The Box

by Jeremy Brown

  No shots were coming their way, so far, and Razvan was reaching for the door when something very close exploded, impossibly loud, knocking him to the ground and silencing the machine gun.

  Now there was just ringing in his ears as he tried to sort out what was happening.

  And it was fairly clear.

  The whole thing was a setup, and he’d jumped right into it.

  Well, sort of.

  The good news was, now he wouldn’t need to work to find the thieves.

  They’d come right back to him.

  He pointed at Nora and told Benj, “Put a gun to her head.”

  Then he called Chicago.

  When the old voice answered Razvan asked in Romanian, “How long?”

  The answer was good news.

  Razvan said to the old voice, “Wait, please,” because a man—the boyfriend again—was hollering through the closed door, telling them about the predicament they were in and how they might get out of it.

  When he was done, Razvan went back to the phone.

  “Give me the direct number to the crew.”

  “You don’t need to talk to them,” the old man said. “They talk to me.”

  Razvan didn’t have time for it.

  “Look, you want your money? Give me the fucking number. Now. The thieves are here, we have them trapped. You’ll only get in the way.”

  After a moment of shocked silence, the old man gave him the number. He sounded disgusted about having to do so, but that was for another time.

  Razvan called the number and told the man who answered what to do.

  Then he ended the call and told Benj and Costel, “We hold out for ten minutes. Maybe less.”

  They nodded.

  Nora hadn’t moved since Benj pressed the gun to her temple, and now the only thing moving were her eyes, wide and searching for help.

  Razvan grinned at her, piling the flesh around his sunken eyes, and yelled to the men outside, “Fuck you. You open that door, she dies.”

  Donaldson stood in the open door of his cruiser, gaping down the dirt road at the fireworks show coming from the Romanian property.

  The sounds were a bit behind the flashes of gunfire, all of it unmistakable and taking him straight back to his time in combat, surreal and not anything he wanted to experience again.

  Then a big flash and a second later the crack and boom of a large explosion, and Donaldson ducked back into the cruiser and got on the radio, fighting the urge to call for air support.

  “Sheriff, it’s insane out here. I’ve got shots fired and bombs going off.”

  Sheriff Wern said, “Bombs?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Well, who’s out there? Just the Romanians?”

  “I have no idea. I assume it’s them and the guys who went after the armored car this morning.”

  Wern was silent for what seemed an hour, then said, “Any sign of Nora Albrecht or her vehicle? A Lexus?”

  “What? No. Why?”

  “Well, she’s not exactly missing, but Hennig didn’t find her out at her place. And Jim saw a man driving her car…”

  Donaldson shook his head, marveling at the sheriff locking up the radio while he thought out loud.

  When the line was open again he said, “I don’t know about any of that. But we got big problems out here, and I mean big. We—”

  Then he stopped and listened.

  “Hold on sheriff, it all went quiet just now.”

  “Can you see anything?”

  “Just the silos poking up over the street, and the lights, and what looks to be smoke. I can’t see anything on the ground.”

  “No vehicles moving around?”

  “Negative. I’m gonna drive closer for a look.”

  “You damn well will not, Donaldson. You stay put.”

  “Sheriff, they—”

  “Whatever is going on out there is between them. None of my people are getting hurt over some dirty money getting tugged on by two gangs of scumbags.”

  Donaldson was a little ashamed of the relief he felt at being ordered to stand down, but he couldn’t give up that easily.

  “You said the Albrecht girl might be out here.”

  “No, I said she’s not at home. You get confirmation she’s out there with the Romanians, that’s another story.”

  “So, I ought to take a look.”

  “You ought not! Stay put or I’ll call your butt back to the station.”

  “Fine, copy that. But—hold on, I got headlights approaching from the southeast. Any units coming my way?”

  “No,” Wern said, “is it the Lexus?”

  Donaldson waited until the vehicle got closer. It had those bright LED headlights with the blue tint, painful to look straight into, but he could tell it was too big to be the missing Lexus.

  “Some kind of SUV or larger,” he said. “Standby.”

  He put the radio down and walked around the hood of the cruiser, where he was illuminated by his own lights and felt safe with the buffer of the car between him and the approaching vehicle.

  He put his left hand up, telling the driver to stop.

  His right hand was on his service pistol.

  The vehicle came on, slowing as it got closer, and when it stopped Donaldson was going to tell them to keep going straight toward home or turn around, depending on who it was.

  But it didn’t stop.

  It rolled right past the cruiser and Donaldson, who glared at the heavily tinted passenger window and couldn’t see a damn thing inside.

  It was a Suburban, long as a ship as it rolled by, and he thumped on the back door.

  “I said stop!”

  The Suburban ignored him.

  It got to the intersection with the Cherokee parked across the western stretch of 64th Street and bumped into the ditch, the engine clearing its throat when the big tank climbed out the other side and kept rolling down 64th toward the compound.

  Donaldson was angry enough to send a few warning shots over the roof, but instead made note of the Illinois plates and shared the situation with Sheriff Wern, who went quiet again for a few moments, then said, “Okay, get out of there.”

  “Say again?”

  “Pull back. I don’t want you sitting between whatever comes out of that place and the way out of town. Go north, far enough they won’t see you, and make sure this thing doesn’t spill out.”

  Donaldson didn’t know what to think of this plan, if you could call it that.

  “Well, what the hell should I do if it does spill out?”

  “I’ll probably call the National Guard, but I’d rather not. Now get moving.”

  Bruder listened to the channel with the open microphone, inside the counting room with the Romanians, but they were speaking in Romanian and offering zero insight for what they were planning.

  Connelly paced the width of the pickup truck, back and forth along the front bumper.

  “They can’t kill her,” Rison said, to calm him down. “If they do, they’re dead.”

  “Yeah, but are they too stupid to know that? I mean, they won’t even say what they want. Like, a truck and half the money. They won’t say anything.”

  Kershaw said, “They’re just killing time. Stalling until backup arrives.”

  “Which we can’t allow to happen,” Bruder said.

  Connelly shook his head.

  “Well, we can’t just bust in there. Razvan has that gun on her, and those other two are armed. We kick that door once, she’s dead.”

  “Tell them you’re gonna blow the charge,” Rison said.

  “They won’t buy it. Not for a second. Not with her in there holding it.”

  Rison shrugged.

  “Worth a shot.”

  “No, I’ll go talk to them,” Connelly said. “I’ll get them to come out.”

  “Don’t bother,” Bruder told him.

  They all looked at Bruder, then followed his gaze toward the road, where they saw bright LED headlights coming their way, strob
ing through the tree line.

  Bruder asked Rison, “You have number five?”

  Rison brought the explosive charge with ******5 written on it and handed it to Bruder along with the remote.

  Bruder looked at the clumps of soil and scraps of corn leaf stuck to the bundle.

  Rison shrugged again.

  “I kinda tossed it away from me before I hit the button on number four. Just in case.”

  He looked at Connelly.

  “No offense.”

  Connelly didn’t notice. He was watching the headlights coming closer, probably seeing them as the end of his chance to get Nora out of that room with Razvan.

  Bruder asked Kershaw, “You got the door?”

  He nodded along his rifle.

  Bruder pointed to the pickup blocking the gate and told Rison, “Move the truck.”

  That snapped Connelly out of it.

  “No. What? You’re letting them in?”

  Bruder and Rison were already jogging to the truck.

  “Keys are in it,” Rison said, and started it up and bumped backward over chunks of rubble from the gunner’s bunker.

  When he had enough room Bruder swung both sides of the gate open and spent a few seconds studying the mess on the outside of the fence, then dropped the explosives next to a piece of tarpaper with a ragged scrap of plywood still attached.

  He and Rison hustled back to the front of the house and got behind the vehicles parked there.

  “Door,” Kershaw called out.

  Bruder looked over and the door to the counting room was opening.

  Nora appeared first.

  She had a long, thin arm tucked under her chin like a snake and the satchel of explosives clutched against her chest.

  The arm belonged to Razvan, his left, and he followed her through the doorway.

  Even with her throat in the crook of his elbow, Razvan’s arm was still long enough to use that hand to press a phone to his ear.

  The other hand held a pistol with a fore grip, or extra magazine, hanging down below the barrel.

  The gun dug into her ribs hard enough to curve her torso.

  Rison and Kershaw and Connelly tracked him with their rifles and Connelly said, “Stop. Gun down and move away from her.”

  Razvan ignored him and spoke Romanian into the phone.

  His eyes glittered in their sockets and he grinned out at Bruder and the others.

  “What a long day, eh boys? You can relax now, it’s done. It’s over.”

  He moved out of the doorway so the other two men could get past. They tried to aim their pistols at everyone at once, and the one Bruder recognized from Nora’s shed approached Connelly with one hand out.

  “Give me the rifle.”

  “Stop right there,” Connelly said.

  “Come on, asshole. Look, you see those headlights? That’s your doom.”

  After a few seconds of looking around, Razvan’s eyes landed on Bruder and stayed there.

  He called across the lot, “You’re the boss. I can tell. The only one not bothering to point a weapon at us. The General.”

  Bruder checked the headlights, coming up on the tree line now, and didn’t answer.

  “The cavalry,” Razvan said, gesturing with the phone as well. “They want to have you drawn and quartered. You know what that means?”

  “Claudiu didn’t mention that one,” Bruder said.

  The smile fell off Razvan’s face, but his eyes still glittered back in their pits.

  He stared at Bruder but spoke for everyone to hear.

  “The boss will get what’s coming to him. The rest of you fucking thieves, put your guns down and behave, and I’ll give you quick deaths. After you watch him die.”

  “Let Nora go first,” Connelly said.

  Razvan sneered at him and nuzzled his chin across the top of Nora’s head.

  “We’re way past that, boyfriend. It was never going to happen anyway. You were both dead the moment you arrived. You were all dead the moment you touched my money.”

  He stretched tall, unconcerned in his moment of victory about exposing himself to the rifles, which were now dipping toward the ground as the vehicle rolled into the reach of security lights and became a blacked-out Suburban.

  It slowed for the turn into the driveway and tried to weave around the larger bits of concrete and metal.

  “Welcome to Iowa,” Razvan said into the phone, and Bruder hit the remote.

  The explosives lifted the back end of the Suburban off the ground, making it look like a bucking horse for a second, and blew the windows out and doors open.

  Bruder and his crew were ready for it, though it still made them flinch.

  Razvan and his men were not, and they ducked and twisted and spent too much time trying to figure out what happened.

  In that time, the rifles came back up.

  Kershaw put five fast rounds into the big Romanian, who fell face-down into the stones.

  Rison shot the one reaching for Connelly’s gun twice, center mass, and once more in the head as he sagged.

  Connelly dove for the gun in Razvan’s hand and Razvan, who probably had time to shoot Nora, panicked and brought the pistol toward Connelly and fired as Connelly dropped away from the barrel and yanked the wrist down with him.

  Bruder shot Razvan once under the right collarbone, then again, just below the first shot, when Nora spun away.

  Razvan’s head was there the whole time, floating like a balloon above Nora, but Bruder didn’t want to risk a miss.

  Connelly pulled the gun out of Razvan’s limp hand and tossed it away, then shoved the Romanian in the chest to speed his collapse against the wall next to the counting room door.

  Kershaw kept his rifle pointed at Razvan and said, “You hit?”

  “I’m fine,” Connelly said, and rushed to Nora.

  Rison glanced at Bruder to make sure he was good, and said, “Looks like we’re all keeping our blood inside today.”

  Then he looked at the smoking Suburban with its doors hanging open like loose teeth.

  “Them, not so much.”

  “Come on,” Kershaw said, and he and Rison went to see if any more work needed to be done.

  Bruder walked over to Connelly and Nora and pried them apart to get at the satchel.

  “Gimme that,” he said, and took the explosives from her and the remote from Connelly.

  He crouched next to Razvan and shoved the satchel under his damp shirt, then checked him over.

  He found Nora’s phone and kept it, and Nora’s gun stuck in his waistband, and he took that too.

  Then he looked at the phone Razvan had been using to talk to the Suburban.

  That call had ended abruptly, but the phone was still unlocked.

  “This other Chicago number. This is your boss?”

  Razvan groaned and coughed blood.

  Bruder said, “What did you say about us? About Nora and her boyfriend?”

  Razvan showed him bloody teeth.

  “Everything. I told him everything.”

  Bruder considered that.

  “Him? It’s just one man?”

  The grin faltered.

  “No, dozens of men. Hundreds.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Bruder said, picking the ugly pistol up. “What’s the address?”

  Razvan laughed and coughed.

  “Fuck you.”

  Kershaw and Rison strolled back.

  “It’s a genetic blender in there,” Kershaw said.

  Bruder showed him the phone.

  “You can find the address for this number?”

  “Sure. Just a matter of time and effort.”

  Razvan looked between them, his bluster fading to confusion.

  “You’re going to see him?”

  “No, you are.”

  The confusion turned to surprise when the bullets hit him, then the surprise turned to nothing.

  They put the loose cash back inside the duffel bags and loaded them into the bed of Ra
zvan’s pickup truck.

  When that was done, they dragged Razvan’s body into the counting room, then the others from the lot and the dust-covered machine gunner, stacking them on top of Razvan and the explosives.

  The bodies in the Suburban stayed where they were.

  Connelly kept a close eye on Nora, who helped load the cash but didn’t want to touch the bodies.

  She was a little shaky, which was understandable, but seemed to understand and accept what had happened, and what needed to happen next.

  All in all, his opinion of her continued to grow.

  Rison checked the house to make sure no one was locked or hiding inside, then opened the wood stove and stuck the corner of a blanket in. He dragged the opposite corner to a couch and dumped the barrel of dirty paper plates and napkins over all of it and walked out.

  They all met at the Lexus and agreed it was time to leave.

  Rison drove Connelly and Nora in the Lexus through the gate and around the Suburban.

  Kershaw and Bruder followed in Razvan’s truck.

  They got to the tree line and stopped and met between the two vehicles.

  Smoke began to lap out of the house’s open front door.

  “I just realized I’m starving,” Rison said. “Who wants a burger?”

  “Maybe down the road,” Bruder said.

  He had the remote labeled with ******3 in his hand.

  “I think Connelly should have the honors,” Kershaw said.

  Nora said, “Who’s Connelly?”

  Then, when Bruder handed the remote to the man next her, “Oh.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Donaldson heard the booms and the shots, then another big boom, then he watched the car and truck roll down 64th Street toward Pine.

  He was north of the intersection, like the sheriff wanted, pulled off the road and close enough to be seen from the intersection in daylight but invisible in the dark.

  He got out and rested his elbows on the cruiser’s roof to look through the binoculars he’d gotten from the trunk.

  The second vehicle’s headlights showed him the Lexus in front, and he figured the second one for a pickup by the height and shape of its lights.