In the silence that follows my outburst and the revelation of today’s significance, the pastor clears his throat. “I think we will stop there, today. Young man?”
I blink the tears from my eyes and will myself to take control again. Bury the pain, I tell myself. You’re good at it.
“Young man?”
Wini rubs my back and whispers, “He’s talking to you.”
I look up, keeping my hands on the sides of my head. The pastor is staring at me, his eyes not unkind, his smile merciful. “Would you like to talk?” He motions to a fifth door that I hadn’t noticed before because it lacked an Exit sign. It might not be a way out, but I’m sure it leads to one.
I give a nod and stand up, wiping the real tears from my eyes with a fake, face-concealing arm wipe. Wini stands with me, keeping an arm around me as our row clears out for us, making a nice barrier between us and the men at the back of the room. In the aisle, we keep our heads down and head for the stage.
“What are you doing?” Wini asks.
“Improvising,” I say. “The exits are being watched. His office could be the only way out.”
“Dan, please tell me you didn’t fake that outburst.” Wini looks up at me with the sincerest eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Wish I had.”
“It was a good thing,” she says. “Good for your heart.”
With all her sass and colorful language, I sometimes forget that Wini is the closest thing I have to family. With no brothers and sisters and both parents long since in the grave, there are very few people in the world I feel truly care for me, and if I’m honest, who I care for in return.
And there’s a bonus to this. Our mutual affection and my outburst is all genuine. A pair of actors couldn’t sell it as well. So when we reach the stage and head toward the door at the back, the men guarding the exits are looking everywhere except at us. On the surface, we match who they’re looking for, but we definitely don’t feel right. And honest emotions make people uncomfortable. If I were to look back right now, which I’m not going to do, I’m sure every member of the congregation would divert their eyes. An hour from now, they’ll barely remember what I look like. Same with the stooges tracking us.
The pastor starts singing what I recognize as the doxology. “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow…”
The last time I heard it—Kailyn’s funeral—the voices were melancholy at best, but here, the people join the pastor and raise their voices as though trying to carry me into the next room.
“Praise him, all creatures here below; Praise him above, ye heav’nly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
I’m simultaneously moved, and annoyed. I’ve got bad guys to evade. That’s hard to do when your eyes are blurry.
When the door thuds behind me, I turn to thank the pastor for the invite, and then ask to be shown the door. The man’s raised arms confound me for a moment.
Is he coming in for a hug?
Then I see the big man behind him, sound suppressed gun in hand, and realize that they’d known exactly where I was the whole time. I also realize, as the weapon rises toward my face, that these men are not Delta operators—though I suppose they might have been once.
They’re mercenaries.
Maybe.
I’m not entirely sure.
But I think I’m about to find out.
Or die.
One of the two.
Maybe neither.
Shit, this sucks.
5
“Who are you?” the big man asks, looking over the barrel of his gun. It’s a Beretta M9, and with the sound suppressor it will sound less like a gun booming and more like someone dropping heavy books. He could gun down the three of us and no one would know the noises were gunshots until our bodies were found by some congregation member seeking wisdom, or solace, or whatever people meet with pastors about.
“Who am I?” I repeat, “Who are you?”
I don’t like failing tests. Asking me a question is like challenging me to a life-and-death game of Jeopardy. But this time, not answering is what’s going to keep me alive. His question reveals that these guys don’t have the endless resources I feared, and confirms that they’re not part of the government. If they could have run my plates, they would have, and the question of who I am would be moot.
Of course, not answering could get me shot, so there’s that…
“I’m the guy who’s going to put a bullet in your head.” The man shoves past the pastor and levels the long, tubular sound suppressor at my right eye. “I’m going to put a round through your right eye so that it scrapes along the inside of your skull and comes out the left eye.”
I squint at the man. “Won’t that shoot you too, then?” I demonstrate the bullet’s passage through my head, complete with squishy sound effects, tracing the round’s imaginary path out my left eye and into the man’s chest.
While the man watches me, I look him over. The Beretta harkens to a military past. The M9 is most well-known for its reliability, and if there’s one thing soldiers appreciate more than big booms, it’s shit working when it’s supposed to. Between the black glove of his stretched out gun hand, and his suit coat, is the bottom half of a tattoo featuring a skull and crossbones atop what I think is a parachute. A banner cuts through the image, the word cut in half by his cuff, but I’m fairly certain it says, ‘Airborne.’
This man was a U.S. Army Ranger, which would normally be enough to ensure my respect and gratitude, not to mention a fifteen percent discount on my services, but under the circumstances, he can go sit on a fuck stick. I don’t even know what that means, but it’s not good.
“Counting to five,” he says. “If I don’t know who you are by then, you’re dead. And then your friends are dead.”
“I only just met them.”
The man is lethal. I have no doubt about that. In a firefight, I’m sure I’d want him on my side, and by my side, but in a battle of wits, the man is outmatched.
“Doesn’t matter,” the man says. “Your name.”
“Scott Flannagan,” I say. He bullied me from third grade through high school. If I manage to get out of this mess and these men go hunting for Scott Flannagan, I’ll sleep with a smile on my face tonight. “I’m from San Jose.”
The man reaches out his free hand. “Wallet.”
Damn.
“It’s in the car.”
Furrowed eyebrows reveal the man’s churning mental gears. He doesn’t know whether to believe me or not. From his perspective, I’ve been fairly forthcoming, and most people would be with a gun to their head. But lying is tricky. Everyone has tells. Mine was smiling a little when I gave him that name.
Damn you, Flannagan.
His trigger finger inches from beside the trigger, to around the trigger. I’m about to find out if this man will follow through on his threats. Though, if he does, I’ll be dead before I can think the first syllable of ‘Huh, what do you know? He is a murdering nut job.’
The man closes the distance between us, keeping the weapon raised and the trigger finger ready. If I twitch, I’m dead, so I don’t even consider putting up a fight. He pats down my right pant pocket, plucking out the phone, which has everything he needs to ID me and Wini. Then he pats down the left and takes the photo of Marta and Isabella, along with my envelope.
“Weren’t lying about the wallet,” he notes, backing off a step.
“I never lie,” I say, trying my best not to give the envelope any attention. He’s watching me. Gauging my reactions.
“I’m sure you don’t, Mr. Flannagan.”
He’s not as dense as I’d assumed. He’s a better actor than me, and in this match of wits, he now has the upper hand. He pockets the phone and looks at the photo of Marta and Isabella. “How do you know them?”
“I don’t.” It doesn’t reveal much, but I think he’ll know it’s the truth.
“Why were you at their home?”
“Why were you?”
The man s
ighs, toggles a throat mic I hadn’t noticed before, and says, “Targets subdued. Three total. Request evac.”
He waits a moment and when he nods to someone who can’t see it, I have little doubt that a chopper is now en route to pick us up. And fast. Sounds from the world around us are muffled by the room’s thick walls, decorated with a strange combination of religious paintings and DC comics super hero toys, but I can hear the approaching whine of multiple police cruisers.
“Three?” the pastor says. He looks mortified, leaning on his desk to support himself. He all but collapses into his chair. “I’ve never met these people before.”
“So much for Christian solidarity,” I grumble, and I notice Wini’s hand dipping into her purse…the purse where her revolver sits waiting.
The soldier discards the photo and turns his attention to the envelope. He gives it a once over, but there’s nothing to see. It’s unlabeled and still sealed. He grips the side, preparing to tear the top open with his teeth.
“Don’t,” I say.
He pauses. Stares me down.
“Something in here you don’t want me to see?”
“Please,” I say, the emotion in my voice real. “It’s personal.”
“After today, nothing in your life will be personal. Every skeleton in your closet will be revealed.” He nods to the pastor, still seated behind this desk. “This guy might call it judgment day. And that makes me God, which means I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“Please don’t…”
Paper tears.
“Put the fucking envelope on the floor or I will fucking erase your God damn head!” The man flinches to a stop at the savage fury booming from Wini’s mouth. When he sees the revolver clutched in her steady hands, aimed at his head, he lowers the envelope, but not his gun.
“Do what she fucking told you!” This time, it’s the pastor, his voice cracking with emotion. He’s clutching an honest to goodness .50 caliber Desert Eagle in his hands. If one of those big rounds even clipped the soldier, it would be a kill shot. .50 cal bullets don’t pass through a body without taking a significant chunk along for the ride.
The pastor’s weapon and shaking hands make him the most urgent threat. The soldier’s aim remains on me, but his eyes shift to the heavily armed man of God.
The soldier opens his hands so that the envelope falls to the floor and his gun swings loose on his index finger. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m a Republican,” the pastor confesses, and I nearly laugh.
The envelope calls to me from the floor, beckoning me to retrieve it and the potentially precious cargo it contains. But while the man has loosened his grip on the gun, he has not dropped it. If he’s as experienced as I think, he can probably still get off a shot before the pastor can squeeze his trigger.
And that puts Wini in danger, because the soldier’s second shot will be directed toward her. Two shots. Probably in less than a second. And then I’ll be next. Our only hope is to act first, but how can I convey that to the pastor or to Wini—neither of whom really want to take a man’s life—without getting them killed?
I can’t.
So I charge.
The man’s gun swivels back into his hand and turns in my direction. He fires once, the round clipping my shoulder with a tiny fraction of the force my shoulder delivers to his gut. I lift him off the floor with a shout, directing my fury over the envelope’s molestation, and I slam him into a bookcase.
The impact is enough to draw a shout of pain from the man, but it sounds more angry than pained. A sharp thud on the hardwood floor tells me I’ve managed to disarm him, so now we’re down to fisticuffs.
In a straight forward fist fight, this guy would take me with little effort. He’s a good five inches taller, muscly, and judging by how hard he was to lift, he has a good fifty pounds on me. All that, and he’s an ex-Army Ranger. Best of the best.
Here’s the difference between us, though. He’s probably mastered several martial arts, and that’s all well and good, but I don’t care about looking good or feeding my ego with superior technique. I want to win, and fast. So while he raises his elbows up to drive them into my back, I go to work on his nuts. I get in three hard shots, working my fists like I’m at a punching bag.
When the elbows strike my back, all the power is gone from them.
“Fucking coward,” the man says, his face beet red, all of his strength fighting against the fetal position his body is crying out for. He manages to throw a right hook, which I block with my left arm. Instead of throwing a punch, I thrust my open hand out, catching him in the throat. He’s rattled and gagging, but training and probably pride, moves him past it.
His left hook sails over my ducked head, and when his side opens up, I strike with both fists.
Coupled with the nut-shot trio, this strike is enough to double him over and end the fight. But he still doesn’t drop. I pick up his gun, then the envelope and Marta’s photo, both going back into my pocket. I retrieve the phone next, a mystery man once more.
The man looks ready to vomit when he looks at me again. The trouble is that he’s also smiling.
“Now, who are you?” I ask him, leveling the Beretta at his face.
“You’re fucked,” he says, then he turns his head toward Wini and the pastor. “You’re all fucked.”
He turns his head slightly, the way people do when they’re listening to something. Only in this case, he’s the only person hearing it. That’s when I notice the earbud in his ear and remember the throat mic he activated, but never shut off.
Reinforcements are en route. Probably about to kick down the door.
“Is there another way out of the building?” I ask the pastor.
He nods and motions to a side door I hadn’t noticed. “Leads to an emergency door,” he says. “It’ll set off the alarms.”
“Even better,” I say, and then to Wini. “Go. Take the pastor.”
“I have nothing to do with this,” the pastor protests.
“Until they think otherwise, you do,” I tell him. “There are at least seven more of these guys coming this way. Go. Now!”
When Wini and the pastor hustle toward the side door, I take a step back.
The merc matches my pace. “Not going to let you leave.”
“Think I don’t know that?” I ask, and then I adjust my aim from his head to his leg. “But you’re not going to have a choice.”
When the guy’s eyes go wide with the realization that I’m not bullshitting, I pull the trigger. The weapon kicks and puffs out a round into the man’s leg. He takes the abuse like he did the rest—by not falling. When he rushes me, I put a round in his other leg.
Now he drops, teeth grinding in anger.
“I wonder, are your buddies out there more loyal to you, or the mission?”
He says nothing.
“Will they let you bleed out to catch me? And by the way, I’m nobody. I have no idea what’s going on and that’s the truth. But I’m not about to let you assholes threaten good people. So…” I fire once more, putting a round in the man’s side. It’s not an instant kill shot, but without treatment, he could bleed out.
He goes down to his side, wisely applying pressure, no more threats on his lips. But he doesn’t need to verbalize them. I can hear the footfalls of his ‘back up’ thundering across the stage. I leap through the side door, swinging it closed behind me just as the office door shatters.
Then, as an alarm blares throughout the massive mega-church, I run. I can’t hear the men pursuing me anymore, but I know they’re back there, and that they’ll cross the twenty foot office before I reach the open door and sunlight at the end of this fifty foot corridor decorated with bright crayon drawings of boats, rainbows, crosses, and shepherds.
6
Running forward while looking back will never be an Olympic sport. It’s all but impossible to move in a straight line. Colliding racers would drop in a tangled heap of limbs not far from the starting line…which would be
more entertaining, but less of a sport and more of a mosh pit. The corridor’s walls repel me, a human pinball, my advance slowed with each impact, but the chaotic course is necessary.
Running forward while looking back is hard. But firing a gun without aiming is harder. Not just because I’d miss the target, but because an innocent bystander could exit one of the many side doors while I’m pulling the trigger. My situation is desperate, but I’ll be damned before putting a bullet in someone who doesn’t have it coming.
I pull the trigger, sending a sound-suppressed round into the wood beside the pastor’s office’s opening door. The weapon is impossible to hear over the alarm, but the mercenary pushing the door open understands the shattering wood’s message: show your face and catch a bullet.
These kind of guys—built for action, and fighting, and domination—won’t be deterred by promises of pain, even with their colleague bleeding out on the pastor’s office floor, so I pour on the speed. I fire three more rounds, evenly spaced to hold the mercs back.
Sensing the hallway’s end just ahead, I lean forward, ready to careen into the pushbar and burst out into the parking lot.
But there is no impact. I simply fall through a rectangle of light and spill onto hot, hard pavement, skinning my elbow and my side.
Wini looks down at me, holding the door open, caught off guard by my dramatic and clumsy exit. “Should I have not held the door?”
I sit up, aim back down the hall and fire two rounds toward the two mercenaries pushing out of the office, weapons raised. The first shot kills a wall, but the second strikes the lead merc’s shoulder, twisting him to the side and slowing his partner. “Close it!”
My voice is hard to hear over the wailing alarm, honking horns, the fleeing congregation’s screaming voices, the approaching sirens, and the thumping of helicopter blades, but Wini slams the door shut.
I’m disoriented and unsure about where my car is, but I know one thing for sure: we need to get the hell away from this door. I scramble to my feet, throw a protesting Wini over my shoulder, and run away from the door at an angle, hoping to join the fleeing masses fanning out through the parking lot like a river’s delta.
The Others Page 4