Bargain With the Devil: A Historical Espionage Thriller, page 23
Avakian stood there with his mouth open. Totally blindsided. Hustled to the accompaniment of the musical beat called township funk, which was playing from someone’s blaster nearby.
“I’d give them those bank codes, double quick,” the RSM advised in lieu of farewell. And after a pause in response to Avakian’s silence, “Aren’t you going to threaten to kill me?”
Avakian gave a bit of a startled twitch and turned to him, actually grateful for having his focus restored. “I don’t think I’m going to have the time.”
The passenger door slammed shut and the SUV took quite a few points to turn around in the narrow road.
One of the gangsters gave Avakian a hard shove toward their leader. Who was arrogant and pleased with himself, his hands on his hips and an automatic pistol stuck in the front of his black jeans. Mid twenties with a pair of flashy chrome-framed sunglasses perched atop a black do-rag. Immaculate white top-of-the-line basketball sneaks. And a green t-shirt with some kind of motif that Avakian couldn’t make out in the darkness.
Avakian didn’t need to bother about acting stunned—he already had sufficient motivation, thank you very much. He measured off the distance as he approached the leader, flanked by the two drug runners. This was not the time to wait and see how the situation would develop. One thing was certain: the situation wouldn’t be developing any better for him.
When he was about fifteen feet from the leader Avakian transitioned from a dejected trudging into a flat-out charge, taking his escorts by surprise and leaving them behind. The leader’s expression changed just as abruptly from smirk to shock.
Avakian swung his hands out from behind his back, the still-handcuffed left in a wide arc to whip the metal cuffs across the leader’s eyes. A yell as they struck him, and his hands instinctively went up to his eyes. As they collided and went down together Avakian grabbed for the pistol in the man’s belt.
Nothing to do but see if South African gunmen kept their pistols loaded. Avakian jerked it out, thumbed the safety forward, aimed upward toward the heart, and pulled the trigger. The pistol fired, provoking a grunt of pain. The leader went limp.
Someone jumped onto his back. Avakian twisted around violently, catching the man in the side of the head with his left elbow at the same time he jammed the pistol into the ribcage and fired again. Another body leaped onto the pile and grabbed for the pistol. Pinned to the dirt by all the weight, Avakian kept the pistol tight against his side so it couldn’t be pried away and threw a left-handed stiff arm at the head in front of him to try and gain a little separation. Avakian had him by the throat and the guy was clawing with his hands and trying to bite him on the wrist. The outstretched arm held his assailant just far enough away for Avakian to swing his gun hand around the dead body that lay between them and shoot him in the side. An, “oof,” at the shot, but he was still fighting. Avakian stuck the pistol under the man’s jaw and fired again. The muzzle blast scorched his fingers but that fight was over.
A lot more people were shooting now. Avakian pushed and kneed the bodies off himself but stayed on his belly and stayed behind them. They were his only cover in the middle of the road.
Flashes from at least two pistols farther down. Someone had turned off the work light in the container. This was no time to be getting into a firefight, not without even knowing how much ammunition remained in the pistol he was holding. Or crank off a couple of feel-good rounds whose muzzle flash would only pinpoint his location to everyone. He patted down the bodies in front of him and found a short barrel revolver. Could have been used to blow his head off, but it was amazing what people forgot all about in high-stress situations.
A figure ran right by him. Probably from the container. Unarmed and trying to get clear. The pistols farther down the road went to a faster rate of fire and the shotgun opened up, all shooting at that poor fool. Who went down in mid stride and crumpled onto the road.
While that was happening Avakian sprang up and ran for the moving truck parked in front of the cannabis storage container. He leaped onto the front bumper, scrambled across the hood, and continued up the windshield. He was atop the cab when the shotgun fired again. Two quick blasts and he heard the pellets thudding into the metal below him. If you didn’t aim you could miss just as easily with a shotgun as anything else.
From the top of the cab Avakian vaulted onto the truck roof, sprinting down the length of it and leaping across the four foot gap onto the top of the container. In mid air someone inside the container took a shot at him and he felt the bullet pass through his jacket. He landed with an echoing bang of metal and was instantly back on his feet and running for the end of the container.
Standing on the edge, Avakian took a look down. A family courtyard behind a shack, the entire space about the size of a maximum security jail cell. He jumped and did a parachute landing fall onto the sand. Closed in by corrugated metal on all three sides, with a couple of beaten plastic lawn chairs stacked up in one corner. He tucked the pistol under his arm and fumbled around in his pocket for the handcuff key. It was good to finally get that dangling bracelet off his left wrist. The gunfire had dogs barking frantically all over the neighborhood.
Dropping the cuffs onto the sand, Avakian readied the pistol and kicked open the flimsy wooden back door of the shack. Total pitch darkness. He reached under his belt buckle and tore out the mini butane lighter he’d taped there. Holding it arm’s length from his body in case it became someone’s aiming point, he sparked up.
God. Dirt floor. Beds against every wall. Furniture hammered together from scrap shipping crates. The poor family was huddled up in the corner, Mom protectively out in front of the kids, trying to hide them from whatever danger he represented. Well, at least they were hiding instead of everyone attacking him with kitchen knives to protect the homestead. Avakian just held the pistol up to his lips for silence. Not saying a word, he picked his way across the shack to the front door.
Lighter off, he opened the door to reveal a much narrower lane. Foot traffic only. One thing about regular gunfire in a neighborhood, it kept the prudent indoors.
He eased the door shut behind him and crept down the lane, staying in the shadows close to the shacks. A streetlight poked up over the roofs a short distance away and he used that for orientation. Where there was a streetlight there as a street.
In a pool of light it cast he removed the magazine from his pistol and counted out the rounds inside. Eleven in the magazine and one in the chamber. Only five in the revolver in his pocket.
At the end of the was a packed dirt street, wide enough for cars. Bunch of people hanging around. Well, run across and attract everyone’s attention or walk across. He walked.
Three steps out into the street someone yelled what sounded like, “Mlungu!” More voices rose up, and then, “Fumana! Fumana!”
People came pouring out of the darkness, and Avakian ran for his life. He sprinted across the street and into the nearest lane he could see.
Yeah, they were criminal scumbags but the whole neighborhood would try to kill him because he was a stranger, and he was different. And that was just the way the world worked, no sense crying about it.
Avakian knew his best time in the sprint wouldn’t outpace a bunch of teenage South African track stars. He skidded to a stop at the next bend and waited. Not long. The mob came pounding up only seconds later.
It was a little known fact that most soldiers were terrible pistol shots, as were most cops. As Avakian advanced through the ranks of the Army and found himself more frequently armed with only a pistol, he made sure he mastered the weapon. He shot in International Defensive Pistol Association matches whenever he was in the States, but he was a bit rusty lately.
The mob’s point man was carrying a handgun. Avakian also saw a few pangas, African machetes. He leaned out over the corner and sprang his ambush, firing until the point man dropped. The mass of people came to a screeching halt, everyone falling over everyone else. Avakian fired continuously across the width of the lane, shifting from one target to another. By the time his ammunition ran out the stream of humanity had fled in the opposite direction, everyone in the back running for the lives and pulling the rest along with them.
Six bodies were splayed across the lane, some of them groaning. Avakian trotted up and retrieved another automatic pistol from the dirt, checking the chamber and magazine. This one was an issue South African military Beretta copy with a full 15-round magazine.
A couple of single pistol shots rang out behind him. Signal shots? That wasn’t such a bad thing. Periodic gunfire would make it hard to zero in on him if he had to do some more shooting.
Don’t dawdle, he told himself. He didn’t know the neighborhood, and the only thing that would keep them from encircling him was continuous movement. The rules were pretty simple. Always move unexpectedly, and never in a straight line. Never try to hide—always keep moving. If you let yourself get halted or pinned down you’re dead.
The lane ended in a corrugated metal fence. Avakian grabbed an open edge and yanked the sheet of metal off the post. He ducked through the gap and found himself in a slightly larger backyard than the first. A dark blur shot out of the darkness at him. Avakian fired instinctively and there was a loud yelp. Shit. The poor dog was just doing his job. A window curtain moved and Avakian dropped into a shooting crouch. A face appeared in the window. A little boy. Avakian let the muzzle fall. I’m sorry I shot your dog, son.
A new noise attracted his attention. At the far end of the yard was a line of chicken coops, individual cages stacked one on top of the other. Cramped as the quarters the humans around here occupied. But at least there was only one chicken per cage, to keep them from pecking each other to death.
Avakian stuck the pistol in his pocket and climbed up the stack of cages. He had his hands on top and went to push himself up when one hand went right through the flimsy wood and down into the cage. The top row collapsed and he lost his footing. Terrified chickens came shooting out at him like feathery missiles, squalling hysterically.
He landed hard on the ground, spitting out chicken fluff and manure. The shack door opened and a man came rushing out, shouting and brandishing a shovel. Avakian fired a shot over his head. That made the chicken farmer think twice about things and he scrambled back inside.
Avakian took a run at the fence and used the collapsed coop to boost himself up. A couple of kicks and he was over and into another lane.
Move, move. He trotted down the lane. At the next turn he paused to peek around the corner. Nothing there, but he thought he heard footsteps behind him. He turned back to listen, but didn’t hear anything more. He trotted forward again, then stopped abruptly, cocking his ears. Yes, a couple of footsteps behind, then silence. Someone was there. Following him. Pacing him.
As soon as Avakian started moving again a young boy’s voice behind him shouted, “Uyaba!”
Avakian rushed back down the lane but the footsteps retreated away from him. More signal shots popped off in the distance.
Shit. Maybe he’d chased him off. He began to run. But behind him the boy’s breathless voice continued. “Uyaba! Uyaba!”
Avakian stopped. Both the trailing footsteps and the shouting stopped. He was frantic for another solution, but there wasn’t one. The bottoms of most of the shacks were lined with rocks. He grabbed one and sprinted for the next turn. The shouting resumed behind him. “Uyaba! Uyaba! Uyaba!”
As Avakian went around the corner he stopped but hurled the rock farther down the lane ahead. It clanged off a metal wall. He dropped to the ground and aimed the pistol around the corner. The footsteps behind him kept advancing and a moving shadow appeared down the lane before halting abruptly, perhaps sensing something. Before the shadow could disappear Avakian squeezed the trigger.
After the report of the shot died away there was the sound of a boy crying in pain. Avakian was instantly sick to his stomach. He pushed himself to his feet and ran away from the sound.
The lane ended in a wooden fence with a padlocked gate. Metal spike strips atop the fence. Avakian was preparing to shoot the lock off when he was stopped by the sound of a vehicle roaring down a nearby road. Lots of loud voices over the engine noise. Full of reinforcements?
He ran back down the lane and yanked a couple of pieces of laundry off a drying line. Winding them around his hands he leaped up on the fence and used the spike strips to pull himself up. Swinging up a leg, he wedged his shoe in between the spikes and threw himself over. On the way down his jacket caught on a spike. He dangled there for a few seconds, feet suspended a few embarrassing inches off the ground, before his weight ripped the cloth free.
Touching earth he threw the wraps off his hands and took up the pistol again. The wooden slat fence bordered the lane on both sides for about twenty feet before opening up onto another street.
Through the fence slats Avakian could see the intersection and a pickup truck just below the corner streetlight. The pickup was in fact full of armed men. Just stopped broadside to him and about to unload. He couldn’t let them get spread out.
With one knee on the ground and the frame of the pistol braced against the side of the fence, Avakian sighted in carefully. Always shoot the guy yelling orders first.
A careful trigger squeeze and the pistol bounced in his hand. The guy yelling orders dropped to the ground and Avakian fired much faster into the bed of the pickup. They definitely weren’t expecting this. Some fell, some ran.
He’d be out of ammo soon, so he quickly pulled the revolver out of his jacket pocket, stuck it in his waistband for a fast backup, and charged them.
Avakian advanced with both hands wrapped around the pistol, arms locked outstretched. As he came closer he could see from that new angle a gunman trying to drag another away. He shot them both. Another figure broke and ran. Avakian shot him in the back.
Approaching the front of the pickup a head popped up over the hood and Avakian snapped off a shot. His pistol slide locked back, the magazine empty. He dropped it and pulled the revolver from his waistband. There was no one in the cab. Facing the front of the pickup, he bent his torso to the right, briefly exposing himself to the other side of the vehicle. A terrified kid sitting next to the front wheel, holding his pistol sideways like in the movies, blazed away at him and of course missed. Avakian shot him in the head.
The tip of a shotgun barrel poked around the back of the pickup. Bad mistake. As soon as the owner’s head showed Avakian squeezed the trigger. The hammer clicked—the cartridge didn’t fire. The gunman swung around the back of the pickup, bringing his shotgun up. Avakian cycled the revolver trigger as fast as he could. Click. Click. The cylinder spun on the last round.
BANG! BOOM! The pistol fired—the shotgun fired. The gunman fell back and the shotgun blast hit the sand in front of Avakian’s feet, throwing up a shower of dust. Avakian dashed forward through the cloud, prepared to club him to death with the empty pistol, but the gunman was stretched out on his back, staring sightlessly up at the stars.
Avakian’s entire body was shaking involuntarily. Brazilian revolvers were notorious for light hammer hits, striking the cartridge primers too lightly to ignite them.
He knew from experience that the only thing that would stop the shaking was forcing himself to move, to do something. He began harvesting pistols from the ground, firing a couple of rounds to find two that worked and salvaging the ammunition from the rest. Fortunately South African gangbangers used 9mm automatics almost exclusively. The dead shotgunner had a few extra shells in his pocket. Avakian transferred them to his and tossed the sawed-off double barrel 12 gauge into the cab of the pickup.
Get out of here, he told himself. He abandoned his labors and jumped into the front seat of the pickup. Shit, no keys. Roaring under the adrenaline overdose that had set off the shaking in the first place, he was struck by indecision. Find something to rip open the steering column or frisk the bodies in the street for keys?
If he’d been able to watch himself he would have seen a man literally rocking back and forth in the front seat of a pickup as he tried to make up his mind. This little dance came to a halt when an automatic rifle opened up on him from across the street.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The fire drove Avakian across the cab of the pickup, out the other door, and into the street. One of the tires blew and he was showered with pieces of door window glass.
The shakes were gone. It seemed counterintuitive, but sometimes getting shot at again brought you back together.
His trained ear identified the sound of the bullets passing overhead. Not an AK-47. He’d been shot at by enough of those to know. Probably a stolen South African army weapon.
He reached back in the open door and grabbed the shotgun off the seat. Right, one barrel had already been fired at him. He broke it open and replaced that spent shell with a fresh one.
A shotgun against an automatic rifle wasn’t a good matchup. Avakian aimed it straight up in the air and fired. The streetlight blew out and the intersection was plunged into darkness. The next barrel was aimed a few feet over, into the transformer box on the light pole.
Right after that blast there was an eerie hum and then the box blew with an incredible shower of sparks. All the lights went out in the entire block. The same instant Avakian was on his feet and sprinting down the street. As he’d hoped, after that moment of surprise whoever was manning the automatic rifle picked himself up off the ground and resumed firing on the pickup truck.
Avakian ran down to the next intersection and paused to reload the shotgun and see if he was being chased. No one behind him. It was about time he had a little luck.
He clicked the shotgun action closed and began looking around for another lane when he had the sudden revelation that his strategy sucked. Sneaking around these dead-end lanes would not only take all night, it would give his pursuers more than enough time to get organized. Every time he had an unfortunate encounter with a local they could run a vehicle down a side street to cut him off, just like before. Not to mention that there was no guarantee he could continue to survive firefights and pick up new weapons all night long.
