Beck told him again, “Let me know what you see, but stay out of sight, man. Seriously. Don’t put yourself anywhere around this.”
“I’m up in the fuckin’ projects, dude. Nobody gonna see me, but I’ll tell you right now, I see them.”
“Who? What?”
“Two black SUVs comin’ down Lorraine, heading your way.”
“Can you spot any cops anywhere?”
“Nah. No five-oh anywhere I can see. Got some boys over by all the Hamilton Street crossings and ain’t heard any word from them about cops.”
“Okay, thanks. Stay where you are.”
“I hear you, boss, but I got one request.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t let any dumb-ass motherfuckers bust up my window.”
Beck smiled. “I’ll do what I can.”
And then Beck heard the far-off sound of a car engine breaking the silence of the dead winter night. The sound seemed to be coming his way, slowly.
“I think I hear ’em.”
Beck’s phone signaled another incoming call. Shit.
“Take care, Willie.”
He tried to drop the call to Reese and catch the second one. He ended up with only a dial tone. “Goddammit.”
Had to be Pearce. But what was the message? He’d made the pitch? They bought it? Didn’t buy it? Were coming? Weren’t coming? Fucking cell phones.
Suddenly, Beck saw the glare of headlights behind him on Van Brunt.
It was going down. A black SUV turned onto Reed.
Too late to try to call Pearce. Had to go with the assumption that even if the cops were coming, they’d be too late. Useless pieces of shit. I must have been crazy to count on them.
The SUV rolled past Beck, headed in the direction of Conover.
Beck let the SUV get about twenty feet ahead of him, then edged out into the street. He crouched down low near the front of the car he had been hiding next to so that he could have a better view in front of him.
He glanced across the street at Olivia’s Porsche. No sign of Ciro and Joey B. Good, stay out of sight, boys.
Now they all had to wait. Stick with the plan until they couldn’t. If the cops came in time, it might work. If not … Beck didn’t want to think about “if not.”
Beck watched the SUV slow to a halt a few feet before the gate. Shit. It would be better if they had stopped parallel to the gate. Fuck it. Beck eased a few feet forward, still keeping low. In the dim light Beck could make out the Chevy emblem on the back of the SUV. It was a Suburban. Big enough for a lot of men.
The passenger door of the SUV opened. One man stepped out of the vehicle. He had a two-foot-long bolt cutter. So far so good. The interior lights dimmed as he shut the door behind him, but it was on long enough to light up the inside of the Suburban. Time enough for Beck to catch sight of Stepanovich’s bald head rising above the others, but not enough time to get a body count. Didn’t matter. At least he knew where Stepanovich was.
The man with the bolt cutter went straight to the chain on the gate and set to work. Beck hoped he’d be smart enough to cut the hasp of the lock. The chain would be too hard for a bolt cutter. Even one that big.
The guy kept working it, grinding away, opening and closing the long handles. Finally the chain fell. He grabbed the end of the gate and tried to pull it open. Nothing. He pushed on it, leaning his weight against it. It went nowhere.
Jeezus Christ, thought Beck, you dumb son of a bitch. Slide it. Slide the damn thing. It’s on wheels.
Finally, the man with the bolt cutter figured it out and started to push the gate to his right. The wheels were frozen or rusted. They wouldn’t turn. Another of Stepanovich’s men stepped out of the Suburban and helped him. They kept lifting and shoving the long gate over the patches of frozen snow, opening it wider and wider.
What are they doing? Beck wondered.
And then he saw what they were up to. They intended to drive the SUV into the lot. Why? What were they thinking?
Beck began worrying that Ciro and Joey B might start shooting as soon as they saw the SUV pull in, but there was nothing he could do about it. They were across the street in the parking lot behind a tall wrought-iron fence. Too far away to signal them.
* * *
Out in front of the bar, Manny Guzman watched a second SUV, a black Chevy Tahoe, turn onto Conover. He remained back in the doorway, hidden by a small slice of shadow. Waiting. Watching.
He agreed with Beck that killing any of these men would bring way too much heat down on them. But if it came down to it, he would kill as many of these bastards as he could, and die doing it before he let anybody hurt Beck, or the bar, or any of his brothers.
The Tahoe stopped on the other side of the street, right across from the bar. Manny nodded. So far so good. If Demarco could do what he had to.
Well, thought Manny, if anybody can, it’s Demarco Jones. If not, fuck it. What happens, happens.
* * *
Back by the empty lot, Beck realized it wasn’t quite as bad as he first thought. He saw what they were doing. It was actually pretty smart. Once they got the gate open wide enough for the SUV, the driver made a slow Y-turn and backed it into the lot so it ended up facing out toward Reed Street.
The driver rolled the big Chevy into the open space where the gate had been, halfway in the lot, halfway out on the sidewalk, effectively blocking most of the only way in or out of the empty lot.
* * *
Out on Conover, Manny watched the passenger door behind the driver ease open. One of the men in the SUV stepped out onto the street, leaned back in the SUV, and brought out a five-gallon polyethylene gas can which he placed on the cobblestone street. Then he leaned in and brought out another five-gallon poly can.
Once the gasoline cans were on the street, the man crouched down next to them. He was short, stocky, wearing dark clothes.
Manny watched as he looked at the bar for a moment, and then unscrewed the lids on both cans. He turned the lids over, revealing the spigots, and screwed them back on the cans. The rest of the crew got out of the Chevy and took cover behind the length of the big SUV.
They moved quietly. No slamming doors. No talking. Two positioned themselves behind the hood. Two behind the roof. One crouched at the back end of the SUV. The driver stayed in the vehicle.
So far, Beck had called it right.
They all looked at Beck’s building. It was dark and quiet. Either it was empty, or everyone inside was asleep with the lights off.
There was no movement anywhere on the desolate street. No sounds except a distant foghorn way out in New York Bay.
The arsonist stayed crouched down low, waiting, listening. And then he was ready. He slid one of the five-gallon containers around and grabbed it with his right hand, leaving the other for his left. He turned to say something to the men on the other side of the SUV.
Just before the attacker with the gasoline turned back to face the bar, Manny slipped out of his doorway and moved quickly for the cover of an old wooden utility pole. He reached the pole and stayed behind it, leaning his back against the rough wood. He took a deep breath, leaned out, and aimed his long-barrel thirty-eight at the red can on the arsonist’s left side.
His first shot missed the poly can by a quarter of an inch, and plowed into the side of the arsonist’s leg, just above the ankle. He went down. Manny fired again. This time his shot hit the polyethylene can on the left. The hot bullet didn’t ignite the gasoline, but the container exploded, and five gallons of gas, probably mixed with some sort of accelerant, splattered everywhere.
By the second shot, the men behind the SUV had seen Manny and began firing back.
They were Kolenka’s men. Seasoned. Calm. Shooting rapidly, but without panicking. Two were leaning flat on the hood of the Chevy, bracing their shooting arms, firing semiautomatic handguns slowly. A third held fire and watched, while the fourth fired a rifle somewhat blindly over the roof of the tall SUV. The fifth man crouched behind the bac
k of the vehicle, fired two-shot bursts in Manny’s direction from another handgun.
Manny had twisted back behind the telephone pole, standing sideways. The pole just about covered him completely, but bullets zinged past him, wood chips from the pole flying around him. He couldn’t move. He was trapped. But he had just one more thing to do, and with the hail of bullets, it would be impossible not to get hit.
Shit, thought Manny. Come on, D. Get to work, man.
* * *
The gunfire over on Conover Street couldn’t have been timed better. The sound forced Stepanovich and his men to get moving.
Now Beck saw how many attackers had come. Six more men, including Stepanovich, piled out of the SUV, joining the two already outside the vehicle. They all started running into the empty lot, fanning out to get in position behind Beck’s building. Beck saw three with some sort of rifles. The rest seemed to be holding handguns.
Across the street Ciro had maintained iron discipline, following Beck’s orders even though the SUV had ended up in a place different from what they’d planned. Exactly one minute after the last man had exited the Suburban, Ciro stepped out from behind Olivia’s Porsche, walked to the wrought iron fence bordering the parking lot, and started methodically shooting rounds from his M-16 into the SUV. Joey B followed next to him and began pumping blasts of 12 gauge into the vehicle, aiming for the tires first, and then the windshield.
Ciro stood as if he were on a firing range with zero regard for the possibility of anybody shooting back. He had the barrel of the assault rifle between the iron bars of the fence, his aim rock steady. He fired shot after shot into the engine block, placing twelve bullets into an area no larger than a square foot.
Joey B obliterated the front tires and the windshield.
Within five seconds, the Chevy had become a useless wreck.
* * *
Bullets continued to zing around Manny and into the old utility pole. The pole was slowly disintegrating. One way or another, he’d have to do what he was supposed to.
Before he had taken his position in the doorway, Manny had placed a Mason jar filled with gasoline and melting mothballs next to the telephone pole. He’d punched a hole in the screw-on top and stuffed a thin piece of a dish towel down into the flammable mix.
Manny bent his knees, trying to stay covered by the pole, and grabbed the Mason jar. He managed to get hold of it and stand up without getting hit. He pulled out a cigar lighter that produced a torchlike flame.
Once, twice, three times, and the lighter ignited with a hiss. Manny hesitated, knowing that once he touched the flame to the piece of towel, he would have to step out and throw it, gunfire or not. Which meant he’d probably die throwing the goddamn gasoline. Where the fuck was Demarco? Had they spotted him? Did he go down with the first shots? Fuck it. So be it.
And then Manny heard the first scream.
* * *
Seconds can seem like an eternity when people are shooting at you. But it hadn’t taken Demarco Jones more than ten seconds to make his move. He’d been concealed behind a patch of overgrown bushes and scrubby trees that ran along the fence of the empty industrial lot opposite Beck’s building.
He’d waited patiently for Kolenka’s men to start shooting at Manny. Then he rolled out onto the sidewalk, crouched low, and moved quickly toward the shooters from behind, fluidly, effortlessly, unheard against the gunfire.
In his left hand he carried a Spyderco Warrior combat knife, in his right hand a crude fifteen-inch galvanized iron pipe with the bottom taped for a secure grip. A beautifully designed and expertly honed cutting tool in one hand. A crude bludgeon in the other.
Demarco moved like a wraith behind the five men shooting at Manny. They never saw or heard him. Even if they had, there wasn’t much they could have done about it.
Demarco’s first slash severed the thick hamstrings on the legs of the two men leaning over the SUV’s hood. One fast hard slash cut through the muscles and tendons of four legs. Both men screamed, reached backward toward the searing pain, turning toward the iron pipe that smashed into their heads with two fast hits. Both were down in just under three seconds.
The third shooter, leaning over the roof of the SUV, turned toward Demarco as the pipe crunched into the middle of his forehead, splitting the skin, breaking his nose, and knocking him unconscious. The combat knife’s blade swept down and sliced through the arm that held his gun, cutting through muscle and tendon, all the way into the hard humerus bone just above the elbow.
The fourth shooter holding the rifle turned it toward Demarco, but way too late. Demarco was already too close to him, the barrel of the rifle pointing past him. Demarco punched the iron pipe into his stomach and slashed the rifle out of his hands.
The last shooter crouched behind the back end of the SUV had been shooting with his left hand. He had to spin all the way around to get a shot at whoever was attacking them from his right.
Demarco wasn’t even breathing hard. He spun toward the last man, his back now against the SUV. He was so calm, so fast, that he actually had to wait a beat for the man to finish turning toward him, and then Demarco slashed his blade down on the man’s gun hand, cutting all the tendons running along the wrist to the thumb. Followed by a fast uppercut with the galvanized pipe that shattered the man’s left mandible, knocking him unconscious. He fell in a heap, his gun hand useless.
The gunfire had stopped almost as suddenly as it had started.
Manny Guzman smiled.
He stood up, holding the Mason jar filled with homemade napalm, the soaked piece of dish towel burning and smoking.
He stepped out from behind the light pole and stepped toward the SUV, taking no chance that he would be throwing it from too far away. But Manny had forgotten about the driver. He had apparently followed orders by staying in the SUV, but now that he saw Manny approaching with a flaming bomb of some sort, he jumped out onto the street, gun in his hand.
He took aim. Manny overhanded the jar like a major league pitcher. The driver fired. Manny threw. Bullet versus firebomb.
The momentum of Manny’s throw pulled him down low. The bullet missed his chest, but caught him on the top of his right shoulder, gouging out a trail of flesh and blasting through the top tip of his clavicle.
The jar shattered. The homemade napalm splattered into the gasoline. The driver pulled off a panicked second shot, but Demarco Jones had already thrown his iron pipe. It smashed into the driver’s back. The shot went wide. A soft whump sounded and everything burst into a roaring black inferno of flames.
* * *
Stepanovich’s men were caught between two impulses.
Shoot back at whoever had shot up their SUV. Or, keep running through the lot to get into position behind Beck’s building to intercept anybody fleeing the flames clearly visible on Conover Street.
Stepanovich stood near the middle of the lot, about twenty yards back from Beck’s building, yelling orders.
Beck moved closer to the gate now, to keep his eye on what Stepanovich and his men were doing.
His original plan had depended on the cops being in the neighborhood by now, responding to gunshots, while Manny, Ciro, Demarco, and Joey got the hell out of the area.
He looked across the street to make sure that the Porsche was moving. It was. Ciro and Joey B were driving out of the lot to swing around to get Manny, who should be running as fast as his old legs would carry him into the empty industrial lot opposite Beck’s building where Ciro and Joey would pick him up.
Demarco was supposed to head quickly in the opposite direction and get the Mercury which was parked over on Beard Street, meet Beck, and drive out of the neighborhood.
But there were no cops swooping in and taking out whatever was left of the Russians on Conover and the Bosnians in the empty lot.
He checked again after the Porsche. It was out of sight. Good. Manny, Ciro, and Joey would be safe. Beck wasn’t worried about Demarco. He was probably already climbing into the Mercury on Bear
d Street.
Beck could have turned around and hustled over to Van Brunt, where Demarco would find him, but no. No way. Not now. Not with these bastards and that bald maniac alive and able to come after them.
He went through a quick calculation. His men were safe. He had all the weapons he could carry. His Browning was registered. The Benelli legal. He could hear Phineas making the argument that his client had been forced out of his home, only to be ambushed, whereupon he had no alternative but to fight to save his life.
Beck smiled in the dark red glow that pulsed on the other side of his building. It would end here and now, one way or the other.
68
Beck kept moving toward the disabled Suburban blocking the entrance to the empty lot, watching Stepanovich and the others as best he could. They were midway in the dark empty lot, having spread out behind his building.
He saw Stepanovich pointing and ordering two of his men to go back to the Suburban and see who had shot the SUV to pieces. That left six, plus Stepanovich out in the lot.
Beck watched the two come running back toward him. He slipped forward, staying low and squeezed between the SUV and the open fence gate.
He carried the shotgun in his right hand, and moved toward the rear of the SUV. If he could take out these two, that would cut his enemies to seven, but he had to do it silently or he’d lose any advantage surprise might provide.
Beck stayed where he was, watching the two men slow down and approach him across the empty lot. As they came near, they split apart so they’d approach on either side of the SUV. Beck cursed. Now he would certainly have to shoot them.
They walked bent over, wary of becoming targets for whoever had shot up their SUV.
Beck knew he could get the one advancing toward him on his side, but it would be tough taking out the second one.
Among Thieves Page 33