by Sean Black
“You okay?” the female marshal asked her.
“I can’t breathe.”
The female marshal unclipped her seatbelt as the last vibrations of the impact stilled. She got up and knelt next to Chance, whose face and lower body were masked by her long blond hair, which had cascaded forward.
Chance tightened her grip on the knife and waited for the gap between the top of the marshal’s ballistic vest and the bottom of her helmet, a gap that exposed her neck, to come within slashing distance.
* * *
The muzzle of Lock’s gun flared as he fired off three quick blank rounds toward the driver of the van, who ducked his head to take cover. Lock moved swiftly to the side of the van. He grabbed for the handle, stepped off to one side, and yanked it hard.
As rehearsed, the door opening prompted two, equally harmless, gunshots. Lock reached into a pocket of his webbing, pulled the flash-bang grenade out, checked that his ear protectors were snugly in place, and tossed it in around the side of the open door.
The deafening bang prompted a piercing scream. Lock’s heart jumped as he feared he’d misplaced the throw. The intention was to roll it on the floor. A flash-bang was non-lethal. Unless it exploded directly in someone’s face.
Pivoting on his heel, Lock punched out his SIG and swept around the edge of the open door. It took him almost a full second to process the scene that greeted him.
There was blood.
A lot of blood.
Both marshals lay on the van’s floor, blood spurting from neck wounds. Kneeling between them, ochre red blood staining her hair, like a bad dye job, and covering her face was Chance. Clutched in her still-cuffed hands was a knife.
She looked up from her handiwork, and smiled broadly at Lock. “Well, if it isn’t my knight in shining armor, come to rescue me.”
Lock stared at her, still trying to get his head around what he was seeing. The inside of the van had been transformed in less than thirty seconds into a human abattoir.
A voice near the front of the van. Lock glanced over to see the driver, frantically keying his radio microphone.
“Officers down! Officers down! For real!”
With some difficulty, Chance scrambled to her feet. Keeping her head down, she duck-walked to the lip of the van, and hopped out. She straightened up.
Lock took a step back. She dropped the knife onto the blacktop and opened her palms to show him they were empty.
Lock could hear shots behind him. That would be Ty, playing his part by pinning down the rear vehicle, which contained the marshal’s counter-attack team.
Only this wasn’t exactly as rehearsed. Not anymore. The driver of the transport van had clearly gotten his message through.
Chance threw herself to the ground as a live round slammed into the van behind them, blowing a half-inch-sized hole in the bodywork.
They were taking fire, and it wasn’t blank.
Lock followed Chance to the ground, and used his body to shield hers. Whatever lay ahead, he needed her breathing to save Carmen. Explanations would have to wait.
Glancing up he found himself staring into Mirales’ lifeless eyes through the blood-splashed shield of her tactical helmet. Reaching down, he frisked Chance for any other weapons. She squirmed beneath him and let out a low moan.
“Oh, keep doing that. It feels good.”
Someone who didn’t know what Chance was capable of might have gotten embarrassed and given up on the search. Lock wasn’t that guy. He ran his hands over every inch he could get to. Finally, satisfied that she didn’t have another weapon, he stopped, grabbed the back of Chance’s shirt and began to haul her underneath the van as a volley of fresh gunfire peppered it.
* * *
The first Ty knew of the change in operation protocol was a bullet smashing through the windshield of his van. He had, as rehearsed, been bearing down on the marshal’s counter-attack team from the rear, ready to make a show of engaging them before he rode to Lock’s rescue further down the line.
Now, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him, he was taking live fire from the same guys he’d been joking around with a few hours before. Thankfully, previous combat situations as a US marine had taught him that friendly fire was a more common occurrence than civilians might suspect and there was little point in bitching about it. Or, in the words of one marine buddy in Iraq, “Sometimes shit just happens, and you have to deal.”
Dealing meant adjusting tactics, and fast. So, rather than sit there and engage with the Counter Attack Team, which, in any case, had been pretty much for show, Ty pulled down hard on the wheel of the van and buried the gas pedal to the floor.
He drove around the black Suburban holding the CA Team, taking fire as he did, and bolted toward the transport van. He slowed, spun the wheel one more time and came to a halt in front of it, the vehicle providing him cover.
Leaving the engine running, he ejected the clip in his SIG, jammed in a fresh one, holding live rounds, and bailed out.
Lock’s head popped out from beneath the van. “What took you so long?” He shuffled forward on his hands and knees, and Ty saw he had a hand on the back of Chance’s neck. She was covered with blood. So was Lock.
Looking past them, Ty got a glimpse of the inside of the van. Two dead marshals or, rather, one dead marshal and a dead FBI special agent. The live fire suddenly made sense.
Chance tried to wriggle out from under Lock, who tightened his grip on her. Ty reached out and pulled Lock to his feet, bringing Chance with him.
Chance struggled back round so she was side on to Lock. “Nice to see you kept your pet all these years,” she said to him.
A fresh staccato burst of fire peppered the ground a few feet from them. Ty figured they could save all the catching up about old times for later.
“Here,” Lock said, pushing Chance toward him. “Put her in the van. If I’m not there in thirty seconds, split and don’t look back.”
He tossed Ty his cell phone. Ty caught it with his left hand, pocketed it, and grabbed Chance, while he kept his SIG in his right hand. Pushing her ahead of him, Ty turned back toward his van. As he reached it he saw the lead Suburban spin to a side-on stop, blocking the road ahead. Ty threw Chance inside the van, and squeezed off a shot toward the driver’s side front wheel of the Suburban. He hit it clean, his bullet ripping off a strip of rubber, as one of the marshals inside returned fire, the second of his shots coming so close that Ty felt the air part just over his head.
Turning, he saw Chance clambering behind the wheel. She reached down to throw the van into Drive. Ty jumped in and shouldered her into the passenger seat, her slender frame no match for his sheer size. “Hope you weren’t thinking of taking off without me.”
She shot him the trademark smile that had drawn so many people to their death. “Just trying to be a team player,” she said, all sweetness and light.
He gave her a “Sure, you were” look, throwing his elbow out a little wider than usual as he flung the van into Drive, catching her rib in the process. “We ain’t on the same team, lady.”
He eased the van forward. Lock had maybe five seconds left of his allotted thirty. Ty felt torn. He didn’t want to leave him. But he knew that, above all else, Lock wanted Carmen safe. In his pocket, Ty had the key to making that happen: Lock’s cell phone and lifeline to the kidnappers. If Chance wasn’t delivered, Carmen’s fate would be sealed.
Ty kept easing forward, all the while counting down. He had the nose of the van facing the entrance to the old fire road that intersected this section of highway. The fire road was part of the reason they had selected this location for the ambush. It snaked for a half-mile over open ground before it was swallowed by a thick forest of Red Fir and Jeffery Pine that led, several miles later, to a lake. The route would give the illusion of providing cover from aerial surveillance. It was part of the sales pitch Lock had designed to make the escape seem credible to the kidnappers. This van was fitted with a tracker so that the authorities could l
ocate them when the exchange was taking place.
Goddamn.
Ty had forgotten about the tracker. A good idea that would now ensure they didn’t make it to the RV point.
One second more.
Ty’s massive hands gripped the wheel. It was time to go.
A tap at the window. Lock stood there, a black box in his hand – the tracker.
With a swell of relief Ty threw open the door. Lock clambered over him and squeezed between the seats into the rear of the van. He dropped the black box on the seat. “Wouldn’t get very far with this on board,” he said.
“What about the eye in the sky?” Ty asked.
“I have an idea for that too. Just get as far down this track as you can in as little time as possible.”
Lock unholstered his SIG and pushed the barrel into the side of Chance’s head, just behind her ear. “Let’s hope we don’t hit any bumps,” he said.
Chance was not a woman who scared easy. She turned her face toward him, side-glancing him with razor blue eyes. “We hit any bumps and your girlfriend is dead,” she said coolly.
Ty gunned the engine. The van’s tires spun in the dirt, then found grip. They took off at speed, leaving two dead bodies and two Suburbans with shot-out tires in their wake.
56
The van lurched into the air, all four wheels briefly leaving the ground, as Ty hunched his long frame over the steering wheel. Lock reached through and clamped a hand on Chance’s shoulder to prevent her head smashing into the van’s roof and breaking her neck.
“You want me to ease off the gas here, Ryan?” Ty asked, as they continued to barrel down the fire road.
“Don’t think we have that luxury right now.”
“I hear you.” Ty pressed down a little harder on the accelerator. The van’s suspension groaned in protest as they hit a fresh series of ruts.
“You sure you want the Negro driving?” Chance asked Lock. “I mean didn’t he kill your last girlfriend when he was behind the wheel?”
Ty glared across at her from the driver’s seat. Lock chose not take the bait. Instead, he slipped his hand from Chance’s shoulder.
“Hold on tight,” said Ty, adjusting course a fraction toward a pothole near the edge of the road. As the van’s passenger side sank into it and back out again, Chance rose in her seat, the top of her head slamming hard into the roof. She yelped with pain.
Lock put his hand back on her shoulder. “You want to play nice?”
“I was just saying. Jeez. No need to get so pissy.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Lock.
They hit a rise in the road. A few seconds later, they cleared it. Spread out beneath them was a carpet of mature Red Fir and Jeffery Pine trees.
The van eased down the slope toward the forest.
“I think we done reached the Promised Land,” said Ty, as the road took a turn and they closed in on the forest.
Lock didn’t share his optimism. Not yet anyway. He could only imagine the shit storm that Chance’s knife trick had caused back at the ambush site. The only chink of light was that, with so many law-enforcement agencies involved, and two individuals from two different agencies having been murdered, the frenzy would be such that it would slow the reaction. There would almost certainly be a huge pissing contest taking place right now as to chain of command and who was the lead agency. That might buy them some time.
A flicker of light that hadn’t been there a second before. In the back, Lock shifted position so that he could better see the side mirror just beyond Chance. Red roll-bar lights. In the distance, but closing fast.
“Don’t think we should count our chickens just yet,” he said.
Ty stomped back down on the gas. The van lurched forward, heading off the fire road, and over the open ground, cutting toward the forest at an angle.
Even moving into the trees, Lock knew there was no way they could outrun whoever was behind them. He had to come up with an alternative. Fast.
57
Petrovsky swung a wild boot at the Suburban’s front passenger-side tire. More rim than rubber, he had taken the vehicle as far as he could down the fire road before it had given up on him.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted, as a couple of his subordinates eyed him warily.
It was no secret that Petrovsky had been the one person most opposed to Lock’s plan of staging the escape. Right now it looked like he had been correct. It had blown up in their faces, and in spectacular fashion. Maybe now, he reflected, the other agencies might listen and he could run things his way.
An LAPD cruiser came screeching to a stop a few feet from Petrovsky. Stanner emerged and headed straight for him.
“What the hell happened?” Stanner asked.
“You see the bodies yet?” said Petrovsky.
Stanner’s gaunt features darkened. He gave a curt nod. “Butcher shop.”
He had likely seen hundreds of dead bodies and dozens of murder victims. So had Petrovsky. But somehow dead law-enforcement officials hit closer to home.
They were a more vivid reminder of each man’s own mortality. Not just because there was familiarity but also because it was an affront to a hard-won established order. Cops and federal agents weren’t supposed to die by someone else’s hand. It was a challenge to the very basis of society. The first step to anarchy.
“Look,” said Stanner. “We’ll find them. It’s just a matter of closing the net.”
“And what about Lock and his buddy?” Petrovsky said.
“What about them?”
“Soon as they took off with her, they became part of this.”
Stanner kicked the toe of his shoe into the ground. “Lock wants to get Carmen back. Vaden was part of that deal.”
Petrovsky’s face turned beet red. He struggled to keep his rage in check. “Not anymore she’s not. If we can bring her home safe that’s one thing. Far as I’m concerned, Lock and Johnson are fugitives now.”
“If you recall, we agreed to do it this way,” Stanner cautioned.
“No, you agreed, and I got railroaded. Either way, any deal terminated as soon as Vaden did what she did. I’d imagine the Bureau will see it that way too now.”
“So we take Lock and Johnson into custody when we get them? Their attorney can argue their case. In court and in the media. That’ll be like pouring gasoline onto a flaming pile of shit.”
Petrovsky’s expression told Stanner he wasn’t done. “If they make it into custody . . .”
“What are you saying here, Marshal?”
“I’m saying that anyone who’s actively involved will have to face the consequences of their actions. Up to, and including, the use of deadly force.”
“You’re going to kill them?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
58
Point finished a call and threw the cell phone back on the couch. Rance paced the floor behind him. Through the doorway, he could glimpse Carmen, cuffed and chained to a chair in the living room.
“That’s another one down,” Point announced.
“Where?” Rance asked.
“The place in Encino.”
“Ah, shit, man.”
“Chill. This was bound to happen when the heat came on. We still have more than enough places in the tank.”
“Maybe if Chance hadn’t killed that Fed . . .”
Point placed an open hand on Rance’s chest. “You want to run that one by me again?”
“I was only saying that maybe we don’t need any extra problems.”
Point slowly shook his head from side to side. “Oh, and you don’t think that Chance escaping was going to be a problem for us?” He took a step toward Rance, closing in, his eyes unblinking as he jabbed a finger into his partner’s chest. “Let me explain something to you. This here is a war. As real as any of the other ones we’ve seen. Only the stakes are higher. A lot higher. We’re fighting to take our country back. So you’d better buckle in because this is going to get a lot tougher befor
e it gets easier.”
Rance lifted a hand and pushed Point’s hand away from him. “I get all that. But why go and kill a Fed when you don’t need to?”
“Tell you what, you can ask Chance when you see her. How about that?”
The color faded from Rance’s face at the mention of Chance. “Maybe I’ll do that,” he said.
“And maybe you won’t.”
A car horn sounded outside. Point moved to the window and pulled back the blinds a fraction. “They’re here.”
Rance joined him at the window. They watched as one black and one red Ford SUV pulled up outside the house. The doors of the two SUVs opened and men spilled out. They varied by age and size, but they had three characteristics in common: they were dressed in camouflage gear, they were heavily armed, and they were all, without exception, white.
“What did I just tell you?” Point said, turning back to face Rance. “This is war. The time for mercy is over.”
The man who climbed from the front passenger seat of the red SUV appeared, from the body language of the others, to be the leader of this new, larger, group. He was huge, a veritable man mountain. Not tall, maybe only five ten, but muscular and broad. The sleeves of his black T-shirt strained to cover biceps larger than most men’s thighs. He had long black hair and a thick black beard.
He walked up the front steps of the house and onto the porch. Point opened the door. He went to embrace the man. Padre blew him off, shoving a hand into his chest.
“You ready to do this?” Padre asked him.
“Yeah. Y’know they’ve hit another of our places?”
Padre stared at him. “Not our places. Your place. Let’s be clear on that.”
“Sure, of course,” said Point, wrong-footed.
“Good,” said Padre, pushing past him into the house. “Now where’s the Mamacita?”
59
Ty’s hands clamped around the steering wheel, the muscles in his arms taut. Thick black smoke belched from the tail pipe. Once distant, the sirens grew louder with every passing moment.