Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  Cobra led the way through the open door. The tall, broad figure of Shorty followed. Bishop went in last.

  The warehouse bay was wide and high. Rows of towering lockers and towering shelves, one towering row after the next, rising into rafters and scaffolding and darkness. Forklifts and stepladders stood against the wall or by the security curtain. Between the curtain and the edges of the lockers, there was a broad corridor of open space.

  Moving fast, breathing fast in their excitement, Cobra and Bishop and Shorty met up with Charlie and Steve in the center of that corridor.

  They were in a pool of light from the bulbs over the door. Bishop kept his expression wry and cool as always, but he was wound tight; tight. His pulse was hammering even quicker. The suspense was like a metallic glow in his head, almost too bright to bear. He expected the police to jump them—now, right now. He expected to hear their shouts and see their guns and their tense faces. But still it was quiet. There was nothing.

  “Where the fuck’s the guards?” Charlie grunted.

  Cobra shook his head. “Off, maybe. Who the fuck knows? Let’s just do it”

  He gestured to Bishop and Steve to follow him. They started up an aisle between two walls of lockers. Shorty with his shotgun and Charlie with his Glock stood guard in the corridor, watching the doors.

  In the aisle, the shadows were deeper. At first Bishop had to strain to see. Then Cobra dug a miniature Maglite from his jacket pocket. The three men followed its powerful beam deeper into the bay.

  The locker they wanted was midway down. It had a man-sized gunmetal door on it, and there was another keypad beside the door. Cobra had the code to this one, too.

  While the outlaw punched the buttons, Bishop scanned the aisle, back and forth. He lifted his gaze to the locker tops, and higher to where the rafters faded into blackness. Where the hell were the cops? Where was Ketchum? If there’d been some mistake, if Cobra walked out of this, if he went looking for Honey—Bishop began a rushed, rough, fragmented estimation of the disaster.

  But there was no time for it. The keypad gave its long beep, breaking in on him. The light on the pad went red to green. Cobra yanked the locker door open. His face was arching and eager, his gaze a bright emerald in the Maglite’s glow.

  Three large duffel bags lay piled together on the locker floor. The Maglite’s beam played over them.

  “Check ’em,” Cobra said.

  Steve knelt down quickly. Bishop looked away, peering into the surrounding darkness. No, there was nothing moving, there were no cops, there was no one. He heard the rip of a zipper.

  He looked down. Steve had one of the duffels open. The Maglite beam was dancing over the contents. Steve looked up at Cobra with a grim smile on his pitted face. He gave a dull grunt of approval. “Huh.”

  There were heart-stopping millions in there, stack upon stack of pale green cash.

  Cobra nodded. “Zip it up. Let’s go.”

  The three tromped back up the aisle, Cobra in the lead. Each had a duffel over his left shoulder, a gun in his right hand. They stepped out into the corridor.

  Shorty and Charlie wheeled from either door, met the others on either side. Cobra grinned at them.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “All right!” said Shorty, clenching his fist.

  The others laughed in triumph.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Thirty-Four

  Even Bishop never saw them coming—but suddenly there they were. Two helmeted men in black armor at the office door, one leveling an HK, the other handpumping a round into the chamber of a Super 90 12-gauge. Two more with CAR-15 assault rifles were at the far door, closing in. And from up the dark aisles came even more of them, stalking out of the shadows like killer phantoms. Red target lights lanced out and pegged the outlaws’ chests. The bay fluorescents flickered on above to reveal the snipers on the locker tops: three men kneeling up there, each training a Remington on the group below.

  Finally, Inspector Ketchum strolled in from the office. He stepped casually between the two cops flanking the door. The wiry black man seemed small next to the others in their helmets and bulky Kevlar vests. He himself wore only a suit, it seemed, and a trenchcoat against the night mist—and of course his usual scowl of disdain for all mankind, particularly these dickheads.

  “You’re fucked, boys, lay ’em down,” he rasped softly.

  Shorty, with a guttural noise of rage, clenched his teeth and tensed to move, his shotgun stiffening. There was a whispered spit of air, a wet impact. Shorty’s shaved head exploded, sending a spindrift of blood over the face of Charlie nearby. Shorty, already dead, tilted back, then crumpled down. He made barely a sound in falling. Nothing, in fact, had been louder so far than Ketchum’s quiet rasp.

  Charlie, his features sprayed with red, gaped, trembled. Piss darkened his jeans, pattered onto his boots. He let his semi slip from his lowered hand. It clattered weakly on the cement floor.

  Steve raised his arms. The duffel bag fell off his shoulder. The Glock tumbled out of his limp fingers. It spun down, bounced off the cement end over end, and lay still.

  All this seemed to happen in a single moment, and in that moment Bishop noticed something. The red target dot had gone out on Cobra’s chest. Steve, with his raised hands, was in front of him. He had blocked the sniper’s shot.

  Cobra must’ve seen it, too, must’ve seen the way Steve was placed and how it shielded him. He shifted, just a little, but enough to move the duffel bag and hide his expression from Ketchum. Bishop’s glance went down. He saw Cobra’s hand begin to tighten on his .45.

  Bishop dumped his duffel bag, raised his pistol to the side of the outlaw’s head.

  “I’ll kill you, Co,” he said evenly. “Try it and I’ll kill you.”

  Cobra turned to him—turned and looked, first into the barrel of the .38, then past the barrel into Bishop’s eyes. There was no surprise in that look. It was clear that in that instant he realized everything, the whole story, but in some part of his mind he must’ve already known, because there was nothing like surprise. He merely straightened where he stood, went taut with the betrayal. Thrummed with the force of his hatred. And he smiled, his craggy features arrowing upward.

  “You’re dead,” he said.

  Bishop answered by lifting his chin a little—as much as to say just drop the gun. And Cobra did drop it. Slung it away like an empty cigarette pack so that it hit the floor flat and spun across it to the feet of an oncoming rifleman. Cobra shrugged off his duffel bag, too. It dropped heavily with all its millions. But the outlaw never took his gaze away from Bishop—not his gaze or his hatred or his smile. He just nodded and went on smiling—as much as to say yes, yes, now he knew, and he was not surprised.

  The cops, at the same time, were closing in, a tightening semicircle of gun barrels and unwavering stares. They were shouting.

  “Hit the dirt, scumbags!”

  “Down, down, down!”

  And now they attacked.

  One grabbed Charlie, knocked his legs out from under him with a sweeping kick.

  “Get your fucking balls to the cement!”

  And two grabbed Steve and slung him to the floor, screaming.

  “Hit the fucking dirt!”

  “Get down!”

  The outlaws were forced to their bellies under a swarm of armored men. Their hands were wrenched behind them; their wrists were cuffed. Ketchum stood watching quietly, his hands in his pockets.

  And at some point during all the chaos, someone made a mistake.

  He was a big cop named Rittenbacher. While the other cops were going for the other bikers, he went for Cobra. He had an HK MP5 submachine gun trained on Cobra’s head. His voice was an animal snarl from under his helmet visor.

  “On your dick, you piece of shit, or I’ll bust a cap in your fucking brain!”

  Hands in the air, Cobra took a step back. To reach him, Rittenbacher pushed in front of Bishop, coming between Cobra and Bishop’s gun, cutting o
ff Bishop’s shot. Holding his weapon in his right hand, he reached out and grabbed Cobra with his left. But by then Cobra had turned, had maneuvered himself so that now Rittenbacher had to step in front of him, which blocked the beads of the snipers, too.

  Bishop saw what was happening. He shouted, “Blade!”

  But it just went sour too fast.

  Cobra’s right hand flashed down, flashed up—and now he had the long bayonet in it. He whipped the point of it into Rittenbacher’s side, into his heart and out, that quick. Rittenbacher stiffened. His eyes went wide. Any noise he made was lost in all the shouting.

  In a single movement, Cobra grabbed Rittenbacher’s HK and shoved the big cop backward into Bishop. Rittenbacher dropped, a dead weight knocking Bishop to one side.

  Cobra, meanwhile, ripped the HK’s strap clear of Rittenbacher’s shoulder. The gun was his.

  Before anyone could react, he was charging at the door, charging straight at the startled Ketchum. He swept the machine gun over the room as he ran, sending a fusillade in every direction.

  Bullets sparked off the concrete, off the metal lockers. Cops dropped to the floor as one. The snipers on the locker tops ducked their heads. Ketchum went for his Glock, but he was too late. Cobra barreled into him, shoved him aside.

  The outlaw raced through the office door. Behind him, only Bishop, who’d struggled free of Rittenbacher’s corpse, was still standing. Bishop leveled his .38 as Cobra plunged into the office shadows.

  But it was no good. There was no shot. Armored cops jumping to their feet blocked him. Ketchum blocked him, trying to get off a shot of his own.

  Bishop cursed, He fought his way forward, weaving around the cops. He reached the office door just behind Ketchum. Ketchum went through, and Bishop followed.

  By then Cobra had reached the door to the outside. He yanked it open. Ketchum raised his pistol quickly and fired. There was a white flash, a deafening blast.

  But Cobra was gone, out the door, rocketing headlong into the night.

  Bishop went after him.

  Thirty-Five

  There was an army of cops outside the warehouse by this time. A perimeter of cars and guns and officers watching, waiting. Not one of them saw Cobra escape. By the time they got the alert from inside, there were half a dozen people bursting through the warehouse doors, no way to know who was who, where to aim, when to fire. Cops jumped into their cars and set the red lights flashing. Sirens started to howl like hunting dogs. Other cops, in armor and armed, began ducking and dodging through the city-lit mist. But Cobra was already out of sight. No one had a clue which way he’d gone.

  No one but Bishop. Bishop was sprinting toward the construction site, his teeth clenched, his eyes blazing, his arms pumping, his hand gripping his .38. He was through the perimeter in seconds, never slowing. His heavy boots flashed over the pavement. It seemed he willed them to be weightless in his rage to outrace the fugitive.

  Because he knew where Cobra had parked his bike. He had seen the mark on the map in Shotgun Alley. He knew Cobra would reach the machine and be off before the cops could organize, be gone before the cops could marshal their unwieldy cages and head after him. He knew that Cobra would get away unless he—Bishop—could get to his own bike first, unless he could cut the outlaw off. He knew he was the only one who had even half a chance to stop him.

  He pumped harder, ran faster, leapt over the curb, off the pavement, into the rubble of the construction area. His boots smacked onto the broken stone as he pistoned past the rising network of girders and concrete. Still, it seemed a slow, slow journey, a long, long run. Crazy, horrible, bloody images in his mind the whole way. Cobra on the loose. Cobra springing out of nowhere, Honey hunted, Honey seized in the dead of night. She flashed before him, tortured, mutilated. Bloody on the floor with Cobra standing over her, howling in triumph. The outlaw knew everything now, and he would live for revenge. He would live to kill her. She would never be safe again, if he got away. She would never be safe, unless Bishop could bring him down.

  There it was, finally: his own bike, his black-and-chrome Fat Boy, standing tilted at the edge of a streetlamp’s glow, at the far border of the construction site. He cranked himself harder, went faster, was there. Too motored up to slow down, he had to grab hold of the machine, grab the seat, the bars, to keep from barreling right over it. The bike was jolted. His helmet was jarred off the brake lever. It fell clattering onto the stones. He didn’t care. He didn’t pause. He jammed his gun down into a jacket pocket. Swung into the saddle. Flipped the bike on. Throttled it high.

  And in the selfsame moment, he spotted Cobra. He saw the streak of his silver Softail under a streetlamp straight ahead. The outlaw came racing around a corner on the opposite side of the construction site. He turned onto the street, heading away from the Basin. The chopper’s headlight was off, and as the bike sped out of the lampglow it became a featureless blur of motion in the mist. But Bishop could track it as it raced perpindicular to him, raced to cross his path, to pass him by as it vanished into the city.

  Bishop worked the Fat Boy into gear. The bike shot into motion so fast he damn near lost it. It hit the dirt. It left the ground. It leapt through mist and darkness and dove down into rubble and dust. The earth seemed to slide out from under its tires. For a moment Bishop felt as if he were riding on his side. Then the bike sliced forward, slowly rising, righting itself. He gunned it, angling across the site, trying to get to the other side before Cobra got past him.

  Bishop went faster, then even faster over the rough terrain. He felt a wild and reckless stillness in him. He felt distant from himself, another man. Something drifted through his mind: dreamy murder like a wisp of smoke. He wanted—he didn’t know what he wanted. There wasn’t time to know. The idea was already gone and he was thinking nothing, just working the Fat Boy through a brutal acceleration, trying to feed the cold fire from his veins into the machine.

  The bike struggled, bucked, jackknifed over the broken field. He wrestled it down, forced it forward, forced it on. There was Cobra on the street ahead, nearly past him. But now, at the corner of his vision, he caught sight of an obstacle, an outcropping of the half-finished building here, a girder slamming through the darkness directly toward his face.

  There was no time to swerve. He didn’t want to swerve. He wanted Cobra, that’s what he wanted. He bore down on the outlaw even as the girder filled his view. He ducked low, pressed himself hard against the shuddering bike. He felt the engine’s vibrations in his chest. He felt the steel beam brush over his back, whisper over his leather jacket. Then he was under it. He raised his head, looked up. Cobra was gone.

  No, wait—not gone. Just past the point of interception. But still there, still streaking through the mist and toward the corner.

  Bishop angled after him. His bike hit flat ground, seized some kind of traction. It exploded forward, off the rubble, onto the pavement, onto the road behind the silver chopper. The Fat Boy slid wide as Bishop brought it to bear on the outlaw’s tail.

  As he did, Cobra slanted round the bend, out of sight. Bishop got a good glimpse of him as he made the turn. He saw the gleaming bike leaning under the intersection’s streetlamp. He saw the outlaw, his angular face bare to the wind, his hair swept back, his craggy features flattened with the force of his speed.

  Then he was gone and Bishop was swerving after him.

  They roared down a side street, machine after machine. It was tight here, dark. A narrow canyon between empty buildings. Headlights off, the bikes plunged into shadow. Bishop felt the onrushing air pull at his cheeks, bite at his eyes, blur his vision. But all the same, with a surge of animal joy and hatred, he made out the dim shape of the silver chopper and saw he was gaining on the rear tire inch by inch.

  They broke from the street onto a broader avenue. The scene before them fanned wide. Bishop glimpsed a gravel pit to his left, gray as ash, its monstrous elevator piercing the mist to rise against the stars. Ahead, at some distance, was the curving line
of the baseball stadium. And to the right, under the sliver of moon, were broken piers and an expanse of night-black water. Beyond it all rose the city skyline, a jagged panorama of pinnacles and higher pinnacles etched in light and more golden light. Cobra streaked into this backdrop and then turned right, heading for the water.

  Bishop was just behind him. He pressed down, pressed himself nearly flat against the handlebars, trying to pick up speed, trying to pierce the wind. He took the corner wide, making a broad arc out to Cobra’s left. He barely slowed. He twisted the throttle. He spurted forward again, his front tire beginning to draw level with Cobra’s rear.

  That was what finished it: Bishop pressing in to Cobra’s left. The outlaw must’ve been hoping to break in that direction, to cross the marina, find the freeway, the bridge. But Bishop was there.

  A second later, a road opened to the right. Cobra began to go for it. But he saw—and, drawing level with him, Bishop saw—the whirling red flashes of the hunting cop cars down that way. Cobra hesitated—and he ran out of room.

  The avenue ended. There was a curb, an empty lot, and then the ruined piers and the water. Bishop saw it. He wrenched his bike away, away from Cobra, away from the onrushing gutter. He braked hard. The tires skidded out from under him. The Fat Boy laid down a curling line of smoke and rubber as he tried to right it, to rein it in. He almost did, too, he almost stopped it. But not quite. At the last moment, he lost his hold. The bars slipped from his hands. The bike spun out from under him. He was pitched sidelong through the air, an awful instant out of all control. Then the pavement; the impact jarred him to the bone. His body slid over the tearing macadam. He rolled to absorb the impact. There was another terrible second when he didn’t know if he was hurt or if Cobra was getting away or if Cobra was there, right there, moving in to attack him—