by Diane Capri
After a fashion—and a brutal weeding-out process that involved the disappearance or the very public execution of a few of the entrepreneurs—an uneasy truce was reached. The local gangs would be permitted to continue trading in their areas of specialization provided they gave Tony’s property a wide berth while they did so. In exchange for leaving his property undisturbed, Tony would allow the gang members to live.
Once the bloody details had been ironed out, the arrangement was one that worked more or less to everyone’s satisfaction. The exceptions, of course, were the young men who had died during the negotiating process.
Tony walked through a reinforced metal door featuring a blacked-out Plexiglas window. The door was located between the double bays of the ancient two-car garage that served as his organization’s workspace, and he found himself staring into the gaping double barrels of a Mossberg twelve-gauge. Holding the weapon was Brian Waterhouse, a blond twenty-five year old, who sat at the far end of the cement-block structure on a high, hard-backed stool.
When Brian saw who had entered, he lowered his weapon. Giving Tony a sheepish grin, he said, “Sorry about that, boss.”
“No apology necessary. That was perfect. Unless and until you know exactly who is coming through that door, you should always be prepared to blow them straight to hell. As long as you don’t jump the gun.” Tony smiled thinly and crossed the garage. He placed the briefcase on a battered gunmetal-grey desk and lowered his bulk with a satisfied sigh onto a metal folding chair behind it.
Although it was still midafternoon on a sunny spring day, row after row of fluorescent lamps hung suspended from the ceiling, casting the interior in a harsh, almost antiseptic, artificial brilliance.
Weapons of all types littered the makeshift office. There were semiautomatic rifles and pistols, most altered to full auto. There were revolvers, and even some single-shot rifles and shotguns like the big Mossberg that had been aimed at Tony when he had entered. The weaponry took up one entire wall.
A locker filled with hunting and tactical combat knives was angled into one corner, and next to it a row of shelves held an array of grenades and other explosive devices. An impressive assortment of Tasers and nightsticks occupied another row of shelves.
Stored along the wall directly opposite these weapons were racks of electronic equipment: military grade GPS units, walkie-talkies, police scanners, cell phones, and shortwave radios.
The back wall was home to a mountain of tools, including welding equipment and automobile batteries, tires, and spare parts. The garage, in addition to serving as an office and staging area for Tony’s team, was exactly what it appeared to be: a mini supply depot for a deadly paramilitary organization.
Tony surveyed the room with a critical eye. Three of the five men who comprised his organization were present.
Brian asked, “So … how did it go?”
“I haven’t looked inside the briefcase yet,” Tony answered with a smile, “but I’m confident it contains everything I specified during negotiations. When I showed up at the meeting place, our Pentagon contact was so frightened that I was afraid he might actually suffer a stroke right on the spot. Anyway, he probably assumes that if he stiffs me, he will get carved up like a turkey on your Thanksgiving holiday. Now that I think about it, he seemed pretty perceptive, at least on that point.”
The group shared a laugh and the men went back to doing the chores they had been occupied with when Tony arrived: cleaning and organizing weapons or just lounging around on lawn chairs like the garage was some sort of low-rent social club.
Tony stared at the case lying on his desk for a few minutes without making any move to open it. Despite his outward nonchalance, he felt a tug of tension in his gut. He was so close now to having compiled everything he needed to complete his mission that he felt like a child waking up on the morning of his birthday. The anticipation was so strong he could almost taste it, and he wanted to savor that feeling for just a little longer.
Finally, with an impatient sigh, Tony grabbed the briefcase by the handle. He snapped the latches and lifted the top. He examined the contents, then looked up to see everyone in the garage staring at him expectantly.
Tony smiled. “We are in business, gentlemen.”
CHAPTER TEN
Nelson loved summer. When it was muggy and hot and everyone else was driving around with their windows closed tightly and the artificial chill of their air-conditioning keeping them comfortable, Nelson would lower the top on his Chrysler Sebring convertible and enjoy the commute to and from his office. He loved the way the hot breeze ruffled what was left of his thinning hair; he loved to feel the heat and humidity.
Today didn’t feature the broiling heat he loved so much, but the temperature was about as warm as it ever got in the Mid-Atlantic region in May, and Nelson was taking full advantage of the unexpectedly balmy conditions on his drive home.
The adrenaline rush that had followed his noontime meeting gradually leached away over the course of the afternoon, but Nelson was still able to accomplish more work in the four-hour stretch before quitting time today than he had in any one-day period for as long as he could remember. Who would have guessed the way to increase organizational productivity would be to sell a briefcase full of classified material? He imagined himself developing a motivational speech based on that concept and smiled wryly.
Nelson was amazed at how the thought of all that cold, hard cash had enabled him to power through his jitters and beyond his exhaustion. Now, with the top down, the warm air rushing by, and Vivaldi playing much too loudly on his stereo, he felt damned near invincible. A briefcase full of untraceable cash lay on the seat next to him, and against all odds, he was suddenly out of the financial hole hi gambling jones had dropped him into.
While he drove, Nelson wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be prudent to parlay his good fortune into an even bigger score with a quick detour to the track on his way home. There was no question his luck had turned, and as the old saying went, “Strike while the iron’s hot.” Nelson had no idea what that expression meant if you examined it literally, but he figured it was damned good advice anyway. When you’re on a roll, don’t stop for anything. Keep right on going until your luck starts to change, then stop. Ya gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. And all the rest of that happy horseshit.
The breeze began to cool noticeably as the sun sank in the mostly cloudless western sky, and Nelson reluctantly concluded it would be in his best interest to continue straight home. He was excited about his newfound windfall and was looking forward to celebrating with Joy.
Of course, she was blissfully ignorant of the financial gymnastics he’d gone through to replace the retirement money she didn’t even know was missing; thus she would have no idea what they were celebrating. But Nelson was certain that when he walked through the door, buoyant and cheerful for a change, she would join him in a little impromptu party anyway.
Behind him on the winding country road that let to Nelson’s home in rural Virginia, a vehicle rapidly closed the distance between itself and Nelson’s Sebring. He watched as it grew in size in the rear view mirror. He swore quietly under his breath. Christ, that idiot must be going eighty! On this two-lane road that twisted and turned like a drunken serpent, driving at that breakneck speed was practically suicidal.
Nelson leaned forward in the driver’s seat and peered into the mirror, his attention so taken with the lunatic approaching that he nearly drove off the road. The damned fool was going to kill somebody and Nelson didn’t want it to be him. He eased off the gas and flicked on his right turn signal, letting the nitwit behind him know that he was getting as far out of the way as was possible without actually leaving the road.
He could see quite clearly now that it was a Ford F-150 that was endangering his life. The pickup was maybe ten or twelve years old, with dents and dings all over the front bumper and grille and a right quarter panel that was a markedly different color than the rest of the truck. It was
one ugly piece of shit.
Nelson gasped as the rattletrap truck picked up speed, its body shaking and shimmying, barely under control. An oily blue cloud belched out behind the rustbucket, trailing the truck like smoke behind a skywriting airplane.
The vehicle veered sharply left, almost as if the driver had just now seen Nelson’s car, which was of course impossible. The truck was now right behind the Sebring, and Stevie Wonder would have to be driving to not see the Chrysler convertible dead ahead. Nelson breathed a shaky sigh of relief as the truck swerved into the thankfully empty oncoming traffic lane to pass him. He began increasing his own speed in anticipation of the truck roaring by.
As the truck blew noisily past, Nelson risked a glance into the cab and was surprised to see a blond-haired, surfer-looking dude of maybe twenty-five years old looking intently at him from the passenger seat. The kid had no reason to be angry with Nelson, but he seemed to be glaring at him.
Nelson caught a glimpse of the driver and felt a strange, disorienting stab of recognition. Who the hell is that guy and how do I know him? he thought.
And then all at once it hit him, like a piano falling on a cartoon character. The maniac driving the truck on this secluded road in the middle of nowhere was the same man he had met in the park today on his lunch hour.
Confused, Nelson turned his attention back to the winding road, and as he did, the truck suddenly whipped back to the right, slamming into the left front of the Chrysler and sending it careening directly toward a stand of trees just off the shoulder. Nelson registered a loud bang as his left front tire blew out and the steering wheel began shimmying violently. The car lifted onto its right two wheels, and the panicked Nelson jerked the wheel left, overcorrecting and nearly sending the vehicle tumbling end over end into the woods.
For one crazy second Nelson thought he might get the badly damaged Chrysler under control and coast to a stop along the side of the road. Then the pickup nudged his left front quarter panel again, just kissing it, touching it so lightly it seemed the vehicles might not even swap paint this time. But the contact was enough to eliminate any illusion of control Nelson may have felt he retained over the car. The Sebring started a long, slow slide to the right and into the thick forest.
He had just enough time to think They did that on purpose! before the car rocketed into a tree, the sound of the crash much shorter and more abrupt than Nelson would have expected based on a lifetime of watching action movies with the drawn-out car crash scenes Hollywood was so fond of. A quick explosion of grinding metal and shattering safety glass, a painfully bone-jarring deceleration inside the vehicle, the rag-doll-like feeling of his body being held in place by the safety belt—thank God for the safety belt—and then darkness overtaking everything.
Nelson felt the coppery taste of blood burst into his mouth with frightening force, and then consciousness disappeared.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
One hundred yards from the crash scene, just shy of another hairpin curve, the F-150 idled loudly on the road’s thin, sandy shoulder. Time was critical; there was no telling how long it would take before someone encountered the wreckage. If that happened, Tony and Brian would be forced to eliminate more people, something Tony wanted to avoid if at all possible. It wasn’t that he minded wasting another worthless civilian or two, but he didn’t want or need the added attention from the authorities that killing more people would inevitably bring.
Still, they sat for a little longer, biding their time, carefully watching where Nelson W. Michaels’s car had entered the woods and smashed through a small line of scrub brush and into a stand of trees roughly thirty feet into the forest. Tony wanted to see if the guy would be able to escape his damaged car. If so, he would come stumbling out onto the road any minute now, and they could simply drive back and pick him up. It didn’t seem a very likely scenario given how fast the guy had been going when he impacted the trees, but you never could tell.
Another minute went by, and still no sign of Michaels. Tony shifted the creaky automatic transmission into reverse, and the truck chugged slowly back to the spot where the victim’s car had slid into the woods. A thick black slash on the road from the screeching tires made the location impossible to miss. It had been close to three minutes now since the collision, and still no other vehicles had passed the scene. Michaels really did live in the middle of nowhere; the feeling of isolation was completely at odds with the knowledge of how close they were to Washington, D.C.
The two men looked at each other inside the cab of the F-150, and Tony nodded. Without a word, they stepped down to the ground and picked their way into the woods, heading toward the wrecked Chrysler, walking slowly and carefully but at the same time confident they had nothing to fear. Each man drew his weapon, identical Glock semiautomatic pistols—undoubtedly overkill, pun definitely intended, against an injured and disoriented middle-aged lifelong government bureaucrat—but Tony Andretti was not one to take unnecessary chances, especially since he was now so close to achieving his goal.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Everything felt hazy and fuzzy and a little unreal. Nelson was angry with Joy for waking him up when he was so goddamned tired, especially considering how she did it: lying across the foot of the bed, the full weight of her body covering his legs. He struggled to kick them free, to pull them out from under her, but he hadn’t realized how much weight she must have gained recently because he couldn’t move his lower body at all. He kicked again, hard, and was rewarded for his efforts with lightning bolts firing up each shin all the way to the knee.
The bright, throbbing pain in his legs dragged Nelson fully back to reality from his haze of semi-consciousness. He wasn’t at home in bed at all; he remembered now that he had just been involved in a very serious automobile accident after being forced off the road by his contact from earlier in the day, the man whose name he didn’t even know and furthermore didn’t want to know. His legs were pinned in the wreckage between the car’s dashboard and firewall, which had slammed together like pincers from the force of the impact and trapped his shins in their viselike grip.
Nelson knew he was in big trouble. His legs were shattered, and blood was flowing freely down the side of his face. His head pounded with what felt like the world’s worst migraine—concussion, anyone?—and he was having considerable difficulty breathing. He wondered about internal injuries and felt the first real stab of panic.
How far into the woods had the car gone before smashing into the trees? Was the wreckage even visible to anyone who might be driving by on the road? If not, Nelson knew there was a good chance he might die right here before ever being discovered. This road was remote, but it wasn’t so far out in the sticks that no one would come by for hours on end. Nelson felt confident that if his car were visible to motorists driving past, help would come along relatively quickly.
And if it wasn’t, well, he didn’t want to consider that possibility.
The sounds of cracking branches, of people working their way steadily through the heavy underbrush penetrated Nelson’s consciousness, and even in his state of panicked confusion and pain, he knew the best-case scenario had already occurred. Someone had seen the wreck and called for help or perhaps stopped on the side of the road to investigate before calling the authorities.
Nelson wondered how long he had been trapped in his car and realized he had no way of knowing. But it didn’t matter. The main thing—the only thing, really—was that help had arrived and he was going to survive.
“Help me!” he tried to scream, succeeding only in issuing a soft breathless croak. This frightened Nelson more than everything else combined—more than seeing the guy from the park driving the truck that had forced him off the road, more than crashing into the trees in the forest, more even than the utter certainty that both his legs were broken and he was quite possibly suffering from life-threatening injuries.
And the pain was worsening. Rapidly. Nelson tried to take a full breath and could only manage to force a short lit
tle bubbling gasp through his windpipe. Where the hell were the people he had heard approaching through the woods? Didn’t they realize they had to hurry? He peered out what was left of the smashed driver’s side window, and his heart leapt as he saw what looked like two fuzzy, indistinct shadows approaching. They seemed to be moving with frustrating slowness.
Finally the shadow people made it to the door and wrenched it open. A loud screech told Nelson that there had been significant damage to that side of the vehicle—he was lucky they were able to get the door open at all. A chunk of shattered safety glass fell to the ground. He tried once again to tell his rescuers to hurry but succeeded only in rasping out something unintelligible, even to him.
“You okay, buddy?” one of the men asked.
It seemed like a stupid question to Nelson, who shook his head. “Need help,” he croaked. The coppery taste of blood in his mouth was getting more pronounced, and he could feel the torrent of blood running down the side of his face like a small stream. And he was freezing.
“No problem. That’s why we’re here,” the guy answered.
Nelson smiled in gratitude and forced himself to focus on the faces of the Good Samaritans, and when he did, he felt his bowels clench instinctively in fear. It was the men from the truck, the men who had intentionally forced him off the road in the first place.
The olive-skinned man from Lady Bird Johnson Memorial Park grinned when he saw the recognition dawning in Nelson’s eyes. He pulled the door open a little wider and reached into the car with both hands.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They approached the Chrysler cautiously. The car was canted at an angle and wedged up against a tree. Tony and Brian could see that Michaels was alive but he was trapped inside and clearly in bad shape. He was dazed, moving slowly and clumsily, sliding into shock.