon was no match for the blade and she made quick work of them. Riley pulled his arms apart, flexing his fingers. Feeling better. Odds of survival improving all the time. He stooped and picked up the H&K, slinging it around his shoulder. Moved the selector switch to three-round-burst. Knelt and dug around in Kovac’s pockets and came out with his Smith & Wesson and two extra 9mm magazines. He put the revolver in his waistband and stuffed the magazines unceremoniously into his pockets. Throop didn’t try to stop him. He guessed she’d witnessed at least a portion of what had transpired over the previous half hour. Realized Riley was on the wrong end of the stick.
“Forget about Metzer,” Riley said. “They’ve taken Agatha. This whole area is some sort of militia compound. There must be other buildings, to the south. They need some kind of code or password from her, and they’re going to kill her once they get it.”
“My guy is still back there,” Throop said. “I’ve lost contact with him. I’m not going to leave him while Metzer’s running around to our rear.”
“We’re in a radio quiet zone. No cell phones, no wi-fi, no shortwave. Going to make communication difficult.”
“Well that’s just great.” She turned back in the direction of the forest. “Listen. We take Metzer out of the picture, we can coordinate. Help you track down Agatha. Better than you running off half-cocked and alone into enemy territory and hoping for the best.”
“You want Metzer bad, huh?”
“What do you think? He was playing me from the start. He’s working with the guys who killed Ramirez. He needs to go down.”
“He’s not going to be leaving in handcuffs, you know.”
Throop said nothing. Gave Riley an impatient look. He pointed at her Beretta.
“You ever fired that thing before?”
“I fired it at you, remember? Outside your cabin.”
“Yeah. But you missed.”
“We’re wasting time,” Throop said. “How do you want to do this?”
“I’ll go in through the front. You take the rear. We clear the first floor. If he’s not there, we go up together to the second. Move aggressively, but carefully. Metzer could be holed up anywhere. When you find him, don’t hesitate.”
“Okay.”
“And try not to shoot me, while you’re at it.”
“I’ll do my best to avoid that.”
They headed for the farmhouse, moving in a quick crouch, a tight side-by-side formation. As they neared the porch steps, Throop split off and looped around the eastern side, her windbreaker flapping as she went. Riley took the porch stairs two at a time and stopped beneath the dim glow of the lantern overhead. He turned the brass handle of the white painted door. Unlocked. He raised the H&K, squaring it away against his shoulder, and burst inside.
He’d expected some type of foyer, maybe a short hallway leading to a kitchen, a den to his left with a fireplace, a parlor or anteroom.
What he found instead was a madhouse.
The walls had been torn away, turning the first story of the farmhouse one large open space. Wooden flooring had been set down, and a twisting maze of railings ushered him along. Cardboard cutouts of ski-masked criminals clutching AK-47s beckoned around corners, all of them riddled with bullet holes. Alongside them were hastily painted facsimiles of wide-eyed children and old ladies. Everything illuminated dimly with dull fluorescent track lighting that must have been running on an automatic generator.
A training course, Riley thought. Urban combat simulation. The walls were padded with rubber to drag the bullets and keep them from flying out into the next state. And lurking somewhere among the snarling cardboard bad guys was Metzer, lying in wait.
The place was a demented carnival funhouse. Riley followed the wooden walkways straight. Ahead was a large board painted to look like the side of a building, a gang member with a purple mohawk peering out from a drawn-on window. He ducked left, threading through a hole in the walkway, his eyes tracing for movement through the dim light. Footsteps, from the other side of the house. Either Throop, making her way toward him, or Metzer, stalking them both. Riley held the H&K steady, moving it in time with his body. Having Throop here complicated things somewhat. He couldn’t just turn and spray if he saw movement. The half-second delay in firing response would give Metzer an edge. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Riley charged ahead, past a cutout replica of a simian-looking black man holding a knife to a young Aryan girl’s throat. All this must have been left over from the militia, Riley guessed. White supremacist lunatics, perfecting their aim out in the wilderness. A good training ground for ISIS-wannabees and neo-nazis alike.
He moved quickly through the course, scanning the crude displays, but there was no sign of Metzer. Eventually came to the end at the far rear corner from where he’d come in. Two thick slabs of rubber covered the stairs.
“Riley.”
A female voice, whispering. Throop came hustling along, around one of the rubberized corners, Beretta aloft. Didn’t shoot him out of panic. That was promising, at least.
Riley pointed upward. In normal circumstances, he’d be able to visualize a building’s layout with some degree of certainty. There’d be bedrooms, or offices, or lobbies. But the farmhouse had thrown him for a loop. He had no idea what to expect at the top of the stairs.
“I go left, you go right,” Riley whispered. “You see Metzer, shoot him.”
Throop nodded. Riley started up the stairs, hugging the left side where they would creak less. Heard Throop’s soft footfalls behind him. Sprang up from the second-to-last step and ran forward. Directly into a padded wall. Throop came to a stop beside him, puzzled. Riley stepped back, surprised. The padded wall in front of him ran floor to ceiling, and traveled around the second story in an airtight square. A small area of walkway leading all around it. No way through on this side. He squeezed along the tight space, turning the corner. Ahead, there was a small gap in the padding. A sliver of darkness, big enough for someone to lift the covering and enter the enclosed area.
Riley figured this was some sort of CQC training area. Close quarters combat. A small arena with padded walls where
the recruits could learn hand-to-hand fighting. Maybe simulated attackers would flood into the gap wearing hockey pads and foam knives, and the trainees would fight them off. Some ridiculous scenario like that. But Metzer wasn’t roaming around the outer layer. Which meant he was inside. Which presented a problem. Because there was only one way in or out.
Riley could try firing blindly with the H&K. But the arena was a big space. Nearly the whole of the second story. And the padded walls would stop or deflect some of the rounds, without a doubt. Even if he fired an entire magazine, there was no guarantee he’d hit Metzer. And then he’d have wasted thirty bullets, when he had a feeling that tonight he was going to need every one of them.
Throop met him in the corner, breathing hard, having circumnavigated the tight space the same way Riley did.
“There’s an entrance on the other side there,” she said. “A gap in the wall.”
Riley nodded.
“Saw it. Only problem is, he’s in there, waiting for us.”
“How do you know?”
“The walls are thick, but not thick enough to obscure two sets of clomping footsteps. I saw him come in, and he’s not downstairs. I doubt he can hear us talking, but he knows we’re here.”
“He could already have his gun trained on the entrance.”
“I’d wager he does. The thing is just a big square, right? Only three real places Metzer could be. Our immediate right corner, our immediate left corner, or on the far wall in the middle. Don’t think he’d be in the rear corners. Makes the shot trajectory too difficult.”