by Charlie Cole
It’s happening again, I thought. Just like Claire. She’s crashing just like Claire and I’ve killed her. I’ve done it again. She’s dead. Jessica’s dead and it’s all because of me…
The van flipped one last time, tottered on one set of wheels and then the twisted wreckage fell in a horrible, hollow clang onto its side and finally lay at rest. Smoke twisted up from the gaping hole in its side where the shell had exploded. The van lay no more than thirty feet from the police barricade. Officers stood impotently by, looking at one another, their minds too dazed by what they had just witnessed to move.
I had become so focused on the van… no, on Jessica… that I’d lost perspective of the Suburban. The SUV braked hard and at the speed I was traveling, I had no hope of stopping.
In truth, I had no will to stop. No desire to continue on if Jessica was gone. I’d kill these bastards for what they’d done to her. They had not known Jessica. Nor Nan or Billy. They killed because they could. And God help me, if they took my Jessica from me, it was only right that they reap the whirlwind that followed.
I accelerated toward the back of the SUV, aiming, targeting them. The men inside were agents of Mitchell Burr. They deserved what was coming. The engine thrummed and the RPM gauge stretched upward, upward… and I rear ended the SUV and prayed for death…
Chapter Twenty
I was dead. I was convinced of that. Not in the way that you believe that a bone may be broken after a bad fall. I was as convinced of my mortality as I was convinced that there was gravity. There was no need at all to discuss the issue, it simply was.
Before that day, I had heard accounts of near death experiences. People often proclaimed that they saw a bright light at the end of the tunnel… it was not that way for me and so I knew without a doubt that my life was over.
It was as if I was waking from a deep sleep. I could smell something. A scent of something baking… it seemed so familiar to me and yet I struggled to grasp what it was, as if I didn’t have the words to articulate it. Then it came to me as I drifted up into consciousness what the smell was.
It was bread. Fresh baked bread. Claire used to bake bread when we had first been married. When we were poor as she called it. She would bake bread and we’d sit in our bedroom on top of the covers, eating slices of warm buttered bread. We made ridiculous yummy noises and closed our eyes, just enjoying our time together.
How had I ever forgotten that? It was never truly forgotten, of course, but the memory had gotten buried under… stuff. My heart ached for that time and so I woke to smell of the baking bread. I opened my eyes and saw her then.
Claire.
She was in the kitchen of our first apartment, baking bread again the way that she had all those years ago. I saw her so clearly and all the thoughts and images I’d had of her in my dreams and nightmares in the months and years after her death all fell away. I saw her as she truly had been. My wife Claire…
She turned and saw me. I expected a reaction, a reproach but none came. Just a smile. A turning up at the corners of her mouth that said that she was expecting me… as if there could be no other result. One day soon I would follow after her, she knew that and had been comfortable to wait.
“Hi,” I said. I didn’t know what to say after that, so I said what I knew to say.
“Hi,” she said back, and seemed genuinely happy to see me.
I walked further into the kitchen and saw her take a fresh loaf of bread out with her old hotpads with the cows on them. She’d always loved cows. It was one of her things.
She looked up at me then and I wanted to say something, but couldn’t. I didn’t know where to begin or what to say. But she seemed to know something that she had to share.
“You’re early,” she said with a smile.
“I’m early?” I repeated. I felt like a fool saying her words back to her, but a good-natured fool. There was no guile in her voice or mine and I wondered at the last time we’d talked that way in life. I felt the tears begin to well, then slide down my cheeks and I didn’t bother to try to stop them.
I thought she’d ask me about the children. How could I do what I had done and leave the children behind? I didn’t know how to answer that. In truth, if somehow I carried death with me like a disease, sharing it with everyone around me like Kendrick had said, then perhaps it was best that I not see the children again. I didn’t know how to tell Claire that and thankfully she didn’t ask.
“You’re early,” she said again, but her words didn’t hold a bite of antagonism. “Simon, you’re not ready yet… you’re not done.”
I opened my mouth to say more, but struggled.
“I don’t want to leave here,” I said.
“I know,” Claire smiled.
“I want to stay,” I said.
“I’d like that,” Claire replied and she reached forward, touching my arm with her hand. My skin tingled at her touch. I’d forgotten how much I missed it. Then it was gone.
“But not today, Simon,” she said, still smiling, but with finality in her voice, “Not today.”
I felt the darkness surround me then and I let it swallow me, the soft light of the kitchen and Claire falling away. I tried to get back to her but I couldn’t. Everything went black.
I awoke then. Consciousness coming to me before I opened my eyes. I could hear the sounds of traffic, cars and buses and the warbling of an ambulance siren, and somewhere far above, I heard a helicopter. I could hear voices, shouts and commands and the footfalls of men running.
I realized that I was lying on my left side, my head lying against the driver’s side window. My head ached and I felt a sharp burning high on my forehead from a cut. I realized it then…
I was alive.
I was alive and I was very unhappy about it.
The frame of the Suburban rocked and I could feel someone trying to ascend the side of the SUV. The front windshield had been spider-webbed during the collision with the other vehicle and so whoever was climbing up the side of the Suburban was trying to see if I was still alive.
Everything came back to me in a rush. The collision with the SUV, my vehicle flipping onto its left side. Think, I had to think… Burr’s men would probably still be alive. Kendrick and his agents would be coming to attempt retrieval of our files from the van…
Oh shit, the van…
Jessica was in the van. Billy… Nan… I didn’t know if anyone could have survived the grenade attack that the van had undergone, but I had to find out. But first, I had to deal with whomever was scaling the SUV and coming looking for me.
My head was woozy, but I quickly found the Glock that was strapped into a shoulder holster under my jacket. I let my right hand fall to that position and unsnapped the release. I kept my eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness but peeked the slightest bit up toward the passenger door that was pointed skyward now.
A shadow appeared through the window. I could make out the shape and a moment later, that he had a gun trained on me. Probably not an EMT, I decided. The figure jerked on the door handle once, then twice, then managed to get the door to creak open with a grinding squeal of metal. He pushed it open as far as it would go, then looked back down at me. I wasn’t moving. He lowered his pistol and looked closer, trying to decide if I was dead or faking. I decided to show him.
The man had been one of Burr’s people and I’d recognized him from the elevator in the Jacobson Tower. As he leaned closer, the muzzle of his pistol slid away from my direction and I took the opportunity to make my move.
I jerked the Glock from its holster and fired once. The 9mm slug hit the man in the center of the forehead and he spilled backwards out of the doorway. I heard silence for a half second, then the sound of his body hitting the pavement outside the Suburban.
Whether I wanted to or not, I was committed now. I unbuckled and struggled out of my seat. I stood on the driver’s door, my world having taken a 90 degree turn to the left. I knew that my attackers would expect me to follow the first man out the
way he’d fallen. I decided to surprise them. I kicked the windshield that was already broken and it buckled in its frame. I kicked it again and it came loose enough that I could squeeze my way out.
I could survey the scene then and it looked like a warzone. My Suburban was on its left side in the middle of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Burr’s SUV was jammed into the railing, having slid to stop after I’d rear-ended them. To my right was the van, still smoking from the grenade attack.
The passenger door of Burr’s SUV was open. I looked back and saw the passenger lying on his back where I’d dropped him. Back to the SUV, the driver must have still been inside. I lifted the Glock with both hands and pointed it at the driver’s side door.
“Drop the gun, Simon!” It was Ken Gibson, standing in the police barricade. He was yelling to me, but not willing to come out and stop me.
“Keep them back, Ken,” I said. My voice had changed, sounding strange even to my own ears. It was low and rough, like a cemetery worker’s shovel biting into the dirt. A horrible sound… a harbinger of mortality. Ken kept the cops back.
I raised the Glock out in front of me, centering the front site on the driver’s side door. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew the remaining gunman would come from there. And a second after the thought passed through my mind, he did.
Burr’s man burst from the driver’s door, moving to my left, raising his gun as he did so. He was unsteady on his feet, stumbling, but putting on a good act. I considered that he might be wearing a Kevlar vest and so I aimed above it. I fired and the bullet hit the gunman in the throat, exploding his artery in a gout of blood. His face went slack in surprise and he made a helpless effort to cover the wound with his hand, but the blood poured out between his fingers. He looked at me then and I continued to walk toward him. He opened his mouth to make a plea for assistance and gave only a gurgling choke. I shot him again and the bullet dumped him over backwards into a pile of elbows and knees.
I was walking toward him still, but saw a reflection in the side window of the Suburban. It was an eerie, dreamlike reflection of a man. A man with a gun. A gun held in a hand with scraped knuckles. His eyes were black and devoid of emotion, his mouth a bloodless scar under a broken nose. The gash at his hairline was pouring blood down his face, painting half of it a deathly crimson like warpaint and in the middle of the stream of blood was one of those dead eyes, the white of it stark in contrast.
Jesus, I thought, that guy’s fucked up… He’s dead and doesn’t even know it… then a second later… God, that’s me.
I looked down at the gunman laying on the bridge and took his SIG automatic from his twitching fingers and fired one round into his head. At last he stopped moving.
I heard the cars approaching behind me then. Two, no… three black sedans. I turned, looked and saw them. It was Kendrick. Kendrick and his attack dogs. Agents sent to kill me… to kill us.
If they had their way, they’d kill me on this bridge and seize the digital data tapes in the van. All of our work… all of our suffering… would be for nothing. Ron Crawford… Geoff Spanner… we would not die here for nothing.
I was alive.
Alive and pissed off about it.
If Kendrick was right about what he’d said, that I carried death with me like a disease, then I wanted to infect everyone of these bastards from Blackthorn. Everyone who stood with Randall Kendrick. I wanted nothing more than to share my affliction and make them feel my pain. Death is coming, boys, I thought. It’s coming for you.
I watched the Blackthorn cars slide to a stop at the end of the bridge, sealing us in. I was standing in the middle of the kill zone. And there was no place else I would rather have been. My mind flashed a thought from something Randall had showed me once when we’d been colleagues. It was from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare… “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.”
Caesar… Brutus… I shook my head to clear it and watched three pairs of agents exit the cars, then Kendrick… and then Isabelle. He was pulling out all the stops. One agent leveled an H&K G36 rifle at me over the hood of his car. It was Agent Vaughn. I bolted for the driver’s side door of the Suburban the gunman had just emerged from and dove onto the seat. Bullets punched into the Suburban’s frame. I scrambled across the seat, smashing my groin on the center console as I went, then unlatched the passenger door and spilled out onto the pavement. The grenade launcher that had been on the floor by the passenger’s feet fell out after me and hit the pavement with a solid thump. I regarded it for a moment.
I could hear the rotors of the police helicopter beating the air, then the shadow of it passed overhead. They were surveying the scene. On the next pass they’d deploy and drop a SWAT team into the kill zone. I had to stop Kendrick’s people before that happened. No one else was going to die for me that day.
I stood on the far side of the Suburban and looked through the windows. Agents were approaching in a cover formation. I leveled both pistols at them through the glass and fired, pulling the trigger again and again. The glass shattered and the agents hit the ground for cover. Two of them went down for good.
I jammed the pistols into the back of my belt, grabbed the grenade launcher from where it had fallen and ran for the bridge rail in a low crouch. Once there, I swung my leg over and vertigo ran through me with a nasty chill. I had no time. The other leg went over and I dropped into space, held over the river below only by my fingertips.
I waited for a beat, then two, then three. At last I heard footsteps approaching, but not the railing… toward the Suburban. I pulled myself up and my arms screamed in agony, but I gave no heed to the pains of my body. My pain just didn’t matter. I pulled up and hooked my left arm around a railing support and peered over the top.
One agent was rounding the back of the Suburban, rifle held ready for a tactical assault. And then another agent came to the door that I’d dived into. I recognized him, it was Agent Vaughn. Vaughn who had killed Chris Swenson and planted his body in my house. He was looking for me. Time that he found me.
I pulled the sling of the grenade launcher from my shoulder with one hand and managed to get a hand on the pistol grip. I heaved my arm over the railing, aiming at the back end of the Suburban. The movement caught Vaughn’s attention and his face screwed into a mask of surprise and rage. He lifted his rifle, aiming for me but I fired first. But not at him.
The grenade shot forth with a loud crump. I tracked the trail of its path in a line of smoke left in its wake. The grenade punched into the body of the Suburban near the gas tank. The vehicle exploded with Vaughn in it and I imagined being able to hear him scream, but it was likely more hope than actual hearing.
With the explosion, I dropped back, still barely clinging to the railing above. My right arm swung free and the grenade launcher twisted, then fell loose from my hand and fell down, down into the waters below. Vaughn was dead. But I still had work to do.
I pulled myself up onto the railing, then over and tumbled onto the pavement. The Suburban was burning fiercely and the heat of it threatened to boil the flesh from my skull. Every nick and cut I’d sustained shrieked at me to get away, the skin raw and sensitive to the roiling flames. I pulled the SIG from my belt with my left hand and began to walk toward the van. I had to raise my right hand to shield my face from the heat.
The police helicopter was approaching and I saw the rappel lines fall and I knew the SWAT troopers would be next. I was so focused on them, that I almost missed Agent Roger Brock. He broke cover from my right, H&K G36 rifle up and firing at the SWAT troopers. He intended to take them down while they were vulnerable in mid-rappel. Brock’s left side of his face was burned, the explosion charring the flesh. I could see some of his comrades around him, their bodies still burning. Brock’s rifle was coming up, aiming at the back of a SWAT trooper when I fired at him.
The bullet struck him in the left forearm and his hand spasmed open and dropped the rifle at the last second, sending his shot wide. He screamed in pain and frustra
tion and then saw me. I was holding the pistol on him, no more than twenty feet away. He looked at me and blinked. It was as if he couldn’t believe I was still alive. I wanted to tell him I felt the same way, but before I could, he rushed me.
I tried to track Brock, but he was faster than I expected. When we’d fought before, I’d had the element of surprise. Here, he was in control. More experienced. Fueled by rage and pain. I wounded the bear but did not put him down in time.
Brock’s shoulder hit me in the gut and flattened me onto my back. My gunhand smashed back into the street and the SIG bounced away. I kneed him in the groin, once, twice, then hammered him in the ribs just above his liver. Bile spewed from Brock’s broken lips and he fell aside. I elbowed him in the side of the head in my attempt to get up. I shoved him away, but just as quickly, he recovered and came at me in a low crouch.
Unlike the movies, hand-to-hand combat isn’t the stuff of Jason Statham films. There are no kicks to the head unless your opponent is already on the ground. These skirmishes are short, bloody and brutal.
Brock feinted with a left, came at me with his right for a palm heel strike to the nose. He was trying to kill me outright. The gloves were off. I weaved left and jackhammered a right uppercut into his solar plexus, then a left into his kidney. He dropped his guard just enough and I snapped his collar bone with a hammer fist. His arm dropped to his side.
His leg lashed out and caught me in the back of the knee. It buckled and I hit the pavement, shredding the flesh on my knee. He’d kill me if I didn’t move fast. I lunged upward, smashing his nose with my elbow. His head rocked back and I stomped on his left knee before he could recover.
I was moving in to finish him when I heard gunshots behind me. Not the rapid-fire of automatic weapons but the loud, flat boom of a .45 caliber handgun. Isabelle was shooting the SWAT troopers. I saw three of them fall limp on their rappel lines and hang in the air. I grappled with Brock for a second, then I had him in a choke hold from behind.