by Ahern, Jerry
“Right!”
“Got a shiv! Be careful!” Shaw shouted, reaching the store front, pulling a loaded spare magazine from under his jacket, clamping it tight in his teeth.
Shaw dropped into a crouch, trying to take advantage of what litde cover there was below the level of the plate glass and the gratings as he charged the doorway. People in Sugar Street were running everywhere, the few tourists here screaming or shouting, the locals just escaping.
More gunfire emanated from within the store.
Shaw edged forward toward the open doorway. Shots, directed toward him this time, the plate glass near him shattering, huge shards of it crashing downward. Shaw could stay where he was and risk getting cut in half or try to make it inside without taking a bullet. He ran inside, firing his .45, aiming high so he wouldn’t hit Mrs. Rubenstein or Angie.
Shaw hit the floor behind some crates and dropped to his knees, buttoning out the partially spent magazine up the butt of the pistol and replacing it with the one clamped in his teeth. “Police! Throw down your weapons, damnit!”
“Fuck you!”
Shaw shrugged his shoulders.
He heard Angie’s voice, shouting, “Tim! Four guys in here! Got us-” Gunfire again, rapid and heavy Shaw screwed his hat down tighter on his head. Angie shouted again. “Got us pinned down, but we’ve got the back door cut off.”
“Fuckin’ wonderful,” Tim Shaw said under his breath “We got ‘em trapped.”
Shaw thumbed up the safety on the Colt, setting it down onto the floor beside him, pulling the little three-inch barreled Centennial out of the pocket of his raincoat. He shifted the revolver into his left hand, putting the .45 back into his right. He thumbed down the Colt’s safety. “All right you guys, listen up. We can do this the easy way or the hard way; don’t mean shit to me! All I want’s information. You gimme what I want, you drop your weapons, you walk.
You don’t, you might die. What’s it gonna be? I don’t have all day, huh!”
Nothing for a few seconds. Then the same guy who’d shouted, shouted again. “Yo, cop!” “Yo, shithead! Whatchya want?” “What information ya want?”
“I gotta talk with a schmuck by the name of Yuri. Know him?” “Never heard of him!”
Tun Shaw shrugged his shoulders, called back, “Gee, that’s too bad, ya know. Now I’m gonna have to kill all you guys, ya know? What a bummer, huh?!”
“Hey, dad!”
Tim Shaw shot a glance toward the doorway and the sound of the voice. Behind what litde cover there was, he saw Ed, a .45 in his fist, his right knee on the neck of the guy who’d rabbited out of the store, the guy’s hands cuffed behind him.
“Way to go, Eddy!” Shaw shouted to his son. Then he turned his head and shouted toward the interior of the store: “The reinforcements are here, guys. Start rememberin’ Yuri or start gettin’ whacked. What time you had just ran out.”
It was as if everyone waited for a beat. The only sounds were the street noises, and those far away, outside of the building, the street as empty as a ghost town in an old western movie.
In about another thirty seconds, there’d be sirens; in about two minutes there’d be uniformed cops. Tim Shaw needed at least a minute to get the information he wanted and then let these guys walk if they played ball.
Then the same voice came back: “Whatchya wanna know about Yuri, cop?”
“His favorite fragrance so I can buy him a gift, asshole! Throw your piece out and get your buddies to do the same, then stand up, hands up and where I can see you guys. Then ya tell me what I wanna know and ya walk. Not before.”
Without exposing himself to hostile fire more than he had to, Shaw could see most of the corridor between the crates, almost all the way back to the rear of the store. And he saw a gun-just a regular, good old-fashioned gun and not an energy pistol-skate across the floor and come to a stop against a packing crate.
Then there was another one, just like the first. Both Lancers, either stolen from an armory or from a well-off citizen; punks like these didn’t buy guns, at least not from legitimate gunshops. There came an energy pistol, then another energy pistol and an Eden bayonet.
Tm touched, guys,” Shaw said “Step out with your hands up. Mrs. Rubenstein, Angie-keep ‘em covered.”
“We got ‘em, Tim!” Angie called back.
Shaw could see the four men now, coming out, hands high over their heads. If he hadn’t given his word, he would have popped them and rid the world of four scumbags. But he shrugged his shoulders and stepped into the litde corridor between the boxes and crates, a handgun in each fist. Sirens were growing louder on the air. “So, before I forget my part of this, tell me where to find Yuri. And if you guys aren’t makin’ tracks before the uniform guys get here, there’s no deal. So, talk fast.”
“Yuri’s over on Maui, man, with his litde sister; she’s real sick.”
“And you give me a pain in the ass, junior,” Shaw said, grinning. He walked up to the one who’d talked, a man of about twenty or so, his hair so greasy-looking it shined, his trousers so tight they looked like they were spray painted on. Shaw laid the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson up against the man’s right temple. “Play it straight and you walk; lie to me and if I don’t catch it now and blow ya away, I’ll hunt ya down and do it then. You can’t hide from me, not ever, got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, all right.”
“Where’s Yuri-and just so we don’t labor under any misapprehensions here, the Yuri I want is the guy who sells designer drugs and is all pals with the Nazis. That Yuri. Know him?”
“Yeah, man.”
Tm old enough to be your father, God forbid. Don’t call me man. “Yes, sir.”
“Better. Where’s Yuri?”
“1322 Lanai Avenue, apartment 63.”
“Truth?”
“So help me, man-sir!”
Shaw flexed his fist on the butt of the Smith & Wesson. “One
other little thing. This goes for all four you guys, right? I ever catch any of you tryin’ a mugging again, you go down; not to some luxury jail cell, either. You really go down, six feet under good old Hawaiian soil. We understand each other?” “Yes, sir.”
“Get into a job training program or somethin’-just get outa my life.” Shaw lowered the revolver and looked past the four toward Annie Rubenstein and Angie. “Okay with you girls these guys split?”
Annie Rubenstein smiled, nodded her head. “Whatever, Tim,” Angie said.
“Step aside, ladies, and let these guys take a hike the back way.” Then he looked at the four. “You guys wanna do that?”
“Yes sir,” said the only one of the four who’d yet spoken.
“Remember. Let your consciences be your guides and if you cross me I kill ya. Hit the road.”
The four started edging away. One of them started to reach for his gun, but not in any way that was threatening. Shaw laughed, “Be serious, huh!”
As the four ran along the corridor between the rows of boxes, the sounds of the sirens got so loud they had to be just outside the front entrance. Shaw walked back toward the two women.
There was a dead man with an energy rifle in his fists, nested in some of the boxes, two neat bulletholes in him, one in the chest and one in the thorax. “Those shots were pretty close together. Microphone picked it up as one shot. Which one of you charming ladies, uh-“
Angie grinned and nodded her head toward Mrs. Rubenstein.
Tim Shaw just shook his head. “Angie, stay with Eddy and help him out. Mrs. Rubenstein, wanna come with me to 1322 Lanai, apartment 63?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
A gun in each hand, he nodded toward the rear of the store. “Shall we?” Once he found Yuri, he’d have a line on the Nazis that hit the school. He thought he should warn Mrs. Rubenstein, and as he slipped his revolver away, the .45 in his left hand now, he said to her, “You realize you might be an accomplice to a killing?”
“A killing?”
He held the door for her as they ente
red the alley. Garbage and empty boxes were everywhere, but the four bad guys weren’t anywhere to be seen. “Well, Yuri isn’t exacdy your model citizen, and if I find out he knew about the school thing, well, he’d get a lawyer and eventually he’d walk because I don’t have any probablexause.”
“Then the law’s as screwed up as my father said it used to be in the Twentieth Century?”
“Ohh, no. But some people get around almost any law. Yuri’s one of those guys.”
“The killing thing?”
“Yeah?” Shaw responded.
“Only if you have to, huh?”
“Believe me, Mrs. Rubenstein, that’s the only way it’d ever go down. And I like your style lady.”
27
From the top of the catwalk, James Darkwood saw the true meaning of the word “revenge” more graphically than he could ever have imagined it. The men and women whom he had liberated from the cage were killing everyone on the lower level, shooting them or bludgeoning them to death, ripping clothes from the bodies of the dead to cover their own nakedness, running on.
Darkwood looked to the lower level only occasionally, his eyes and his weapon on the tunnel, waiting for the inevitable. He gave things another minute at the maximum.
And this time, as he turned to look over the catwalk, he shouted, “Lefs get out of here! Now! Tm leaving! Anybody who wants out with me comes now!”
To the casual observer, Darkwood realized his actions in freeing these captives might have appeared to be altruistic in nature. But they were not. Quite selfishly, he wanted to free those people because it would make him feel good to do so; and, any of these people he could get away with him might well provide highly valuable intelligence data concerning the experiments going on in Mixing Room Nine of Plant 234.
Darkwood took one last look back. People were already starting up the ladder for the catwalk. James Darkwood stepped into the tunnel, starting forward at a good pace, his energy rifle trained on the far end of the tunnel for that inevitable moment when the first security forces would come storming through.
He was almost right under the overhead hatch leading to the roof when the door at the far end of the tunnel opened.
It was too long a shot for an energy rifle, but Darkwood fired anyway and the door slammed shut. About another minute and they’d try again, probably with gas that the standard masks like the one Darkwood wore wouldn’t filter out. “Up here!” Darkwood shouted, gesturing to the ladder with his free hand. And then he started up the ladder. “And hurry!”
The going was slower, holding his weapon, just as it had been on the ladder leading up to the catwalk, but he felt better holding it. If the security people were good, there’d be a reception waiting for him and the escapees on the roof. He hoped the security people weren’t good.
At the height of the ladder, Darkwood hooked his left forearm through the second from the top rung and grasped his rifle. With his right hand, he shoved upward on the hatch, letting it fall over open.
No plasma energy bolts lit the darkness.
Darkwood started up through the hatchway, the escapees clambering up behind him. “They’re coming!” a voice shouted.
Darkwood was onto the roof, no security personnel in sight. “Hurry it up. Take deep breaths and hold them until you’re on the roof. They’ll use gas,” Darkwood called back down into the tunnel. Partially naked men and women were piling out of the hatchway, half crawling over one another. Darkwood pulled off his protective hood and the mask, throwing it away, the night air assaulting his nostrils, his lungs, making his blood rush with its cool freshness, giving him the sensation of lightheadedness.
Darkwood stepped back, closed his eyes, tried adjusting to the lower light level.
There was only one hope of getting out alive.
That was to make it to the loading docks and steal a cargo helicopter. He thought of his ancestor, Jason Darkwood. In Jason Darkwood’s later years, memoirs were penned. In them, Jason Darkwood told of his first flight aboard an aircraft, how it had at once frightened and exhilarated him.
What would Jason Darkwood have thought if he’d known that one of his descendants was qualified as a pilot, on both fixed wing and helicopters?
James Darkwood smiled. Jason Darkwood would probably have enjoyed it. That the last?”
“Yeah-that’s all of us,” a woman shouted back to him.
“You two guys,” Darkwood ordered two of the younger men. “Get the hatch closed and try to jam up the mechanism for the locking wheel. Buy us some time. You with the rifle,” he told the older teenager, “Stay with them just in case.” Darkwood looked around. Several more of the escapees had weapons they’d acquired in the lower level of Mixing Room Nine. “Anybody with an energy weapon, stick close to me. We’re going over to the edge of the roof. Any resistance we encounter near the loading docks, we have to take care of quickly, then we’re stealing a cargo chopper and flying out of here. Any questions?”
The older man to whom Darkwood had given a rifle asked, “You fly?”
“No, but I know how to run machines that do,” Darkwood grinned. “Let’s go!” And James Darkwood started running in the direction of the loading docks.
28
They encountered no resistance on the roof of Plant 234, but by the time they reached the west side of the structure, overlooking the loading docks and the parking area beyond where over-the-road transfer trucks and cargo helicopters were parked, there was considerable activity.
Eden Military Police cars were in sight converging on the complex. In no time at all, James Darkwood realized, there would be helicopters as well. Then his luck, which had been running rather well and better than he had any right to expect, would run out. The cargo helicopters were slow, lumbering beasts to get airborne. Once airborne, because of the great engines required to handle the enormously heavy loads they usually carried, they maneuvered slowly, but they could cover straight line distances quickly.
There would be a chance, a very decent one, to escape.
If, however, gunships closed in on the loading dock and parking area, one of the cargo choppers would never get airborne and Darkwood and the men and women he’d freed would be doomed.
There was no time left to consider alternatives or ponder his fate should he fail. “Follow me!” Darkwood commanded, clambering over the edge of the roof and dropping to the sloping roof which covered the loading dock, skidding along its surface toward the roof of a cargo trailer. Darkwood hit the cargo trailer’s roof hard, rolled, caught his breath. Some of the freed prisoners were already following him.
Darkwood hauled his energy rifle up on its sling as he climbed to his feet.
Dockworkers shouted at him. Black-uniformed plant security personnel turned their weapons toward him. James Darkwood, still on the roof of the trailer, fired his energy rifle at the nearest armed man, cutting him down. Energy bolts impacted the roof of the truck, crackling across its metal framework, melting the plastic where the bolts struck. Darkwood jumped to the loading dock, rocking the butt of his rifle into the jaw of one man, hammering the muzzle down over the skull of another. He stepped back, firing into a knot of men coming for him.
Energy weapon fire came from the roof of the trailer, the older man whom Darkwood had armed cutting down some of the dock workers and security personnel. Darkwood jumped from the loading dock, shouted to the older man, “Rally everybody and follow me toward the choppers!”
“Right!”
James Darkwood ran. Two plant security personnel came up on his left and before they could fire, Darkwood fired. He kept running. He felt no remorse at having fought with the dock workers; these were not slave laborers and they have to realize they worked at a chemical weapons plant. If they could sacrifice their morality, he could sacrifice their lives if necessary. He ran on, nearing the far end of the parking lot.
A military police car was driving toward him at high speed.
Darkwood brought the energy rifle to his shoulder, stopping dead, firi
ng at the windshield. The plasma bolt struck and the windshield shattered, the Eden Military Police car swerving, spinning, rolling over.
Darkwood ran for the nearest of the cargo helicopters. “Please, God!” Darkwood murmured as he reached for the door handle. The machine wasn’t locked. “Yeah!” Darkwood climbed up, looked aft, saw no one, went forward, dropping into the pilot’s seat. He flipped the toggle switch for power and the control panels began to light. He’d never flown one of these, but all the controls were marked in English and the basic design of the cargo helicopters was similar to that of military transports, and he’d flown one of those on several occasions just for fun. This was not fun.
The helicopter fuselage began to vibrate as he started the main rotor. He started the tail rotor then. The wheels on which the chopper stood were self-chocking; he’d checked that as he boarded. He left his wheels chocked, his eyes on the tachometer diode readouts for the main and tail rotor engines.
Time was his greatest enemy. At any second, Eden gunships might close him off, or military police vehicles cross into the lot and open fire.
As he looked through the windscreen, James Darkwood could see his band of half-naked evacuees, running, hobbling, some helping to half-carry others, coming toward the machine. Gradually, only a little more quickly than he should, Darkwood started building RPMs. Oil pressure and temperature gauges were showing well, the ambient temperature outside in his favor there.
At the far end of the parking lot he saw a military police car, then another, then another. “Shit.” Darkwood checked his gauges. He couldn’t get airborne yet even if he tried. But he could move.
Darkwood activated the controls unchocking forward wheels, then aft, the chocks folding up into the wheelwell housings. Oil pressure and temperature were rising. He checked pitch controls. He had full response. James Darkwood released front and rear parking brakes and adjusted main rotor pitch, increasing tail rotor RPMs. The cargo helicopter started to move forward across the parking lot, not like an aircraft but like some huge lumbering bus with undersized wheels instead.