Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8

by Tom Clancy

  They came closer, Rugby Shirt stepping over to the driver’s door, Flamingo Pink hooking toward its right side.

  Lathrop recalled the scouting he’d done, placed this matched set among Armand’s traveling entourage of bodyguards. He had never seen Armand go anywhere without five or six armed men around him and didn’t suppose it was any different tonight. There would be more of them around . . . the only question was where. He couldn’t see out the vehicle’s side windows without bringing his head up, but a glance at the rear video display told him its image had been improved by the garage’s fluorescents—although the low line of sight still restricted what he could observe.

  Getting his elbows underneath him, propping himself up a bit, he adjusted his pistol in his right hand, then checked again that the MP7 was within fast and easy reach under his other arm.

  He knew he’d have to move at any moment.

  There was nothing left for him to do now but stay ready for when it arrived.

  Raul brought his window partly down again, leaving it raised a little higher than before.

  “Here it is.” He looked out at Rugby Shirt. “Got what I promised.”

  Lathrop heard the strained edge in Raul’s voice, noticed his fingers were back around the steering wheel, fidgeting with the wheel.

  The guard stood there and didn’t say anything. His eyes slid over the Navigator, inspecting it in the outspill of light from the wide bay entrance. Then they came level with the kid’s face.

  Lathrop drew a breath. The mingled garage smells of car exhaust, valve oil, and gasoline vapor reached him along with the night air . . . that and a metallic clanging beyond the door. There would be other bays besides the one that had been opened to admit the Nav. Some probably with mechanics in them, working to dismantle the latest stolen vehicles delivered by Armand’s crack-addicted worker ants.

  Raul continued to sit there facing the guard, waiting to be let inside.

  “Wha’s goin’ on?” he said, angling his chin toward the bay entrance. “Thought Armand know I got here.”

  Rugby Shirt’s eyes held firmly on Raul.

  “No este tu irrespetuoso,” he said.

  Do not be disrespectful.

  The kid dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. When he clenched it around the steering wheel again, Lathrop noticed it was glistening with streaks of wiped-off perspiration.

  “Didn’t mean anythin’,” he said. “Jus’ want to be bringin’ in this coche, do what I gotta do.”

  Rugby Shirt stood by the vehicle, quiet and intent, his lips pressed together. Beside the passenger door, his partner was equally impassive.

  Lathrop saw Raul shift in his seat with apprehension, got the sense he was starting to unravel under their combined scrutiny.

  The waiting silence continued about ten seconds longer, Lathrop down on his stomach in the Nav, his finger curled around the trigger of his .45. He wasn’t inclined to act before the time was right, but it would force his hand if either of the guards decided to lean in closer to the windows.

  Then Rugby Shirt nodded his head toward the garage, rapping the vehicle’s broad flank with his palm.

  “Muy bien, es de el jefe agrado,” he said.

  Very well, it will be to the boss’s liking.

  Lathrop listened, understanding the guard’s Spanish, thinking the look in his eyes didn’t at all match his words. He’d caught on that something was up with Raul. Anybody who wasn’t blind or deaf would have caught on. And while it was possible he would attribute the kid’s twitchiness to his being strung out on rock, Lathrop was not about to stake his life on it.

  Still, Rugby Shirt had decided to let the Nav through the entrance. Whatever his reasons. It moved slowly forward, both guards walking along to either side of it, escorting it into the bay.

  Lathrop braced himself. The Nav’s heavily tinted glass had screened him from sight out in the darkness, but it would be another story under the garage’s bright overhead fixtures.

  Now Raul pulled the Nav through the door and shifted into Reverse, leaving the engine on as he’d done out in the lot. Beside his door, Rugby Shirt nodded his head toward the rear of the garage. When Lathrop had questioned the kid back on the mesa road, he’d said that was where Armand’s private office was located, its door facing the bay entrance and work area, a large two-way mirror on the wall beside the door looking out over everything.

  Lathrop glanced at the rear video screen and saw two sets of legs move into the right side of the picture, coming around from what he assumed was the next bay over. Then a third pair appeared behind the Nav on the left. All of them were in drab green mechanic’s pants, Lathrop’s view of them cut off above the knees by the camera. If these men were armed, he had no way to tell.

  A few seconds went by. Then another pair of chopped-off-at-the-knees legs entered the left border of the picture and came up to join the group behind the vehicle. These were in ordinary brown chino trousers rather than grease monkey work pants.

  Lathrop was guessing they belonged to a third bodyguard. He also guessed at least twice as many more were elsewhere in and around the building—the chop shop had its regulars in addition to Armand’s personal crew. And he couldn’t allow himself to forget the lookouts. They were local punks, sure. Amateurs. But amateurs that he had to believe would be carrying hardware.

  He waited a second or two more.

  Behind the wheel, Raul had kept the Nav in Reverse, his foot on its brake. He seemed to be hanging onto the last frayed threads of his self-control well enough to stick to the plan. Lathrop had wanted him to keep the pedal down, stay put as long as possible, figuring that some of the guards would be drawn around the vehicle. The closer they got, the better it would be. When the time came, Lathrop would prompt the kid to release the brake and start the Nav rolling backward, throwing whoever was around it off balance, and giving Lathrop a bare moment of surprise he could work to his favor.

  Now Rugby Shirt turned all the way around to face the office door, stepping toward it, waving for the kid to get out of the vehicle. Lathrop was convinced he looked more suspicious than impatient.

  “Mira, viene aquí!” he said, instructing Raul to follow him over to the office.

  Raul hesitated.

  Lathrop tapped the kid’s backseat, his cue to release the brake.

  Raul sat there, unresponsive, his foot leaden on the pedal. He took several breaths through his mouth. It was the same sort of harsh, nervous breathing Lathrop had noticed when they’d approached the chop shop, only with a shallow rapidity that made it sound like he was gasping for air.

  Out in the garage Rugby Shirt paused, turned around, waved the kid out of the Nav again.

  Lathrop saw the pair of chinos inch closer in the rearview video screen.

  Then Raul grabbed the shifter and threw the Nav into Park, reaching for his door handle with his other hand, jerking himself toward the door, starting to push it open, getting set to bolt out into the garage.

  The kid’s rope had finally snapped; he’d lost it. Lathrop wasn’t waiting to find out what he had in mind.

  With a quick, fluid movement, he pushed up onto his knees, swung his .45 up above Raul’s shoulder in a two-handed grip, and fired three rounds through the windshield.

  Rugby Shirt could not have been prepared for what hit him. He would have had only an instant to see Lathrop spring into a double-handed shooter’s crouch in the Navigator’s cargo section, and was unlikely to have heard the muffled pops of the sound-suppressed gunshots before his developing suspicions came together.

  The bullets penetrated the windshield with a loud, sleety explosion of broken glass, meeting his flesh and muscle across the rib cage. He wobbled around on loose legs and smashed backward against a pegboard wall to his left, clawing for a handhold, groping blindly at its cluttered array of power tools in a vain attempt to stay on his feet. Several of them crashed off their hooks as he slid down to the floor of the garage, leaving the board and whatever tools remaine
d hanging from it speckled with red.

  Lathrop saw this at the outermost corner of his vision while switching his attention toward the right side of the windshield, moving his SMG around in the same direction. Flamingo Pink had drawn his own weapon from its holster, a big, long-barreled semiautomatic handgun.

  The gun a dark rising blur in his fist, he took hurried aim at the Navigator and triggered off a couple of shots.

  His speed and accuracy were better than Lathrop expected. The first slug punched into the Nav’s hood just below its folded wipers. The next struck the right side of the windshield a millisecond afterward, partially dissolving it, spewing glass into the vehicle this time.

  In the front seat Raul released a panicky scream and ducked under the steering wheel to avoid a storm of jagged, blown-out shards. He dove facedown across the seat and put his hands over his head as the broken glass showered over him, leaving his door ajar, abandoning his decision to cut and run, looking for cover inside the vehicle now.

  Lathrop couldn’t afford to let the kid’s wild thrashing around become a distraction. He focused narrowly on Flamingo Pink, inhaled, and held the breath to steady his aim like a trained sniper. Then he squeezed the trigger of his .45 to take the guard out with a single clean shot to his heart.

  An instant later the guard collapsed in a scattery mist of blood, the front of his shirt billowing out where he’d been hit, his pistol slipping from his fingers.

  Of the gunnies Lathrop had been able to see from the Navigator’s rear section, that left the man in chinos as an immediate concern.

  Raul was another. The kid was out of control. Bleeding from lacerations on his hands, bits and pieces of the shattered windshield pouring from his hair and clothes, he had frantically reached out to shut the door that he’d intended to open moments ago, still hollering at the top of his lungs, repeating a single Spanish phrase as if it were stuck on his tongue: Lo siento, lo siento! He was sorry, sorry, sorry.

  Lathrop had no idea whether he was screaming at him, Armand’s men, or whoever opted to listen amid the surrounding bedlam. Maybe he was apologizing to all of them, and hoping God might have some forgiveness and mercy for him, too. But it didn’t really matter. The kid was useless to anybody within earshot.

  In fact he’d become a liability from Lathrop’s perspective.

  His gun extended in one hand, Lathrop grabbed for the door handle to his left and hurled himself out of the Navigator, landing on the balls of his feet, hunkering there on the driver’s side. He was aware Chinos would be somewhere close, maybe still behind him—

  He looked back over his shoulder just in time to see the guard jogging around from the right side of the cargo hatch, his weapon held level with his hip in one hand. Lathrop could tell at a glance it was an Uzi mini or some close knockoff.

  He thrust himself toward the front end of the Nav, snatched at the outer handle of Raul’s unlatched door, and gave it a hard tug to overcome the kid’s desperate opposition from inside. Pulling the door wide open, he scuffled behind it and squatted down low in the angle between its hinges and the driver’s-side panel, pressing against the vehicle so that he was almost wedged against its wheel well.

  The move would give him cover from Chinos. That was the plus. The bad part was that it meant he’d had to turn his back to the one-way mirror fronting Armand’s office, leaving him vulnerable from behind.

  It also meant Raul had been left suddenly and completely exposed to Chinos, but he had ceased to be Lathrop’s concern.

  The kid jerked upright in his seat as the door was torn from his hand and flung outward, his lips frozen in a breathless grimace of terror, his throat clamping shut around his screams. Then he turned his head to see the guard hasten around the cargo hatch to his side of the vehicle, advancing behind his tiny assault weapon. His eyes bright staring circles, aware his prospects of survival had radically dwindled all in a second, Raul forced his vocal cords to respond to his commands and started shouting out the door in Spanish again, adding vehement denials to his repetitive declarations of regret, insisting that not only was he sorry but things weren’t his fault here. Lo siento, no es mi culpa.

  Chinos gave him just an instant’s notice, scarcely pausing to meet his gaze with his own through the open door. His eyes did not offer the barest hint of whether he considered him a threat, an opportune target of revenge, or both at once. They communicated nothing, nothing whatsoever as they brushed against Raul’s and his compact submachine gun unleashed a burst of fire that ripped into Raul at almost point-blank range, snuffing the life out of him even before his body spilled limp-limbed and shuddering against the steering column.

  Crouched on his haunches behind the door, aware of that mirror at his back, Lathrop did not miss his chance to exploit the moment Chinos had wasted taking out Raul. Shoving his pistol into its holster, he grabbed the foregrip of his MP7, braced its extended rifle stock against his shoulder, and pushed its bore around the edge of the door.

  Chinos was quick to catch sight of it. He whirled toward the door seemingly on reflex and rattled off an arcing volley, smashing the driver’s side window from its frame . . . a reaction that might have done even more damage if Lathrop hadn’t gotten the jump on him by a slender hair, drawing an accurate bead, catching him in his midsection with a tight salvo. The guard pivoted drunkenly on his feet, his gun hand convulsing to trigger an ineffectual spray of ammunition at the walls and ceiling, his other hand clutching his stomach, blood dribbling between his fingers from multiple bullet wounds.

  Lathrop was up from his crouch before he dropped, his MP7 poised.

  He looked from side to side. Two of the three mechs that had approached the Nav’s tail section were gone, but it was hard to tell where. The bays over to his right were occupied by cars, vans, pickups, and SUVs in various stages of being stripped. Some of the vehicles were on hoists, the heavy-duty kind that were built into the floor. There was an open service pit in the bay closest to Lathrop, a large Cadillac sedan pulled almost up to it. A small crew of grease monkeys stood among the different vehicles, staring at him, looking scared stiff. A couple of them might have been the same men whose legs had entered the rearview video image. Or not. Next to the open bay entrance behind the Nav, another mech had sunk down into a corner and was cowering there with his hands on his head in submission. Lathrop figured him for one of the first three. His friends could have cleared out through the door—or not.

  Lathrop reached a hand into his jacket, flashed the special agent badge around his neck, motioned toward the entrance with his subgun.

  “DEA!” he said. “Vaya, go!”

  His face streaked with perspiration, the mech nodded and slowly rose off the floor.

  Lathrop snapped the gun toward his head to hustle him along. “Ahora!”

  The mech nodded more vigorously, sprang the rest of the way up to his feet, turned, and fled the garage.

  Lathrop saw him bowl into a cluster of lookouts still lingering in the lot outside the entrance, then push past them to disappear in the night. They all seemed like versions of Pedro with their head wraps or Under Armour skullcaps, their basketball warm-ups, their hoodies and low-waisted baggy pants. And the conspicuously identical gumstick MP3s on their arms.

  They looked at him. He looked at them. The thing about the loose-fitting ghetto wear was that it could be a bluff or conceal a small arsenal.

  Lathrop fired a burst out the door, his aim intentionally high, displaying his shield so they could see it, hopeful they would get the message that he was giving them a pass. He had not forgotten about the one-way mirror behind him—and whoever might be behind it. Any time he spent worrying about this bunch was too long.

  They took his warning and scattered from the lights of the garage, losing themselves on the mechanic’s heels.

  Lathrop thought about the mirror at his unprotected back and started to turn.

  That was when he heard the rev of an engine inside the garage to his right. He glanced toward the sou
nd, saw that the mechs who’d been staring from over by the vehicles were heading for the entrance . . . all except one, and he’d gotten into the Caddy sedan. Almost simultaneously the office door crashed open and a tight knot of three or four men in street clothes broke from it. They held submachine guns of the same sort Chinos had carried and were assembled around another man who could barely be seen through their flanking bodies.

  Several of them were rattling fire at Lathrop as they moved toward the auto bays in hurried unison.

  He took cover behind the Nav, glanced over at the sedan he’d assumed was their escape vehicle, and realized that assumption was wrong. The gunmen had reached the space between the Caddy and service pit and veered toward the pit instead of the idling sedan. A couple of them paused at its edge, still firing at him. The rest separated from the others, backed toward the pit, and then followed the man they were escorting down into it.

  No sooner had the last of them dropped over its side than the Caddy throbbed into gear, screeched a half dozen feet forward, and just as abruptly came to a halt right over the pit.

  Lathrop knew that first man into it had been Armand Quiros. He’d caught a glimpse of him when the group left the office and gotten a slightly longer look as he descended the rail or ladder on the side of the pit. But it was really simpler than that. Armand’s office plus Armand’s bodyguards equaled Armand.

  What Lathrop wondered about for a brief instant was Armand racing into that hole. Why would he box himself in while a charged-up getaway car was waiting for him? If that was really what he’d done. A man like Armand would be prepared for somebody to make a move on him sooner or later. Whether it was the competition or a takedown by the law, he would anticipate more than a solitary attacker . . . Lathrop had in fact banked on his turn-tail worker ants sharing that same belief. Armand would expect his enemies to be waiting along the mesa road toward Devoción and probably to the south of town as well. In his mind a frontal escape from the garage would leave him open to being followed or caught in a net of barriers, and that meant he would want a less obvious exit through the pit. Want to be sure there was another car ready on the other side of it.