by Mike Cooper
The axillary artery is fatal. I snagged the rifle as he went down, blood spraying everywhere.
“Harmony!”
She’d exhausted both magazines but driven the rooftop sniper back. I coughed, choking and nearly blinded.
A hand on my arm and I almost lashed out—but it was Harmony, holding me up, eyes red and streaming like mine.
“We have to get out of here!”
I looked at the stairwell down—the epicenter of the inferno, a wall of flame and intense heat. Not that way.
“Up?”
She shook her head violently. “He’s waiting—suicide.”
That narrowed the options to one. I checked the Vikhr, pushed the selector to full auto and aimed at the window right next to the exterior door. I pulled the trigger and held it down, twitching the barrel right and left. The window glass blew out in a spray of shards.
Smoke and flame immediately billowed toward it—not quite a flashover but too damn much.
“Run!” I yelled in Harmony’s ear, over the roar and crashing of the fire. “Truck’s right underneath!”
She grabbed my hand and we sprinted for the window. I dropped the rifle—nothing but a hindrance now—and we hurdled the sill, still clutching hands, right into space.
An instant of clean cold air, the plummet, then we landed in the pickup’s bed, hitting it simultaneously. I fell, Harmony on top of me. We tumbled around the plywood in an awkward, tangled mess.
The fall was only about twelve feet but we had no padding of any kind and nowhere to roll to absorb the shock. It hurt.
The truck sagged.
I breathed. A moment passed, then we both tried to move.
“You hurt?” I said.
“I can move.”
“Check me.”
I pulled her up and we did a quick, mutual exam, looking for broken bones and blood and spinal injury. Shock can leave you functional for a few minutes—better your buddy figures out you need immediate attention, before you collapse and die.
Lots of bruises, nothing permanent. Amazing.
“We have to go,” I said. “The guy on the roof will figure it out any second.”
But when we climbed from the bed, I saw that the rear tire had finally collapsed. Our combined impact must have popped the ancient radial like a balloon.
“Fucking Christ!” I started to kick the shreds of rubber on the rim, stopped myself just in time. No need for broken toes.
“The SUV,” said Harmony. I glanced at her—naked, covered in soot and dirt, empty-handed. I was no better, especially with blood drying all up one arm and across my face.
“Just our luck someone will have a video camera.” We started running—slowly and painfully on our bare feet—toward the next block.
I really hoped she had a spare key.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My go-bag burned up back there,” Harmony said. “I didn’t bring anything else.”
“The floor mats are bolted down.” I sat back up. “No seat covers. Think there’s a horse blanket in the back?”
We had two handguns—the Kahr and my 226, both of which Harmony had scooped up on the way out. Fortunately the Escalade was locked with a keypad, so it wasn’t a problem getting in. She drove one-handed, her left arm across her chest. Not so much for modesty, at least not from me, but to avoid drawing attention from other motorists.
Of course it was dark—night now—and the Escalade’s cab was higher than most, making it harder to see in. But the last thing we needed was bystanders pointing and pulling out their cellphones and posting photos to Facebook.
We did have one more resource. Harmony had left her cellphone in the vehicle, plugged in to charge.
“I’ll call Dave,” I said. “He can meet us somewhere.”
“I guess that’s—I can’t think of anyone else.”
I lifted the phone from the cupholder, leaving it still wired to the cigarette lighter, and swiped the screen. The glass remained completely black but for a small white box in the center.
“How do I turn this on?”
“Biometric lock, plus a gestural password.” Harmony started to reach for it. “No, forget it, I need two hands.”
I hadn’t gotten a good look at her phone earlier, and now I studied it more closely. “This doesn’t look like an iPhone.”
“Of course not. Apple collects every bit of your data and never lets go.”
“So what is it?”
“Modified Chinese hardware, running a custom OS built on a mobile Linux kernel.”
I thought about my twenty-dollar throwaway. “Guns, unarmed combat and dark-side hacking. Is there anything you can’t do?”
“I know some guys, and I pay them very well. Right? Recognize your shortcomings and hire what you need.” She glanced over. “You should try that.”
“I’m more of a Renaissance man myself.”
She slowed the SUV, studying the road. We were off the main avenue, driving through a semi-industrial area—low, dark buildings behind chain-link fences, a gas station, an equipment-rental lot with cherry pickers and excavators and minidozers lined up under sodium lamps.
“I’m going to stop over there.” Harmony slowed, crossed the road left and pulled along a railroad siding. It wasn’t a station or a stop, just a stretch of double track with some rusty signs and a pair of turnouts. The closest building was a hundred yards away. She killed the lights but left the engine running. “Switch seats. I’ll call, you drive.”
The Escalade might have been Humvee huge, but with the hump and the shift and the steering wheel, it was crowded in the front seat. Harmony slid right, I awkwardly tried to climb over her—and our lack of clothing was suddenly very obvious again. My knee came down between her legs for a moment, my chest brushed her head . . . she put a hand on my thigh for balance, looked up.
“Um—”
Our mouths met. I braced myself with one hand, ran my other across one breast. She gave me a squeeze and I was instantly ready to go, all other thoughts driven from my mind.
“No, wait.” She pushed back. “This is stupid!”
“Yes. Right. Absolutely.” I released her, twisted around and managed to fall into the seat beside her, more or less upright. For a moment we sat like lovebirds at the drive-in, side by side and pressed together.
My johnson was staying with its own program, straight up and waving around. Harmony looked at it and grinned. She turned to put both arms around my neck and snuggle in.
“Really . . . stupid . . .” she whispered. Then she threw her leg over and rolled on top of me.
We looked into each other’s eyes. I couldn’t move much, pressed into the seat with Harmony in my lap, but my hands were free to roam.
A vehicle drove past, fifty feet away. It didn’t stop and we barely noticed. Harmony braced her knees on the seat on either side of me and lowered herself down.
“Oh, jeepers,” I said.
Harmony started laughing. “Jeepers? Jeepers?” But then she gasped and stopped talking and that was all for a while.
—
At one point I thought the Escalade moved, bouncing and skidding on the gravel, but maybe it was just me.
—
We slumped, wrapped together. The seat fabric seemed damp everywhere, underneath, behind. I could feel Harmony’s pulse, strong and rapid, where her chest was pressed against mine.
After a minute she eased back slightly, so she could look me in the face again. Dim light from down the road showed her eyes gleaming in the shadow.
“Jeepers?” she said.
Too embarrassing. “Something, you know, in high school the, uh, first time . . .” I tried a casual shrug. “It kind of got stuck in my brain, I guess.”
She kissed my nose. “I got something stuck in my brain, all right.”
And I think it reflected the tenderness of the moment that we both let the puns drop there.
Ten minutes later, back on the road. I drove carefully, getting the feel of the three-ton be
hemoth. Harmony hunched, keeping herself low in the cab, and tapped at the phone. When it began ringing, she handed it over and I lifted it to my ear.
“What do you want?” The voice raspy and muffled.
“Dave?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s me. We need some help.”
“I’m in the middle of—oh, man.” Indistinct noises.
“Dave. I said we need some help. Serious.”
“Can I get back—?”
“We’re in trouble!”
Click.
I glared at the phone, looked at Harmony. “He hung up.”
“What’s going on?”
“Dunno.”
I came to a railroad crossing and bumped over the tracks without slowing, unwilling to linger under the gate’s bright streetlights. Harmony took back the phone and redialed.
“Dave!” Pause. “It’s Harmony. Don’t hang—don’t hang up on me! Look, if you drop us now, I will come over and—what? Shoot you?” She laughed, short and sharp and scary. “No, I won’t shoot you. I’ll take some Tovex and blast your Camaro into a pile of smoking junk so ruined and pulverized the insurance adjuster won’t even recognize it as an automobile! Okay? Are you listening?”
She handed the phone back to me. “He’s listening,” she said.
I put the phone back to my ear.
“Silas, what the fuck?” Dave’s voice was clearer now. “What’s with her?”
“Don’t worry, she was kidding—she knows it’s really a Charger. Can you meet us?”
“This isn’t a good time.”
I couldn’t help looking over at Harmony. We were covered in dirt and smoke and blood. The cab smelled of all that, plus the tang of sweat and coupling. We had one phone, two handguns and nothing else in the world.
“I’m sorry it’s not a good time,” I said. “But we need clothes, money and a ride.”
“Uh, give me an hour?”
Noise in the background. A woman’s voice.
“Who’s there with you?”
“Well, you know—”
“Is that Elsie?”
Even through the crummy cellular transmission I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “Yup. In fact.”
I shook my head and glanced at Harmony again. “He’s fucking Elsie.”
“No I’m not!” Dave said. “We’re, shit, talking and like that.”
“Where’s Brendt?”
“At Sully’s.”
“Where are you?”
Pause. “His and Elsie’s house.”
We came to a dark intersection. I looked left, right, saw no traffic and picked left arbitrarily.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re going to save us, and I’m going to save you from yourself. Like I said, we need some clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Yeah, clothes. Pants, shirts, socks—the whole bit. I’d say Harmony’s close enough to Elsie’s size, you can borrow some underwear from her.”
Dave started laughing. “You two are buck naked somewhere, and you’re giving me shit?”
“Long story.”
When we hung up, I handed the phone back to Harmony. “Third Street and Dunbar in Clabbton. A church. He says he’ll meet us behind it, half an hour. Can your phone get us directions?”
She nodded and tapped it into life. “This is total, gangster-on-the-run fucked up,” she said.
“Oh, that reminds me. Call 911 first. I assume your geek-boys have rigged that to block any line trace.”
“911?”
“Pretend you just fled the fire at the garage, and tell them it was a meth lab.”
Harmony got it immediately. “They’ll believe it, all those accelerants.”
“If they think there’s benzene and ether around, they’ll be a lot slower going in and investigating. Plus the red herring should keep them busy for hours.”
“That’s good.” She was already dialing.
“And after that, maybe one of the newspapers? Or TV stations? If we can get the idea out into the press that it was meth, that’s like perfect cover. Everyone will believe it.”
“Which might even buy us a day.” Harmony lifted the phone. “You’re kind of smart for a lunkhead.”
“And you’re a nice girl,” I said. “For a ninja weapons master.”
—
The Charger was already there when we arrived, parked in back. It was one of those newer churches, a wooden building with some metal siding and a cheap cross on the top. The sign out front had theater-marquee plastic letters: HAVE YOU “LIKED” JESUS THIS WEEK?
I pulled in alongside, closer to the building. A security light mounted on the corner pointed toward the road, leaving the back shadowed. The road was quiet. We were at the outskirts of Clabbton, where the cheap commercial strip gave way to open fields and third-growth forest.
Dave’s door swung open. I got out, wincing as I stepped barefoot on the gravel. Harmony came around from her side, much less bothered—probably all that time in the dojo, kicking the hell out of the makiwara.
“Silas—” Dave stopped, gaping at Harmony.
“Eyes front, asshole,” she snapped. “It’s been a long night.”
“What happened to you?”
“Those guys who blew up your shop,” I said. “They seem to specialize. Another auto garage now lies in ruins.”
“The Russians?”
“We didn’t have a long discussion.”
Dave pulled his gaze away from Harmony. He reached back into the car and handed me a big plastic bag. “Brendt’s, mostly,” he said. “Elsie threw a few things in there too.”
“How about shoes?”
“Not sure if they’ll fit.” He retrieved a pair of workboots, heels worn down and laces frayed. “What size are you?”
“Eleven.”
“I don’t know what these are—they’re his.” He had a pair of running shoes for Harmony.
We dressed quickly. Brendt’s clothes hung loose on me, no surprise considering his mass. Harmony’s jeans and T-shirt were tight but at least long enough.
“That feels better,” she said, threading a belt. “Much, much better.”
“Thanks,” I said to Dave.
He waved a hand. “I got to say, your phone call, you really killed the mood there.”
I wasn’t his keeper. “You left Elsie at home?”
“Sure. Brendt has the car.”
But I was his brother. “You’re not going back, are you?”
“I guess not.”
“Where is Brendt, anyway? I thought you said he worked days.”
“Got a temporary job, rigging out at Erlenton. There’s a big press conference tomorrow and they’re building a temporary stage.”
For what I’d thought was a depressed, declining, Rust Belt dinosaur, Pittsburgh seemed to have a lot going on. “FerroCorp again?”
Dave looked puzzled for a moment. “The mill? Naw, this is different. It’s one of the fracking companies.”
“Oh.”
“Someone’s buying in. They want to make a big splash, I guess. Brendt has a friend in the carpenters. Cash, no bullshit.”
Slapping together a temporary structure in the middle of the night—probably no permits, either.
Might be a little packet for the building inspector though.
Harmony had been checking her Kahr. Slapping the magazine back in, she said, “Want your pistol back?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
She passed me the Sig. I made sure it was decocked and slipped it into my back pocket.
“Eight rounds between us,” she said.
Not much. “I know.”
Dave watched. “You all gonna get into more shooting?”
“I hope not.” Harmony had that steely look again. “But chasing Silas around—best be prepared.”
“No shit.” He nodded. “So . . . now what?”
A very good question.
“That thing’s a liability,” I said to Harmony, gesturing at the Es
calade. “Maybe they saw it, maybe they didn’t, but I don’t think we can take the chance.”
“I don’t want to abandon it.”
“Why not?”
“The guys who lent it to me—they’re not exactly U-Haul. I ought to give it back.”
I looked at Dave. “What do you say?”
“What?”
“Follow us into town, Harmony returns the Humvee, you drive us back?”
“Sure.”
And that was that—we had a plan. Harmony rubbed some dirt onto the Escalade’s rear license plate, while I fine-toothed it inside for anything we might have dropped.
“The seat,” I said, scooting back out of the cab. “It’s kind of, you know . . .”
She laughed.
Dave watched, leaning on the Charger, arms crossed.
“You two,” he said. “Man.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Back into Pittsburgh. This had to be the tenth time I’d driven up or down the Parkway. At least now, long past rush hour, it was both dark and lightly traveled. Harmony put the Escalade in the center lane and kept it at a steady sixty the whole way.
We exited east of the city proper down a long ramp that seemed to get bumpier and more potholed every yard. The street at the bottom had been cut up and patched so many times that some of the metal road plates had been asphalted in place.
“Everyone tells me Pittsburgh’s a beautiful city,” Harmony said, fighting the wheel as the SUV bucked over the road’s cratered surface. “But I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Depends on your business. Downtown looked nice.”
“Maybe we’ll get over there sometime.”
She navigated without hesitation, taking several turns and a long, dark street past a fuel oil distributor. Behind a heavy fence we could see a row of tank trucks, parked for the night. The pump gantry sat near one huge tank, at least thirty feet tall, and others were visible under security lights farther in.
“Are we near the river?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“They probably bring the oil in on barges.”
“Does it matter?”
I glanced at her. “Tactical considerations? Maybe we’ll have to leave in a hurry.”