“Nope,” Esparza says. “We move. The bomb squads are dealing with the two trucks. If we can get to the upper level near Terminal Five there will be a chopper.”
“When?” Wilson asks, as Bruno sees the sheer terror in Ruteb’s eyes. Or maybe it’s just a reflection.
“Now!” Esparza says.
He and Nolan take up flanking positions to either side of Ruteb, Wilson, and Bruno. A nod, and they all hustle out of the structure into the empty street.
“How much time?” Wilson says, panting. Exactly what Bruno wants to know.
“Call it eight minutes and don’t ask again,” Esparza says.
They have covered no more than thirty yards and are two levels below a landing pad when Bruno realizes that something is wrong—the others sense the same danger. To their left, Bruno sees what appears to be an abandoned Ryder van.
The back is opening and a man is emerging with a weapon, raising it to shoot.
The spray of bullets sends all of them sprawling, through Ruteb is last to hit the pavement.
To Bruno, Ruteb is strangely ready to accept his fate—anything but annihilation.
The countdown must be at five minutes, less, and they can’t move!
Then Esparza and his partner and Wilson are blasting away at the shooter. Bullets ping, punching holes in the van, kicking up pieces of pavement.
Four minutes—
The shooter is still upright.
Wilson is hit. She spins to the ground, dropping her pistol.
Bruno rushes to her, sees the fear on her face as he says, stupidly, “I’m here. You’re good.” Because she appears to have been shot in the thigh, not in her torso.
But none of them are good—
Three minutes.
Then Ruteb stands up, as if daring the shooter to get him.
The shooter falls.
“Two minutes!” Esparza says, and now he sounds shaken. “Come on!”
Ruteb picks up Wilson’s pistol. “We will not escape,” he says to Bruno. “You should all—”
And he shoots himself in the head, blood spurting from one temple.
He crumples as Esparza, his partner, Wilson, and Bruno can only stare.
One minute.
Bruno looks at the pistol in Ruteb’s hand. Is about to reach for it when Wilson groans.
He reaches for her instead. He and Esparza haul her up and head out, the partner providing cover.
The timer on Esparza’s phone buzzes.
Zero.
Bruno waits for the flash of light and heat that will send him into the worst kind of death.
And waits.
“What the fuck?” Esparza says.
“Maybe the bomb squad got them.”
“Keep going.”
And they do, reaching the chopper without getting shot at, or annihilated.
* * *
They leave Nolan behind—no room in the chopper— and are airlifted to Marina del Rey, three miles south. Bruno spends the entire fifteen-minute trip in a crouch, his face against the rattling frame of the chopper as an EMT and Esparza stabilize Wilson—he hopes.
Bruno wonders if he should use his phone to send a message to his mother and friends, listing himself as safe during LAX emergency.
Idiot. He’s not safe.
Then, over the insane shuddering of the helicopter, he sees the EMT leaning over Wilson, applying chest compression. Esparza can only look helplessly at Bruno.
And Bruno wants to nudge the EMT aside and tell Wilson, Let go! Die here and now before some explosion annihilates us in midair—!
But then Wilson moans and the EMT sits back. “Okay for now,” he says.
The chopper is already dropping toward the pad at the hospital.
Within two minutes, Bruno is seeing Wilson transferred to a stretcher, gratified that she is conscious. She even squeezes his hand as she is lifted.
Esparza helps Bruno out of the chopper and toward the emergency room, not lifting him but definitely urging him forward. “It could still go off,” he says. Which Bruno knows and fears.
Chang is waiting as Bruno enters the emergency room, which is filled with LAX passengers and staffers somehow injured in the evacuation. Before he can sit, or collapse, she catches him and helps him to a chair.
“Jeff, you need a doctor.”
“I’m fine. I mean, relatively speaking. Alive for now.”
Chang’s phone rings. “Sorry, let me—” She will answer it no matter what he says. He nods as she walks away, already complaining, “They won’t let any of us leave and we’re inside the blast zone—”
She does not ask about Ruteb.
Bruno has a moment to feel his own hunger, thirst, weakness. And then to appreciate his situation: threatened by near-term death, possible annihilation.
He looks at those arrayed on plastic chairs on either side of him, people of color in many cases, children with adults, no one truly old. Staffers wearing badges, sneakers, and blue garments glide or sprint from one machine or patient to another. Doors and curtains open and close.
The televisions are off.
Esparza stands at reception talking into his phone.
Who here is facing a good death?
“Are you Jeff Bruno?”
Bruno turns. A large, red-haired woman of middle years with a bandage on her forehead is sitting behind him. “Hannah Vindahl,” she says.
“How the hell did you get here?”
She pats the bandage on her head. “I ran into an ambulance while using my phone. Where’s Ruteb?”
Bruno can’t soften the message. “Dead.”
Vindahl actually puts her hand to her mouth, a shock response Bruno has never seen. “But he was with you!” Bruno senses the tiniest hint of criticism in her voice. “What happened?”
He points a finger at his temple and mock pulls the trigger.
“Oh, God, they shot him?”
“Shot himself.”
Bruno can see Vindahl absorbing, then processing this terrible news. “Well, fuck.”
“I guess he believed.”
“So do I.” Her expression softens. “And so, I think, do you.”
It’s Bruno’s turn to process a statement, which hits him as hard and deeply as his cancer diagnosis did. “Where,” he finally says, “does that leave us?”
“Pressing on with our work. Thank God Ruteb transferred most of his data.”
“With religious assassins everywhere we look?”
“This team was probably from Ruteb’s institute. They think he’s a traitor for sharing their research. Now that he’s gone, they’ll think they’ve won, for a while.”
And she takes Bruno’s hand. “Join us.”
The offer is as startling as it is kind. Bruno knows he is done with law, with Gloria Chang. But as he stares into the days, months, and hopefully years to come, he wonders … How do you live when even death is unfair?
About the Author
Michael Cassutt is noted for his writing about the space program – not only articles in magazines such as Space World, but a massive biographical encyclopedia, Who’s Who in Space. Cassutt is the author of two previous mystery thrillers set within the space program, Missing Man and Red Moon. He lives in Los Angeles, CA. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Michael Cassutt
Art copyright © 2019 by Robert Hunt
chael Cassutt, The Vetting
The Vetting Page 3