Recurrence

by Dave Norem

  They all glanced around. Cramer, his hands at his sides, shrugged his shoulders. “Good thinking, we’ll wipe out our tracks and then get some dry gray dirt from behind the building and blow across it with a bellows. No, make that two bellows.”

  John nodded his agreement. “We need more than one way out and a second set of vehicles spotted a block or two away. These people are planners too and we don’t know who else is in on it—like maybe cops.”

  Discussion dwindled, and everyone was satisfied with the plan and their individual parts. Someone still had to steal two pickup trucks and two more cars, and there was more equipment to buy. Someone had to go back into the factory and install, wire, and camouflage three battery operated cameras. The bullhorn and the two monitors would be in the trucks. They worked that out too and dispersed. John went home to Julie until time for the next meeting.

  He is in a battle, including horse and cannon, and is nearly deafened. Rifle, revolver and cannon fire within yards of him sound muffled, as if from within distant walls. He knows not where or what direction his own line is, or whether to advance or to retreat, or for what cause. Both friend and foe surround him, and he knows them not. They are both faceless and colorless, all with distant gaze as they toil at the machinations of Hell.

  The air around him is foul: filled with smoke and mists of blood, guts, dust, earth and urine. Vapors are so nauseating he fears that he will vomit and choke to death in his own eruption of bile—and the excretion of what he’s breathed in and swallowed. Vision is interrupted flashes of varying light and horror. Fire belching from cannon is interspersed with earth, equipment and bodies erupting alongside him into atmosphere, while more of same constantly rains down upon and around him. A thought passes; “I am killed, from above—or—from below.”

  He never perceived that war would be not just from front or side, but from the full spectrum of angles and degrees, as if one is at the center of an imploding sphere of fire, bedlam and death; a state unimaginable and untenable.

  The battle slows, becoming individual sights and sounds. The eyes recover faster than nose and ears and distinction of horrors becomes less other-worldly, mating with the still horrendous smells and sounds. A hand is before him, but only a hand. A still-kicking horse’s leg sails through the air, narrowly missing his head. The blend of screams from both man and beast are still melded, but now separating to match the sights before him.

  A face, a face! He sees a face with some color but does not recognize it. There are others of same, all strangers in death. Recognizable ropes of gut land upon him. He hears them land and smells the steam rising from them. He falls into a trench, lands on his hands and knees, and vomits.

  Julie is calling his name and is trying to pull him erect: to help him. She is holding his arm over her shoulder and her other arm is around his waist. He knows now that he’s fallen from his bed and vomited.

  Her words slowly penetrated. “You were screaming in your sleep. “Where are they, where are they?” Then you were cursing, and beseeching God.” He stumbled toward the bathroom, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Later he told her that he didn’t remember what the dream was about.

  Julie was used to the nightmares. She was his wife. Sometimes he would tell her about them and sometimes he wouldn’t. She knew that he didn’t remember all of what was in the dreams, or even all of the dreams. This time she was sure he remembered, but didn’t want to tell, possibly to spare her feelings or to keep from frightening her.

  The second meeting was in Covington, Kentucky; a rough-and-tumble blue-collar town of lowered property values just across the river from Cincinnati. Covington was also a place where men congregated after a long hard day or night of work: the luckier ones returning from the “Sin-City” General Electric plant or the Seagram’s distillery.

  A small group of men could go completely unnoticed, while one or two strangers wandering in and out of the bars might lose their shoes or shirts to a pool hustler, or their lives to a knife.

  Cramer’s group stayed one night there, at three different, but close together, motels. One of them was sufficiently isolated that plans were reviewed, and equipment and supplies were counted, inspected and cleaned without interference. All of them stayed well clear of the nightspots, whores and street hustlers. The next night they would rendezvous not far from the job site.

  Cramer nodded at the riflemen, “I’ve got some tracer rounds for the AR-15’s. Mix them in at the top of your clips to give our audience a little more effect with your initial bursts.”

  “Wimpy’s got the trucks and cars located and marked. You two can get the locations from him.” Cramer indicated John and Spane. “They’re going to do this deal at 2:00 O’clock in the afternoon. I guess they are hoping to blend in with weekday traffic. That means we’ll have to go in tomorrow night with the trucks and gear, and then wait it out.”

  “Make sure you’ve got food and Cokes.” Spane said.

  “Or whatever else you drink,” muttered one of the gunners.

  “No booze,” said John. They all nodded assent.

  Cramer held up a hand. “One other thing; drug dealers are a lot tougher than we’re used to dealing with and they’re cold blooded. They’ll kill without thinking twice about it. We don’t want to kill anybody, but if it comes down to one of us or any of them, let it be them... But only if you have to!”

  They rendezvoused at a twenty-four-hour bowling alley parking lot, leaving the cars they arrived in there. John had purchased a light-green four-door sedan the afternoon before, for additional and clean transportation.

  The car was a low mileage 1962 Oldsmobile, Super 88 Holiday Sedan, a good solid-but commonly seen-older car. He bummed a ride from Wimpy and now it was in a hospital parking lot a mile beyond the bowling alley. It was complete with a legitimate license plate, but in a fictitious name that matched the identification he was using.

  They drove to the factory, passing it by until there was no traffic. They had previously parked an older Ford station wagon, also purchased for cash, alongside the street a short distance away. A wheel cover lay on the ground beside the car. One of the men had jacked up the right front corner, but in a manner that they could drive it right off the bumper-jack if necessary. Others had parked two of the stolen cars at separate spots on the streets behind the abandoned factories.

  One of the trucks had to make a second trip to get all of the men and equipment in place.

  At 2:00 AM, they were all inside. They had driven in with their headlights off, but once inside the building it was too dark. A man had to lead the way on foot with a flashlight. Two more hours were spent getting everything in place, setting up the equipment, and covering tracks and footprints. Not long before daylight, they settled down for a long wait. When they weren’t dozing, they spent a lot of time reminiscing about past jobs and women they had known. Spane had the most to say about the latter.

  Shortly after daylight, they watched on the monitors as a police cruiser pulled into the lot and drove directly into the building; stopping between the opened ramp doors and out of sight of the street. The men watching on the monitors were unable to see into the car. It sat there for five minutes, occasionally moving on its suspension as the occupant, or occupants, moved inside the vehicle.

  The driver’s door opened and a short slender man in uniform, but without a gun-belt, stepped out and walked around the rear of the car without closing his door. When he reached the back of the car, the front passenger door opened, and a pair of trouser legs appeared one at a time, followed by a woman’s head. She remained seated with both feet on the ground.

  The men watching on the monitors couldn’t get a good look at her, but those overhead later told them that she was a cop too, good looking but fat.

  The male cop walked around to her doorway and stood in front of her, his right elbow on the top of the door and his left hand on the roof. She spread her legs as he app
roached, and then reached out and opened the front of his pants. While he hung onto the car, she lowered his pants and undershorts to his knees and began stroking and caressing him.

  “God Damn,” Spane gritted through his teeth, as he watched on one of the monitors. “He’s getting a blow job from his partner.”

  No one else commented, as the situation was obvious. It took another fifteen minutes for them to finish and for her to clean them both up with something from inside the car. They left shortly thereafter.

  Cramer shook his head in mock disgust and murmured, “Just finishing up the graveyard shift and heading back in from another hard night of fighting crime.” Those with him chuckled softly.

  John, standing alongside the truck-bed, thumped a fist into the heel of his other hand, “Now we’ll have to go back out there and cover their tracks.”

  Cramer reached out and gripped his forearm. “No, this is better. It’s a distraction and the tracks don’t go anywhere.”

  With the show over, they moved to the truck cabs and dozed intermittently. By noon, most of them were awake and alert, talking among themselves. They grew bored again and lapsed into silence.

  A late model Dodge Coronet drove in through the far door at 1:30, and stopped in the open. Moments later, a tall white man in his forties, with buzz-cut hair, stepped out from the front passenger side. He wore dress slacks and shirt, covered by a light windbreaker. With the door still open, he looked all around; then spoke to someone inside the car without looking at them. He stepped away, still leaving the door open, and walked clear of the car. His gaze seemed to be everywhere—ceiling, walls, aisles and walkways, but mostly at the floor.

  “Look at Buzz. I wish to hell we’d hung a microphone from the ceiling,” John whispered as he and Cramer watched the monitors. They all had walkie-talkies with earphones, but John and Cramer were close enough together that they didn’t need them.

  “You can’t cover everything, I’m just glad we hung a camera on the outside.” Cramer whispered back.

  Buzz walked all around his car, looking at the tracks made by the cruiser and the man on foot, which were only partially overlapped by marks from the Coronet. He seemed to work it out and stepped back to his own car, again speaking to someone inside without looking into the car.

  Stepping away from the car again, he walked toward each side of the building, peering up first one dark and empty aisle, and then the other. The trucks were fifty yards in, and out of his line of sight, behind a wall and some shelving.

  Seemingly satisfied, he climbed to the top of the stairway and stuck his head into the partially opened office door. Following this, he moved to the pile of trash at the end of the walkway; then looked over the top of the pile for a full two minutes. Cramer’s crew silently waited as he studied, and then kicked at the pile, strewing papers and trash, some of which fell to the floor below.

  Breathless moments followed for the crew, anticipating his advance toward the concealed rifleman on the far end. Again, he gazed down the aisle for what seemed like an eternity; then swung back toward the stairway and descended to the main floor. He got back into the car, turned his head toward the rear seat and pulled his door shut. The Coronet slowly drove out through the open door on the opposite side.

  Without exiting the parking lot, it returned to the door it had originally entered and stopped slightly farther in. The driver reversed the car and turned it, so that it was in the middle, facing out.

  When he’d finished this maneuver, a Chrysler New Yorker came in and parked on the opposite side, with its rear toward the closed dock-doors.

  “Getting ready for a dance,” Cramer said through the open, sliding rear window of the truck.

  He was sitting in the bed of John’s pickup, facing forward with a monitor between his spread legs. John was looking over at the second monitor, propped up in the bed of Spane’s truck, backed in beside him. When they moved, the wires would be yanked loose from overhead joints and pulled into the truck beds. The monitors would stay in the trucks too.

  Promptly at 2:00 PM, a two-year-old beige Cadillac with New York plates drove in through the gate and eased into the doorway on the end closest to the street. It stopped until a dark-blue Buick came up behind it; then maneuvered so that it could back into position next to the New Yorker. The Buick stopped close to the front of the Cadillac, without turning or backing.

  Cramer tapped on the glass behind John’s head, “this kind of screws up our plan for full coverage.”

  “It’ll still work,” Spane said, as he leaned over from the cab of the other truck.

  Cramer nodded at him, “as long as everybody waits for the signal.”

  They went back to watching the monitors. All four cars sat motionless for a minute, and then Buzz stepped from the Coronet and closed the door behind him. The passenger door on the Cadillac opened and a swarthy man with straight black hair and a thick moustache stepped out, closing his door too. He was average in height, but built like a tank.

  “Pancho,” Spane whispered loudly to John and Cramer. John nodded back at him.

  Buzz walked over and met Pancho in front of the Buick. They shook hands and Buzz led him to the trunk of the New Yorker, where the lid popped open as they approached.

  John and Cramer couldn’t see what was happening behind the trunk lid, but they received three quick transmitted clicks from one of the riflemen, indicating that the money was there.

  Buzz and Pancho were behind the car for several minutes before Buzz closed the trunk lid. Pancho stuffed something in his jacket pocket and then tapped on the fender of the Cadillac: its trunk lid opened too. Both men stood at the back of Cadillac, looking into the trunk. Buzz reached inside and pulled a package out, sniffed at it and put it in his pocket. Pancho closed the lid and both men returned to their cars.

  “Ready Boss?” Spane asked.

  Cramer shook his head no, “not yet.”

  All four cars sat unmoving for another few minutes; then rear doors opened on both the Cadillac and New Yorker. A different man stepped from each car, on the side facing the other.

  Both were men of stature and looked at each other for a moment face-to-face before reaching out to shake hands. They spoke briefly and then got back into their cars. Next, the rear doors opened on the other side of both cars, and a new man stepped out and toward the rear, as both trunk lids popped open again.

  “Quite a choreography, but now it’s Showtime,” Cramer said. He keyed his walkie-talkie two short clicks, followed by a long click.

  A burst of automatic weapons fire reverberated through the metal building, followed by two more short bursts.

  Before the echoes died, Cramer was on his bullhorn. “Do not move! We’ll kill everybody! We’re not cops— Do not move!”

  The pickup-truck drivers started their engines and cables for the bullhorn and monitors were yanked loose from the overhead joints. The trucks roared out from behind the shelving, around the walls and through the doorways. Meanwhile, out of sight of the men in the trucks, the men at the back of the cars slammed the trunk lids shut and jumped back toward the open rear doors of their cars. One was hit in the ankle by a burst of rifle fire directed at the tires, but both still made it into the cars.

  As John’s truck entered the area from the left side, the Buick was lurching forward unscathed. He angled toward it, and too late, saw the side windows lowering. A shotgun blast from the back of his truck peppered the side of the Buick. The paths of the Cadillac and New Yorker were now blocked by the Buick, which moved only another twenty feet before it was rammed by Spane’s pickup and spun at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Windows lowered on the two facing cars and automatic weapons fire poured from both. John missed the rear of the Buick by inches, swerved slightly, and rammed the Cadillac head-on. He continued accelerating, pushing the Cadillac backwards through the dock door and over the edge. In his peripher
al vision, he’d seen a body fly from the back of his truck when they collided.

  Bullets and glass were banging through the cab of the truck, as the Cadillac broke through the sheet-metal dock door, knocking it free of the building. He saw two big-eyed faces as it dropped with its hood in the air. He slammed on his brakes and stopped short of the edge, still hitting the Cadillac undercarriage hard enough to topple it on over, first sideways and then onto its roof.

  The Coronet was now caught in a cross fire from Cramer’s riflemen and all of its windows shot out, ending the hail of bullets hitting John’s truck.

  While this was happening, the men from Spane’s truck bed surrounded the Buick, and one man from the bed of John’s truck made it to the back of the New Yorker. It sat with all four windows closed and unbroken, with only one flat tire. A passenger had caught lead meant for the other tire.

  His mind in a whirl, it occurred to John that Cramer was the one who had gone flying from the back of his truck.

  All firing stopped, and John waved up at the riflemen above, motioning them down. They came down fast, two sliding on electrical cables first. The third man ran down the stairs once they were in position. The first two advanced on the three remaining cars, while the third ran over to the dock door and looked down at the overturned Cadillac. John backed his truck away from the opening and jumped out.

  Spane jumped from his truck cab and ran past the Buick, firing a shot into it as he passed. He ran up to the New Yorker and bellowed, “Open up!”

  He fired directly at the driver’s side window only to see the window vibrate and remain intact.

  “Bullet-proof glass, but they can’t shoot out at us either!” John hollered. He pointed his gun at a front tire and the trunk lid popped open just as he fired. His man grabbed a suitcase from the trunk and Spane ran up and grabbed another.

  John spun around looking for Cramer, assuming him killed or incapacitated. Instead, he was crawling toward the truck on his knees and one hand. The other hand was at his side with his elbow tucked in tight against his ribs. Blood was dripping from the side of his head. John and Wimpy ran up to him and each grabbed an arm.