by Matt Rogers
It was a cigarette.
Someone was smoking, the burning tip weak and tepid in the dark, enhanced by the goggles.
Slater thought, Who’s out here at this hour?
He took the Ka-Bar from its holster.
No mercy. No second chances. He’d never operated that way and he never would. Ray wasn’t holding dirt on his men. He’d used Alan Ward as a desperation move, so he’d threatened the kid to get a temporary hold over him. But his men themselves … they were here of their own free will. They would have sat back and let Ray have his way with Alexis. They facilitated a sex trafficking ring, they assisted in the disappearance of witnesses. They were complicit to Josefine Bell getting eleven years in lockup — and she wouldn’t have been the first.
Slater thought all that through, and decided.
He looped round the back of the mountain of pipes and came up on the cigarette smoker from behind. The guy was short, at least four inches shorter than Slater, and impressively muscular. Slater’s goggles revealed all. He had a crude Kalashnikov AK-47 swinging on a shoulder strap, its magazine curved and full. He was disgruntled. Breathing heavy, sucking in smoke like his life depended on it, grumbling to himself. Probably cursing how unnecessary this protection work was. He knew he was just there as a deterrent, to discourage any wise-guy friends of Kerr’s kidnappers who got smart ideas and thought they’d sneak up on the warehouse from behind. He wasn’t taking his job seriously.
Bad call.
Slater took his goggles off when he was six feet away so he could see clearer up close. In the darkness he reached out with a gloved hand and crushed the cigarette into the guy’s mouth, planting his palm over the lips to muffle all sounds. The guy saw red and yelled into Slater’s palm, but the iron grip nullified all sound. All that came out was a weak and timid ‘Hey!’ All that show muscle did nothing. Slater was twice as strong, and he manhandled the guy down to his knees and slit his throat with the Ka-Bar.
The struggling ceased.
Slater lowered his body to the dirt without a sound and walked over it as he moved on.
Any bystanders would consider him a monster if they’d witnessed it.
That was fine by him.
He scaled the back fence of the lot, dropped down on the outer perimeter of the target warehouse, and scanned every window with the goggles returned to his face. All quiet.
Until it wasn’t.
Knocks and bumps emanated from a shoddy portable toilet up the back of the property, only a couple of dozen feet to Slater’s left. It was one man — another big guy — adjusting himself after using the facilities. Pulling his pants up, banging his elbows against the plastic walls. The sounds were faint, barely perceptible in the night.
Slater heard them.
He strode right up to the door and waited for it to open.
It came open slowly. The guy was big and mean and strong-jawed, one of Ray’s trademark helpers. Someone with more brawn than brains, who didn’t have time to think about the sort of suffering he was facilitating. He had something else in common with Ray. His eyes were bloodshot and wide, and there were still remnants of fine white powder intermingled with the hairs in his right nostril. A little pick-me-up for the night ahead.
At least he’d die on a high.
Slater shoved the Ka-Bar’s blade through his forehead and wrenched it out. With his other hand he pushed the guy in the chest, spilling him back into the cubicle. He landed on the seat, his eyes already glazed over.
Slater closed the door on him, making no noise at all. He crouched low and swept the yard and warehouse again.
A flash of human movement, through the glazed window of a rear door.
He vanished behind the portable toilet like he’d never been there at all.
Fifteen seconds later another thug sauntered up to the cubicle. He tried the door. It unlocked. He pushed it open. Saw his buddy stone cold dead on the toilet, a gruesome puncture wound in the middle of his forehead.
He opened his mouth to sound the alarm.
Slater materialised behind him and shoved the blade through his throat. Pulled it out with a counter-clockwise twist and pushed the guy inside on top of his colleague.
He closed the door again, calmly stepped away, and made for the warehouse.
Something stopped him in his tracks, freezing him like a deer in headlights.
Gunshots, rupturing the silence, loud and unsuppressed.
Coming from the front lot.
Slater’s blood went cold.
53
King got out, rounded the hood, and dragged Gloria Kerr out of the passenger seat.
She went willingly.
She kept her mouth shut.
Intuition paid off. Kerr wanted to live. She didn’t want to complicate things. She had all the time in the world to hunt down a traitorous junior officer when she was a free woman. There was no need to enlighten Ray to the deception until after the swap was complete. She trudged across no-man’s-land with King, slouched and placid.
Violetta came behind them with a hand on the small of Ward’s back. He still had his wrists “cable-tied.” He did his best to look absolutely terrified, which didn’t take much effort with the consequences of failure running through his head at warp speed.
The exterior lighting was barely enough to make out facial features. They were six anonymous outlines in a lot. The air ran thick with tension.
King couldn’t make out much of what Ray looked like, but from what he could gather the ex-sheriff was an impressively ugly man. Big, strong, fearsome, with a face like a bad apple.
His gun hand was shaking.
Alexis wasn’t shaking.
She was dishevelled, unkempt, but King didn’t think she’d been touched or interfered with in any way. He’d interacted with too many rape victims to count — both female and male. What he did remember was the hollow hopelessness, the deadness behind the eyes.
Alexis’ eyes blazed with defiance.
‘Hey,’ King said to her.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘You good?’
‘Yeah.’
Ray said, ‘We haven’t met.’
‘No, we haven’t,’ King said. ‘You want to put that gun down?’
Ray kept the barrel rigid against Alexis’ skull. ‘Not until you give me what I want.’
King said, ‘In that case…’
A SIG Sauer P226 MK25 appeared in his palm like a magician’s trick, and he pressed it to Kerr’s head with the same smoothness. He made sure every action was flawless. He couldn’t afford to make Ray jumpy, prone to pulling the trigger out of impulse.
Ray said, ‘What are you doing?’
King said, ‘Blowing Gloria’s brains out. Should be loud enough to draw attention. How are you going to explain it when the cops find the DA’s body all the way out here in your possession?’
‘Won’t matter to you,’ Ray said. ‘You’ll be dead.’
Silence.
Ray said, ‘And I own the cops.’
‘Really? The whole LVMPD? All six thousand employees?’
Ray went quiet.
King said, ‘You own a few bent cops in powerful positions. Don’t let that make you think you’re stronger than you are. That’s why you need Ms. Kerr here. That’s why you rely on so much help.’
‘You don’t know the first thing about what I do.’
‘I know enough.’
‘So are we doing this or what?’ Ray said.
‘As soon as you take the gun away from her head. Until then I’m happy to stand here all night.’
Ray raised a bushy eyebrow and gave a sick smile. He drifted the barrel up and down her temple. Alexis didn’t waver. Her green eyes stayed locked on King. He was her bastion of calm amidst all this tension. But Ray was getting to her with the charade, and a solitary tear slid down her cheek.
Violetta took a step forward, shoving Ward along with her, so now the four of them were lined up across from Ray and Alexis.
Ray said, ‘Just for reassurances sake — what happens afterwards?’
‘We already discussed that.’
‘Spell it out for me,’ Ray said. ‘Like I’m a kid.’
‘We take Alexis. We leave. We consider everything that’s happened to you so far punishment enough. We let you and Gloria go on with your miserable lives, and we take our little crusade someplace else.’
Kerr twitched, her face shifting against the gun barrel.
She knew he was lying.
Ray noticed.
He clammed up, went silent. Then a look passed over his face.
The dawn of realisation.
The cooperativeness vanished.
King’s stomach opened into a pit and his insides fell through it. He thought, No.
Not this close to the finish line.
Not now.
Ray said, ‘Your “crusade”?’
King shrugged.
Ray put it together. ‘You killed those guys.’
King said, ‘What?’
‘That’s what kickstarted this whole war,’ Ray said. ‘Gates thought I whacked four of his men. Calle 18 thugs. You won’t see me shedding a tear over them, but I didn’t do it. He never believed me. And then … well, I got so angry that he was attacking me, so I attacked back. I never stopped and thought, Who actually did that? It was you.’
King said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes you do.’
Alexis tensed up. King saw her coil like a spring, anticipating something. She’d spent more time around Ray and his goons. She knew him better than King did. And if she was worried…
King said, ‘Let’s discuss this rationally. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I need more details.’
‘Turn us on each other,’ Ray said, thinking out loud. ‘Create chaos. Let us rack up the body count while you sit back and put your feet up…’
King said, ‘Keith?’
Ray looked up. ‘You don’t need more details. You know what I’m talking about.’
Beside King, Ward took a step forward.
Now King tensed up.
What are you doing, Alan?
Ward said, ‘Keith, your shooters are dead. There’s another guy. This is a setup.’
Silence.
Ward said, ‘Kill the girl.’
In hindsight it made perfect sense.
Ward always had two options.
Option one: side with King, Slater and Violetta. The cop didn’t know the three of them, but he’d trusted them for a brief spell. Everything he’d seen of the vigilantes had demonstrated they were unwaveringly moral, refusing to do the wrong thing even if it got them or their loved ones killed. It was noble, just like he’d said. But it’s not human instinct. Human instinct is to survive. Ward hadn’t been able to picture himself surviving in the aftermath of the good guys winning. He’d done a bad thing by kidnapping Alexis, and he couldn’t see a scenario where they didn’t kill him just to tie everything up with a neat bow.
Option two: side with Ray. A degenerate psychopathic drug addict who made rash decisions on the regular, a man who was backed up to a wall with no way out, who’d been run out to an abandoned warehouse in Arden to take the heat off his war with violent pimp Armando Gates. Not a wise decision to choose him on the surface, but this world doesn’t exist on the surface. Ray always saw what was right in front of him. Now he saw a young man willing to help him, and because he was an impulsive moron he’d inevitably forget about the past.
Ward saw forgiveness for his mistakes in the form of Keith Ray.
If he’d chosen King, there’d always be that guilt hanging over his head, the knowledge that he’d wronged someone who never forgot, never forgave.
King and Slater’s rigidity had pushed Ward away.
King figured this all out in the blink of an eye.
Then pandemonium erupted.
King moved like a whip. He knew he’d be the first target of the shooters in the windows, so as soon as Ward said, ‘Kill the girl,’ King grabbed him by the uniform and dragged the cop in front of him.
Sorry, Alan.
This was your choice.
The first bullet hit Ward in the left side of the chest, shattering his heart, killing him instantly.
It would have hit King in the throat if he hadn’t moved.
King held him by the collar to prop up his dead body, using it as a meat shield.
King used his first shot with the SIG to nail Keith Ray between the eyes.
No bulletproof vest this time.
No miraculous salvation.
Just a dead ex-sheriff with a hole in his head.
54
Ray’s momentary confusion over Ward’s sudden allegiance switch meant that he’d been half a second off putting the gun back to Alexis’ head. It meant when he fell away with a black hole between his eyebrows and reflexively pumped the trigger, the bullet went wide and missed her. She responded fast and smart, throwing herself to the ground, covering her head with her hands.
King fired four shots up at the window he’d seen the muzzle flare come from.
Another bullet thwacked Ward’s slouching corpse.
Blood sprayed King’s face.
It wasn’t his.
More shots hit the open window — Violetta, unloading her weapon, providing suppressive fire. Zoned in with indescribable adrenaline, King saw a silhouette amplified in a second window. He fired twice and the silhouette jerked backwards and disappeared from sight.
The shooter from the first window wasn’t down.
He fired again from the darkness.
Ward’s corpse took a third direct hit.
The bullet went through and grazed King’s thigh, splitting skin, drawing blood.
King growled, ‘Fuck it.’
He couldn’t stay in no-man’s-land a second longer.
He hurled Ward’s bullet-riddled body aside and threw himself over the hood of the Range they’d arrived in. He came down on the other side in an ungainly heap, throwing dust everywhere, so it took him a moment to make out the pair of figures sliding round the trunk, finding cover too.
Violetta, dragging Kerr by the hair.
A bullet whipped past the air between them, ruffling both sets of long hair.
Violetta flinched and fell away, unsure if she’d been hit or not.
Kerr ran for it. Flat-out sprinted across the road, despite the shooter in the window not being able to identify who was a friendly and who wasn’t. Putting her life in the hands of the gods.
King raised the SIG and zoned in on her upper back as she ran away from the car.
He had a clear unobstructed shot.
He could make it with his eyes closed.
Violetta yelled, ‘No!’ over the din of the SUV absorbing rounds.
King hesitated. He looked over.
She was shaking her head violently. Blood flecked the side of her face. Not hers. From what King could gather, the bullet that had passed between them had grazed Kerr’s cheek, which was what had made Violetta let go of her in the first place. It hadn’t directly hit her, because if it had she’d be on the ground bleeding out instead of running for her life.
Lucky bitch, King thought.
Violetta shouted, ‘She knows where Elsa is!’
King still had his sights on Kerr’s rapidly shrinking silhouette.
He could still hit her effortlessly.
He didn’t lower his aim.
He said, ‘Someone here will know.’
‘Don’t risk it,’ Violetta said. ‘Let her go. We’ll get her back.’
‘How?’
Violetta didn’t answer.
King thought it through. It didn’t take long. It was a better option than leaving the DA gunned down in an industrial zone, her answers snuffed out along with her life.
He nodded.
Violetta chanced a look over the SUV’s trunk. She caught a sliver of view, then threw herself back down to avoid a cluster of shots. The
first shooter was proving relentless in his assault.
The colour had vanished from Violetta’s face. King could see it clearly in the dark.
She said, ‘Alexis isn’t there.’
‘What?’
King risked a glance over the hood. Saw the same thing. No-man’s-land bare and empty, save for the fat corpse of Keith Ray.
Violetta said, ‘She ran back inside,’ as King dropped down again.
‘Fuck.’
‘Better than standing out there in the open.’
‘True.’
‘You lay suppressive fire,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a run for—’
Something snagged in King’s short-term memory. An unusual glitch in what he’d glimpsed. He thought it over, then decided he needed a double-take. He inched back into view, his skull creeping over the top of the hood.
A shot cracked past.
He didn’t flinch.
The shooter needed uncanny accuracy he didn’t possess if he wanted to blow the top of King’s head off. King only stayed there for a full second anyway. Then he dropped back down, his suspicions confirmed.
More shots blasted the SUV.
Violetta said, ‘What are you doing?’
King held up a finger. ‘Wait.’
Three.
Two.
One.
The gunfire ceased.
55
Slater perched on the narrow roof of the ground floor’s awning.
He was practically indistinguishable from the wall behind him in his dark combat gear.
With three dead men in his wake, he’d broken into a sprint when the gunfire flared up. He’d kept the MP5 on his back and the Ka-Bar at his thigh so he had both hands free. It was only twenty feet down the side of the lot to the lip of the awning. He’d identified the window where most of the bullets were coming from, used his considerable athleticism to leap up and snatch hold of the rusting metal, and heaved and strained and vaulted up onto the lip.
From his vantage point he saw Alexis run for her life in the wrong direction. He didn’t blame her. The SUV was at least fifty feet from the warehouse, and she was closer to the front door. She’d recognised she needed to get the hell out of Dodge and disappeared under the awning, failing to spot him crouched above her. Then there was commotion by the SUV, and he’d looked over to see what was unmistakably Gloria Kerr sprinting away across the road.