Part 2 (1/2)
CUT AND run! Bobby actually thought she would cut and run when trouble struck-”Get the h.e.l.l out of here”
cut and run? just because he told her to! If she was an obedient little wifey, not a full-fledged partner in the agency, not a d.a.m.ned good investigator in her own right, just a token backup who couldn't take the heat when the nice kicked in. Well, to h.e.l.l with that.
In her mind she could see his lovable face-merry blue eyes pug nose, smattering of freckles, generous mouth-framed thick honey-gold hair that was mussed (as was most often the case) like that of a small boy who had just gotten up from a nap. She wanted to bop his pug nose just hard enough to make his blue eyes water, so he'd have no doubt how the cut-an run suggestion annoyed her.
She had been on surveillance behind Decodyne, at the end of the corporate parking lot, in the deep shadows under a ma.s.sive Indian laurel. The moment Bobby signaled trouble she started the Toyota's engine. By the time she heard gunfire over the earphones, she had s.h.i.+fted gears, popped the emergency brake, switched on the headlights, and jammed the accelerator toward the floor.
At first she kept the headset on, calling Bobby's name, trying to get an answer from him, hearing only the most G.o.d awful ruckus from his end.
Then the set went dead; she couldn't hear anything at all, so she pulled it off and threw it into the back seat.
Cut and run! d.a.m.n him!
When she reached the end of the last row in the parking lot she let up on the accelerator with her right foot, simultaneous tapping the brake pedal with her left foot, finessing the small car into a slide, which carried it onto the access road that led around the big building. She turned the steering wheel into the slide, then gave the heap some gas again even before the back end had stopped skidding and shuddering. The tires barked, and the engine shrieked, and with a rattle-squeak-tw.a.n.g of tortured metal, the car leaped forward.
They were shooting at Bobby, and Bobby probably wasn't even able to shoot back, because he was lax about carrying a gun on every job; he went armed only when it seemed that the current business was likely to involve violence. The Decodyne a.s.signment had looked peaceable enough; sometimes industrial espionage could turn nasty, but the bad guy in this case was Tom Rasmussen, a computer nerd and a greedy son of a b.i.t.c.h, clever as a dog reading Shakespeare on a high wire, with a record of theft via computer but with no blood on his hands. He was the high-tech equivalent of a meek, embezzling bank clerk-or so he had seemed.
But Julie was armed on every job. Bobby was the optimist; she was the pessimist. Bobby expected people to act in their own best interests and be reasonable, but Julie half expected every apparently normal person to be, in secret, a crazed psychotic.
A Smith & Wesson.357 Magnum was held by a clip to the back of the glove box lid, and an Uzi-with two spare, thirty-round magazines-lay on the other front seat. From what she had heard on the earphones before they'd gone dead, she was going to need that Uzi.
The Toyota virtually flew past the side of Decodyne, and she wheeled hard left, onto Michaelson Drive, almost rising onto two wheels, almost losing control, but not quite. Ahead, Bobby's Dodge was parked at the curb in front of the building, and another van-a dark blue Ford-was stopped in the street, doors open wide.
Two men, who had evidently been in the Ford, were standing four or five yards from the Dodge, chopping the h.e.l.l out of it with automatic weapons, blasting away with such ferocity that they seemed not to be after the man inside but to have some bizarre personal grudge against the Dodge itself. They stopped firing, turned toward her as she came out of the driveway onto Michaelson, and hurriedly jammed fresh magazines into their weapons.
Ideally, she would close the hundred-yard gap between herself and the men, pull the Toyota sideways in the street, slip out, and use the car as cover to blow out the tires on their van and pin them down until police arrived. But she didn't have time for all of that. They were already raising the muzzles of their weapons.
She was unnerved at how lonely the night streets looked this hour in the heart of metropolitan Orange County, bare of traffic, washed by the urine-yellow light of the sodium-streetlamps. They were in an area of banks and office buildings no residences, no restaurants or bars within a couple of blocks. It might as well have been a city on the moon, or a vision of the world after it had been swept by an Apocalyptic disaster that had left only a handful of survivors.
She didn't have time to handle the two gunmen by the book and she could not count on help from any quarter, so she would have to do what they least expected: play kamikaze, use her car as a weapon.
The instant she had the Toyota fully under control, pressing the accelerator tight to the floorboards and rocketed straight at the two b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. They opened fire, but she was already slipping down in the seat and leaning sideways a little trying to keep her head below the dashboard and still hold the wheel relatively steady. Bullets snapped and whined off the car. The winds.h.i.+eld burst. A second later Julie hit one of the gun men so hard that the impact snapped her head forward, against the wheel, cutting her forehead, snapping her teeth together forcefully enough to make her jaw ache; even as pain needled through her face, she heard the body bounce off the front b.u.mper and slam onto the hood.
With blood trickling down her forehead and dripping from her right eyebrow, Julie jabbed at the brakes and sat up at the same time. She was confronted by a man's wide-eyed corpse jammed in the frame of the empty winds.h.i.+eld. His face in front of the steering wheel-teeth chipped, lips torn, chin slashed, cheek battered, left eye missing-and one of his broken legs was inside the car, hooked down over the dashboard. Julie found the brake pedal and pumped it. With the sudden drop in speed, the dead man was dislodged. His limp body rolled across the hood, and when the car slid to a shaky halt he vanished over the front end.
Heart racing, blinking to keep the stinging blood from blue ring the vision in her right eye, Julie s.n.a.t.c.hed the Uzi from the seat beside her, shoved open the door, and rolled out, moving fast and staying low.
The other gunman was already in the blue Ford van. He gave it gas before remembering to s.h.i.+ft out of park, so the tires screamed and smoked.
Julie squeezed off two short bursts from the Uzi, blowing out both tires on her side of the van. But the gunman didn't stop. He s.h.i.+fted gears at last and tried to drive past her on two ruined tires.
The guy might have killed Bobby; now he was getting away. He would probably never be found if Julie didn't stop him. Reluctantly she swung the Uzi higher and emptied the magazine into the side window of the van.
The Ford accelerated, then suddenly slowed and swung to the right, at steadily diminis.h.i.+ng speed, in a long arc that carried it to the far curb, where it came to a halt with a jolt.
No one got out.
Keeping an eye on the Ford, Julie leaned into her car, plucked a spare magazine from the seat, and reloaded the Uzi. She approached the idling van cautiously and pulled open the door, but caution was not required because the man behind the wheel was dead. Feeling a little sick, she reached in and switched off the engine.
Briefly, as she turned from the Ford and hurried toward the bullet-riddled Dodge, the only sounds she could hear were the sounds of a faint breeze in the lush corporate landscaping that flanked the street, punctuated by the gentle hiss and rattle of palm fronds. Then she also heard the idling engine of the Dodge, simultaneously smelled gasoline, and shouted, ”Bobby!”
Before she reached the white van, the back doors creaked open, and Bobby came out, shedding twists of metal, chunks of plastic, bits of gla.s.s, wood chips, and sc.r.a.ps of paper. He was gasping, no doubt because the gasoline fumes had driven most of the breathable air out of the Dodge's rear quarters.
Sirens rose in the distance.
Together they quickly walked away from the van. They had gone only a few steps when orange light flared and flames rose in a wooooosh from the gasoline pooled on the pavement, enveloping the vehicle in bright shrouds. They hurried beyond the corner of intense heat that surrounded the Dodge and stared for a moment, blinking at the wreckage, then at each other.
The sirens were drawing nearer.
He said, ”You're bleeding.”
”Just skinned my forehead a little.”
”You sure?”
”It's nothing. What about you?”
He sucked in a deep breath. ”I'm okay.”
”Really?”
”Yeah.”
”You weren't hit?”
”Unmarked. It's a miracle.”
”Bobby?”
”What?”
”I couldn't handle it if you'd turned up dead in there.
”I'm not dead. I'm fine.”
”Thank G.o.d,” she said.
Then she kicked his right s.h.i.+n.
”Ow! What the h.e.l.l?”
She kicked his left s.h.i.+n.
”Julie, dammit!”
”Don't you ever tell me to cut and run.”
”What?”
”I'm a full half of this partners.h.i.+p in every way.”