by Bradley West
If she was running for her life, why would she drop a shoe? Either they’d knocked it off in a struggle, or she’d kicked it off as a sign. “You go ahead,” Sal said. “I’ll stay here and look around, then follow you in a minute.” Arkar nodded and stepped out.
Sal felt faint. His Tapazole pill was hours overdue and his heart raced. Before he could take a step, a clamp closed on his chest and his heartbeat disappeared. Oh, Jesus! Not now! He dropped to his knees and clutched his chest. This was it, the big one his cardiologist had warned of. Sal’s vision blurred and he closed his eyes, willing the vise to ease its horrible pressure. His ears popped and restored some of his hearing. The faintest thump reached him. Steph. He lifted his head in slow motion and moved it to pan slowly across the storage area. Twenty feet away was another shoe in front of a big freezer door.
Foot by foot he crawled, raising his head to adjust his direction. He passed the shoe and reached the door. He looked up: The handle was three feet off the ground, a long metal bar like on the emergency exit door of an airliner. He’d have to stand up and swing that arm up and over one hundred and eighty degrees to unlock it. He might as well have been asked to climb Kilimanjaro in an afternoon. Exhausted, he panted as his heartbeat cut in-and-out. The crushing pressure returned, and he collapsed onto his chest.
* * * * *
The police interlude proved costly—when the Audi rounded the corner and the halogen headlights lit up the service road, all that Jaime and Travis saw were dumpsters and Arkar aiming his M-4. Jaime cut the lights and braked while Travis shouted something in a foreign language. Their Burmese friend withheld fire and ran up to them.
“Where’s Sal?” Jaime asked.
“He stayed to look. He found Stephanie shoe.”
“We’ll leave him to it,” Travis said. “Get in and let’s find the last two kidnappers.”
Muller and Katerina heard the Audi before they saw it and sheltered behind the mounds of trash and plastic-wrapped decaying bodies that lined the other side of the street from McClatchy. They watched the car prowl up and down along to the perimeter fence before it turned back into the school driveway and out of sight.
“Looks like we made it,” Muller said.
“Let’s find our SUV and wait till they’re gone. Those bozos won’t stay long. I can use the lab equipment to harvest blood once the bodies thaw. And maybe they’ll leave Burns behind. We have unfinished business with Fraser, don’t we?”
Muller cast an appreciative eye at Katerina. As his departed mother used to advise him, Son, when you’ve met the right one, you’ll know it.
From the darkness came a voice. “I know you. You’re the fucker that blowed up our clubhouse and stolt the computer. Getchyer hands up.”
A surprised Katerina turned around and saw the silhouettes of two men up the driveway, “You don’t know me. I’ve never seen—”
“Shut up, bitch. I’m talkin’ to your man, Rolfie the gunrunner. Looks like you took one in the side, old buddy.”
Muller recognized that white trash voice and diction. “Is that Dirty Pete? Jesus, am I glad to see you. I have a great deal for you that’ll be worth millions, but I need your help.”
“You ain’t gonna make it to the sunrise unless you bring back our laptop. Norris was real specific ’bout that. Sort of surprised to see you. Figured it were the spics or spearchuckers who blowed everything up.”
“Listen, you can have the laptop, no problem. One of you come with me, and one stay here with my partner. The fuckers who blew up your clubhouse are there too, and we can kill all of them. Norris would like that, wouldn’t he?”
Dirty Pete considered this for a moment. “I dunno, but we gonna find out ’cause we gonna call him.”
* * * * *
Carla had waited the last half-hour for something, anything to happen after Travis shot up that cop car. She found herself fully occupied now, holding the M-4 on two petrified officers. “I heard my boyfriend tell you to stay put and leave your guns on the ground. What made you pick them up and point them at his car when he drove off?”
“Ma’am, we have no idea what’s going on,” Eagan said.
“That’s apparent. Here he comes. He’ll decide what to do with you.” The Audi screeched to a stop with the kneeling policemen caught in the headlights.
“We lost them,” Travis said as he got out and Jaime drove off. “I’m taking the pickup to go look for them.”
“I’ll come with you,” Carla said. “I can drive.”
“Fine. Sal’s back in the cafeteria. We dropped off Arkar to find him. I’ll take care of these two knuckleheads while you go get the truck.”
chapter thirty-six
FROZEN
Tuesday, July 14: Oakland and Berkeley California, night
Sal sensed lives slip away on either side of the door, his cheek pressed against the cold steel. He was underwater on a deep dive and low on oxygen. He breathed irregularly in rasps. He had to get more air from his scuba tank, and that door lever was the airflow knob. Somehow a rhinoceros sat on his chest, more than a hundred feet underwater. It didn’t make sense, but none of this made sense. He was on his haunches, upper body supported by palms and forearms leaning against that dank metal. It felt so calm here in the depths, the rhino and he just suspending . . .
Steph. Steph was on the other side of the door freezing to death. He reached up with his right hand and fingers briefly clutched the horizontal handle, then slipped off. He tried with his left hand and failed again, knocking the headlamp off his head. He leaned over to reach for the handle again and just kept falling, ending up face down on the floor.
The darkness was complete. His life was over. Then from the other side came a noise quiet as death’s whisper. Steph. Tyson. It was now or never. With both hands, he fought to his hands and knees. Three breaths later, he raised his head to face the door. Darkness took him to the brink of unconsciousness as his failing heart struggled to pump blood up to his brain. He thought back to his first car, a decrepit Pontiac Tempest, driving it to Petros Lake Park with his high school girlfriend Nancy for heavy-duty parking sessions. The blackness receded slightly, and he steadied his body on the door with his palms. Now for the last part. He reached out for the handle and pulled himself to his feet, then yanked it upward with an effort that exploded the scuba tank on his back and sent millions of bubbles up from the depths. Frozen air poured over Sal and he collapsed. Before he lost consciousness, he felt himself ascend from the blackness toward the moonlight as the rhinoceros and he floated in tandem. The beast’s great onyx eye was full of glee as Sal tried in vain to form words while the last of his breath escaped. He smiled as he broke the ocean’s surface and lifted into eternal night.
Arkar found Stephanie with Tyson under her shirt and Sal on his back outside the open freezer door. He pulled out his phone and called the boss. “I have Stephanie and baby. Sal is bad. Cafeteria. Come now.” Arkar closed the freezer door, removed his shirt and wrapped it around Stephanie before he hugged her from behind to transfer as much body heat as he could muster.
A minute later, Sal heard voices, including the familiar sound of a loved one. Stephanie, his eldest and favorite, was there to comfort him. Someone cradled his head as hands pummeled his chest. There was a blinding light in his eyes but he couldn’t focus.
* * * * *
For the second time in fifteen minutes, the two cops were left unsupervised as Carla dashed to the pickup and roared off to join Jaime and Travis. She found Steph outside in the alley wrapped in a space blanket. Carla rushed to her cousin’s side. “Oh my God! Are Tyson and you okay?”
Shaking with cold and anger, Steph replied in a quavering voice. “We were locked in a freezer. I can’t feel anything. Please check Tyson. And how’s Dad?”
“Sure, sure. Let me see.” Tyson had his eyes shut but was probably ten Fahrenheit (5C) warmer than his mother. Being clenched against her chest had saved his life. Carla returned him to his mother’s arms and the hungry bugger
rooted for Steph’s breast. “His hands and feet are warm, and he seems alert. Let me rub your feet. Flex your fingers too. I got frost-nipped at Tahoe one year: It’ll hurt like hell when the blood comes back. Sal’s breathing on his own.”
Travis and Arkar lifted an unconscious Sal by his armpits while Jaime took his legs. They carried Sal out of the loading bay door and laid him on his back in the Audi’s backseat, feet poking between the bucket seats and propped against the dashboard. Jaime bent his legs to ensure a full gravity-assisted feed of Sal’s blood to his vital organs.
“How is he?” Carla called out. “What’s wrong?”
“I think he had a heart attack,” Jaime said, “but he managed to open the freezer door before he collapsed. Arkar restarted his heart, but he’s unconscious and breathing erratically. I’ve put him into a shock position, but we have to get him to a hospital.”
“No, take him back to the marina,” Carla said. “Tina did four years in ERs and she’ll have meds. Travis and I will follow you when Steph can walk.”
“We have to stick together,” Jaime said. “We don’t know who’s out there, and we’re trapped in this alley. Let’s return to where we left the cops and get their help.”
“He’s right,” Travis said. “It’s a short drive and maybe they have a defibrillator.”
On the ground, Stephanie let out a cry. “Oh my God! My fingers are on fire!”
“That’s good,” Carla said. “Let me know when you can feel your toes. We need to move out.”
* * * * *
Nails pulled a wheelie on his vintage Harley Fat Boy and Muller held on for dear life. Norris’ instructions over the phone had been crystal clear: “Call me when you have the fucking laptop. No laptop, cut his dick off and feed it to him.”
The cop car was back there somewhere, but the alley that Muller told Nails to turn down was empty. Muller dismounted with pain. That flesh wound the hero shrugged off in the movies hurt like hell even though it hadn’t hit anything important.
Nails pulled out his Uzi and stepped into the darkened room. “Goddammit!” Muller said as he opened the freezer. The frosted corpse of the old security guard was the only human occupant. “Someone let them out. Follow me. Let’s get the laptop and my shotgun, then I need to go back to where I was shot. There’s someone in that room who has information I want.”
“Laptop first, Rolfie, or we’re both lunchmeat.” Nails prodded the disarmed Muller forward with his snub-nosed Uzi.
* * * * *
After a decent interval, officers Eagan and Schneider realized that no one was coming, and the gunslingers might have been telling the truth. Schneider decided to check out the bombed school. If they didn’t find anyone, they’d head back to the station and let the watch commander figure it out.
* * * * *
Fraser Burns had moved slowly, but he found Shuckies face down on the hallway floor with his shirt soaked in blood. Exhausted by the short walk, Burns knelt by the wounded man’s head. “Warren, can you hear me?”
“I can’t feel my legs.”
“You were shot in the back. Everyone else is gone. Let me have a look.” Burns had zero first-aid knowledge and could only confirm that Shuckies had two entry wounds just above his waist. One was right of center and the other looked like it had hit his spine. Both were ugly holes, and from the considerable blood puddle, at least one had exited the other side.
A pair of flashlights appeared at the end of the hallway. Burns shone his phone light around and spied Shuckies’ weapon on the floor. He scrambled over and picked it up, unfamiliar with how to arm it even before he doused his light. “Two people are up the hall. I’ll come back once I figure out who they are.”
Had Burns been healthy, he might have dodged the flashlights’ beams. As a forty-five-year-old with a high fever and a bad knee, it wasn’t even close.
“Freeze! Oakland PD! Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head.”
Police? What were the coppers doing here? On reflection, Burns was happy to have them, as at least they’d protect him from the others, and maybe they could help Shuckies. “Okay, okay. This man’s been shot. Please help.”
The lights intensified as the two officers approached. “Mother of God, what’s wrong with you?” Eagan asked.
“I have Covid-20,” Burns said simply.
Both officers took a step back. Schneider’s light found Shuckies. “This guy’s a mess.” He turned his light onto Burns. “Get out of here. Fuck off. Go to a hospital. Leave your weapon.”
Schneider and Eagan stared at Shuckies, a paraplegic-in-waiting from the looks of him. Before Burns had traveled far, Schneider had one more question: “Anyone alive back here?”
“One geezer in Room 134 with a sucking chest wound and Covid. He’s in a bad way: I wouldn’t bother.”
“Right. Get some help.”
* * * * *
Muller and Nails had heard snippets from afar and worked their way almost to the hallway junction when they saw Burns wobble past. “Give me my Benelli,” Muller whispered. “We need him.”
“Fuck that. See who else is around.”
Burns lurched along in an old man’s gait, unaware of the conversation thirty feet to his right. Nails peeked left around the corner and spotted the two uniformed cops tending to a stiff.
“Leave them!” Muller hissed. “Follow the other one. He has information worth millions.”
Weary of Muller’s impertinence, Nails stepped around the corner and with one hand sprayed the entire magazine of thirty rounds. He controlled his weapon no better than a Fourth of July drunk holding a firehose, but when the barrage had ended, there were two more names eligible for the Oakland Police Department’s In Memoriam wall, with Smiley Shuckies extremely dead as well. Meth-soaked Nails appreciated the destroyed lockers, wall and floor almost as much as the image of those blue uniforms dancing as bullet after bullet slammed into them.
Up ahead, the orgy of gunfire gave Burns energy he didn’t know he had. He scaled the rubble pile before the back entrance and stumbled through the blasted doors into the night. Three men with automatic weapons greeted his emergence. “I need to speak with Sal,” he said before he sank to his knees in illness and exhaustion.
“Sal had a heart attack,” Travis said.
“Stephanie, then. She knows me.”
“Fraser, is that you?” Stephanie said.
“It is. Horne and Shuckies are shot. Two police set me free, but I think Muller and Katerina shot them just now.”
“And you’re next, cabrón,” Jaime said, drawing his pistol and leveling it at Burns’ bowed head. “I’d shoot your balls first if you had any, but—”
“Stop!” Stephanie shouted. “He saved my baby and me. We need to bring him with us.”
“I’m sorry, Stephanie,” Travis said, “but he has Covid-20, and we can’t risk the exposure.”
“Steph,” Sal rasped from the Audi. “Are you okay?”
“Dad? Dad!” Stephanie made an effort to get up, but her still-numb feet betrayed her. Carla wrapped her arms around mother and infant and helped sit her back down. Tyson awoke and started to cry.
“We have the last dose,” Sal said weakly. “Give it to him.”
“Are you nuts?” Travis said. “Leave him here to suffocate.”
“A deal’s a deal,” Sal said. “Give him the injection and we go.”
Carla looked at Travis and shrugged. “Okay, Uncle Sal. I have it in my bag.” She jogged to the Dodge, found the vial, loaded the syringe, and then walked over to Burns. “I’ll leave it here on the ground. You need to inject yourself. I’m not coming any closer.”
Burns scrambled over like a heroin addict in need of a fix and plunged the syringe into his upper arm.
“Fuck all this,” Jaime said. “We gotta go. Arkar, you’re with me in front. Carla, you drive Travis, and Steph and Tyson go in the backseat. Puta, I’ll open the tailgate. If you climb in before we drive off, close it and you can ride to our next stop. No
promises after that.”
* * * * *
The SUV shuddered to a final halt, mortally wounded by two rounds to the radiator, three miles from their destination. Tien lowered his head as Melvin recited the Lord’s Prayer over Robert’s lifeless body. Then they drank the rest of their water and made for the Mission garage, handguns reloaded and pockets full of cartridges. That had been three hours earlier and they’d made slow progress as they shucked and jived up and down savage streets. The incongruity of a large African American man with a bandaged right shoulder and a .40-cal pistol in hand and a small Vietnamese American man with a Glock had been enough to keep predators at arms-length, but trailing them nonetheless. The other factor was that they didn’t look like they had anything worth stealing other than weapons.
Tien had possessed the foresight to download the Google map of the garage’s environs earlier in the day. Even with the electricity out and cell reception spotty, he could still navigate via satellite-supplied GPS signals. Melvin was impressed. They found the shuttered auto repair shop on a back street and rang the doorbell.
They heard the sound of turning locks. Jaime’s wiry former USMC platoonmate poked a shotgun barrel through the doorjamb. “We’re closed,” he said and shut the door.
“We’re here for the truck. We’re Jaime’s friends. We were in the blue Tahoe last night. He’s busy and asked us to collect.”
The Iraq and Syria combat vet opened the door and squinted at them both. “I don’t remember either of you,” he said, once again aiming his shotgun at Melvin’s face. “Did you serve?”
“Sergeant Melvin Robinson, 101st Airborne, 1st Brigade Combat Team, Operation Dragon Strike, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, 2010–2011. Sergeant Jaime Gonzalez served with you in classified CENTCOM-directed operations in Syria in 2018.”