Steel Dragon

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Jonesy!”

  “I know, I know!” He tried to accelerate but was no match for the corvette. It pulled easily up to the driver’s side of the police car.

  Two men in denim jackets studded with spikes sat inside. The man in the passenger seat held an assault rifle the likes of which she had only ever seen in movies.

  “Your days of corruption are over, you fucking pigs,” the man screamed over the roaring engines of the two racing vehicles.

  He punctuated the vitriol with a fusillade aimed at their vehicle.

  “Fuck!” the sergeant hollered and jerked the wheel to the right to hurtle them down another street. The corvette tried to follow but they were going too fast and the turn was too sharp. The tires screeched before the driver adjusted their course and careened on down the street they had been on before.

  Even though the guy in the corvette had only a few seconds to fire, he’d obliterated the side of the police cruiser.

  “The motherfuckers are packing.” Jonesy clenched his jaw as they neared the next intersection with both officers on high alert.

  The corvette reappeared and fired wildly. It raced past the back of the police vehicle—the damn corvette must’ve been going ninety—and a rattle of bullets impacted the trunk.

  “Red, do you think you can handle these assholes?”

  “I can try.” Kristen drew her pistol, took her time, and fired. Her first three shots caught the windshield before she got lucky and hit one of the front tires.

  The corvette veered to the left and gave up the pursuit.

  “Nice fucking shooting, Red. I don’t know if Butters could have made that shot.”

  “Yeah, well, almost being annihilated by fucking motorheads is like old hat for me now.”

  “No fucking joke. Did you see any more of those assholes?”

  She looked behind them. “Yeah. Holy shit, Jonesy. There are so many people on the streets back there. It looks like…it looks like a goddamn war zone.”

  He responded with another push on the accelerator and the vehicle surged forward. The thought of leaving the violence behind instead of facing it head-on made her feel sick, but she knew he was right. If they went into a warzone, they needed to be better equipped.

  They made it the station in less than five minutes. She was half-surprised to find it still standing. It was close to downtown, after all, and according to the reports that flooded in, it sounded like downtown attempted to blow itself up.

  Jonesy parked in front of the station and the duo raced inside.

  “About fucking time. Now, saddle up!” Drew yelled at them as soon as they reached the gear room. He chucked a bulletproof vest at her and another at Jonesy. It was a small miracle they’d made it back alive and she hadn’t realized how much danger they’d been in. Thankfully, she had no time to dwell on their lucky escape and snatched a helmet, shoved it on, and tightened the chin strap while she shoved the disquieting thoughts aside.

  The team raced through the station to their SWAT van. They scrambled in with Jonesy at the wheel, the team leader in the passenger seat, and the others in the back.

  “What’s the plan?” the sergeant asked Drew.

  He answered through the window to the back of the van so they could all hear.

  “Right now, we don’t know who these assholes are or what they want. All we know is that there is a considerable number of them, they’re heavily armed, and they seem to be converging on the warehouse district. We’ve created a blockade on the bridge to Bell Isle. The big brass think they’re using the warehouse district as a staging area and that they might try to take the island and use it as a permanent base. It’d be damn hard to dig them out if that is the case because there’s only the one bridge on and off.”

  “Who is telling us go to Bell Isle if the warehouse district is the focus?” Kristen asked.

  “That’s above our paygrade, Hall. We’re a team and every member of a team needs to play their position. Our job is to not allow the assholes to take the island.”

  They raced down Lafayette St, banked hard on East Grand, and crossed about halfway on the bridge to Bell Isle before they stopped. Three police cars were drawn up there already, plus another SWAT van. They unloaded and Jonesy turned the vehicle to join the blockade.

  She sighed a breath of relief. There was no way anyone could get through that.

  It was almost like her thought was some kind of bizarre trigger.

  “Places, people, keep it neat and keep it clean,” Drew commanded when the gunfire started.

  Fourteen members of SWAT plus seven more police officers took positions behind their vehicles and tried to hold the bridge.

  It boggled her mind to think there were at least ten more SWAT blockades like this. How could that be? She knew there were gangs in Detroit, but this was ridiculous. Had they all joined forces and decided to…what? Burn the city down? It simply didn’t make sense. Gangs did things for money. This was purely destruction.

  “We have forces converging on the warehouse district. All unit—”

  The radio chatter was abruptly replaced with static.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Drew cursed.

  “What do we do?” Keith asked.

  “Hold our fucking position, rookie.” Jonesy nodded toward the mainland. Three cars raced toward them. A machine gun was mounted on the roof of one of them.

  Kristen braced herself for it to get within range but apparently, whoever manned the weapon had far less patience. He opened fire and sprayed the line of vehicles with bullets.

  Butters delivered a clean shot into his chest and he fell from the top of the vehicle.

  The other two cars continued their headlong approach. They didn’t seem to be slowing.

  The car’s tires squealed as it stopped. Another man climbed out and took control of the mounted machine gun.

  The sniper promptly shot him in the chest.

  He stumbled but didn’t fall—bulletproof armor, obviously—so he adjusted his aim calmly and fired a perfect head-shot.

  That seemed to discourage whoever else was there to try anything else but already, a mounted machine gun seemed a low priority. The other two cars now rocketed toward the blockade and their engines roared. The police officers already took potshots at the rapidly approaching vehicles, hoping to get lucky.

  “Tires,” Drew ordered, and Beanpole, Keith, and Jonesy launched a concerted volley toward the car on the right. They managed to damage its front tires and it slewed to the side, pounded through the small wall on the side of the bridge, and splashed into the Detroit River.

  The third vehicle collided with the front of a police car and forced the stationery vehicle into a spin while it simply continued through their blockade.

  “Red, Hernandez, Jonesy, you watch those fuckers who made it through. Everyone else, we have more coming this way.”

  Kristen turned to fire at the car that had broken through their barricade. She noticed in shock that two officers had been run over and immediately tried to use her radio to call for EMS. Only static met her efforts.

  Rather than fall prey to her growing frustration over what she couldn’t do, she clenched her teeth and fired at the car that limped toward them. Jonesy and Hernandez also opened fire and targeted the wheels and windshield. After a moment of concentrated gunfire, it was disabled.

  Two men exited, and one of them lobbed something at the blockade.

  “Grenade!” the sergeant yelled and everyone flung themselves down.

  The ordnance rolled under the other SWAT van and exploded. No one was hurt but the vehicle obviously wouldn’t run again.

  “We have more coming,” Drew yelled and pointed across the bridge to where more cars raced toward them. These didn’t look like they belonged to the Breaks, though. One was a souped-up Honda and another a low-rider with music loud enough to be heard over the now constant crackle of gunfire.

  The radio sputtered to life. “All units converge on Chene and Guoin. We’ve triangulat
ed whatever’s interfering with our radio. Repeat, if you can hear this, there’s an abandoned warehouse on Chene and Guoin, half-covered in vines. All units—”

  The broadcast was swallowed by a wave of static again.

  “You heard the woman—get in the fucking van,” Drew instructed. Two SWAT teams and seven police officers obeyed but immediately encountered difficulty.

  It was soon clear that they couldn’t all fit, so their team plus the other SWAT team and two regular police officers crammed in the van while the other cops took the remaining cruiser and gunned the engine.

  Jonesy threw the vehicle in gear and they began the race toward the warehouse.

  It was lucky that it wasn’t the Breaks who now barreled toward them. Kristen doubted that Jonesy would’ve been able to outmaneuver one of the motorheads, but since these clearly lacked the other gang’s skill and enhanced vehicles, she thought they might actually survive.

  The low-rider was easy enough to lose. The sergeant merely pounded into the side of it and that was enough to ruin its suspension and render the vehicle useless.

  The little Honda was trickier because of its speed. But it was also light, so it couldn’t do much to a larger armored vehicle. It swung against them a few times, but Jonesy had obviously driven in situations like this because he anticipated each strike and managed to keep them moving. Someone in the Honda was armed too, as bullets struck the side of the van, but none punched through the bulletproof armor.

  Still, it was a harrowing few minutes in the back. They were crammed tightly in there, so every turn pushed her against someone. More than once, she thanked her lucky stars that whoever was in the Honda didn’t have explosives.

  One lucky grenade would be enough to obliterate two SWAT teams.

  “He’s behind us,” Drew shouted. “Who wants the shot?”

  “I’ll take it,” one of the members of the other SWAT team yelled. Two of his teammates held his shoulders and a third opened the rear of the van.

  Behind them, the Honda approached rapidly in determined pursuit while the person in the passenger seat fired an assault rifle.

  The officer didn’t so much as flinch. He took aim, exhaled like he was on a gun range instead of in the back of a speeding vehicle, and fired.

  He struck the driver and the Honda slewed wildly with no one at the controls.

  “You’re not the only hotshot, Goodman,” the man joked.

  For a moment, Kristen didn’t know who the hell he had spoken to, but she remembered that their sniper had an actual name and the man had used it.

  “You’re letting out all the cold air!” Butters replied mildly and one of the shooter’s teammates swung the door shut.

  They continued for another few minutes and fortunately avoided any other armed vehicles before tires squealed into an abrupt halt.

  This was it. They had arrived at the warehouse.

  She clenched her teeth as she made herself the promise that she would save her city, or she would die trying.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A single SWAT van stopped dramatically outside the warehouse.

  “Should we blow it to high hell, your honor?”

  For a moment, the black dragon forgot to shrug the arms of his human glamor. It was demeaning to spend so much time in human form. Worse still, he constantly had to learn their expressions and the changes in body language over the decades. It didn’t have to be like this. After all, human ranchers didn’t show this much respect to cows.

  “Mr Black, your orders?”

  He couldn’t even use his real name with these pathetic, short-lived rats. They couldn’t pronounce it, for starters, but there was more to the dragon who called himself Mr Black’s fake identity. It wouldn’t do for the other dragons of Detroit to find out he was the one who had stirred trouble up in their city. Not until after tonight anyway, he reminded himself—not until it was too late.

  “Sir? Should I shoot the SWAT van?”

  He turned to the man. Murray of the Breaks was a pathetic excuse for a leader and yet, he was the best available in this wretched excuse for a city. Still, with the weapons the dragon’s henchmen had procured, even he and his pathetic little band of petty criminals could inflict real damage on the city as long as they remained in the dragon’s aura.

  “Wait,” he said.

  He’d flexed his innate power for the entire night. It hadn’t taken much to push the rats who called themselves gangs over the edge. They were obviously already worthless excuses for humans, more prone to violence than the average man. A dragon’s aura—even one as powerful as him—couldn’t alter someone’s fundamental nature. A dragon couldn’t turn a saint into a sinner was an often said and fairly accurate idiom, but you could push people in the direction they were already inclined toward. Conveniently, none of these people had been saints.

  The fact that it had taken so little effort to compel the gangs to attack their homeland and their own neighbors further demonstrated how badly this city needed to be razed and rebuilt. He hadn’t told them to kill or filled their hearts with rage or terror. Instead, he had simply freed them from their fear and inhibitions against harming their own kind. They had taken up arms like birds learning to fly.

  But it did take concentration to exude an aura like that over multiple city blocks, and when one concentrated, one often missed things one should not otherwise miss.

  Like the dragon who stepped out from the SWAT van.

  Mr Black’s eyes locked on the woman who fitted a helmet over her red hair. She was a dragon. He could sense it. Her human body glowed with energy, strengthened her muscles beyond what the human frame should be capable of, honed her reflexes, and quickened her reactions. But how could there be a new player in town he hadn’t known about? Who was she, and why didn’t she use her full powers? This could ruin everything. She could literally send months of planning up in smoke.

  He had planned to take this city from the two spineless worms who’d been in control for centuries but apparently, he wasn’t the only one who’d hidden in the shadows.

  Whoever this dragon was masquerading as a police officer, she obviously didn’t want to reveal the full extent of her powers. If she was on the police force, she must have been undercover for some time, but why? Obviously, she must have machinations of her own—ambitions beyond the scope of what most humans dared dream—and she’d set her sights on this city.

  Mr Black could use this. Tonight was to be his grand reveal but at the end of it all, it would inevitably come down to a fight—two versus one. But with another player on the board, perhaps he wouldn’t have to reveal himself. Whoever the newcomer was, she must be hiding for a reason. Perhaps she wished to rule the Motor City herself. Perhaps she worked undercover for those worms Damos and Lyra. Whatever her plans were, they clearly relied on her remaining undercover as a human.

  It was well within his ability to ruin those plans.

  There were two options he could see. He would force her to reveal herself or kill her in the process. Whatever cover she’d built would be burned away. Perhaps Damos and Lyra would see fit to deal with her themselves, thus evening the odds when he chose to finish his coup.

  “Turn the radio scrambler off,” he ordered.

  Murray obeyed and fidgeted nervously with the controls. The dragon could understand his concern. The last man who had operated the scrambler had messed up and let the police reveal the location of this warehouse, although it seemed that in the end, only the one police carriage had heard the call and come to investigate. Still, failure was failure. He had hurled that man from the rooftop. It seemed Murray of the Breaks understood the implications of the not-so-subtle threat.

  “It’s down, sir,” the gang leader said, his hands shaking.

  “Tell everyone to converge on the warehouse. I want that carriage full of officers to eat lead. I want them to be roasted alive by the weapons I have given this city.”

  “Sir, if I give those orders, the police will come too.”
<
br />   “Let them come. More bodies means more bullets means more carnage.” Mr Black didn’t know this hidden dragon’s game, but he knew it involved deception. He would force her to reveal herself and once he understood who she was, he would either enlist her to his side or leave her corpse in the shadows when he took this city from her.

  “Breaks, Dead Reds, Knights, Eskeletos, Stray Cats—return to the roost.”

  Immediately, orders came from the human police to notify their officers to go to the warehouse.

  Mr Black smiled. It was a good thing he could fly. He very much doubted this building would be standing by the end of the night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The team surveyed the warehouse before they stepped from the van. It was made of brick, about three stories tall, and in obvious disrepair. Most of the windows were broken. The walls at ground level sported graffiti, tags, and curses that had been written in spray paint over the years and never painted over. The only sections of the structure that didn’t have spray paint were covered in vines.

  Kristen marveled at how truly choked the building was with creepers. It was a wonder it still stood under all that weight. Two large metal hangar-style doors on one end of the warehouse were ajar. A few smaller doors dotted the one side of the building.

  “All right,” Drew said and assumed command of the van full of people. “I have no idea if anyone else heard us, which means we might not have reinforcements until after we’ve done our job.”

  “What’s the plan?” one of the members of the other SWAT team asked and seemed willing to defer to his authority.

  “We’ll check the side doors first. If we can get through one, your team will go in and assess the scene while we look for another door and try to flank these assholes.”

  “That sounds about as smart as anything else,” the leader of the other SWAT team said. Everyone nodded. It was either that or rush in through the slightly open hangar doors, but every single person in the van felt the same way about that. The open doors could only be a trap.