by Matt Rogers
‘Or not,’ King said. ‘Don’t compare your abilities to those of a bent judge running a trafficking network.’
Slater stewed.
King said, ‘You went sober for ops that mattered. You did everything for the right reasons.’
‘Did I?’
Silence.
Slater followed the GPS along West Warm Springs Road, passing out of Paradise. Henderson loomed, and traffic was sparse in the middle of the night.
Until it wasn’t.
They spotted the lights first. Flashing blue and red, warm and faint in the distance. The colours would be rather muted if they weren’t accompanied by the pang in King’s gut as he identified the roadblock.
Slater had to slow to bundle into a line of cars heading east, trickling toward the cop cars across the road. He gripped the wheel tight.
He said, ‘How much time?’
King checked his phone. ‘Nine minutes.’
‘Might have to do something drastic here.’
‘Cool it. We’ve got time.’
‘No we don’t.’
‘Slater.’
Slater gripped the wheel tighter.
King said, ‘Cool it.’
The line inched forwards.
Slater wiped sweat from his brow. ‘I don’t like this.’
‘You want to start a chase and bring half the LVMPD down on the complex?’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Lights. Sirens. Gunfighting straight off the bat. The hostages will die long before we can get to them.’
Slater clenched his teeth and tapped a finger relentlessly against the wheel.
The Rezvani Tank was practically a homing beacon amidst the civilian vehicle line-up. It screamed “suspicious.” Slater buzzed the bulletproof driver’s window all the way down and put his elbow on the sill.
Three cars to go.
One went through.
Then the next.
There was a hold up with the third.
Seconds ticked.
Slater said, ‘How long?’
King looked at his watch.
Seven minutes.
He didn’t say anything. He could feel Slater’s foot hovering above the accelerator, ready to tap into all one thousand horsepower at any moment…
King said, ‘I swear to God, don’t do it.’
‘We don’t have time.’
‘One car, Slater. One fucking car.’
The car in question was a beat-up old sedan. It looked set to fall apart. The officer conducting the roadblock had his head through the window frame. He was nearly half-inside the car.
A shout rose up.
The sedan’s tyres screeched and it shot forward and swerved around the blockade, thumping and jolting against the potholed shoulder. The cop barely managed to extract himself before the side of the window clipped him in the head. He staggered away from the car, signalled to one of the vehicles comprising the blockade, and the squad car flipped its lights and sirens on and peeled off in pursuit, two officers on board.
King sat still.
Slater sat still.
The first officer shook it off and ushered the next vehicle forward. Consummate professionalism.
Slater crept up to the front of the line. Jacked up on modified suspension, the cop had to look up through the open window at them. He could have mounted the step to get closer, but he didn’t. Probably rattled from getting too close to the first car.
From the passenger side King called, ‘What was all that about?’
The cop was maybe forty, with a kind face and too many wrinkles for his age. The job stress, King figured. He knew a thing or two about that.
The guy shook his head, still flabbergasted. ‘Just some junkie. I could see he was high from a mile away. I got too close and he got spooked.’
‘Rough night for you boys?’ Slater said.
Under the sill, he gripped his SIG.
King saw it.
Tried not to think about it.
The cop said, ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘We’re ex-military,’ King said. ‘We understand.’
The cop was about to ask, Which branch? but in the interest of time he refrained, which was helpful considering King didn’t feel like lying to the guy, and he would have had to.
Instead he said, ‘What are you doing driving around in this damn thing?’
Slater said, ‘It’s a commercial vehicle. Perfectly legal. We’re enthusiasts.’
The cop shrugged. ‘To each their own. You boys are lucky you got me, though. There was a shoot-up off Blue Diamond Road earlier today, and there’s been reports of another incident in Arden. We think it’s gangs. Anyway, take a hot tip from me — maybe drive something less conspicuous for a few days. You don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.’
Slater said, ‘You got it. Thanks for the heads up.’
Every sentence was another few seconds ticking away.
King could sense the stress dripping from Slater’s pores.
The cop said, ‘Where are you headed?’
King jerked a thumb at Slater. ‘He’s got family in Henderson.’
‘Bit late for that.’
Slater said, ‘Dad usually works night shifts. His sleep pattern’s all jacked up.’
The cop nodded. ‘Tell your old man to keep fighting the good fight.’
‘I will.’
‘Have a good night, gentlemen.’
The cop stepped back.
Slater lowered the SIG.
King breathed out.
Slater inched forward, then rolled, then accelerated as soon as they were past the roadblock.
Not hard enough to draw attention.
King waited until they were out of sight, until the blue and red had attenuated back into night.
Then he said, ‘Four minutes.’
Slater floored it.
69
The nicotine hit put Icke on top of the world.
No more waiting, he decided.
He pitched forward in the seat, and it groaned under his weight. The noise startled Elsa. She’d been half-asleep, her eyes drooping as she reached the limits for constant stress and started fading. Now her blue eyes came alive. She was underweight, malnourished despite their best efforts to feed her, and the blonde hair that usually flowed was damp and knotted, but they’d clean her up and pump her full of nutrients before they shipped her off with the other two.
The other two.
Usually it’d be girls, but the buyer had requested boys. He still wanted Elsa for his closest employees to take advantage of, but the two fourteen-year-old lads in Icke’s possession were far from the norm. They were the little brothers of two of Armando Gates’ gangbanger enforcers. Icke figured he was doing them a favour. They might live longer overseas, in better conditions, instead of being indoctrinated into Calle 18 and inevitably killed by a rival gang. But in the end it was no factor, because they’d meet the same fate eventually.
We all end up in the same place, he thought.
Only a matter of time.
Elsa was the first to speak. ‘I already told you, Alastair. Please. I already said I’ll tell you anything.’
‘But you’re going to lie to me,’ he said. ‘You’re going to pretend you don’t know. Gloria’s on her way to ask you some questions, you know that, right?’
She nodded, a lump in her throat.
He said, ‘She thinks I’m an idiot. She thinks I can’t get it out of you. I don’t like that attitude very much. So, Elsa, you’re going to tell me what you told your mother before she went away, or I’m going to hurt you.’
‘Nothing,’ Elsa said. Her voice cracked. ‘I swear! Only that I was hanging out at Wan’s — that’s it. I never mentioned you or Gloria.’
‘Elsa, Elsa, Elsa,’ Icke tutted. ‘Why would Gloria tell me otherwise?’
She sobbed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I trust her slightly more than I trust you,’ he said, ‘but it’s clos
er than you think.’
Elsa didn’t say anything.
‘Don’t do that,’ Icke said. ‘Don’t go quiet.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘The truth.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
The nicotine rush blurred with Icke’s anger. It all snowballed. His blood pressure went right up. Colour flushed his cheeks.
He thought, Maybe Kerr’s right. She has a way with words, for sure. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m not as smart as I think.
But where Kerr was smart, he was ruthless.
So that’s what he turned to.
He wrenched a desk drawer open and came out with a big revolver. Elsa saw it and screamed and pressed herself against the radiator, like that would help. Icke levered himself out of the chair, which took some work. His knees had been bad for years and the gut that flopped over his belt only served to throw him more off-balance. Not to mention the head spins. He waddled out from behind the desk, went over and pressed the gun against Elsa’s temple, right above her ear.
This time she didn’t scream.
This time she just went quiet and pale. Her hands shook. Her shoulders heaved.
Silent terror.
He said, ‘It doesn’t have to go this way. What does your mother know?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Wrong answer.’
She thought he was going to do it. He could see it on her face. She thought she was about to die.
Maybe she was.
The anger and the head rush weren’t even anymore. It was fifty-fifty when he’d got up, but now the rage was taking over, making it closer to eighty-twenty. He was competent everywhere, but somehow he couldn’t get it out of her. Even worse, Elsa would tell Kerr what he’d done. How he’d threatened her, held a gun to her head, and still told him nothing.
Good cop, bad cop.
He didn’t mind being bad cop.
He did mind if he failed.
He thought, What’s it matter what Josefine knows anyway? She’s in a cell. She’ll be labelled delusional. She’ll be forgotten like all the hushed-up witnesses in the past were forgotten.
Anger trumped it all. It trumped the overseas buyers, it trumped logic, it trumped reason. Instinct told him to kill her, for the example alone.
He went to pull.
Depressed his finger and felt the pressure on the trigger.
It never got old.
The greatest feeling on earth.
The power of it…
Something stopped him.
Kerr’s reminder.
I can do that routine you like.
Right there in the office, I can rock your world.
If she showed up to Elsa’s corpse she might not be so inclined.
He could make her do it by force, but he’d prefer if it was voluntary.
He didn’t take the gun away from Elsa’s head, but he didn’t shoot her either.
He thought it over.
Then something that rivalled a train horn shattered the silence.
70
Fabian shivered.
He was cold, scared and confused.
Then again, he didn’t know what any of those things meant anymore. He’d been cold, scared and confused for months, ever since two strange white men had picked him up from school and brought him here. Since then he’d been a prisoner, and the days and nights had passed so relentlessly and incessantly that he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been cold, scared and confused. The air-conditioner in the wall pumped without mercy, and the only way to know that time was passing was the increasing squalor of their conditions.
The mattresses got dirtier. The toilet bolted to the floor in the corner got grimier. The washbasin collected muck. The walls started flaking, mostly from Fabian picking at them with a jagged nail because there was literally nothing else to do.
If he didn’t have Omar with him, he would have gone insane already.
Maybe he already was.
They had no one to bounce their concerns off besides each other.
They’d figured out some of it. They’d been thrown into this room together on the same day all those months ago, and they didn’t know each other. But after many conversations in whispered Spanish it became clear — Fabian had an older brother in Calle 18, and so did Omar. They’d spoken about it at length. They hoped their big brothers were safe, hadn’t been hit by rival gangs or busted by the cops. But there was no way to know what was going on in the outside world.
Now Omar woke up. He had short close-cropped hair and a skinny frame. He was more sensitive than Fabian. Prone to outbursts. Never anger, only sadness. Fabian pitied the boy, despite the fact they were the same age.
Omar cracked an eyelid open and said, ‘Still here?’
Fabian nodded. ‘Still here.’
Omar went back to sleep.
Fabian closed his eyes, too, but sleep wouldn’t come.
He wondered if he’d be trapped in this prison forever.
Then something happened that ruptured the routine.
He heard a horn blaring, over and over and over again.
Loud enough to stir the whole complex.
Then minutes of silence.
Then gunshots.
Dozens of them.
And screams.
71
King said, ‘You think there’ll be more than eight men out front?’
Slater said, ‘I doubt it.’
‘You think there’ll be snipers in the windows?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Then we take them by surprise,’ King said. ‘You know the drill.’
Slater nodded.
Zoned in.
Henderson flashed past. The police lights were a distant memory. Now they raced through sleepy suburbia, entombed by the night, minutes out from the complex. Satellite imagery identified it as some sort of industrial building. There was a main office complex and a loading bay out back. There were acres of land all around it. The neighbouring establishments weren’t close. They’d have some discretion to do their work, but the gunfire would send all Henderson’s residents heads’ shooting off their pillows.
There was no way around it.
Get in. Get the job done. Get out.
Don’t be there for the aftermath.
For King and Slater, no problem. That’s the way they’d operated their whole lives.
There was no build up. No drums beating in the distance, signifying war was coming. One moment they were in a side street and the next the complex was there in front of them. It was a three-storey structure, relatively modern, built with cheap materials. Like it had been taken out of a formulaic magazine, blown up to full size, and dropped into a sand lot. It was completely unimpressive — you wouldn’t look twice at it. Which was the point.
Slater said, ‘You sure about this?’
King gripped his SIG. ‘Very sure.’
‘Okay, then.’
Slater pulled up to the gate, nosed the ram bumper right up to the wire, and blasted the horn.
It was an overwhelming combination. The Rezvani’s headlights were fearsome, illuminating the whole complex and everything around it. They were basically industrial floodlights bolted to the front of the truck. And the horn pierced the night, drawing endless unwanted attention. Slater didn’t hold back. He beeped for three seconds, then released, then repeated the process. A consistent droning roar that would make mercenaries hearts’ thud in their chests.
Like, What the hell is this? We’re trying to run a discreet operation here.
There was a benefit to being so brazen. Icke’s security team was on guard, but this was so insane, so over-the-top, that it couldn’t possibly be an adversary. They’d be expecting adversaries to sneak up on them, and on the off chance anyone would mount a frontal assault, they’d simply smash through the gate. The wire was flimsy enough. Slater could do it in a heartbeat. But then they’d be fighting right away, and it was better to put the enem
y on the back foot.
Urban warfare, distilled down to its essence, there for the taking if you had the courage.
It sure didn’t take long.
Two men came sprinting out of a door on the ground floor, squinting against the glare of the headlights, waving their arms frantically over their heads.
Gesturing, Stop making so much fucking noise!
Slater relented. He eased off the horn, but the noise was still considerable — the V8 engine rumbling, the lights beaming, as if the new arrivals were lighting a runway to a place where crimes were taking place.
The two men running for the gate had sidearms, but they were holstered at their waists. Smart move. They wouldn’t be able to make out a single detail of the vehicle behind the glare. For all they knew, it could be SWAT, here with a warrant, demanding an unannounced search. They sure suspected something along those lines, because their faces were overcast. They weren’t angry.
They were rattled.
One guy — short but muscly, with a head shaved bald — fiddled with the gate lock and threw it open. He ushered them inside.
‘Simple as that,’ Slater said.
King fired a text to Violetta: “Four of Icke’s best men.” I need names.
She came back in seconds: Kerr said “Bowman.”
He slid the phone into his pocket and rolled down the window.
The bald guy ran straight up to the truck and leapt onto the side step. His face was frantic. He looked once at them, noted the civilian truck and the tactical gear they wore, and pulled his piece. He stuck it in King’s face, who didn’t so much as blink, let alone cower.
Like he’d thought earlier: there for the taking if you had the courage. Emphasis on “courage.”
It was a brash manoeuvre, but it worked.
He acted like nothing was wrong in the world.
The guy hissed, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Who are you?’
King said, ‘Get that out of my face.’
‘Not a chance.’
Slater leant across the centre console. ‘Listen. There’s a problem.’
‘What problem?’ the guy said. ‘Who are you?’
King said, ‘Bowman split.’
‘What?’
‘What do you know about it?’