“You okay?”
He looked up at me, sweat pouring down his face. He jerked his head at me.
“Grab this,” I said, as I dropped my zip saddle rope down to him. “Hold tight to the rope.”
He did as I asked and looked up at me.
“I’m going to pull you up.”
Jerome looked down. “I’m heavy.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I held the back end of the rope out to Max and said, “Packen”. Instantly, Max lunged forward and clamped down on the rope. Instinctively, he started to pull back with all fours. I held the rope tight and yelled over to Jerome, “Put your feet against the wall, disengage your harness and walk up the wall to us.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Do it,” I said, “or I’ll cut your line and let you fall.”
“No you won’t,” he said.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I can’t hold this for long, so either you do what I tell you or I’ll let you hang there while I go and try the mission… just Max and me.”
He steeled himself, not an easy thing, dangling in the dark ten stories up, and got his feet under him and against the wall. “Okay, I’m gonna do it.” And he did, just like that. Suddenly, my shoulders felt the massive increase in weight and all the time off from serious workouts and all, the injuries came back to haunt me. I grunted audibly and pulled hard. Max pulled hard too. He was no Husky, bred to haul huge loads piled high on sleds across miles and miles of frozen landscape, but he was one tough conglomeration of muscle and bone and drive, and he pulled back like a machine, almost pulling me off my feet. Jerome came up that wall like he was running and gripped my outstretched hand like it was a life preserver. I dragged him over the wall and we fell together onto the graveled tar, both of us breathing hard and sweating like we’d just left a sauna.
Max walked over to us, his mouth closed, breathing normally through his nose as if he’d just woken from a sound sleep. He cocked his head once, then went over to the wall and lifted a leg.
Jerome and I looked at each other. I grinned, and for just a second, I thought he was going to bust out laughing, but then it passed and we both got to our feet.
We stashed the harnesses by the elevator shaft and took our guns out of our backpacks. I handed Jerome one of the night vision goggles and got it up and running for him. I handed him one of the commandos, the one with the Aim-Point instead of the scope. Both were hooked up with suppressors, just like our pistols. I gave Jerome the Glock 21, while I sported my usual S&W 4506. It was a lot of metal to lug around on a mission like this, where speed was going to count, but metal’s a weapon too, you know.
We went to the roof shed and found the door hanging open, the handle twisted and rusted. Our first stroke of luck.
Max watched the men from the wall, his incredible senses taking in massive amounts of data and processing it instantly, keeping what might be important for survival and letting go of everything useless to that task.
The Alpha, once again, was allowing their prey to live, and he even seemed to be helping him. This made no sense to Max, and worse, it heightened the internal drive to protect the Pack by taking over the leadership role in order to do so.
The sounds they made, the visual cues, their scents. He took them all in, noting the strange mixture of fear and stress and excitement that ran through both men. Everything about them spoke of danger coming, and so Max decided this would not be the right time or place to take over the Pack. To do so might mean its destruction and that was not something he could allow. But the conflicting emotions and drives; to rise, to subordinate, to rule, to feel the caress and comradeship of the Alpha, to challenge and combat or to submit and experience this new strange bond that he had begun to feel. His animal mind pushed the conflicting thoughts from him and he fell in with the Alpha as they opened the door to the stairwell.
This was not the time to consider such thoughts. This was a time for protecting the Pack. This was a time for killing.
40
Twenty minutes to eight. Jerome went to the elevator, holding it on the tenth until I called him and told him to go. Max and I made our way quietly down the stairwell. I watched him closely, seeing the change in his body behavior as we spiraled our way down to the ninth. His tail went up, his ears and head too, scenting with little head jerks, like a shark testing the waters. He would have broke then and there, but I held him back with a hand signal. Crouching, I peered around the lapses in concrete until I spotted the head of the black kid outside the door to the eighth floor. The door was closed, which was good. I sent Jerome a text that he could head down now and sent Max down.
Jerome felt his cell vibrate and he saw Gil’s message to ‘go’. He hit the button for the eighth floor. The doors closed and the elevator started down with a loud chunk sound and a sudden lurch.
The thought passed through him that he had never in his life put so much trust in another man. The detective could have let him die several times already and had outright saved him twice. Right now, Jerome was again putting his life in the man’s hands. If he came out of the elevator and Gil and the dog were not there to set up a diversion, as well as taking out some of the Bloods, he would certainly be shot to pieces before he could escape. Strangely though, he had no doubt that Gil Mason would be there, despite the danger. And this from a man that Jerome had tried to kill and still might have to kill, because nothing mattered to him except saving Clair. Not these men, not the dog, no, not even the detective.
The little digital light over the door, showing the floors, had long since burnt out and hadn’t been replaced, but the loud mechanical chunk told him when he was there, even before that instant of weightlessness that signaled the stopping of the elevator’s controlled fall through open space.
Jerome held the stubby rifle at the ready. He wasn’t so accustomed to rifles, but his instinctual talent at killing and violence made up for his lack in technical skills. Besides, Gil Mason had told him all he needed to know. You pointed the muzzle at what you wanted to destroy, then clicked the trigger.
Jerome’s lips actually twitched at the corners and then the door opened.
Max padded down the stairs silently, his eyes locked forward, the scent drawing him in a near straight line toward his prey.
The guard, Tyrell Jefferson Monroe, leaned against the door lounging, unaware of the danger that approached. He was seventeen years old and had never killed anyone, although he’d done an even dozen robberies and broken into about a thousand cars. He’d never actually stolen one, hot-wiring just wasn’t his strong point. His main claim to fame was that he’d raped an old woman after breaking into her apartment and tying her up. She hadn’t had a lot, just a few dollars and an old TV that wouldn’t bring much. She had some food stamps, and some loose change, but not much of that either. He fell asleep in her apartment after awhile, and when he woke up, she was still tied with the silver tape he’d found under her sink. The strip he’d slapped across her mouth still held. He smoked a bowl while she watched him, a little line of dried blood coming from her nostril and dripping down her cheek, holding there like an ancient stalactite. Probably from when he’d punched her to get her to shut up. She was old, really old, but she was a she and he was high and he hadn’t had a woman yet, so he did what he did and her cries made him feel strong. He’d thought about killing her then because he did feel kind of bad after, but he heard a siren from somewhere outside and thought they might be coming for him. So he ran and the siren turned out to be a fire truck, but by then he was coming down from the high and just let it be.
The memory brought mixed emotions of guilt and excitement. He sucked in on the cigarette he was smoking, a smile coming to his lips, when he suddenly saw something staring at him in the dark corner by the back of the stairs.
For just a second he thought it was the old woman. The way she’d looked at him. That look of pure hatred. But then he caught himself and realized it must be some kind of animal because it held that stra
nge reflective look that they do. His hand started to move toward his waistband and the gun he had stashed down the front of his pants. But it never made it there, because he was right. It wasn’t a poor, abused old woman tied and helpless. No it wasn’t an old woman at all.
Max watched… his eyes unblinking… utterly still… his breathing slowed to almost nothing.
I let Max go with a simple hand gesture. He moved like invisible lightning, disappearing in an instant. No sound of nails clicking against the concrete reached my ears. Max moved like a big cat, soundless, even though he did not possess retractable claws. No, not retractable. Instead, Max walked on the pads of his feet like a panther.
I moved a few steps down, listening and peering through the near lightless stairwell. It wasn’t quite dark enough for night vision, not yet, but close. I waited for about five seconds. Still no sound of attack. I’d lost my vantage point to see the guard, but Max hadn’t attacked yet… at least I didn’t think so. A scary thought hit me. What if he had already attacked and he was waiting down there for me in the dark, with the guard’s throat in his teeth. A little chill ran up my spine-bone.
And then I heard the man scream. It didn’t even sound like a man scream. It sounded like something out of a nightmare. Horrific, high-pitched and from the depths of the soul. Taking the steps three at a time, I made the eighth floor in record time. What I saw stopped me cold.
Max jumped and his four large canines bit down into the man’s face. The front two took him through the mouth, the bottom two coming through the chin, breaking out teeth and snapping bone as he clamped down with titanic force.
Tyrell reached up with both hands, the gun completely forgotten, the very idea blanked out in a white sheet of pain and horror that he had never imagined possible. His fingers gripped fur and his mind went instantly to the thought of bears. He’d teased a bear once in the zoo when he was seven. Pointing at it and laughing and slapping at its face through the glass that separated the two, and suddenly the bear had turned and charged straight at him, hitting the glass so hard that it shook the entire enclosure, its giant teeth scraping the glass, making a horrible sound. Little Tyrell jumped back, falling on his butt and biting his tongue. He thought he was hearing that same sound of teeth scraping glass now, only it was actually Max’s teeth grating against his broken jaw, magnified threefold within the confines of his skull.
Max jerked hard to the left; harder to the right, then back to the left again, his thick neck muscles dragging the screaming man back and forth like he was a child.
Tyrell’s body flopped to the concrete, his face still trapped by this monster from the pit. Blood filled his mouth, and the taste of it made him think of the old woman’s bloody nose. It didn’t bring a smile to him now. This time it made him think that maybe he was feeling a little of what she felt that night; her hands bound together behind her back, her mouth taped closed, her eyes wide. His lower jaw was being wrenched from his face and the blood poured down his neck and down his chest. He screamed and screamed and screamed, begging for someone to come, and still the monster bear thrashed him around and around, smacking his head and limbs against the cold hard floor and walls. He heard blubbering and choking sounds from what seemed like far away, but then realized it was his own voice, changed somehow and seeming to come from outside him. And then the darkness grew darker until his vision squeezed into a tight pinprick and then mercifully went out completely, as consciousness fled and his body went limp. Max’s bottom canines had severed the right jugular on its way through the neck and floor of his mouth.
Max dropped the deflated, lifeless creature and turned toward the stairwell. More targets were coming.
What was left of the guard lay just to the right of Max. Blood drenched the walls and floor and Max’s face. He looked like the scariest werewolf of all time. The man’s face looked worse. His nose had been eviscerated, his lips pretty much gone. Gaping gouges were torn through the front of his throat and up into the soft underbelly of his chin. I saw a chunk of what I could only describe as maybe a piece of tongue lying on the floor a few feet away. Broken, bloody teeth were scattered about like shattered bits of porcelain. The man’s eyes were open so wide they looked like swollen grapes and his fingers were curled into gripping claws, as if rigor had already started to set in, which I knew to be impossible.
I’ve seen a lot of horror in my time, both in the war and since, but this… this was bad. I turned away as quick as I could, knowing that some sights could never be forgotten and the less you had to see them the better.
Max was facing the door and I heard the sounds of feet running towards us from the other side. It sounded like a lot of them.
I took up a position to the side, back in the dark, and waited. Hoping my timing had worked out right.
The elevator door opened. Jerome stepped out, seeing no one there and turned to the left. A group of about seven Bloods were running full tilt toward the far stairwell and were almost there. He also saw at least two black faces peeking from the room where he’d seen the woman and men earlier. Hefting the AR15 up a little higher, he saw the red dot and placed it on the back of the last man in line running to the door. The weapon hardly bucked at all against his shoulder as the first bullet spit effortlessly out of the barrel, hitting the running gangster just to the right of his spine, next to the shoulder blade. He dropped in a tangle of feet. Jerome thought he could easily get used to this little rifle. He took out the next man in line, and the next, before the first man reached the door. About the same time, the men in the room looked his way and started pointing guns at him.
Jerome fired three times at them and they ducked back inside very quickly. Jerome turned his attention back to the men headed for the stairwell as a bullet hit the floor a few yards in front of him. The remaining four men were all facing him and firing. He ducked back into the elevator just as he saw the stairwell door open up behind them. Max came through like some kind of hound from Hell. He took the closest man to him down low along the hamstring, a full mouth bite, crumpling him.
Gil came through the stairwell door, his rifle flashing bullets into the backs of the last three men. Making sharp popping sounds, just a bit louder than the impacts of the bullets themselves, as they sunk into flesh. All three went down and he planted a last round in the face of the man that Max was still thrashing.
Jerome kept his rifle planted on the room where the men had pointed guns at him, but no one appeared.
Gil Mason picked up on the apartment and advanced, his weapon pointing at the doorway, the monster dog padding beside him at his right leg.
Jerome left the relative safety of the elevator and closed in from the opposite direction.
Gil stopped Jerome a few feet back from the doorway with a hand signal. He pulled a flashbang from one of the many pockets his BDU pants sported. Pulling the pin, he tossed it into the room. The sounds of scrambling could be heard and then the body-numbing explosion of noise and light. Gil moved in fast before the shock could wear off, Max beside him. Two gang members staggered about inside the room, both holding guns. Gil shot the closest two times, center mass. Max charged, striking the other man just as he was pulling his gun up. Max hit him full force in the crotch and the man swung down instinctively with the butt, smacking Max in the head. That made him mad and he twisted and tore back, wreaking havoc on the tender flesh of the nineteen year old. Jerome put a bullet in the boys chest and he fell back, gasping for air that he would never breathe.
Ziggy sat in a chair in the middle of the room, eyes wide and his head twitching like a bird. A woman and another man sat close by on a couch.
Jerome looked down at Ziggy and started to reach for him.
Gil saw the fear in Ziggy’s eyes and stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “Wait.”
Ziggy nodded his head wildly, jerking his chin toward his lap.
Gil knelt down and saw the wires and plastique. He was no explosive tech, but he’d worked more than a few bomb dogs over the years and k
new a pressure device when he saw one. Standing, he placed a hand on Ziggy’s shoulder and looked at Jerome.
“He’s sitting on about a pound of C4. If he stands, we all go boom.”
“Then what’s the play?”
Gil scanned the room. Seeing the dead, something struck him. “I see Bloods, but where are the suits?”
“Suits?”
“Secret Service. Clyde.”
“Not here,” said Jerome.
It was then that Gil remembered the ‘plus one rule’. If there’s one there’s two. The adage usually applied to searching for bad guys and finding one, but it held just as true for explosives. Jerking his head, he saw a small red flashing light under the counter by the sink.
“OUT!” yelled Gil, pushing the big man toward the door. He flashed a hand signal to Max and the dog leapt as the room disintegrated.
41
I saw the flash and felt weightless as a hot hand picked me up and tossed me, like the careless gods of mythology. My head and shoulder smashed into something immovable and then I saw nothing for a span of unknown time. When I woke up, my hearing was gone and blood ran down from my head and into my face. I swiped it away, feeling a twinge in my right shoulder. Heat blasted at me from behind and when I looked back I saw fire raging from a room that was no longer there. The entire floor was gone, sunken into the room below, and a sea of raging flames. Ziggy had simply ceased to exist. My brain wasn’t working quite right just yet, so I couldn’t put things together. Jerome lay on the floor in front of me, his eyebrows burned off and blood seeping from his ears and nose. Max lay on his side a few feet away. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. That helped me to pull everything together and I pushed myself to my knees. Debris and chunks of drywall weighted down my left foot, but I was able to disentangle it and drag myself the rest of the way into the hallway.
Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set Page 42