by Peter Telep
“I’m confused,” Josh whispered. “Are these guys working security for some big meeting—or are they here for us?”
“For us?”
“Maybe we picked up a tail.”
Johnny’s phone vibrated. He withdrew it from his pocket and read a text from Willie: car pulling up at the motel. “I need to go,” he told Josh. “Hold here.”
“Roger that.”
Johnny hustled off, working his way along the perimeter, keeping his distance from their friendly neighborhood jihadi posted on the north side. He reached Willie and gathered his breath before muttering, “Talk to me.”
Willie pointed at the motel. “That little Honda pulled up. Tall guy, looks like a young bin Laden, got out. He went inside the office, door on the far left. Still in there.”
Johnny checked his watch: 2301. “This ain’t no meeting,” he told Willie. “Josh thinks we picked up a tail. Maybe they came for us.”
“Or they’re waiting for someone else? Maybe the plan was to lure Nazari here and take him out. They’re still trying to plug their security leak.”
“That’s possible.”
“You got orders, Master Sergeant?”
Johnny grabbed his phone. “I’m texting Josh and Corey. There’s a guy on the north side. He’s theirs.”
“Roger that. What about us?”
“You cover me.”
“Cover you? What’re you doing?”
“I’m calling their bluff.”
“We’re even, Johnny. Don’t make me save your ass again.”
“Not part of the plan.” He pocketed his phone and took a deep breath. Clutching the fence with both gloved hands, he climbed over it, hopped down, then sprinted across the street toward the hotel.
Knowing the snipers were tracking him, he juked right, then left—the first shots coming in succession, punching a hole in the Honda’s rear window at his shoulder and flattening the driver’s side rear tire with a whoosh and hiss.
In three more strides, Johnny was at the motel’s office door, reaching for the handle as his shoulder made contact. The door swung open—
But Johnny rolled away, ducking back outside.
A round from a shotgun blasted through the doorway, peppering the Honda to release a detonation of glass. Johnny spun forward in his counter-attack.
The jihadi stood there, a gaunt-faced demon with yellowing teeth and a matted beard. His eyes radiated a profound hatred as the shotgun’s smoking barrel came to bear. The motel disintegrated around him like buildings in those old nuclear test films. Improbably, he and Johnny remained, squaring off within the embers of a charcoal landscape. All of this happened in Johnny’s imagination, within one one-hundredth of a second before he pulled the trigger.
His first round pasted a red star on the jihadi’s brow. The second caught him in the neck and tore free a ragged chunk. Blood spewed as he tumbled backward and the shotgun went off again, blasting into the popcorn ceiling to unleash a torrent of debris.
Before Johnny could steal another breath, sniper fire burrowed into the doorjamb. As the splinters flew, he threw himself inside the office, collapsing into the dust. He crawled over the dead man and around the counter. The stench of gunpowder clogged the air as he scrambled to his feet, his ears ringing.
In a hallway behind the counter he found a heavyset black man, the concierge, lying on the blood-soaked carpeting, his arms and hands sliced open, his chest riddled with wounds. Johnny grimaced and charged past him, searching for another way out.
* * *
Corey was halfway across the field, drawing within a few yards of the man near the trees, when shots boomed from the plant behind him and the man sprang like a buck, rushing toward the motel.
With the sound of his own ragged breath raging in his ears, Corey followed, breaking into a hard sprint that woke tremors in his knees.
Detecting Corey’s approach, the jihadi spun back at the next cluster of trees and raised his rifle. As Corey threw himself toward the dirt, a gun shot exploded to his right. That was Josh, who followed with three more rounds. So much for taking a prisoner.
As Corey landed with a breath-robbing thud, so too did their assailant, his luck poor against Josh’s superior marksmanship. Josh rushed to the man, grabbed him by the shoulders, and dragged him around the broadest tree trunk for cover. At the same time, Corey struggled back to his feet and high-tailed it for those trees.
More shots from the plant sent dirt and broken glass fountaining into his path as he rounded the tree and dropped onto all fours. Josh had already torn off the man’s cap to reveal a shock of black hair. His long beard and the absence of a mustache suggested a lot. The jihadi’s vacant eyes stared back at him, and for a moment, Corey sensed something in the man’s expression, something released only after he had died, an emotion darker and more unsettling than just hatred, a venomous and contagious thing that Corey could not describe.
Josh finished rifling through the jihadi’s pockets and cursed. “No ID, nothing,” he said. “Get a close up of this guy.”
“Roger that.” Corey fished out his phone and felt pangs of disgust as he thumbed off two photos of the corpse’s face.
After that, Josh said they would keep to the fence line, driving north and remaining within the denser undergrowth. Corey nodded, understanding Josh’s plan. They were returning to the factory to go after those snipers.
* * *
Johnny slammed through the door at the end of the hall and staggered into an alley alongside the motel. Keeping tight to the row of trees on his right, he jogged toward the street, reaching a trio of plastic trash cans at the curb. The cans dropped like bowling pins under a sudden hailstorm of sniper fire.
Cursing, Johnny darted to the right and sprinted across the road, rounds literally paralleling his steps or striking like tiny meteors into the asphalt ahead. He reached the fence, where Willie proffered a hand and helped haul him over.
“Guy on the north side’s dead,” Johnny reported. “We need to get one of those snipers at the plant. Let’s go!”
Johnny chose the south side fence, veering off the lot and onto the broken sidewalk to save time. They could not see the snipers from their angle, meaning they too were concealed. Only when they rounded the corner, searching for a gap in the first floor walls, did they come back under fire.
“I’ll check for a car out back,” Willie said, cocking a thumb up the boulevard.
“Do it,” Johnny said.
As Willie hauled ass under the bridge, beating a serpentine path through a gauntlet of abandoned tires, Johnny threw himself toward the building as a round cracked directly above and pinged off the fence. “Oh, I’m coming for you,” he muttered.
Gritting his teeth, he bounded across the uneven sidewalk, passing under the wooden power poles, that, quite fittingly, were rowed up like Orthodox crosses beside the building. With his 1911 in one hand and a flashlight in the other, he scaled some plywood and reached a small opening. As he entered, the cold air shimmered with dust, and the gigantic letters of some graffiti artist seemingly detached themselves from the wall and glided toward him. Some forty yards away to his left, concrete stairs once surrounded by a stairwell towered in the gloom. He aimed for them, the flashlight’s beam slashing across gaping cracks in the floor.
He reached the foot of the stairs and scowled. A motley crew of Michelangelos had left their messages on the face of each step: Risk failed. This is America. Burn this place. Cars killed the earth.
More “artwork” covered the water-stained walls as he ascended, moving between concrete stairs and sections of rotting wood that coughed as he booted by. The wind whistled through windows fringed by teeth of glass, and soon, he traversed landings where the rest of that glass had been trampled into glittering mats that crackled like corn under his feet.
The rumbling boots of the jihadi’s exit panned overhead, and Johnny quickened his pace, reaching the fifth floor and shining his light on another stairwell, at the far end, where he c
aught a fluctuating silhouette, along with a rifle barrel.
Johnny fired, the pistol’s muzzle flashing saffron, the round chewing into the wall at the sniper’s shoulder as he shrank into a cloak of darkness.
Wincing over the miss, Johnny forged on, narrowly avoiding a mountain of concrete and tarpaper from the collapsed ceiling. With the sky exposed, the light turned silvery and cold, his breath heavier, his nose running. He nearly tripped as he reached the second stairwell, double-timed down to the next floor, then let his beam play across piles of green garbage bags that had weathered down into clumps like seaweed. He stiffened as gunfire thundered to the south. That was Corey and Josh engaging another sniper.
A crash from below had him descending again, his legs wobbly from the exertion, his balance faltering despite the surge of adrenaline. He reached the third level, then the second, where he spotted the jihadi skirting a pole with a circumference that could hide two men. Johnny aimed both the light and pistol, tracking the sniper as he left the pole and, for a few seconds, appeared in the open—an apparition leaping across carpets of rubble and slowing as though Johnny’s light were draining him of power.
Anticipating the man’s turn toward the staircase, Johnny dropped the flashlight and clutched the pistol with both hands to control the recoil. Now relying upon his night sights, he squeezed the trigger, and the barrel kicked up slightly in his hands. The jihadi lurched and clutched his leg, but he dragged on toward yet another staircase to their left, near a broad bank of glassless windows.
As though smelling the blood, Johnny fetched his flashlight and returned to the pursuit, so caught up in the electricity of the chase that he failed to see a piece of concrete jutting up like a traffic cone. His knee brushed across the rock a second before his boot latched on.
He hit the floor like a refrigerator, losing the flashlight but maintaining his grip on the pistol. Swearing against the stinging pain in his leg, he pushed forward, seized the light, and groaned as he stood. The bleeding jihadi had already disappeared into the stairwell, leaving a trail of glittering rubies.
Johnny shuffled down another flight, slamming into the wall as his ankle twisted on a broken board. A curse reached his lips but escaped no farther. They were at the north end of the building now, past Lambert Ave, where the windows and doors were more heavily fortified against looters. The only way out was through a narrow doorway on the south side. Street lights drew a crooked shadow from that opening toward a heap of red bricks that seemed blasted from the wall by tank fire.
A scraping of shoes and ragged breathing sent Johnny’s light veering toward the wall, where the jihadi lumbered like a hunchback, exploiting waist-high mounds of ruptured flooring and corroded steel beams for cover. But then he stopped, craned his head, and met Johnny’s gaze. In the next second he was gone behind a dorsal fin of concrete.
Johnny hit the deck just as the first shot blasted into the wall behind him and echoed away. He pushed up on his elbows. A second round punched the floor near his right arm and ricocheted up and away. Johnny barrel rolled to the left, drawing himself to the nearest pole. He wormed his way behind it, then rose to his haunches.
As he leaned out, the sniper’s rifle spoke again, and Johnny could feel that round chiseling into the stone near his shoulder.
With all those gunshots still hammering in his ears, Johnny added his pistol to the conversation. His .45 caliber double tap would, he hoped, give the jihadi pause. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect.
Just as his second round clanged and sparked across a steel girder only inches above the man’s head, the jihadi dashed off, no longer limping but raging against the horror of his wound in a last ditch effort for the doorway.
Fearing that another round might kill the man, Johnny held fire and tore off. He reached the girders and vaulted onto one, doing a two second high-wire act, then leaping to the floor and falling in behind the jihadi, drawing within a meter. As he launched forward to tackle the man, they crossed onto a section of plywood about five-feet square. The sheets were neatly arranged but waterlogged and sagging at the center.
If Johnny had the time, he might have looked up to spy the gaping hole extending through every floor and allowing rainwater to filter inside—but he was locked on to the target, programmed to win, and ready to celebrate with a beer and a bag of chips. Under the weight of both men, the plywood boards buckled then snapped. He and his prey plunged through a hole hidden beneath the boards.
By the time Johnny lowered his flashlight, it was too late. They had fallen some twelve feet and were a gasp away from splashing into a garbage-filled swamp that had collected in the basement. Old shoes, bags, pieces of wood, signs, swollen newspapers, and a thousand other articles like the wreckage from an airliner bobbed on the surface. A thin layer of ice, along with the almost furry scent of mildew, foretold of the shock to come.
The last thing Johnny remembered was a cold rip—like a zipper—rising from his ankles to his face. The sludge enveloped his head just as his brow made contact with a hard surface. His neck snapped back, and all of his aches sloughed off into a cold and impenetrable darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“I had no idea that my time spent as a lifeguard on Onslow Beach would come in handy up in Detroit, a city not exactly known for its beaches.”
—Willie Parente (FBI interview, 23 December)
Willie craned his head toward a curious and muffled splash from inside the plant.
At the same time, a figure carrying a rifle skulked across the rooftop, drawing close to the parapet.
Raising his Glock, Willie targeted the silhouette. The man leaped down onto the skeletal framework of a bridge between buildings, superimposing him against the icy stars.
Judging the sniper’s speed, Willie squeezed off a round, intent on striking the jihadi’s leg. The bullet chipped into the ledge, issuing a white-hot spark. What occurred next was even more disappointing.
While glancing up to search for the source of that incoming fire, the jihadi lost his balance, tripped, and launched into an unintentional Olympic-style high dive. He shrieked as he dropped some five stories, spinning like a broken boomerang before striking the rubble with a deadening thud.
Swearing over the loss, Willie raced across the moonscape of crumbling concrete. He reached the sniper, lowered himself to one knee, and dug for his flashlight. He removed the man’s ski cap to reveal a tangle of bloody hair, with more blood seeping across the rocks like paint from a leaky can. His dark complexion had gone ashen, and his long beard was now plastered against his neck. Willie dug through that beard to check for a carotid pulse. No sign. He worked his light across the man’s face. Pupils dilated and clear fluid leaking from his ears, indicating massive head trauma. A quick search of the jihadi’s pockets produced nothing but a box of ammo. Other than that, he had only his rifle: a Blue Door bolt action chambered in .300 Win Mag, a rifle similar to a Remington 700.
A nearby gunshot sent a jolt up Willie’s spine. He glanced once more at the building where he had detected the splash.
Gathering up the man’s rifle and the box of ammo, Willie hustled across the lot. He turned sideways to pry himself into an opening in the plywood, then panned his light across the floor toward a jagged hole near the center. Steam fog unfurled over the edges as though from a cauldron. He held the light there—just as another round struck like an echoing timpani drum from below.
Willie approached swiftly, leading with his Glock. He reached the edge, then held his breath and aimed his flashlight down into the hole. The light’s beam grew thicker as it reached the near-black water. He probed a surface of flickering reflections cast off from broken glass and garbage bags and the eyelets of old high top sneakers, along with clothing so swollen and mangled that it resembled pieces of cancer-laced intestine growing with mold.
“Hey...” came a voice almost unrecognizable, more a rasp than an actual word.
Willie shifted the light—
And there, floati
ng within this nightmare soup was Johnny, his arm raised, his 1911 clutched in his hand. He had torn off his balaclava, and his forehead looked swollen and bleeding. He squinted like a vampire and tried in vain to shield his eyes. Beside him, bobbing face down like a piece of flotsam, was another man, assumedly one of the snipers.
“What the hell? Was that you firing?”
“Yeah. Little help,” he managed. “I’m real dizzy.”
“Hang in there. I’ll find a way down.” Willie spun around, raking the light across the walls and locking onto a staircase about twenty yards to his rear. He hurried over and descended until the stairs vanished beneath the murky waves. He sighed and looked around. The plant had transformed into an ancient city cast into the sea by a massive earthquake.
Shaking his head and shivering in anticipation, Willie removed his own balaclava and his jacket, setting them down on a dry stair. He placed the rifle, his Glock, and the contents of his pockets on top of his jacket. Holding his breath, he pushed forward into the flooded basement, gasping against the cold, the water viscous in spots as though some tanker had sprung a fuel leak.
Soon he was at chest-height then lost his footing as he neared Johnny. He had decided to keep his boots on because who knew what lay beneath the surface—perhaps the rusting teeth of some steel girder or a razor-sharp piece of aluminum. He spat and emptied a path between the trash, reaching Johnny in less than sixty seconds. He came in behind his friend, latched an arm beneath his chin, and began hauling him back toward the stairs. To distract himself from the terrible stench, Willie imagined that a crowd of bikini-clad women were now witnessing his heroism. He shivered and grinned to himself before Johnny ruined the image.