Cut Out

by Bob Mayer

  “Get out of the car!” Giannini yelled, muzzle pointed directly at the dark windshield. There was a long pause, then the driver’s door opened. Her friend Nickie stepped out, hands held high.

  “Tell your buddy to get out, too,” Giannini said, feeling slightly relieved.

  The passenger door opened and a taller punk version of Nickie unfolded from the car.

  Giannini kept the gun up as she approached them. “Why are you following me?”

  Nickie smiled nervously and shrugged. “Oh, come on, Giannini. You know why. I didn’t mean no trouble. But you know—I had to. D’Angelo would have had my ass if I had a line on the Cobbs and didn’t follow it up.”

  “Put your hands on the hood of my car,” she ordered, waving with her gun. The two trooped over and assumed the position.

  Giannini shifted the aim of the revolver and fired, the .44 magnum Federal Hydra-Shok round tearing through the thin metal of the hood of the El Camino as if it didn’t exist and continuing through the engine block before ending its path in the asphalt. She fired twice more, ignoring Nickie’s screams of protest.

  “Jesus, Giannini! You didn’t have to do that! That’s my wheels!”

  Giannini walked over and stuck the warm muzzle into Nickie’s back. “You want to see what else I’m going to do?”

  Nickie’s eyes grew wide. “But—but—”

  “Get out of here.” Giannini suddenly realized that Nickie was looking past her.

  She whirled as a Lincoln Town Car came roaring down from the other end of the street. With a screech of brakes it came to a halt thirty feet away on the other side of her car. Both front doors swung open and a man jumped out of each. The one on the right had a sawed-off shotgun; the one on the left had a semiautomatic pistol.

  Giannini snapped off a shot in their direction, then dove behind Nickie’s car. Nickie and his friend sprinted for the far end of the alley and were gone. Giannini heard the roar of the shotgun and the splatter of pellets against the metal of the car. She peered under the car, searching for any sign of approaching feet.

  She had two rounds left in her revolver. She debated briefly whether to break open the cylinder and reload, or to take her chances with two shots against two opponents. She heard movement to her right and twisted her head. She couldn’t see anything, but she knew that at least one of them was trying to outflank her.

  “Give it up, Giannini!” a voice yelled out. “We only want to talk.”

  “Right,” Giannini muttered to herself. She edged around the El Camino, listening carefully for the sound of footsteps in the garbage-encrusted street. There was the slightest rustle of an old newspaper; Giannini popped up, muzzle of her .44 magnum leading. The man with the shotgun was caught halfway between the far wall and the car, the weapon at his hip. They both fired at the same time. The shotgun pellets bounced harmlessly into the bricks ten feet above Giannini’s head. Her round was more effective, hitting the gunman in the right shoulder and spinning him completely around, shotgun flying out of his hand.

  The other gunman fired off two rounds, one of them smashing the windshield of the El Camino, the other whistling harmlessly down the alley as Giannini regained her cover behind the car.

  “Jesus, I’m hit,” the shotgun man cried out.

  Giannini’s confidence level was higher now that the shotgun was out of the picture. She knew that most people were notoriously inaccurate with handguns at ranges greater than ten feet. Unlike the movies, it took a lot of practice to get good with a pistol and be able to hit what you aimed at. She flipped open the cylinder to her magnum and pocketed the empty casing and one good round. Her hands moved efficiently as she removed the speed loader from her blazer pocket and loaded six new rounds with one movement.

  “We can stay here all day for all I care,” Giannini called out. “I radioed for backup. They should be here any minute.”

  “Get me out of here!” the wounded man cried out.

  Giannini heard the scuffle of feet. She rolled right, coming to a halt on her stomach, arms extended, revolver aimed straight ahead. The man with the pistol was scuttling along the far wall, pistol pointing at the El Camino. He fired as fast as he could pull the trigger, covering his movement toward his partner.

  His aim was somewhat better this time and Giannini felt, as much as heard, a round crack by, less than a foot away, over her head. She squeezed the trigger, feeling the gun buck in her hand. Her first round hit low, catching the gunman in the thigh, doubling him over. Her second round caught him in the chest as he sank to the pavement, punching the body back against the wall, where it came to rest, legs splayed, lifeless head lolling back against the bricks.

  “Jesus Christ!” the wounded man screamed. He pulled a small-caliber revolver out of a waistband holster and began firing wildly as Giannini stood up. She snapped a round off at him, killing him instantly.

  She ran to her Mustang and got in, then carefully edged around the Town Car and drove out the far end of the alley. She made her way to the Dan Ryan Expressway and headed south. It was time to circle the wagons.

  Several blocks away Nickie and his friend finally stopped running. They’d heard the firing and now the distant sound of sirens.

  “Damn, man, you think they killed her?” his friend asked. “I didn’t sign up to be part of no cop killing. They said they just wanted to talk to her.”

  “I guess she didn’t want to talk to them,” Nickie said. He tapped the envelope full of hundred dollar bills the men had given each of them. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the fuck out of town.”

  CAMP MACKALL

  31 OCTOBER, 4:15 p.m.

  The two bodies lay on top of the pine needles, sprawled as they had died. Despite the chill in the air, flies buzzed about, lighting on the bloody flesh.

  Master leaned over and looked at the empty eye socket where a bullet had torn through. The impact of three more rounds showed on the front of the man’s face. Master slowly ran a gloved hand along the lifeless cheek, then withdrew it. He glanced over at the analyst, who was crouched by the other body. “Well?”

  “I can’t tell. There’s blood around his mouth. The armor stopped most of the rounds. He’s got a wound in the neck that nicked the artery, but I’m not sure that’s what did him in. Looks like he got hit in the neck with some blunt object. I guess that’s what killed him.”

  Master straightened and looked around. Two other members of his team appeared over the lip of the depression, weapons at the ready. “Two vehicles,” the lead man announced. “Tire tracks come in and go out.” He held up a mangled piece of metal and plastic. “The bug from Riley’s car.” The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The van is parked about four hundred meters that way—it’s been ransacked.”

  “Two vehicles?” Master repeated.

  The analyst cursed. “We’ve lost them.”

  Master shook his head. “No. We’ll find them.” He looked down at the bodies. “We’ll find them,” he promised.

  Chapter Fourteen

  FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

  31 OCTOBER, 5:00 p.m.

  “What’s the status?” the man at the end of the table asked. He was seated in a high-backed chair, his face hidden in the shadows cast by the track lighting on the bookcase behind him. The glare illuminated the other three people seated in the room.

  “We’ve got seven bodies and two major incidents we’ve had to clear up,” the lone woman said. She held up a three-and-a-half-inch disk and waved it at the others. “Now we have Chicago querying the status of the Cobbs.”

  “It’s getting out of control,” the second man whined. “We need to get out while we can.”

  “Get out? Get out?” the man growled. His face was heavily lined— the price of years of decision-making—and his hair was white. The faint trace of a scar ran from below his left eye to his neck. He slapped his palm on the tabletop and glared. “There is no getting out, Simon.” His voice returned to normal. “What does Chicago know, Ms. Jamieson?
”

  “Donnelly ran an initial status on the Cobbs in her local file, Mr. Getty. Of course she got a green. Then she double-checked, running the request to Lodestar. Again she got green.”

  “And?” Getty prompted.

  “And nothing. Donnelly’s satisfied. She thinks Giannini was trying to dig up something on the Fastone case for the locals.”

  “That’s not good,” the third man spoke. He pushed his round spectacles farther up on his nose. “We don’t want them to push on Fastone.”

  Simon leaned forward. “If that idiot Master hadn’t—”

  Getty raised a hand and Simon immediately fell silent. “Master doesn’t know everything and doesn’t need to know more than he already does. We can’t change what has happened. We must focus on the situation as it is and decide what to do next.” He rubbed his scar briefly and then looked at Ms. Jamieson. “Summarize the loose ends.”

  “Three. Lisa Cobb, of course. This army man, Riley. And now Detective Giannini of the Chicago police.”

  “Options?” Getty inquired.

  “There are no options,” Ms. Jamieson replied. “We have to terminate all loose ends.”

  “Do it,” Getty said. He focused his hard eyes on Simon. “I want you to go down there and take personal charge of this mess.”

  INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

  31 OCTOBER, 5:55 p.m.

  The signs flashed by and Giannini fumbled with the map with one hand, trying to make the decision between I-65 south off the beltway or I-74 east. She made her choice and let the split for I-65 go by, driving to the next exit, where she got on I-74.

  It had taken two hours for her hands to stop shaking after leaving Chicago. She’d killed a man years ago during a bank robbery, but it hadn’t been as quick and brutal as the exchange in the alley.

  Less than three minutes onto the new route, her portable buzzed. She punched the receive button. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” she heard Riley say. “What do you have?”

  “Well, hello to you too,” she said dryly. “I got a whole lot of trouble is what I have.” Giannini told him about the ambush in the alley.

  “Are you all right?” was Riley’s first concern.

  “I don’t feel too hot, but I’m all right.”

  “Are you being followed?”

  “No, I’m clean.”

  “So you think these two men were from the mob?” Riley asked.

  “I’m sure of it. My little friend Nickie must have set me up after I talked to him this morning. There’s a hell of a lot more going on here than meets the eye.” She quickly relayed all she had found out since the last time they talked: the money Philip Cobb supposedly had hidden, the fact that Philip Cobb had been set up by the feds, and the puzzling fact that the Witness Protection Program listed the Cobbs as being safe and sound.

  “There must be a mole in the Program if someone’s manipulating the computer,” Riley commented when she was done. “That’s bad.”

  “No shit, it’s bad,” Giannini retorted, feeling the stress of the last forty-eight hours and her near death. “It means we might not be able to get help from them like we hoped. Donnelly thought I was there fishing for information on Fastone’s murder. I’m sure she’s already called my department, and they’re just looking for an excuse to take my badge. The fact that I just left two bodies lying in an alley means they can have it. As for the mole, it doesn’t have to be someone in the Program messing with the computer. If you have the proper code words, you can access pretty much any system over the phone lines.”

  “I don’t understand something,” Riley said. “If the mob is after Cobb not only because he put away the Torrentinos, but also because he stole a lot of money, why’d they kill him? Seems like they’d want him alive.”

  “We don’t know he is dead,” Giannini said. “We only have Lisa’s word on that.”

  “How much do you trust Lisa?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know her at all, really,” Giannini admitted. “I trusted her brother,” she said, emphasizing the past tense.

  There was a long silence, which Giannini bore as long as possible before she felt compelled to speak again. “Well? What now?” She glanced reflexively in the rearview mirror. “I’m on the road heading in your direction. The feds are certainly going to be checking up on me, and the Chicago PD might well find out about what happened in that alley if they find Nickie or his friend. I figured it was time for me to get the hell out of Dodge before the next big gunfight.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Riley replied. “We’re getting out of town and going undercover for the time being. We had our own little incident here not too long ago.” He told her of the attack by the two men in the van. “I guess you ought to join us and we can try to figure out something. This has gone beyond what I can deal with right now. These people are using top-notch equipment, and sooner or later the group with superior firepower is bound to win.”

  “Where are you heading?” Giannini asked.

  “The Smokies,” Riley said.

  “Where can I link up with you?”

  “You know where,” Riley said. “Remember when we went there? The place where we had that talk? I’ll be keeping an eye on it and I’ll see you there. You’re going to have to walk in from the main road.”

  Giannini didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I know where you’re talking about. I figure it will take me about another eight hours or so of driving to get there.”

  “There’s no rush. We won’t be on the ground until sometime early in the morning. Try to make it there tomorrow after it’s light.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you then. Be safe.”

  CAMP MACKALL

  31 OCTOBER, 5:57 p.m.

  Riley put down the receiver and glanced around the entrance to Camp Mackall. The MH-47s still sat on the landing pad outside the gate, awaiting their night missions. A group of students were practicing on the rappelling tower set in the tree line, sliding the sixty feet down to the ground on nylon ropes. Satisfied the area was still secure, Riley picked up the receiver and called Sergeant Major Alexander, informing him that his daughter’s car was in the parking lot and that he had left the keys at the Selection and Assessment committee shack.

  On time, Hammer pulled up in his truck and Riley slid in next to Lisa. “Giannini’s on her way down,” he said as Hammer drove them away from the camp to the new hide site, six miles away.

  “She meeting us here?” Hammer asked.

  “No. We’re taking a ride tonight to get us away from here.” Riley pointed at the dirt road that ran behind Mackall. “Let’s head out there and wait for dark.”

  FORT BRAGG

  31 OCTOBER, 7:23 p.m.

  “Anything?” Master asked.

  The analyst didn’t turn around. “I’m getting a message in from Virginia.”

  Master got out of his chair, crossed the small space separating them inside the van, and peered over the man’s shoulder. “What do they want now?”

  “They’re sending someone down to take charge.”

  “Shit,” Master muttered. “That’s all I need. Anything else?”

  The analyst tapped the keyboard for a few seconds. “They’ve added another name to the target list.”

  “Who?”

  “A Donna Giannini. Chicago police.”

  Master went back to his chair and sat down, massaging his temples. “A cop? Why?”

  The analyst read the information as it came in. “She’s connected to Lisa Cobb. Apparently she’s the one who got this Riley fellow involved and she’s been checking on the situation.”

  “So that’s why they’re sending someone down—they’re afraid of losing control,” Master mused. “If she’s Chicago PD, why are they telling us? That’s out of our area.”

  The analyst turned and looked at Master. “They got a contact on her using her portable phone less than two hours ago. They bounced it back through the relay towers and she was somewhere around Indianapol
is when she took the call.”

  “Indianapolis?” Master drummed his fingers on the chair as he considered this fact. “Anything on the conversation?”

  “Not yet, sir. The computer was logged on with the call and location. It will take them some time to access the tapes and get the conversation.”

  “Where was the number she was talking to?”

  “You can’t trace the other end,” the analyst explained. “We could only find where the call went from landline to radio and get the mobile’s approximate position.”

  “All right.” Master flipped open a road atlas and looked at the Indiana map. “She’s heading south, at least. That means she’s coming closer to us. So all the players are coming home to roost. The question is: where?”

  CAMP MACKALL

  31 OCTOBER, 7:45 p.m.

  Riley, Hammer, and Lisa Cobb were off the western edge of the Camp Mackall reservation, about two miles from the Rowe Training Facility. Riley handed Lisa a canteen cup of hot noodle soup and then sat down on the ground, his back against his rucksack. Lisa was sitting on the tailgate of Hammer’s truck, alongside the owner, who had his knife out and was whittling again.

  “You said your husband worked for the Torrentinos, laundering money,” Riley opened the conversation, uncertain how to proceed.

  “Yes,” Lisa answered, the canteen cup paused halfway to her lips.

  “Did you know anything about it before the police showed up at your door?”

  “I told you I didn’t.” Lisa’s voice was cold.

  “But didn’t you wonder where your husband was getting his money?”