Then, all hell broke loose.
Jack listened to one of the detectives tell a story about how they had arrested a senator once and their captain had forced them to let him go when he heard the first gunshot. He knew by the sound it was a shotgun, sawed-off for greater spray. No one in the club did anything, as they weren’t used to hearing gunfire and they probably assumed it was something falling.
“That’s—” William began.
“I know,” Jack said.
Jack pulled out his weapon as a series of pops came from the back. People knew what it was now.
Screams filled the space as the music was shut off. As everyone sprinted for the doors, one woman got knocked down and people began to trample her. Jack ran for her, pushing everyone aside. A big guy in a biker’s jacket took a swing at him and he ducked low, upper-cutting him in the groin and sweeping his legs out from under him with his arms. As the man fell, he ran to the woman and helped her up, guiding her to the line leading out of the exit.
He saw William and the other detectives up and running for the doors. They had all left their firearms in their cars since they were drinking.
“Jack,” William shouted, “come on!”
The door to a backroom opened and the sounds of gunfire overtook the screams. A man in dreadlocks ran out onto the dance floor, two pistols in his hands, firing into the back like he was in a Wild West movie.
Jack ducked low. The lights weren’t turned up yet and darkness shadowed the walls. He put his back to the wall and slid toward the man who was hollering and emptying his revolvers. When he was out, he pulled out some quick-loaders.
Jack sprinted at him. The man saw him and rushed to reload when Jack slammed his fists into his hands, knocking the revolvers to the floor. The man swung and Jack used his momentum, letting him wrap his arm around his neck, as he twisted and flung him over his shoulder onto the floor. He grabbed one of his wrists, placing the man’s elbow between his own knees, and twisted nearly all the way around, snapping his arm at the wrist and elbow.
Another man with dreads ran out holding a shotgun. He saw Jack and the man on the floor and his eyes widened. He pointed his weapon and Jack dove to the floor, barely missing the spray. He picked up the man on the floor as another round went off. Jack held the injured man in front of him like a shield, hoping his friend wouldn’t fire. But he fired twice, knocking Jack backward from the impact.
Jack dove behind the bar as another shot shattered the mirror and the liquor glasses. Shards of glass flew over him and he covered his face until it stopped and then grabbed a broken vodka bottle. He slid under the bar when he saw the man come over.
Jack jumped and thrust the jagged edge of the bottle into the man’s face. He screamed and Jack grabbed his weapon. He twisted toward the man, getting a good grip on the shotgun, and then spun away, ripping the shotgun out of the man’s grasp.
“Down on the ground, now!” Jack shouted, pointing the weapon.
“Fuck you!”
The man ran at him and Jack lifted the butt end of the shotgun and slammed it down onto his face, crushing his nose. He swung it like a bat, slamming into the man’s jaw, and knocking him out cold. He hit the bar and slid down to the floor.
Two more men with dreadlocks ran out of the back, one of them injured and limping. He looked over to Jack and to the two other men on the floor. He went for the assault rifle that was strapped to his back but his companion grabbed him and forced him toward the exit as sirens screamed outside.
A man in a suit with gold chains around his neck stumbled out. He was holding an automatic in his hands and his suit appeared torn to shreds from the entry wounds of slugs. The man stood quietly a while and then fell to his knees. He looked up to the ceiling as he tumbled backward. Jack ran to him but he didn’t even know where to start trying to stop the bleeding. He would place his hands over one hole and like a cartoon character trying to stop a crack in a dam, more blood gushed out of other places. As the man choked to death on the blood filling his lungs, Jack closed his eyes and let him go.
CHAPTER 7
By two in the morning, the only people left at the Red Salamander were police officers and detectives. The CSI team lingered somewhere but from the hood of the police cruiser Jack was sitting on he couldn’t see them.
The night air clung to him. It was wet somehow, though he had never experienced much humidity in Los Angeles and he wondered if it was just him. He had spent so many years in wet jungles that maybe his body wasn’t able to adjust to a dry climate.
William walked up to him out of the crowd of officers talking near the entrance. The bodies were now being hauled out by the Medical Examiner’s Office staff and loaded into their black vans. Jack and William watched them a long time before speaking.
“Twelve dead,” William said. “Most of ‘em were in the drug game. Two of ‘em were just young girls here dancing and got caught in the crossfire.”
Jack didn’t respond and William continued.
“This is what it’s like now, Jack. I wish I could say this was an unusual occurrence but it’s not. The cartel’s got a strong presence here, the Columbians, the Russians, the Vietnamese…and now the Myrs. They battle it out and innocent people end up getting killed over it.”
“It’s always been like that. The world’s always been a mess. There’s not much you can do to change that.”
“The hell I can’t. I can catch those dreadlocked bastards and throw ‘em in a cell is what I can do. Maybe even put a needle in their arms. Don’t you want to see that?”
“No. More killing doesn’t bring anybody back. It just adds death to the world. Revenge isn’t an answer, William.”
“Then what is?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” Jack hopped off the hood. “I’m going home. Call me if you need anything else.”
“I need you to come back and help me. I already talked to the commissioner about it.”
“I’m sorry. But that’s not a world I’m getting involved with again.”
Jack got into his car and pulled away from the Red Salamander. He had to wait for one of the ME’s vans to pass and he followed behind them a few blocks, but it made him feel uncomfortable so he turned away and down a residential neighborhood. He took a long drive before heading back to his condo and parking in the driveway. A song by Deva Premal was playing on the satellite radio. It was a soft female voice repeating a chant over pleasant music. Jack listened to the entire song before stepping out and going inside.
Taking his cell phone out, he kicked his shoes off and threw his keys onto the kitchen counter. The phone’s display said he had eight missed calls and three voicemails. He listened to them. They were all from his sister saying she’d seen him on the news at the shooting and she needed him to call right away to make sure he was okay. He grinned as he called her back, unaccustomed to someone caring about him.
“Hey, Nic, it’s me.”
“Jack,” she said, relief pouring out of her, “why didn’t you call me?”
“I just got home.”
“I saw your interview on the news. What the hell happened?”
“Just like it sounded. A drug war with innocent people caught in the middle.”
“Are you hurt at all?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I’m coming over.”
“No, Nicole, you have a family. Be with your family.”
“You’re my family too, Jack,” she said sternly. “And I’m coming over.”
He wanted desperately to sleep but being able to talk to someone sounded fine too. He went upstairs and took a quick shower, changing into an old University of New Mexico T-shirt and some basketball shorts. Back downstairs, he got bottled water out of the fridge before settling on the couch.
There wasn’t much on TV but soft-core porn and he was amazed that they could even show things like that on television. He had been away a long time apparently. He switched it to a twenty-four-hour news channel and listened to a story
about a mother and her two children who had gotten stuck in a canyon and had to survive on their own for three days.
The doorbell rang and he answered. Before it was open all the way, Nicole threw her arms around him and hugged him.
“Hey,” he said, “I’m okay. Seriously, I wasn’t hit.”
“All those damned missions in the jungle and you almost got killed at a bar.”
“Almost is the operative word.” He pulled her away so he could look into her eyes. “Nic, I’m totally fine. Come in.”
They sat down on the couch and watched television for a little bit without speaking and then Nicole said, “When you first left, I used to stay up nights crying.”
Jack looked to her and then back at the television. They hadn’t had a father growing up and he knew that had been his role. “I’m sorry. I know hindsight’s twenty-twenty, but I sure wish it wasn’t. I can see the mistake I made now.”
She rubbed his hand. “I’m just glad you’re home now.”
“Me too.”
CHAPTER 8
Reese Stillman limped into the abandoned manufacturing plant. General Motors had used it as a factory in the 1970s but closed it and imported the ten thousand jobs overseas. Reese only knew this because, in the long night hours when it was his turn to be the watch, when he was really bored, he would sometimes flip through documents related to the sale in the upstairs offices.
The plant sat on twelve acres on the outskirts of Los Angeles County. It was surrounded by other plants and factories and warehouses but it was far enough from residential areas that squatters had found the empty buildings and taken them over as their own.
Reese pushed past the heavy plastic drapes that hung over the entrance and walked across the factory floor, past the abandoned machines collecting dust and spiderwebs, and went to a slit in the floor with a chain sticking out. He pulled on the chain, revealing a door that led down to the basement.
He walked down the stairs. Music was playing. It grew louder as he descended into the bowels of the building and turned into a hallway that was dimly lit by a few swinging lightbulbs. The walls and floor were cement, the carpet long since ripped out. Doors led to what had once been storage rooms but had been turned into bunkers. Reese walked past one that had two bunkbeds on either side, and men were sitting up in the beds talking and cleaning handguns and shotguns. Another room was the same except it housed women and they sat on the floor, eating a meal of takeout and joking and laughing.
All of them had nowhere else to go. They had nothing else waiting for them outside the walls of this plant. Most of them were runaways, some of them were fugitives. But they all had one thing in common: Agamemnon. He had taken them in when no one else would, trained them, given them purpose and a pillow under their heads. It was more than most of the people here had ever had in their lives.
Reese turned into a large space. Metal grating covered the area, and large machines, which workers were busy fiddling with, were set up against the walls. They were building something here, but no one really knew what. Only Agamemnon had all the details. For protection, he had said. Too much information was too much power and only those responsible enough to handle that power should be trusted with it.
Reese could see a massive black figure moving at the far end of the room. It hauled metal beams to the opposite wall where they were being bolted to the floor and ceiling. The structure almost looked like steel shelves. Reese walked to the figure, Agamemnon’s massive frame coming into focus as he approached.
“You’re limping,” Agamemnon said in his grainy, electric voice.
“We finished the Red Salamander. I got grazed in the leg. Tyrell got his ankle blown out.” Of all the Myrs, he was the only one that did not need to end his responses with sir.
“All of them are gone?”
Reese paused, surprised that Agamemnon didn’t comment on the man that would need a cane permanently now because of him. “Every single one.”
Agamemnon nodded as he laid down the beams. “And how many of our brothers were lost?”
“Four. And two arrested. Including Jimmy.”
“We will hold a memorial for them tonight and remember them.”
Reese nodded.
Agamemnon didn’t say anything at first, the silence filled with the sound of his breaths inhaled through the circuitry of his voice box. “What else, brother?”
“Someone there hurt James. That’s how they got him.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He was in the crowd. They interviewed him on the news; I saw that. I don’t remember the name.”
Agamemnon turned toward one of the men working on the machinery. A thin man with thick glasses that used a blowtorch to meld two pieces of steel. “Brother,” Agamemnon said, “Reese needs help. You will help him.”
The man nodded.
“I want your permission to kill him when I find him,” Reese said.
“Granted. There is something else.”
“What?”
“The two that were caught, including James. We must ensure that they do not speak to the police.”
Reese’s eyes went wide and icy fear trickled down his back. “No…they wouldn’t. Not in a million years. I’ve known Jimmy since we was teenagers livin’ on the streets. No way.”
“There is only one way to make certain.”
Reese lowered his head. He had known Jimmy so long he couldn’t picture his life without him. Even the thought of it filled him with a deep loneliness.
“You were lovers?” Agamemnon inquired.
“Yes.”
“We all have our weakness, brother. This was yours. You must rectify it yourself.”
“You…you want me to—”
“It is not because of ‘want’ that I ask this of you. We are few and if we were to be found here, our numbers could be thinned in one stroke. Our work is too important to leave to the fickle loyalties of a few.”
“But…what if we set them free? What if I broke in there and got them out?”
Agamemnon considered this. “Very well. But it is your responsibility. It will be your failure if you do not succeed. Understood?”
“Yes. What about the man on the news?”
Agamemnon waved his hand dismissively as he turned back to the machines. “Kill him however you like.”
CHAPTER 9
Disneyland was crowded today to the point that Jack felt awkward. It’d been years since he’d been around this many people at one time and he wasn’t sure how to act. He kept thinking everyone was staring at him, noticing his awkwardness. His niece sensed his apprehension and held his hand as they went from ride to ride, never letting go.
After half a day of spinning and looping and twisting, he felt like he was going to vomit. He sat on one of the benches, catching his breath as Nicole went behind the benches to a candy shop with Autumn. Jack’s brother-in-law sat next to him and groaned as he lowered himself.
“My damn knees,” Hank said. “They haven’t been the same since playing football in high school.”
“You should try barefoot running. It corrected a lot of the knee and back problems I was having.”
“Barefoot? As in no shoes?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, Jack, not all of us are DEA hitmen and can run through the jungle with no shoes.”
Jack turned away from him, staring off into the distance.
“I’m sorry,” Hank said. “I didn’t mean the hitman thing.”
“It’s all right.”
“So, when you settling down and finding yourself a good woman?”
“I’m still trying to adjust right now. For a long time it was just me, or me and my partner. When there were other people, they didn’t know who I really was. Being back takes some getting used to.”
Jack looked out over the crowd as he spoke and noticed two men walking toward them. They were hooded, wearing jeans and boots though the temperature was approaching a hundred degrees.
“Well,
if you’re interested, there’s this gal at my work. Cute as a bug. She’s newly single.”
“Uh huh,” Jack said, not taking his eyes off the two men.
They were approaching quickly. One of them looked directly at him and then they turned away and into one of the souvenir shops. Jack’s gaze finally broke free and he realized that Hank had been speaking the entire time.
“And so her husband just left, just like that. You believe that?”
“No, that’s amazing.”
“Yeah,” Hank said, staring off at some kids that were running around.
Movement caught Jack’s eye. The two men had gone through the back door of the souvenir shop and were looping around toward him. Jack looked over and the men broke into a run.
Jack shoved Hank to the ground as the men pulled out handguns from their pants and opened fire. Jack jumped behind a nearby statue as the park filled with screams and people began to run.
He sprinted out from cover as he saw that the men circled around from opposite directions. He kept his head low as he jumped over the railing to a children’s ride and sprinted through to the other side. A Star Wars ride was inside a building and he ran for it as shots echoed behind him.
A hallway and then a ramp as he sprinted down and turned into a small room, flipping the lights off. The people in here hadn’t heard the gunshots and they were still walking around talking and laughing. He slid down the wall close to the floor, and waited.
After a few seconds, he heard someone yell, “Holy shit they’ve got guns!”
People panicked and ran for the exits. Jack kept his eyes on the floor. The clatter of running and screaming filled the building but it soon emptied until just the sounds of R2-D2 and a short film playing somewhere remained. He could see a shadow cast on the floor and then the shadow began to fade. He held his breath.
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