Deadly Assets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Hang on, Matt.”

  Daquan then bolted back through the bushes. As he came out the far side, he saw the driver of the Ford sedan, a heavyset black woman in her late fifties, leaning over the open trunk, looking over her shoulder as she rushed to remove bulging white plastic grocery bags.

  He ran toward her and loudly called, “Hey! I need your car . . .”

  The woman, the heavy bags swinging from her hands, turned and saw Daquan quickly approaching.

  Then she saw that he held a pistol.

  She dropped the bags, then went to her knees, quivering as she covered her gray hair with her hands.

  “Please . . . take whatever you want . . . take it all . . . just don’t hurt me . . .”

  Daquan saw that a ring of keys had fallen to the ground with the bags.

  “It’s an emergency!” he said, reaching down and grabbing the keys.

  —

  Tires squealed as he made a hard right at the first corner, going over the curb and onto the sidewalk, then squealed again making another right at the next intersection. He sped along the block, braking hard to look for Payne down the first vacant lot, then accelerating again until braking at the next lot.

  He finally found the one with Payne and the teenager—Payne was trying to sit upright; the teen had not moved—and skidded to a stop at the curb.

  Daquan considered driving across the lot to reach Payne faster but was afraid the car would become stuck.

  He threw the gearshift into park and left the car engine running and the driver’s door open as he ran toward Payne.

  He saw that Payne held his left hand over the large blood-soaked area of his gray sweatshirt. And, as Daquan approached closer, he saw Payne, with great effort, raise his head to look toward him—while pointing his .45 in Daquan’s direction.

  “Don’t shoot, Matt! It’s me!”

  “Daquan,” Payne said weakly, then after a moment lowered his pistol and moved to get up on one knee.

  Daquan squatted beside him. Payne wrapped his right arm around Daquan’s neck and slowly they stood.

  “This way,” Daquan said, leaning Payne into him and starting to walk.

  The first couple steps were awkward, more stumbles than solid footing, but then suddenly, with a grunt, Payne found his legs.

  They managed a rhythm and were almost back to the car when Daquan noticed a young black male in a wheelchair rolling out onto the porch of a row house across the street.

  “Yo! What the fuck!” the male shouted, coming down a ramp to the sidewalk. “Why’d you shoot my man Ray-Ray for?”

  Daquan said nothing but kept an eye on him as they reached the car and he opened the back door. He helped Payne slide onto the backseat, slammed the door shut, then ran and got behind the wheel.

  “Yo!” the male shouted again.

  As Daquan pulled on the gearshift, he could hear the male still shouting and then saw in the rearview mirror that he had started wheeling up the street toward the car.

  And then he saw something else.

  “Damn!” Daquan said aloud.

  He ducked just before the windows on the left side of the car shattered in a hail of bullets.

  And then he realized there was a sudden burning sensation in his back and shoulder.

  He floored the accelerator pedal.

  —

  Daquan knew that Temple University Hospital was only blocks down Broad Street from Erie Avenue. Driving to the ER would take no time. But Daquan suddenly was getting light-headed. Just steering a straight line was quickly becoming a challenge.

  He approached Erie Avenue, braked and laid on the horn as he glanced in both directions, then stepped heavily on the gas pedal again.

  His vision was getting blurry and he fought to keep focused. He heard horns blaring as he crossed Erie and prayed whoever it was could avoid hitting them.

  By the time the sedan approached Ontario, Daquan realized that things were beginning to happen in slow motion. He made the turn, carefully, but again ran up over the curb, then bumped a parked car, sideswiping it before yanking the steering wheel. The car moved to the center of the street.

  Now he could make out the hospital ahead and, after a block, saw the sign for the emergency room, an arrow indicating it was straight ahead.

  Then he saw an ambulance, lights flashing, that was parked in one of the bays beside a four-foot-high sign that read EMERGENCY ROOM DROP OFF ONLY.

  Daquan reached the bays and began to turn into the first open one.

  His head then became very light—and he felt himself slowly slumping over.

  The car careened onto the sidewalk, struck a refuse container, and finally rammed a concrete pillar before coming to a stop.

  Daquan struggled to raise his head.

  Through blurry eyes, he saw beyond the shattered car window that the doors on the ambulance had swung open.

  Two people in uniforms leaped out and began running to the car.

  Daquan heard the ignition switch turn and the engine go quiet, then felt a warm hand on him and heard a female voice.

  “Weak,” she said, “but there’s a pulse.”

  “No pulse on this guy,” a male voice from the backseat said. “I’m taking him in . . .”

  Then Daquan passed out.

  TWO DAYS LATER . . .

  [ THREE ]

  Temple University Hospital, Room 401

  1801 North Broad Street, North Philadelphia

  Wednesday, December 19, 6:35 P.M.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Matt Payne said, pointing at the television screen while intravenous tubing dangled from the top of his hand. Then he exclaimed: “Shit, it hurts to move!”

  Tony Harris looked to where he was pointing.

  “What?” Harris said.

  The image of Raychell Meadow, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, cut away to surveillance footage from the emergency room entrance that showed the EMTs rushing to the crashed sedan with shot-out windows.

  The ticker of text at the bottom of the screen read HOMICIDE SGT. PAINE HAS BEEN MOVED OUT OF THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT AND IS EXPECTED TO FULLY RECOVER FROM HIS WOUNDS.

  “I bet that was intentional!” Payne said. “Damn it!”

  Payne then pointed to the wall of windows that overlooked Broad Street.

  “If I could get one of those open, I bet I could hit her with my bedpan from here.”

  “What?” Harris repeated.

  “That hack reporter bimbo spelled my name wrong!”

  Harris looked, then chuckled.

  “She probably would have left off the e, too,” he said. “Glad to see you’re feeling well enough to be concerned about the important things now.”

  Harris held up his right hand, fingers fanned out and thumb folded.

  “Four what?”

  “Four hours Daquan was in surgery. The ER works miracles here.”

  Payne nodded. “He got hit in both lungs and his liver. But he’s gonna be fine.”

  Harris folded all but his index finger.

  “What?” Payne said. “You’re now asking permission to use the head?”

  Harris ignored that: “And one deathbed confession. Daquan warned his mother to be careful of Hooks.”

  “Why? He told me ‘word on the street’ was Hooks knew who capped Pookie.”

  “That’s because he had it done—Pookie was skimming from the drugs he sold in Needle Park and owed Hooks money. And Hooks took out Dante because he got cold feet being part of the casino heist and was afraid to talk. Hooks gave Daquan part of the diamonds from the robbery as a bribe—the message being ‘Don’t talk and I’ll take care of you.’”

  “He lied to me, or at least wasn’t truthful about that damn ear stud,” Payne said, shaking his head. “Sonofabitch! No good deed goes u
npunished.”

  “Hard to blame him, Matt. Not sure he had a choice, considering he knew what happened to his cousin. Daquan, I think, was trying to walk the straight and narrow. But Rayvorris Oliver—your big fan Ray-Ray, homicide number 372—decided the diamond stud meant Daquan was going to get Pookie’s turf in Needle Park, which he thought he deserved, paid a visit to the diner, and . . . Well, here you are, Marshal Earp.”

  Raychell Meadow came back onscreen.

  “Why are we watching this channel?” Payne said, disgusted. “I think I’d rather be back in my drug-induced fog.”

  Raychell Meadow, her tone highly dramatic, said: “In a horrific twist of fate, the Reverend Josiah Cross, who was said to have dodged death after gunfire erupted at his Stop Killadelphia Rally on Saturday, was killed yesterday morning. Police report that a forklift unloading a semitrailer full of frozen turkeys to be distributed for Feed Philly Day dropped a pallet carrying a hundred turkeys estimated to weigh more than one ton. The Philadelphia medical examiner’s office said death from blunt force trauma was instant.”

  The screen then showed a pudgy male’s face.

  “Ah, now there’s one of our fair city’s shining stars,” Payne said, “attempting to appear mournful.”

  Raychell Meadow’s voice-over said: “Philadelphia City Councilman (At Large) H. Rapp Badde, who sponsors the annual event at the Word of Brotherly Love Ministry in Strawberry Mansion, issued a brief statement . . .”

  Onscreen, Badde then said: “It’s truly a tragic day for our city to lose such a strong supporter of our citizens. He will be terribly missed, but we take comfort in the fact that he passed as he was performing yet another service to our people. Knowing him as well as I do, I know he would want this ministry to continue. And it will, including the Feed Philly Day, which will take place tomorrow, during which we will give thanks and prayers for all of Reverend Cross’s blessings. I hope to see everyone there.”

  Raychell Meadow came back on: “In related news, police sources report that Tyrone Banks, known by his hip-hop artist name King Two-One-Five, who was to perform at Monday’s canceled Feed Philly Day event, was found dead this morning. An unnamed confidential source said the twenty-five-year-old singer was found wearing a Lucky Stars Casino hat and holding a seven of clubs and two of diamonds from a deck of cards bearing the Philadelphia Police Department’s shield on the back and two Homicide Cold Cases on their face.”

  Payne exchanged glances with Harris.

  “Getting dealt a seven and a two,” Payne said. “Arguably the worst beginning hand in poker. Can’t do shit with it.”

  “Kind of like what he did with his life,” Harris said.

  Harris gestured at the television.

  “There’s more to the story about how they found Hooks dead.”

  “I guessing what Sully said—someone wanted to send a message about what happens to those who rob casinos.”

  Harris nodded.

  Payne impatiently gestured Give it to me with his tube-covered hand, and said, “You’re gonna tell me, I’m sure.”

  Harris grinned.

  “That microphone he loved so much?”

  “That one with the big chrome mesh ball at the top?”

  “Yeah. You won’t guess where they found it . . .” He paused, then said, “Wait. You’re sick enough that you would guess.”

  Payne grinned as he shook his head.

  “Well, don’t let your guard down just because Cross and Hooks got their due,” Harris said. “While the good news is you’re out of ICU and going to survive the shooting—”

  “The bad is?”

  “Your fiancée is going to kill you, she’s so pissed off at you.”

  Keep reading for an exciting preview of W.E.B. Griffin’s (writing as William E. Butterworth III) new novel

  THE HUNTING TRIP

  [ Four ]

  U.S. Army Reception Center

  Fort Dix, New Jersey

  Monday Morning October 7, 1946

  On Phil’s first day in the Army, he was issued about fifty pounds of uniforms and given inoculations against every disease known to medical science. In the morning of his second day, he was given the Army General Classification Test, known as the AGCT, to see where he would best fit into the nation’s war machine.

  In the afternoon, he faced a Classification Specialist, who took one look at Phil, his AGCT score, and then arranged for him to take the test again.

  “Secondary school dropouts” are not supposed to score 144 on the AGCT test. All it took to get into Officer Candidate School was an AGCT score of 110. The second time Phil took the test, this time under supervision to make sure no one was slipping him the answers, he scored 146.

  The next morning, he faced another Classification Specialist, this one an officer, who explained to him the doors his amazing AGCT score had opened for him in the nation’s war machine. Heading the list of these, the captain told Phil, was that he could apply for competitive entrance to the United States Military Academy at West Point. If accepted, he would be assigned to the USMA Preparatory School, and on graduation therefrom be appointed to the Corps of Cadets at West Point.

  That suggested to Phil that he was being offered the privilege of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He had had experience with a military academy, specifically the Bordentown Military Academy, and it had not been pleasant. He had been sent home after seven weeks of military service, so to speak, after having been found guilty of having talked a fellow cadet, PFC Edwin W. Bitter, into stuffing three unrolled rolls of toilet tissue down the muzzle of the saluting cannon. When the cannon had fired at the next morning’s reveille formation, it looked for a minute or so as if Southern New Jersey was experiencing a blizzard in early October.

  On the Greyhound bus back to north New Jersey later that October day, ex–Cadet Private P. W. Williams had been enormously relieved that his military service was over.

  Another option, the captain explained, was for Phil to apply for the Army Security Agency. The ASA was charged with listening to enemy radio communications, copying them down, and if necessary, decrypting them. Personnel selected to be “Intercept Operators,” the captain said, had to have the same intellectual qualifications as officer candidates, that is to say an AGCT score of 110 or better.

  Reasoning that places where radio receivers were located were probably going to be inside, and that Intercept Operators would probably work sitting down, Phil selected the ASA for his career in the nation’s war machine.

  He was given yet another long form to fill out, this one asking for a list of his residences in the last twenty years, and other personal information. He had no way of knowing of course that ASA Intercept Operators were required to have Top Secret security clearances, or that the form was the first step in what was known as the “Full Background Investigation Procedure,” which was necessary to get one.

  The next day, Phil was transferred from the Reception Center to a basic training company.

  There he and two hundred fellow recruits were issued blankets, sheets, a pillow and pillowcase, a small brown book entitled TM9-1275 M-1 Garand Manual, and an actual U.S. Rifle, Cal. 30, M-1 Garand.

  They were told that until graduation day, when they actually became soldiers, they would live with their Garands. And yes, that meant sleeping with it. And memorizing its serial number.

  The idea was for the recruits to become accustomed to the weapon. They wouldn’t actually fire it until the sixth week of their training. Until then, they would in their spare time, after memorizing the serial number, read TM9-1275 and learn how the weapon functioned.

  The first indication that Phil had empathy for Mr. Garand’s invention—or vice versa—came that very evening at 8:55 p.m., or, as the Army says that, twenty fifty-five hours.

  At that hour, Sergeant Andrew Jackson McCullhay, one of Phil’s instructors, walk
ed down the barracks aisle en route to the switch that would turn off the lights at twenty-one hundred.

  As he passed the bunk to which PVT WILLIAMS P had been assigned, he saw something that both surprised and distressed him. PVT WILLIAMS P had somehow managed to completely disassemble his U.S. Rifle, Cal. 30, M-1 Garand. All of its many parts were spread out over his bunk.

  In the gentle, paternal tone of voice for which Basic Training Instructors are so well known, Sergeant McCullhay inquired, “EXPLETIVE DELETED!! head, what the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! have you done to your EXPLETIVE DELETED!! rifle?”

  “Sergeant, sir,” PVT WILLIAMS P replied, “I have disassembled it.”

  “So I see,” Sergeant McCullhay replied. “Now show me, EXPLETIVE DELETED!! head, how you’re going to get your EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Garand back together before I turn the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! lights off in four minutes and fifteen EXPLETIVE DELETED!! seconds.”

  “Yes, sir, Sergeant,” PVT WILLIAMS P replied, and proceeded to do so with two minutes and five seconds to spare.

  “I’ll be a EXPLETIVE DELETED!!,” Sergeant McCullhay said. “EXPLETIVE DELETED!! head, you’re a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! genius!”

  “Yes, sir, Sergeant,” PVT WILLIAMS P said.

  He had already learned the most important rule of all in the Army: Never Argue with a Sergeant.

  Sergeant McCullhay was genuinely impressed with the speed with which PVT WILLIAMS P had reassembled his stripped Garand, especially after he timed himself at the task. When, that same night, he told his buddies at the sergeants’ club what he had seen, they didn’t believe him.

  One of his fellow noncommissioned officers made a challenge: “I’ve got ten EXPLETIVE DELETED!! dollars that says your kid can’t completely disassemble and reassemble a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Garand in less than five minutes.”

  As a result of this challenge—it was a challenge, not a “bet” or a “wager,” as betting and wagering are violations of Army Regulations and those who do so are subject to court-martial—PVT WILLIAMS P was awakened after midnight by Sergeant McCullhay.

  He and the Garand rifle with which he had been sleeping were taken to McCullhay’s room in the barracks where five noncommissioned officers were waiting to challenge Sergeant McCullhay’s assertions vis-à-vis the speed with which PVT WILLIAMS P could dis- and re- assemble a Garand.