4 Real Dangerous Place

by K. W. Jeter

  “Yeah, but . . .” Scavulos pointed through the window of the Claw’s cab, over to the mess on the other side of the freeway. “We’re losing the hostages . . .”

  “Screw the hostages. We don’t need them anymore –”

  That was when my brother Donnie took his shot. He’d crawled as close as he could to the center divider. Peering out from beneath one of the cars in the left-hand lane, he could see and hear the two men. He didn’t know what they were going on about, but didn’t care, either. He figured he wasn’t going to get a better payback chance than this.

  The only problem was that nobody, including me, had ever given him a short course in how to fire an assault rifle, like the one I’d gotten from my old buddy Cole. It always looks so easy in the movies, but believe me, it’s not – I’d landed on my butt from the recoil more than once when I’d first started learning how to kill people.

  From his hiding place under the car, Donnie managed to hook his finger around the trigger and rip off a burst, holding the assault rifle tight against his chest. The front window of the Claw’s cab shattered into glittering fragments. The bullets stitched across the metal roof as Scavulos dived down behind the controls.

  It probably would’ve been smarter if Donnie had tried to take out Richter first. Then he could’ve gone after the other man with more time to line up a shot. As it was, Richter’s reaction time was fast enough for him to whirl around and spot the muzzle flash coming from underneath the car on the divider’s other side.

  Donnie eased off the assault rifle’s trigger, peering ahead to see what, if anything, he’d accomplished. Now he couldn’t see either Scavulos or Richter. He knew that wasn’t good. If he’d managed to blow away the guy behind the Claw’s controls, that still left another one somewhere around. He held his breath, trying to spot any sign of the other man –

  He was lucky, in a way. Richter had a use for him. Otherwise, Richter would’ve just hosed him underneath the car, with a quick burst of rifle fire.

  The next thing Donnie knew, his own rifle was being yanked out of his hands. Richter had vaulted over the center divider, circled around to the side of the car, then swiftly knelt down and grabbed the rifle barrel. It went spinning across the concrete as Richter tossed it away.

  Richter pulled my furiously struggling brother out from under the car –

  I saw that happen. I’d already been heading across the freeway as fast as I could, squeezing between the bumpers of the trapped cars. I’d spotted Richter on the freeway’s other side, but when I heard the assault rifle burst and saw the Claw’s window shatter, I ducked down behind the nearest fender.

  By the time I raised my head again, Richter had pulled my brother up against himself. Donnie was putting up a good fight – his legs might have been dangling uselessly below him, but he was doing his best to get his fists around to the side of Richter’s head. That probably wasn’t a good idea, given that Richter was carrying his own rifle in his other hand. As I watched, he brought its muzzle up against the corner of Donnie’s brow.

  “That’s right –” Richter had spotted me. He was close enough that he barely had to raise his voice over the screaming and shouting on the freeway behind me. “Drop it, or I’ll take this kid’s head off.” A thin smile showed as he glanced down at Donnie, then over toward me again. “This one yours? Looks like he is.”

  Richter had either caught the family resemblance between the two of us, or he was one of those they all look alike to me guys. It didn’t matter at the moment. I stood up, lowering my rifle to my side.

  “Toss it,” ordered Richter. “Far as you can.” He nudged Donnie’s brow with his rifle again. “Or else.”

  I did as I was told, taking my rifle by the barrel and slinging it out into the air. It landed clattering somewhere in the midst of the trapped cars.

  “Good thing for you I don’t feel like wasting ammunition.” Richter started backing up, keeping his rifle poised against my brother’s head. “You stay right where you are, and you’ll be fine. And maybe this kid will be as well. But right now, I’ve got business to take care of. ” He came up against the freeway divider and stepped over it, still holding Donnie. “You’d better hope that the police are as smart as you are.”

  I knew better than to make a move, at least while Richter was still looking in my direction. He might’ve had only a round or two left in his clip, but with the rifle aimed straight at Donnie’s head, that was enough as far as I was concerned. And there were still plenty of other people caught in the bottle here – as long as the police figured that Richter had the trigger in his hand for all those explosives lined up along the freeway lanes, they weren’t going to risk taking him out with a sniper shot.

  Even when Richter tossed Donnie sprawling into the passenger seat of the Mercedes convertible, then climbed behind its wheel, I stayed motionless. Or at least my body did – inside my head, though, things were speeding up. I still had no idea of what was going on, what Richter really wanted – and I wouldn’t find that out until a long time later – but I could tell that it had something to do with that scary-looking metal cylinder, the one marked with all the biohazard symbols, that he had gone to such trouble to get his hands on. I could just see it now, tilted on an angle in the Mercedes’ back seat.

  And the plane that was swooping in toward the freeway – it was going to be right on top of us in what looked like a minute or so, low enough that somebody could’ve looked up and counted the rivets in its wings. That must’ve had something to do with it as well – I could see Richter pointing at it as he shouted some more orders to Scavulos in the Claw’s cab. Then he dropped back down behind the steering wheel, turned the key in the Mercedes’ ignition, and slammed it into gear. Donnie took a swipe at Richter, but he backhanded my brother across the face, knocking him against the passenger side door.

  The car tires squealed and smoked as Richter flattened the accelerator, clipping one corner of the Claw’s tank treads as he swerved around and gunned the Mercedes down the empty lanes.

  I wasn’t hanging around then. It had suddenly flashed complete in my mind, like some ugly little vision, what Richter and his crew had set up. As I ran back across the bottle’s lanes, toward the guardrail on this side of the freeway, all the pieces fit together inside my head. That metal cylinder, whatever the hell was inside it, plus the plane coming in – that must be the reason for all that other stuff Richter’s crew had done. Like blowing up the interchange, leaving its jagged end sticking out in the air up above the freeway level. And then putting up that spindly tower there, without any lights or electronic equipment on it, or any other apparent reason for it, just some kind of hook-and-cable arrangement way up at the top of it. I had no idea how Richter was going to pull it off, but the only purpose I could see for all of it was that somehow he was going to get the cylinder onboard the plane with it. What was going to happen after that – I didn’t have a clue.

  But I wasn’t going to wait to find out – not while he still had my brother. I figured that even with using Donnie as insurance to keep me and the police from interfering with him, there was going to be a moment soon when Richter would be too busy with whatever else he’d cooked up, to keep that rifle pointed at his hostage. And I meant to be there when that happened.

  All I really wanted right now was a motorcycle – and Richter had left one for me. Over by where the panel truck had been caught in the bottle, with nothing but a scorch mark now on the concrete, from when Elton had blow up the truck. That big motorcycle-cop BMW R1200 might not have been as much to my liking as the little Ninja 250R that I was used to, but it would do.

  And don’t get on my case about not using a helmet. All the rest of the time I’m not an idiot, but I figured these were special circumstances. I slung my leg over the seat and straightened the bike off its sidestand, barely able to get my toes down to the pavement. The engine coughed into life soon as I twisted the key at the center of the handlebars. I had enough adrenaline pumped into my system that I
was able to swing the BMW around despite its size, then aim it back across the lanes, in the direction I had just sprinted.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about that thing toppling over on me. As I rolled on the throttle, the main problem I had was squeezing between the front and rear bumpers of the cars trapped in the bottle. There was enough clearance to get from over by the guardrail and through the right-hand lane to the middle one, but the space after that was so narrow that the crash bars on the sides of the motorcycle scraped and wedged tight. I had to drop the bike back into neutral and back it out, raising my legs and kicking against the cars’ front and rear fenders. The bike nearly fell when I got it free, but I caught its weight with one foot thrust out against the concrete. I cranked the handlebars around and gunned the engine again, heading down between the lanes to find a wider space over to the center lane.

  One of Richter’s crew blocked my way. He turned, hearing the sound of the motorcycle coming up fast behind him. Before he could swing around the assault rifle in his hands and fire, I twisted the accelerator hard and caught him straight in his gut. For a moment, he doubled over the bike’s front wheel, his face slamming into the windshield. I twisted the handlebars so he fell to one side, then took the bike over his legs. The first impact had been enough to render him out of commission – I reached down and grabbed the rifle that had fallen out of his hands, laid it across the bars in front of me, then sped up.

  I found a clear space between the cars that got me, with just an angling twist from the middle lane, all the way over to the space alongside the freeway center divider. With a teeth-clenching effort, I swung the bike around parallel to the lanes – a bike like that’s heavy when it’s not in motion – and tried to figure out my next move. From the other side of the freeway, I hadn’t been able to see if the explosion from the first car that Richter’s crew set off had been enough to tear a gap in the divider, big enough for me to get the bike through –

  And now I saw that it hadn’t. The empty, blackened space was a couple of car lengths up ahead of me, and the divider barrier was charred and bent, but still intact. I could drop the motorcycle and climb over the divider, but there would be no way to catch up with Richter on foot. And there were just seconds left, a minute at most – I glanced over my shoulder and saw the windowless jet rapidly filling the sky in the distance.

  With my head turned about that way, I didn’t see what else was heading for me – but I heard it. A grinding mechanical noise, then the Claw’s steel talons seized tight around the motorcycle. I was lifted into the air, my right leg caught between the bike’s gas tank and one talon’s inside edge. Inside the machine’s cab, Scavulos yanked one of the controls back toward himself. The Claw’s jointed arm reared back, lifting the bike higher, turning me almost upside-down upon it.

  I saw Scavulos grab another one of the control levers. One of the bike’s fairings cracked as the talons squeezed tighter. The one against my leg pressed deeper – a couple more inches and it would crush the bone against the bike’s engine. My vision blacked out with the pain. I couldn’t see the assault rifle tumble from where I had laid it across the handlebars, but I felt my hands clench upon its length. I fumbled for the trigger, found it, and squeezed tight, sweeping a blind burst over my shoulder. Hoping to hit something, anything –

  The sharp ping of bullet striking metal sounded from below me, then the louder noise from the side window of the Claw’s cabin splintering to pieces. At the same time, the pressure against my leg relented. I fell, the motorcycle tumbling with me.

  If it had landed on top of me, its weight would have crushed my ribs and any other part it might have hit. My sight cleared, and I saw the big police BMW lying on its side a couple of feet away from me, right next to the Claw’s tank treads. I looked up and saw its arm dangling above, the steel talons spread apart. Inside the cab, Scavulos sprawled over the control levers, blood streaming across his face from the pair of bullet holes in his forehead and under one eye socket.

  I stumbled wobbling to my feet. There was no way I could get the motorcycle upright just by kneeling beside it and getting my hands underneath it – I had to use that trick the motorcycle safety instructors teach people my size, where you squat down backward to the machine, reach behind yourself and push up with your legs. You have to be fast to keep it from falling over on its other side, but I managed. The freeway still seemed to be wobbling and swaying as I climbed on the bike. I could smell leaking gasoline, plus the windscreen mounts were completely broken off on one side, but I twisted the ignition key anyway, hoping the bike would fire up.

  It did, coughing and grunting, then revving to a growl as I twisted the throttle. I couldn’t see the assault rifle anywhere, and there wasn’t time to look for it. The bike’s roar softened for a moment as I kicked it into gear, then roared louder as I wheeled the bike around. I straightened the bike out and gunned it –

  Richter saw me coming.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I COULD SEE Richter up ahead, as I kicked the motorcycle up another gear and rolled the throttle toward its limit. While I had been dealing with Scavulos and the Claw, he had already reached the spindly tower that his crew had erected at the jagged end of the interchange. Leaving my brother Donnie in the car, Richter had carried that biohazard metal cylinder to the tower and connected it to the line that ran up to the hook at the top. That was when he must’ve heard the approaching roar of the motorcycle engine, then glanced over his shoulder and saw me barreling toward him along the curve of the empty freeway lanes.

  The plane was almost on top of him now. Looking up above the bike’s broken windshield, I could see the open cargo door halfway down the windowless fuselage, with some kind of metal arm sticking out from it. That probably had something to do with getting the cylinder up into the plane – for what reason, I had no idea. That was the least of my worries at the moment.

  Richter wasn’t taking any chances on the plane getting there before I did. Bending down low over the bike handlebars, I saw him take the the little electronic triggering device out of his jacket and thumb one of the buttons on it.

  The shock wave from the first explosion shivered up through the concrete and into the bike. On either side, the mirrors filled with the churning blast behind me, its noise washing over my spine. I fought the handlebars, struggling to keep the motorcycle upright as the surface below bucked and heaved beneath its wheels.

  If the explosive packets had been wired to ignite simultaneously, I would’ve been cooked. But they were going off in sequence, one after another, along the freeway lanes. A second after the first one, I heard the next and felt its jarring impact, even closer and harder. I already had the bike kicked up to its top gear – I tucked myself down flat against the gas tank, the throttle cranked to the max.

  Even with as much horsepower as those police bikes have, there’s just no way you can outrun electricity running down a timer wire. The shock wave from the next two blasts rolled over me, the motorcycle’s rear wheel skittering from side to side as the concrete cracked beneath it. I jabbed my left foot down to keep the machine from toppling over. I stayed upright with it, but it cost me speed – the next explosion was close enough behind me to lift the motorcycle free from the pavement. Squeezing the bars as hard as I could, I felt myself rising up from the seat, the top of my forehead slamming against the windscreen.

  I shoved hard upon the right handlebar, laying the bike down on its side to keep from tumbling end-over-end with it. The crash bar ground against the concrete, sparks streaming into my face. As the bike spun around, still hurtling toward the interchange’s jagged end, I caught a nightmarish glimpse of the freeway behind me –

  Or what was left of it. The sequenced explosions had reduced the structure to rubble collapsing to the surface streets below, leaving the interchange as an isolated pillar a few yards long, standing disconnected in the night air.

  I yanked my leg out from where it had been trapped by the motorcycle when it finally came
to a halt. Blood oozed from my scraped-raw shin and knee as I pitched forward onto my hands, as far from the gaping space behind me as I could reach. The edge left from the last explosion gave way, sending the motorcycle toppling down to the street underneath.

  Whatever Richter’s plan had been, I could see that it had gone wrong. The metal cylinder was at the top of the spindly metal tower, fastened to the hook apparatus at its top, but the plane was coming in way too low – the roar of its engines deafening, even past the ringing in my ears from the explosions. I could see Richter right at the base of the tower, shouting into his radio phone, his face contorted beneath the black fluid now streaming from his nose and both corners of his mouth.

  As I watched, the plane rolled, one wing lifting higher, bringing the rim of the cargo door toward the tower’s point, the opposite wing barely clearing the interchange’s broken edge.

  What I could also see was my brother Donnie, his face bloodied, struggling to raise himself up from the passenger seat in the convertible just a few feet away from me, its driver’s side door still open where Richter had slung it. I got to my feet and dived toward Donnie, just as the plane’s underbelly struck the metal tower.

  I wrapped Donnie in my arms, rolling with him onto the car floor, the center console’s gear shift jabbing into the small of my back. Crammed between the front of the seat, underneath the edge of the dashboard, I couldn’t hear the tower disintegrating, but felt its steel struts crash onto the car’s hood. Glass bits sprayed across my shoulders as the windshield burst, one torn end of its chrome frame spearing past me and into the leather upholstery of the seat back.