Hell of a Mess, page 13
part #4 of A Love & Bullets Hookup Series
“Oh, I got it,” he said, full of bravado—and almost slid right off. Once he firmed his grip, Fiona poked her head back into the RV. The rising water maybe a foot deep now, the bodyguards face-down in it, unmoving. Dead.
Boz was alive, though. His lips peeled back to reveal bloody teeth. A sawed-off shotgun in his shaking grip.
“Red wagon,” Boz said, raising the weapon. Fiona ducked back, already knowing it was hopeless—at this range, the pellets would punch through the RV’s skin, tagging her anyway. Her movement rocked the RV no more than an inch, but it was enough to set a miracle in motion.
The gold bust of Tupac, lodged in the corner of the wall-turned-ceiling, tumbled loose. It fell straight down, heavier than a bowling ball, and the Rap God’s forehead hit Boz’s nose with a meaty thump.
Fiona winced. As much as she hated Boz, she hoped the man was dead after a hit like that. She rolled away from the hole, offering the assassin a hearty thumbs-up.
The RV had crunched to its final resting place on one of the wider north-south avenues running up the West Side. They were a few blocks north of Hudson Yards, the city’s ultra-luxury development. The lights dimmed, flared, dimmed again. A bad sign. If the power died for the city’s richest and most famous, everyone else was screwed, too.
“Let’s take the cruiser,” the assassin said, and slid down the flank of the RV to the street, which was flooded to mid-shin, slick with oil and filled with paper and cans and other debris. Fiona dropped beside him, unslinging the submachine gun as she circled around the passenger side of the police cruiser.
The windows were smashed into milky cataracts. She opened the door, revealing two cops slumped in their seats, the baggy mess of an airbag sagging from the steering wheel. She jabbed two fingers into the cool skin of the nearest cop’s neck. Strong pulse.
“Wha?” the cop murmured, awakened by the harsh touch. His nameplate said ‘PEMBRY.’
“Are you okay?” Fiona reached across him to check the pulse of the other cop, whose nameplate said ‘LAWRENCE.’ Another strong heartbeat. Ah, these young guys, full of muscle and vigor.
Officer Lawrence’s eyes fluttered open. “Fu…”
“Stay there,” Fiona said, pulling the cops’ service weapons from their holsters. Unloaded and pocketed the clips, kicked the empty weapons into the flood.
“RV driver’s dead,” the assassin said, reappearing at her side. The door shielded them from the wind, but Fiona needed to brace her spine against the handle to keep it open.
Officer Pembry’s eyes opened, unfocused, drifting from Fiona to the assassin to the cracked dashboard. “Who’re you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Fiona said. “Are you okay?”
Officer Pembry’s shaking hand fumbled for the radio clipped to his shoulder. Hitting the button, he slurred, “Depot... hostage…”
“I don’t think that’s working, buddy,” the assassin said.
“What hostage?” Fiona asked. “Was it a guy in a suit? Dark hair, kind of suave?”
“’Kind of suave’?” The assassin snorted. “That’s no way to describe someone. What next? ‘He smelled like regret and too much vodka’?”
“Shut up,” she said, turning back to Officer Pembry. “What hostage?”
Officer Pembry nodded slowly. “Man in a suit. Dark hair. Kept… making… jokes.”
“Look,” the assassin said, pointing toward the cruiser’s rear. It was difficult to see more than a block through the overpowering rain, but the glow from the surrounding buildings illuminated what looked like a black tank without a turret crossing the intersection. Fiona thought it looked like an APC, one of those armored personnel carriers that patrolled the streets of Baghdad and Kabul before the Defense Department donated them to police forces across the country. Because nothing says community policing like a vehicle designed for heavy assaults.
If Bill was in there, they were getting away.
“Gotta call it in,” Officer Pembry burbled, hands slapping his seatbelt. He was groggy, but for how much longer? “Gotta—”
“Easy, buddy,” Fiona said.
Officer Lawrence stirred again, rubbing his head, and asked, “What’d we hit?”
“An RV,” Fiona said, and when the cop turned toward her, offered him a dead-eyed stare. “Some people were hurt on that RV.”
Officer Lawrence was in better shape than his colleague, his eyes clearer. His attention locked on her gun. “Okay,” he said, nodding.
“You better check on them. You and your partner.”
“Okay,” Officer Lawrence said, nodding, as his door opened and the assassin reached in to grip his shoulder, levering him out of the vehicle and into the rain. The cop yelped, either in protest or because of the cold water.
As Fiona dragged out the cop closer to her, something flashed overhead—a twisted piece of metal, maybe a sign, warbling in the wind. Another few feet lower, and it might have sliced through them like a buzzsaw.
Fiona left the assassin to escort the two cops into the relative shelter of the RV as she slid into the driver’s seat, annoyed at how her feet barely touched the pedals. She tried adjusting the seat, but it refused to move. The impact must have broken the mechanism.
“Do you need a box?” the assassin asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
“Shut the fuck up,” Fiona said. Throwing the car into reverse, she stood on the gas, concerned about the engine’s rattling roar but downright worried about the cracked, leaking windows. Zero visibility out there. At least they were looking for a tank—hard to miss one of those on empty streets, right?
“You know where they’re going, right?” the assassin asked.
At the intersection, Fiona braked, shifted, and steered the car east. “North Brother Island, if we don’t catch them in time.”
And then every light in Manhattan flickered out.
TWENTY
Five minutes into their bumping APC ride across the city, Bill started praying none of these cops had decided to down a heavy protein load within the past five hours. A fart or belch would linger in the tiny space forever, trapped by layers of steel and whatever other taxpayer-funded space-age polymers the Pentagon inserted into these vehicles.
Bill thought about cracking a joke to that effect—“Please, nobody toot.”—but the mood in the tight space was too grim. Sitting on the steel bench beside Soul Patch, Crew Cut seemed ready to pistol-whip anyone who opened their mouth. Next to Bill, Hardaway stared at her hands. Tattoo drove, a silhouette in the driver’s seat.
“You get your partner’s share,” Crew Cut told Hardaway, loud over the rain hammering the APC’s roof. “And don’t give me any kind of weepy shit. I know you hated him as much as we did.”
Hardaway shrugged. “What’s done is done.”
“That’s a girl,” Soul Patch offered. “Chances are good those goody two-shoes fucks are calling anyone they can raise on the radio.”
These cops are finished, Bill thought. Over. Everything they had, everything they spent their lives working for—vaporized as if it never existed. Sure, they might find this money on North Brother, but how far will it get them? A couple of years on the run? He had spent years on the run. It wasn’t any way to live.
Crew Cut turned to stare at Bill, as if trying to read his thoughts, and Bill looked away, toward Tattoo and the front of the vehicle. The view outside the windshield was nonexistent, a blur of water reflected by the headlights, but at least the vehicle’s weight made it impervious to the wind. They could roll over a sedan and barely feel it.
“I’m sorry about your partner,” Bill told Hardaway.
“Shut your mouth,” she snapped.
“No, I really am. He was a nice guy.” Bill used his most confidential tone: “He didn’t deserve to go out like that.”
“He made his choice.” She didn’t sound convinced.
I can’t flip her, Bill thought. There’s just not enough time to build a rapport, not with these guys standing right there. But if she stays angry at everyone, maybe it’ll slow down her reaction times when—
“It’s not going to work,” Hardaway said.
Bill startled. “Huh?”
“Whatever you’re planning.” She leaned back against the rumbling metal. “Just get us to the money, okay? Then we’ll let you go.”
Bill turned to Crew Cut. “You got a boat ready?”
Crew Cut nodded. “Made that call before we left.”
“Okay.” Bill said. “You know how I was on the run for a long time? Yeah, you do. You saw the file. I know how to get you fake IDs, everything you need to build a new life once you’ve got the money.”
“Shut up,” Soul Patch said.
“No, let him speak,” Crew Cut said.
“I know you don’t trust me,” Bill continued, warming to his theme. “But you know I have the right contacts. You’ve spent a lot of time on the street, you know what’s legit and what’s not. I’m not saying you couldn’t do it yourself, but I can help you get set up faster. And after this, you’ll need all the speed you can get.”
“We’ll think about it,” Crew Cut said, and Bill could sense his interest like an electric charge. It was exciting to worm your way into someone’s head, play with their emotions and their view of the world. Maybe I shouldn’t give up the con quite yet, Bill thought. Maybe this kind of thing is what I’m meant to do.
Just as long as you don’t get killed.
True, but that was always the problem, wasn’t it? If he survived this, and if he stayed true to the hustle, he’d need to figure out a way of life that involved less risk of violent death. Like internet fraud.
Up front, Tattoo grunted and twisted the wheel to the left. Bill tumbled across the narrow aisle, almost plowing into Hardaway. Above the constant rumble of rain on metal came another sound, a bone-shaking crackle that reminded Bill of rocks tumbling down a slope—
Through the windshield, a flicker of red and white, followed by a titanic wave of mud—
“Like back in Fallujah!” Tattoo yelped, spinning the wheel in the opposite direction. The APC jolted, rising until it pointed at the howling abyss of the sky. Through the tiny port above his head, Bill glimpsed gray boxes of some sort, a darting blur, maybe a panicked human—
“Whole damn building façade came down,” Soul Patch said, sounding almost awed.
The APC crested, dipped, and rumbled down the far side of a sudden hill. Bill’s stomach flipped. He guessed they had just climbed over a pile of fresh rubble. He hoped nobody was buried under it. The vehicle crashed onto the street hard enough to slam his tailbone into the bench.
“The eye is here soon,” Crew Cut muttered under his breath, his head darting like a bird as he tried to find a better view out of any of the windows. “It’s here soon, it’s here soon.”
Had the rain slackened a little? Impossible to tell. As the APC rumbled along, its headlights the only glow for at least several blocks around, Bill realized he’d rarely felt lonelier and more isolated than right now, surrounded by ten million people. He just hoped Fiona had figured out how to follow him. Baby, I’m not sure I can survive this on my own.
TWENTY-ONE
The drive was a nightmare. The cruiser’s engine performed better than Fiona had any right to expect, given the colossal amount of water pouring through the crumpled hood. It bucked and whined like a dying horse but still rolled them along at five miles an hour. Between the Manhattan blackout and the shattered windshield, the world was reduced to impenetrable murk. She had to steer by feel, jerking the wheel toward the middle of the street whenever her front bumper tapped the flank of a parked car.
“The APC,” Fiona said. “The depot the officer mentioned. Why would cops kidnap Bill?”
“Who knows?” the assassin shrugged, visibly irritated by the water spattering through a crimp in his door. “Makes as much sense as anything else.”
“I love my husband,” she said. “But he’s the world’s biggest shit magnet.”
The assassin snorted. “You two, you could have gone anywhere, right? Why stay here, in New York? Why not Capri?”
She shook her head. “We were planning on leaving. After we got new identities. Not just fake passports—the full package, work history, healthcare, pensions, everything.”
“Why? So you could play suburban housewife somewhere?”
She bashed the cruiser into the flank of yet another parked car, the fender crunching hard enough for her to feel through the steering wheel. Damn. She eased back into the middle of the street again, hoping the fender wasn’t loose. If it sawed a tire, they were done. How far ahead was the APC? Two avenues? Three?
“Sorry,” the assassin said, mistaking her silence for irritation. “That was cruel.”
“Not a suburban life,” she said. “Just the opportunity to start fresh. Really fresh.”
They reached the edge of Times Square. Not that she could see anything with all those garish billboards flicked off. The wind roared through empty space, rocking the cruiser on its springs, and—
Whack!
Something heavy bounced off the roof and spun away.
The assassin yelped.
Fiona pushed the gas, trying to use the power of positive thinking for once in her miserable life. Envisioning a street totally clear all the way to the East River except for a foot or two of water, no car wrecks or stalled ambulances or kids deciding to stunt a TikTok dance video in the middle of a disaster. Envisioning the APC with Bill no more than a block or two ahead of them, slowed by the storm. And if she could just catch up—
“Speaking as someone who knows a little bit about vicious ambushes,” the assassin said, “why don’t we head to North Brother? Intercept them?”
He was right. She knew it. The APC was too far ahead, with no way of powering this busted-up cruiser fast enough to catch a tank built for literally the worst conditions on Earth. For all she knew, Bill’s captors weren’t headed due east anymore. “It’s not the worst idea,” she said. “Except for the lack of a boat.”
“Didn’t Bill have a plan for a boat?”
“Yeah, one of his yahoo friends.”
“Call them.”
“What?”
“Do it. Promise them whatever it takes. If they’re a yahoo, they got a death wish. Trust me on that one. They’ll do it.”
Fiona’s fingers drummed the steering wheel. “Fine,” she said, pulling out her phone and flicking it on. Her face tense in the screen’s eldritch light. “Look at that, got signal.”
“It was meant to be.”
She dialed, put the phone on speaker, and slotted it into the dashboard. Two rings, a click, a burst of static resolving into a confused voice. Fiona launched into it, honey one moment and terrifying the next, playing Bill’s contact like a violin.
As they crept along, the rain slackened from Hurricane Force to something approaching Normal Thunderstorm. The eye was almost here, bringing a few hours of calmer weather with it.
The call ended. The assassin shook his head and whistled. “They rode it out in the Newtown Creek?”
“Guess they didn’t want to leave the boat,” Fiona said, checking her watch. The guy on the phone had said twenty minutes. They had enough time.
“Surprised the boat isn’t kindling.”
“Good thing for us.”
Fifteen minutes later, they crested the downslope to the East River. The FDR was under two feet of water, threatening to float the cruiser as she pushed down the gas. They rumbled beneath the overpass and stopped before a line of concrete barriers separating the road from the piers and ferry crossings studding the Manhattan coastline.
“That them?” the assassin asked, pointing beyond the CitiBike dock at the edge of the overpass’s overhang. The rain slowed to a drizzle, the bruised clouds swirling above. Their cracked windshield framed two human silhouettes at the edge of the ferry landing.
“Yeah,” she said, unlocking her seatbelt.
“Tell me more about these guys.”
“Old friend of Bill’s. Runs guns. He’s odd, but what else is new? Not sure how well Bill knows the ship captain, but he’s lunatic enough to give us a ride in this.”
She put her shoulder to her door, opening it. There was six inches of water on the roadway but none on the pier side of the concrete barriers. Maybe the city’s years of expensive storm-mitigation efforts had actually paid off. The assassin climbed over the barriers first, his hand in his jacket.
The two figures stepped forward, their features swimming from the murk. The tall and cadaverous one in the long purple raincoat was obviously an assistant or bodyguard of some sort, and she recognized the other, squat one as Max, but…
Well, Max had something over his face. A mask composed of mirror shards. As they approached, he said, with a slight accent, “Keep your phones in your pockets.”
“Done,” Fiona said. “Thanks for meeting with us.”
“You are very lucky I live up the street.” Max removed his mask, revealing a squarish blonde head, his thin mouth framed by a slight goatee. Despite the rain, he was dressed in a beautiful blue suit with some kind of silver piping. As they approached, she saw the piping was composed of little symbols—tiny Bitcoin icons, each of them no doubt hand-stitched at considerable expense.
“The boat’s just up there, Anthony is your captain,” Max said. “As Bill knows, he’s a good friend. He’s very capable, as he just proved by riding out the storm to this point. But it’s going to cost you.”
“Fine.”
A massive wave sloughed against the concrete walkway to their left, cresting in a towering burst of spray that almost reached the concrete barrier behind them. The finger-flick of an angry ocean. Fiona felt more than a little doubt about this operation. But what choice did they have?
“What are you supposed to be?” the assassin asked Max. “An escapee from the Matrix?”
“I actually represent a much longer and more distinguished line of cultural thought,” Max offered, his spine stiffening. “One that extends back to William Gibson and the publication of ‘Neuromancer,’ and projects forward to a new future embracing web three, extensive shifting of digital ownership, and a radical reimagining of the blockchain. Sartorially speaking, I’m trying to show how cryptocurrency and Bitcoin—”
