Hard Shot (A Jon Reznick Thriller)

by J. B. Turner

  In the distance he saw the vehicle Perez had identified as following her. “This looks like it,” he said.

  The SUV pulled up, and Reznick turned around to face the Feds in the back seat. “I’m going in there. You gonna cover me?”

  They all nodded. “You got it,” the youngest Fed said. “This is just outside our usual methods.”

  “We want the same thing. We want that young woman in the warehouse found safe. Right?”

  More nods.

  “Good. Let’s get to it.”

  Reznick got out of the vehicle and quickly headed down a path adjacent to the canal as the Feds from the back seat fanned out, setting up the cordon. He jogged down the path for a couple hundred yards. He crunched over some broken glass. He wanted to approach the warehouse out of sight. The streetlights beside the building were getting brighter.

  He reached up and pulled himself to the top of the brick wall, peering over the other side. No sign of the gangbangers. He clambered over and lowered himself down.

  Reznick felt his heart rate begin to rise. He moved toward the loading dock of the abandoned warehouse. He bounded up the steps and pulled open the door.

  He allowed the streetlights to bathe some of the dark space. Then he spotted a door diagonally across. He wedged open the door with half a brick.

  “Northwest door on the canal side open,” he whispered via his headset to the Feds who would be following him in. “Proceed with caution.”

  Reznick moved quietly across the floor. He pushed open a door that led to a stairwell. He bounded up two flights of stairs and crouched down. He heard voices. Farther up. He moved to the next level. He ran up one more flight and through a door.

  Gun drawn, he headed down a long corridor.

  A few yards in front of him, something glistened on the wooden floor. He edged forward and crouched down, trying to get his bearings.

  Reznick touched the substance. It was warm blood, congealing. He saw another spot of blood a yard away. He wondered if Camila Perez had injured herself fleeing for her life. He moved along the narrow space gingerly, testing the rotten floorboards and trying not to make them creak.

  His senses were switched on.

  Reznick stopped. He listened for any sounds. He detected voices, talking low, in Spanish. Then the sound of footsteps way down below on the ground level. The sound of a handgun slide being racked. Those had to be the other Feds, perhaps the SWAT backup who’d been on their way.

  A guy cleared his throat on the other side of the door. “Hey, Camila,” he said in English. “I know you’re in here.” It was the mocking voice of one of the gangbangers. “You’re gonna come out, you little bitch. No one runs from us.”

  Reznick lay down on his stomach and leaned forward. He cracked the door with his handgun. Two spectral figures prowled through the darkened space. One was wearing a white T-shirt, the other a slightly luminous lime-green top, easy to see in the darkness.

  “I know you’re in here,” the voice said. “I don’t know why you’re scared.”

  Reznick sensed they had her cornered in the room.

  Down below, maybe directly underneath, heavy footsteps. Movement. The Feds were closing in.

  Reznick eased the door open a couple of inches. The man in the green top made a signal to the second guy. He swiped his hand in a curved motion, indicating that the girl was hiding behind what looked like a partition wall.

  The guy in the white T-shirt nodded, crouched down, and turned on his cell phone light. “I see some blood.” The thug moved closer and stared behind the portioned wall. “Ah, there you are, you little bitch! Come out!”

  Reznick aimed at the guy in the white T-shirt. He fired two shots to his head. The thug collapsed to the ground. The deafening noise echoed around the brick walls and dark space.

  The guy in green spun around.

  Reznick didn’t wait. He fired two more shots into the center of the guy’s chest. The guy collapsed in a heap, moaning and writhing on the ground as his gun dropped to the stone floor.

  Reznick got up, barged through the door, gun trained on the moaning thug. The sound of weeping came from behind the partition wall.

  Reznick approached the prostrate gangbanger and kicked the thug’s gun out of reach.

  “What the fuck, man!” the guy wailed. “Please, I ain’t got no problem with you, man.”

  Reznick stood over the thug, gun trained on his head.

  “Please, don’t kill me!” the guy screamed. “I surrender, man. You win.”

  Reznick stared down at him and smiled. “You don’t seem so tough now, Mr. MS-13. You like intimidating innocent people? You like threatening a nice young lady? That make you feel tough? Does it?”

  “No, man, it’s all just a crazy misunderstanding.”

  “A crazy misunderstanding, is that right?”

  “I swear. It was mistaken identity. We thought this woman threatened my family. I love my family.”

  “You really are a lying piece of shit, aren’t you? Do you think anyone will miss you when you’re gone?”

  The guy gritted his teeth as if in acute pain. “I fucked up, I know. I fucked up. I’ll face the consequences.”

  Reznick pointed the handgun at his head. “You’re damn right you will.”

  Tears filled the guy’s eyes. “Man, slow down, what are you doing? Are you crazy? I’m not armed now! I am not armed! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “You’re going away for a long, long time, maggot.”

  The guy began to grin. “Maybe. But one day, man, I’m going to get out. And when I do, I’m going to come after you and your family.” The guy winced in pain, clenching his teeth. “You married? Girlfriend, maybe? What about a daughter? Yeah, I bet you have a daughter. Trust me, she won’t remember much when I’m done with her.”

  Reznick said nothing, only gripped his gun tighter.

  The guy’s white teeth were exposed as he smiled. “I can’t wait to hear the bitch scream when I meet up with her.”

  Reznick drilled two bullets into the man’s head before the Feds even made it through the door.

  Twenty-Seven

  The lights from the FBI SWAT team’s weapons bathed the huge industrial space, illuminating the two thugs’ bodies, lying in pools of their own blood.

  A SWAT guy shouted, “You OK, Jon?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Reznick heard the soft sobs behind the plasterboard wall. He walked over, crouched down on his hands and knees, and stared into the dark space. He could just make out a shivering young woman, clearly in shock, staring back at him. “Camila Perez?”

  “Please don’t hurt me.”

  “FBI, ma’am. It’s OK, you’re safe now.”

  “Is it over?” she whispered. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “It’s over. You’re safe. And yes, you can trust me. Don’t be afraid.”

  Reznick reached in, grabbed her hand, and hauled her out of the cramped space. She flung her arms around his neck and began wailing.

  “I thought they were going to kill me!” she said.

  Reznick extricated himself from her tight embrace. “It’s over. I swear to God it’s over.”

  “I thought I was going to die!” Perez turned around and caught sight of the dead bodies on the ground. She screamed, an animalistic scream, echoing around the brick walls of the warehouse. Then she began to flail around, as if she were still fighting for her life. The delayed acute shock had kicked in. She had become hysterical.

  Reznick held her arms tight to restrain her. “It’s over! Do you hear me? You’re safe.”

  “I want to see Leon!”

  He didn’t relish telling her that Cortez, even if he made a miraculous recovery from his overdose and got clean, was going to lose his job at the FBI and go to jail, so he elected to conceal that news from her at that moment. That wasn’t his concern. “Leon is alive. And he is safe. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The woman was breat
hing hard, struggling to get on top of the fear and terror she had suppressed while hiding.

  Reznick turned to face the SWAT team. They were spreading out, making sure the area was secure. He signaled to the SWAT leader for the woman to be taken out of the warehouse. “Go with them,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much. God have mercy on your soul.”

  Reznick watched as Camila Perez was led out of the warehouse. The SWAT team leader approached, his radio crackling to life. He waited until Perez had been led out of the huge space before he fixed his gaze on Reznick. “What the fucking hell just happened here? The guy had surrendered. I heard it all. He wasn’t a threat.”

  “He was in my eyes. That’s why he was neutralized.”

  “Neutralized? We’re not on the battlefield.”

  “I disagree. The fucker was hunting her down. As was his friend. They needed to be taken down.”

  The SWAT guy shook his head. “Are you out of your mind? The guy was begging for his life . . . He was no longer a threat.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You killed him in cold blood.”

  Reznick took a step forward and squared up to the guy. “Look, I’m not going to get into some discussion about ethics with you. The guy was a threat. A real threat. If you heard it all, then you heard that part too. The guy was neutralized. End of story.”

  “You had him on the ground. He had been disarmed.”

  “Couldn’t say for sure, it was too dark.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. I made sure the girl lived. I also made sure I wasn’t killed, or your guys. You will go home to your families tonight. And those thugs will not terrorize one more person in New York tonight, tomorrow, or ever.”

  “That’s not the way we do things.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you need to change that.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means, sometimes, you shouldn’t worry about such bullshit. Neutralize the threat, then move on.”

  “There are rules for a reason.”

  “Rules? What fucking rules? Don’t give me that. You think that worthless piece of shit operated with rules? There are no rules for gangbangers like that. That’s what they thrive on.”

  “Jon, if you operate under the jurisdiction of the FBI, there are rules. I operate under those rules of engagement.”

  “Good for you.”

  “We could have arrested him, taken him in. It’s called due process.”

  “And what about when he’s put in jail, and he’s sending out notes to his buddies to continue their operations? To go after my daughter? To go after those of us who caught him, like those bastards did at Yankee Stadium this morning? Have you ever thought of that?”

  “I have to write this up, Jon. I have to say what I heard. And it won’t look good.”

  “You must have me confused with someone who gives a fuck. You worry about things looking good if you have to. Meanwhile, I’ll just be the crazy fucker who took out those two Aryan Brotherhood psychopaths up in the Bronx. And one of their pals on Long Island this afternoon. Now these bastards. I’m having a really shitty day. Don’t give me lectures about what I should or shouldn’t have done.”

  “This isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.”

  Reznick brushed past the guy and his SWAT colleagues, made his way downstairs to a waiting SUV. He climbed in the back seat and slammed the door shut.

  His adrenaline was still pumping after the chase through the warehouse. He was content that the first MS-13 thug had to be taken down after he’d discovered Perez’s hiding place. But the second guy, it was true, he could have spared. He could have waited for SWAT to cuff him and lead him away.

  He knew he had crossed a line. He should have held back. He should have shown restraint. But he hadn’t. Why?

  Maybe he wanted to play judge, jury, and executioner. Then again, maybe he was just so sick of homicidal dirtbags that he had decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. The assassinations today had been planned from inside prison. It was naive to think that locking up guys like that was enough to stop them.

  Was he at the end of his rope? Was he not thinking straight? Was he just running on empty? Or was it, perhaps, the threats to harm his daughter? Was that it? Was that what had pushed him over the edge? He didn’t know if the guy was bluffing. Maybe he was. But in that split second, Reznick felt something, a force inside him, deep down in his soul, ignite. The mocking eyes of the gangbanger, lying on the ground, seemed to touch a nerve. A raw nerve. He didn’t even think. He had become a machine. A killing machine.

  Reznick knew he needed to take a closer, harder look at himself. His own motivations. Was something in him coming apart? Was he losing control?

  The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if Cortez’s story might serve as a warning. A good guy who’d gone bad. And the reason? Drug dependency. Was that it? Maybe it was part of the reason.

  Reznick was no opiate user like Cortez. But he thought about the Dexedrine. He couldn’t remember a day when he wasn’t speeding. He had long forgotten why he popped them when he wasn’t working. Day in, day out. Stimulated, energized, alert. The feelings of euphoria. Confidence. The feeling he could do anything, that he was invincible. It was like being on a knife edge all the time. The need for speed. The adrenaline coursing through his veins.

  Was he more like Cortez than he cared to imagine? Had the amphetamines and rage numbed his senses? And had it culminated in him losing control? Cortez had lost control. Of his life. His job. Everything. And all because of an addiction that had gotten out of hand. Cortez had crossed a line. But the reality was so had Reznick.

  He didn’t need to kill the gangbanger in cold blood. But he did it. He knew the importance of restraint. He’d had time to wait for the FBI SWAT team. But he had deliberately taken the law into his own hands. It was like a scene he’d witnessed in Iraq countless times. Iraqis in flex-cuffs shot in the head. Cold blood. Eye for an eye. It was biblical justice. But he wasn’t in a war. He was home, on American soil. The war was over. But somewhere deep inside Reznick, a war raged on. Threatening to engulf not only him but anyone whose path he crossed.

  Maybe he didn’t care whether he lived or died. Was that it? Did he have a death wish? He didn’t seem to mind the grief he was giving Meyerstein. He knew she had his back against those in the highest echelons of the FBI who wanted him out. But maybe the truth was he didn’t give a damn anymore.

  Why was that? Was he past caring? Had he seen so much bloodshed and killings over the years that it had begun to eat away at the very fiber of his soul? It was like a descent into some kind of madness. He felt as if he were on a runaway train. And nothing and no one could stop it. Only death.

  Except death was his game.

  His cell phone rang, snapping him out of his contemplative mood. Reznick pulled it from his jeans pocket.

  “Good job,” Meyerstein said when he answered.

  “I don’t think your SWAT guy thought so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Reznick explained how he had taken out the second of the two gangbangers. “It’s not pretty, I know.”

  “Jesus, Jon.”

  “Look, I understand there are protocols. But these guys were hunting that girl. He threatened Lauren.”

  “You killed him in cold blood?”

  “Yes, I did. It is what it is.”

  Meyerstein was quiet for a few moments. “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you get it? That’s not how it works. Not now, not ever. Goddamn you, Jon. Why the hell would you do that?”

  “Things happen. It was dark.”

  “Do you understand what will happen now? The SWAT guy will file a report. And they’ll throw the book at you. You’ll be investigated. You’ll face charges. The government and the FBI will have to carry out separate investigations into your actions. Thi
s will not end well for you, Jon.”

  “I’m well aware of that. But I’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

  “Jon, this is not fucking Delta Force. We’re not behind enemy lines, goddamn it.”

  “Sometimes it feels like it. Not sure who the enemy really is.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Do you think I’m the enemy? Do you, Jon?”

  Reznick said nothing.

  “I’m not the enemy, Jon. Not now, not ever.”

  “I know that.”

  “You know you’ll have to answer questions about this later.”

  “Later is fine with me.”

  They were silent for a moment, the events of the day weighing on both of them. “Anyway,” Meyerstein said, “thank God you found her safe. And you got rid of those two crazies. But there will have to be a reckoning for what happened, make no mistake. Goddamn it, Jon.”

  Reznick sighed.

  “I’ve got to be honest, I feel like I’m losing track of what’s going on today.”

  “I thought you had everything figured out, Martha. Super organized, spreadsheets orderly, et cetera.”

  “That goes out the window on days like this, let me tell you.”

  Reznick got quiet.

  “Jon, I hope you don’t mind. I tried to contact Lauren.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “I know you were worried about her. So I texted her.”

  “What did she say?”

  Meyerstein sighed. “She told me she’s in Times Square. She’s a smart girl, Jon.”

  “I know she is.”

  “She can handle herself.”

  “I know she can . . . The problem is Todd O’Keefe is in the city tonight, I guarantee it.”

  “You think he’s going to resurface in Times Square?”

  “Like I said before, this isn’t over. This isn’t anywhere close to over.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Darkness had fallen over lower Manhattan.

  Meyerstein was alone in the conference room, staring out the windows of the twenty-sixth floor, contemplating the horrific events of the day. She gazed at the lights on in the offices and apartments that occupied the skyscrapers all around. She could just make out what looked like a young woman, sitting at her kitchen table, tapping away on her laptop in an adjacent residential tower. She wondered what the woman did for a living. Was she working on the Fourth of July? Was she emailing friends and family with news of her whereabouts on such a terrible day for New York City?