We're moving pretty fast. No lights. No sirens. Once again, Ceepak doesn't want the bad guy to know we're coming. Might spook the little Russian lady up in her sweatbox if we come screaming in to nab her.
“Which damn parking lot?” The chief? I think he just lost it. “There's one every block for a mile!”
“Kipper and Beach Lane.”
“Hurry! We have, what? Forty-five minutes? Jesus!”
“Forty-three, sir. Keep in contact with the house. Let George Weese know the money is not an issue.”
“I don't like paying extortionists. Terrorists!”
“Neither do I, sir. If we work this right, we won't have to. Keep this channel open.”
Ceepak tosses the radio mic to me. I get the sense he doesn't want to waste any more time on Baines. Not now.
Public Parking Lot 4. There are eight other lots up and down Beach Lane butting up against the boardwalk. I see several gaps, openings between the brightly painted backs of buildings. In those clear spaces I can also see the mob of seminaked bodies bobbing and weaving, moving and grooving-cool young dudes and bodacious beach babes. I can hear 3 Doors Down two blocks up at the band shell. It sounds like they're doing their biggest hit, “Kryptonite.” After that, they'll probably do “Dangerous Game” or “Ticket To Heaven.” They both kind of fit today.
I have never seen so many vehicles jammed into these parking lots. I look north, I look south, there's not an empty spot anywhere.
“Where?” Ceepak surveys the scene. “Where.”
You never realize how many cargo carriers Thule and Yakima and Sears sell until you're wishing they only ever sold one. Everywhere I look, I see vans with boxes on top.
Ceepak punches the play button on the CD player. I hear Wheezer's cocky voice. Arrogant. So proud of his plan.
“Once the money is taken care of, you, Officer Ceepak, you will escort me to the airport where I will board Aeroflot flight 15 to Moscow.”
Ceepak hits the reverse button. The digits spin backward.
“He probably told us where,” Ceepak says. “He likes dropping clues. Hints.”
“Yeah. Because he likes laughing at us when we don't catch them.”
“Precisely.”
Ceepak punches play.
“Perhaps my subtle allusions were a tad too sophisticated for someone of your limited abilities.”
Weese gloating. Bragging about his big successful plan. What'd he call it? “The triumph of the son.” His father would see how big and important he had become.
“Life under the son,” I say out loud.
“Come again?”
“Go to that part. Where he talks about ‘the triumph of the son.’ ”
“Roger.”
Ceepak remembers. Finds it, fast.
“All is in readiness. The multitudes have assembled on the beach and boardwalk. I understand from my father that the Chamber of Commerce is expecting quite a turnout. Thousands and thousands of happy holiday revelers, none of whom, I'll wager, are particularly interested in dying today. But, alas, some may have to. For it is time for the triumph of the son! Time for the world to experience life under the son, as they say!”
“What does it mean, Danny?”
“I'm not one hundred percent sure.”
Ceepak tilts his wrist. Checks his watch.
“Now's a good time to give me your best guess.”
“Okay. There's this booth. About two blocks up the boardwalk. ‘Life Under the Son.’ It's run by these born-again Christians who try to convert sun-worshippers, turn them into, you know, son-worshippers.”
Ceepak's foot is on the gas.
“Two blocks?”
“Yes, sir. Near Halibut Street. The main entrance.”
“Radio.”
I toss him the microphone.
“Chief Baines?”
“Go?”
“Suggest you begin to quietly evacuate the area around the Life Under the Son booth.”
“Where's that?”
“Halibut Street.”
“Jesus. The band shell is up at Halibut!”
“Pull the plug.”
“Come again?”
“Cut off the electricity to the band stand. Have the performer-”
“3 Doors Down,” I say.
“Have the Doors inform the crowd they are experiencing technical difficulties. Let the civilians drift away. Encourage them to hit the beach. Get them down off the boardwalk.”
“What if-?”
“Do it, sir. Now!” Ceepak tosses the mic back to me.
We swing into Public Parking Lot 6. I see lots of cars and vans glistening in the sun. I see a Pepsi truck. I see a tour bus. A couple of Winnebagos. A garbage truck ready to clean up all the empty Pepsi cups. I don't, however, see a minivan with a cargo carrier up top.
“There!”
Ceepak does.
He jams our Ford into park, reaches into his cargo pants, pulls out the binos and presses both lenses against his eyes. I see him slide the magnifying lever. He's zooming in.
“White van. Burgundy interior. Red Avis sticker affixed to rear window.”
More adrenaline races to my heart.
Ceepak tilts his binoculars up an inch.
“Air hole in rear of cargo carrier.”
I check out the line of fire from the minivan to the boardwalk. A good one. Maybe the best. A huge gap where a set of terraced steps, thirty feet wide, swoops down from the wooden walkway. There's a big “Happy Labor Day!” banner flapping in the breeze. It's the main entrance to everything. The whole deal. Beyond the steps, above the crowd, I can just barely see the tip of the pointed spindle on top of the “Life Under the Son” kiosk. It's like a weathervane, only it's a crucifix.
“If we rush the van, she'll start shooting,” Ceepak says.
“Yeah. So what do we do?”
“Give me a minute.”
It's my turn to check my watch. Okay. Fine. We have about twenty-nine minutes left. Ceepak can have one. Maybe two.
A horn blasts.
I look to my right. The garbage truck. My friend Joey Thalken, who usually drives the sand-sweeper on the beach for Sea Haven Sanitation, is behind the wheel. He waves at me, sees Ceepak, waves at him, too. Guess Joey T. is picking up some heavy-duty overtime hauling garbage after the big party. The way he's bouncing up and down? I think he's listening to the concert simulcast on WAVY.
“Can you drive a truck, Danny?”
“No, I-”
“Stay here.”
Ceepak reaches into the back seat. Grabs the paintball rifle, checks to make sure it's charged and loaded.
“I could-”
“Stay here.”
Ceepak is out the door and working his way across the parking lot. Low. Crouching down and hiding behind cars whenever he thinks he might be visible to any rearview mirrors Natalia might've set up in her sniper nest.
He scuttles over to Joey T.'s garbage truck.
I flick on the radio just as the concert dies. I mean, it loses electricity.
“Looks like we're experiencing technical difficulties on the bandstand,” the deejay announces. “Maybe the town fathers forgot to pay the electric bill this month.”
Ceepak's at the garbage truck hunkered down under the driver-side door, talking up to Joey.
Joey nods.
Ceepak does a three-finger point toward the white van.
Joey nods again.
Ceepak and Joey T. worked together back in July. Got along great. Looks like they still do.
Chief Baines must have some of our guys working the crowd in front of the bandstand. It starts to thin out.
“Hey folks, now's the time to hit the beach,” the radio deejay says. “The mayor has just officially declared Pig Out Time!’ Right now, for the next thirty minutes only, all food down on the beach is free! So, while we wait for the juice to come back on, hit the pit!”
I guess some people on the boardwalk brought along radios, Walkmen. People seem to hear
what I just heard and drift away in droves. I see some pushing and jostling as bodies bunch up near the staircases leading down to the beach on the far side of the boardwalk.
I look right and see Ceepak scramble towards the Pepsi truck. He carries the ray-gun-looking paintball rifle at his side like he's some kind of extraterrestrial deer hunter. There's no driver in the Pepsi truck. Ceepak yanks open the big door, crawls into the cab, pulls the door shut behind him. His head disappears under the dashboard. Seconds later, I hear the engine roar, see a chug of diesel fumes puff out its exhaust pipe. I guess hot-wiring is one of those valuable job skills you can learn in Today's Army.
I hear another engine start up.
Joey's garbage truck.
I look toward the boardwalk. The crowd is pushing against itself, heading down to the beach for the free food. Natalia will have a lot fewer targets to choose from come two P.M.
Then I see him.
In his wheelchair. Jimmy. Saltwater Tammy's son. He looks to be alone and, as the crowd thins out, he also looks like a sitting duck. The bull's-eye, smack dab in the middle of Natalia's line of fire.
I open my door and remember I left my bulletproof vest at home this morning. It was soaked with sweat so I hung it over the shower curtain rod to dry. Forgot to put it back on.
Jimmy is just sitting there.
I guess Tammy brought him to the concert, left him alone to enjoy the loud, noisy parts while she went down to the beach and fixed him a plate of pulled pork.
Jimmy is in serious trouble. Target number one.
Ceepak's busy. I'm not.
I hop out of the Explorer.
If Natalia sees me, she might start shooting. She'll definitely recognize me because she's already taken a couple of shots at my face. She might want to mow me down for old-times sake.
She might mow down Jimmy, too.
I make my way forward, try to stay wide of the sniper's eyeline, try to run and crouch and hide behind cars like Ceepak did.
I need to move faster.
Ceepak drives the lumbering Pepsi truck away from the service entrance where it was parked. He turns left and heads down the parking lot lane that will put him directly in front of the minivan.
Joey T. is on the move, too. He rumbles down the row that will put him behind the van.
I see what they're up to.
Ceepak will block any shots with his Pepsi truck; the paneled sides are about three feet taller than the minivan's cargo carrier. Joey T. will box in Natalia's rear. No one will have to storm the sniper nest.
I pick up my pace.
If Natalia gets a hint of what's up, she'll start shooting, whether it's two P.M. or not. I know it. She'll nail Jimmy.
I look up to the boardwalk, see him waiting patiently in his chair, watching everybody leave, head for the beach.
No time to crouch.
Need to run.
I glance over my shoulder. Ceepak is almost in front of the van. He drives slow, tries to look like an everyday, ordinary Pepsi truck just pulling on in to make a delivery. Joey T. keeps pace, parallels Ceepak's moves.
I need to get to Jimmy before Natalia is totally blocked. If she figures out what's going on, she'll definitely go ballistic.
I dart up the tiered stairs, take them two at a time.
Jimmy scans the thinning mob, looks for his mother.
I'm twenty yards away.
“Move!” I yell at these big muscle-bound guys blocking my path.
“Make me,” one of them yells.
So I barrel through them.
“Asshole!”
I stumble, scramble across the boards off balance, just waiting for a bullet to find my back.
Ten yards.
Five.
I'm huffing. My heart pounds. I leap the last three feet and grab on to the wheelchair handles.
My momentum pushes us forward.
Behind me, I hear what sounds like a string of firecrackers going off. Explosions. Fast.
Jimmy recognizes me.
I hear another quick burst of dull thuds. Something smacks me in the ribs. No. I just strained a muscle or something. I push the chair.
“Stop!” Jimmy freaks. I don't blame him.
I run and roll him up the boardwalk until we're safely in front of a store.
T. J. Lapczynski is standing there, licking barbecue sauce off his fingertips.
“Dude! Who's got the firecrackers?”
“Watch him!” I shove the wheelchair toward T. J.
“You got it.”
Jimmy's still freaking. I need to split.
“Easy,” I hear T. J. say. “Easy.”
I run back across the boards. Need to help Ceepak.
I race down the steps, tear across the asphalt.
I don't hear any more firecrackers. No more shots.
I make it to the stalled Pepsi truck, slip around to the side, duck down, almost crawl. I slide along the side, move past the rear tires. The blacktop is sticky. Wet. Something drippy hits me from up above.
Blood?
I look up. One panel of the truck is riddled with bullet holes. Brown foam gushes out like a hot Pepsi can somebody shook then pricked with pins.
I look at the white van.
The front of the Thule cargo carrier is glowing neon green.
From inside the tube, I hear muffled curses followed by a flurry of angry kicks.
Natalia Shevlyakova Weese must be inside, temporarily blinded by the paintballs Ceepak just fired down her peephole.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Monday night, I'm at the hospital with what's left of the Marshmallow Crew.
Jess, Olivia, Becca, and, of course, Katie.
Nobody's talking much. We're just sort of being there for each other, like they say. I guess everybody's thinking about the Mad Mouse. George Weese. What we did to him, back when we called him Wheezer. What he did to Katie and, of course, Mook. What he almost did to a bunch of total strangers.
It could have been worse.
Katie's feeling better. She sits up in her bed, pillows propped behind her back. I brought along a take-out box of Labor Day barbecue for her. Ribs. Baked beans. Cole slaw. Corn bread. But she doesn't eat any of it. I don't blame her. I can't eat tonight, either.
The doctors aren't sure yet if the sniper bullet did any permanent damage to Katie's spinal cord. They do know she'll be in a wheelchair for a while. That's cool with me. I can handle wheelchairs. Just ask Jimmy.
Katie tells us how she listened to some of the concert on a radio her nurse friend smuggled into the room.
“And then the power went out on the bandstand. That was weird.”
“Totally.” Jess agrees.
So does Becca. “Extremely random.”
“You'd think they would have made proper arrangements prior to the event,” adds Olivia.
Power outages. This is the kind of stuff you talk about when the important stuff you should be talking about is still too raw. It's like the weather. You can talk about it without thinking about what you did ten years back when you were a kid learning how to be cool. August 28, 1996. Oak Beach. The end of summer. The Marshmallow Crew. We have our memories. The mad mouse has his.
“You ready?” Katie asks, looking at me with her sweet green eyes, still a little fuzzy from all the drugs being pumped into her veins. “Tomorrow's the big day.”
I feel like saying, Today was big enough. Instead, I say, “Yeah.”
Katie smiles.
“That's right!” Becca tries to perk up the room. “Tomorrow, you can officially fix all my parking tickets!”
“Nah, he'll be too busy,” says Jess. “Officially eating doughnuts. Hanging out at the Qwick Pick.”
I snuffle a laugh. So does Olivia. But the mood in the room? It's not exactly elevated. A week ago? We would have immediately launched into a round-robin debate, riffing on the relative merits of Krispy Kreme versus Dunkin’ Donuts, glazed versus cake. Today, we all just get real quiet again. We listen to the
air conditioner humming under the window and think.
Mook. Wheezer. Weese.
Natalia Shevlyakova Weese quit firing her machine gun when those paintballs splattered in her eyes. She couldn't see so she kicked and screamed, but she didn't squeeze her trigger anymore. Her hands were busy, pounding the sides of the cargo carrier while she yelled something about “fucking American assholes.”
That's when Ceepak put down the paintball rifle, pulled out his pistol, and steadied his firing stance in the open door of the Pepsi truck. I moved to the passenger side of the minivan, near the latch for the cargo carrier.
“On me,” he said. Army talk. Meant to wait for his command.
He held his pistol with both hands in front of him. Aimed it down at the Thule luggage tube.
“Go,” he said.
I popped open the snap, flung up the lid like I was flipping open a coffin.
“Freeze!” Ceepak yelled, jutting his pistol forward and down, ready to fire if Natalia made one wrong move.
She didn't.
She put her hands behind her head. It was over. Guess Russians are realists. Fatalistic. Must be those long, cold winters.
The first thing I noticed when I raised that lid was the stench. The trapped heat had made quite a stew in there. Gunpowder, B.O., hot urine. Seems Natalia had been locked inside her secret sauna for quite some time.
I also noticed that she had a machine gun instead of an M-24 sniper rifle. It was one of those long-muzzled jobs with a belt of pointy-tipped bullets feeding into its side. The belt was very long. If Natalia had opened fire, if Ceepak hadn't blocked her with the Pepsi truck, Saltwater Tammy's son wouldn't have been the only one mowed down. Natalia would have sprayed the whole boardwalk, might've broken that other Russian lady's record for outdoor sniping casualties.
We cuffed her and hauled her to the house. After we locked her up, we went up front to report in with the desk sergeant. He had a radio playing. WAVY. Their news update featured a short interview with Chief Baines.
The reporter asked the chief about the “slight commotion” he had heard in the parking lot earlier.
“Teenagers playing with firecrackers,” Baines replied, his voice strong and confident again. “Another unfortunate consequence of-”
Ceepak and I finished for him: “underage drinking!”
Then, Ceepak laughed. A bigger laugh than I've ever heard him laugh before, like he was letting loose all the pressure that had built up over the past few days, letting it out in one incredible, rib-splitting rumble.
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