Rising Phoenix (48 page)

The shopkeeper looked at him blankly. Hobart raised the gun again and made a move toward him. The implied threat had the desired effect, and he began milling around the room, grabbing clothes, makeup, wigs, and elaborate-looking pads. Every few moments, he would look back thoughtfully, sizing up his customer.

It may not be the most dignified way to get out of the country, Hobart thought, but it seemed the safest. The FBI had sewn up the airports tight, but were looking for a Caucasian male. His friend in the forgery business could have him a fake passport and driver’s license in an hour. With a little luck, he would be on a plane tonight.

“If you could just come out here for a moment where the lights better.”

Hobart stepped back out into the front of the store and allowed the shopkeeper to walk slowly around him.

He was surprised when he felt a strong hand wrap tightly around his wrist.

Christ—a fucking hero.

He raised his free arm, preparing to slam his elbow into the man’s head, when he felt the unmistakable coldness of the barrel of a gun on the back of his neck.

“FBI, Mr. Hobart. You’re under arrest,” The nervousness had drained from the shopkeeper’s voice. In front of him, another man walked slowly from the bathroom, holding a lighter to a cigarette.

“Yeah, I liked this store best, too, John,” Mark
Beamon said, taking a drag on the cigarette. “Quiet part of town. Lots of empty storefronts.”

Hobart relaxed and dropped the gun. He allowed himself to be pushed face down on the floor and his arms to be pulled painfully behind his back. From his position on the floor he could only see to Beamon’s knees.

It took a full two seconds for Hobart’s mind to process what had happened.

The young agent, who a moment before had been pushing a pair of handcuffs to his wrists, was lying face down on the dirty shop floor next to a blackened mannequin. Both man and model bristled with countless shards of glass, brick, and wood.

Hobart scanned the room, finally spotting Mark Beamon through the quickly dispersing smoke and swirling dust. Beamon was struggling to sit up, apparently oblivious to the bullets flying overhead. He looked a little groggy, but hadn’t sustained any obvious injuries. The brunt of the blast had been taken by his partner.

Hobart rolled carefully onto his back, ignoring the sharp debris beneath him. Most of the front of the store was gone. There was no sign of the large picture window that a few moments before had displayed the shop’s costumes, except on the floor around him. What was left of the window’s wood frame was burning.

The ringing in Hobart’s ears was beginning to subside as he rolled back onto his stomach and began
slithering toward a sturdy-looking island of cabinets in the center of the room. He kept his chin close to the floor, lifting his eyes occasionally to watch reddish explosions erupt from the back wall as bullets slammed into the old brick. At least one per second he estimated—standing and making a break for it wasn’t an option.

Beamon was on his stomach now, moving across the room toward his partner, the human pin cushion. He passed within a few feet of Hobart, still too dazed to realize the young agent was dead.

Hobart stopped for a moment, laying his cheek on the floor and watching Beamon struggle across the room. He remained motionless for a few moments, waiting for a bullet to catch Beamon in his ample side and flip him over.

He sighed quietly when Beamon began splashing through the puddle of blood that was starting to flow across the uneven floor, finally reaching the man and beginning a futile search for a pulse on what was left of his neck. Hobart started back for the cabinets, astounded at Beamon’s charmed existence.

It seemed to take forever, but Hobart finally managed to slip behind the island. Remaining on his back for a moment, he examined the cabinets carefully. When he was satisfied that no bullets were penetrating, he sat up and cradled the gun that he had found on the trip across the floor. It was a .45 automatic, not unlike the one he usually carried. He pulled the lever back and examined it for damage and debris. It looked good.

Mark Beamon’s faculties were beginning to return
to him as he reached his partner, though he wasn’t entirely grateful. If there was ever a situation where ignorance was bliss, this was it. The front of the store was missing, and it seemed as if half the population of North Baltimore had picked up machine guns and were now busying themselves trying to knock a similar hole in the back of the building. And to make matters worse, Bobby had definitely seen better days. The young agent’s unblinking eyes had gone a pinkish white from blood and the thick dust in the building.

Number thirty-five.

In less than a second, he’d gone from husband and father to the thirty-fifth name on the plaque commemorating agents killed in the line of duty. Bad trade.

Beamon turned and began crawling toward the heavy group of cabinets in the middle of the room. He put the image of his partner’s broken body out of his mind and began dealing with the problem at hand. Who the fuck had blown off the front of the building—and more important, who was shooting? And another interesting question—where was Hobart?

As Beamon came around the corner of the island, he felt a pistol barrel press against his cheek. Question number three answered.

He pushed himself into a sitting position and pressed his back against the cabinets. The gun barrel stayed with him.

“I saw a wet spot on the floor back there. I was hoping it was you,” Beamon shouted over the gunfire and the ringing in his ears.

Hobart shook his head “Thanks to you, I had the best seat in the house when the front blew.”

Beamon sighed and slumped further against the cabinets, reminded of the corpse in the middle of the room. He reached into the breast pocket of his suit, ignoring the increased pressure of the gun barrel on his cheek, and pulled out a small cellular phone.

“Do you mind?” he said pushing the pistol away from his face. “We can settle our differences later.”

Hobart looked at him suspiciously for a moment and then lowered the gun.

Beamon flipped open the cell phone and dialed Laura, who was coordinating the SWAT team that was supposedly backing him up. She picked up on the first ring.

“Laura! Guess who? Why are you letting people shoot at me?”

The answer was unintelligible.

“You’re gonna have to speak up, hon. I can’t hear too well,” Beamon yelled, pressing the phone to his right ear until it hurt, and sticking a finger in his left one.

“Mark! Are you okay? Most of the front of the building’s gone!”

“Yeah, I’m fine, but that’s not gonna last.”

“We’ve got twenty or thirty mostly Hispanic males out here, Mark. They’re armed to the teeth. Looks like at least one of them’s got a grenade launcher.”

Beamon looked over at Hobart, who was trying to get a glimpse of what was happening out front. “My male ego wouldn’t be bruised if you were to come in here and rescue me.”

“I’m sorry, Mark, but there’s no way I can approach your position—it’s too wide open. The good news is that our Hispanic friends can’t, either. Looks like
they’re planning to just stay put and wait to get lucky.”

Beamon watched a particularly large chunk of the cabinet island that they were hiding behind fly over his head and bounce off the brick wall in front of him. “At the rate my cover is disintegrating, they’re gonna get lucky sooner rather than later, Laura. I’m open to suggestions.”

“They probably have orders to see John Hobart dead. If you can, toss his body out where they can see it—they’ll probably take off.”

Beamon scowled. “Easier said than done. Is the alley in back of the building clear?”

“Last time I heard.”

“You’re a real confidence builder.”

Beamon flipped the phone shut and stuffed it back into his jacket. “It seems that there are some South American gentlemen out there who’d like to speak with you.”

Hobart pulled back against the cabinets. “Can’t really see anything. Doesn’t look like anyone’s on the street, though.” He looked up. “What do you think about a truce until we get out of here?”

Beamon chewed his lip. He had been about to suggest the same thing. John Hobart was a sadistic sociopath—of that there was no doubt. But, while you wouldn’t want someone with those failings to marry your daughter, they weren’t bad allies in a gunfight. Beamon nodded almost imperceptibly. “Truce.”

Hobart seemed satisfied with that, and popped the clip out of his gun for one last inspection. “You got any ideas, Mark?”

“Going out the front ain’t gonna happen.”

Beamon motioned with his head to the archway that led to the back of the store. It was fifteen long feet away.

“If we can make it through there, there’s a back door that opens out onto an alley.”

Hobart nodded slowly. “If they’ve got guys on the roof, we won’t last very long in an alley.”

Beamon shrugged. “We won’t last long here.”

Hobart considered this for a moment, a thin smile spreading across his face. “You first.”

Reluctantly, Beamon rose to a crouched position and backed far enough away from the edge of the cabinets to give himself room to build up some speed before leaving his cover. Hobart edged to the other side. “On three, Mark. One. Two. Three.”

As he sprinted toward the back room, Beamon heard Hobart’s gun begin to fire.

He landed rolling, finally coming to a stop when he hit a mannequin dressed like a turn-of-the-century Southern belle. It took him a few seconds of thrashing to untangle himself from the elaborate hoop skirt.

He walked back to the archway and pressed himself against the wall. Hobart was already up and crouched, ready to spring.

Beamon held up his hand and extended his index finger. One. He put up his middle finger. Two. Ring finger. Three.

As Hobart shot across the room, Beamon fired through the gaping hole that used to be the front of the building, deliberately aiming low to prevent injuring any of his own men. Hobart moved like lightning,
making it through the archway in half the time it had taken Beamon. He also had managed to stay on his feet and come to a graceful stop at the back door.

“You first this time,” Beamon said, taking a position to the right of the door. Hobart gave a short nod, grabbed the knob, and threw the door open.

Beamon tensed and pressed himself harder against the wall, expecting a flurry of ballets to come bursting into the room. Nothing. He peered out into the alley as Hobart moved silently through the doorway. It was empty except for a cat lying in the middle of a discarded toilet lid. The animal looked at them through bored, city-bred eyes, oblivious to the sound of gunfire echoing eerily off the weathered brick walls of the alley.

Hobart signaled “all clear” and began running lightly through the puddle-strewn alley. Beamon loped after him.

They broke out onto a wider, though equally deserted, road, crossing it quickly and slipping into another narrow back street.

They crossed three more streets that way, putting a reasonable distance between them and what Beamon guessed was a group of Luis Colombar’s attack dogs. Despite their slow, careful pace, Beamon felt as though his heart was going to dislodge itself from his chest and skitter off to find a more sedentary home. The image was almost enough to make him laugh.

Hobart, who was about twenty-five yards ahead, slowed to a walk and then turned. Beamon stopped short, keeping the distance between them.

“Sounds like your boys are cleaning things up,
Mark,” Hobart said in a conversational tone. The acoustics of the alley made it sound like he was only a few feet away.

Beamon cocked his head to the side, listening intently. He hadn’t noticed that the gunfire had slowed almost to nonexistence. It sounded like microwave popcorn right before you pulled the bag out of the oven.

“Looks like our truce is about over,” Hobart said.

Beamon slowly brought his gun to waist level and stuffed it in the front of his pants. He hoped that the nonaggressive gesture would keep things from getting out of hand until he had time to think the situation through.

“Looks that way.”

He pulled a cigarette from a pack in his jacket and lit it, surprised that his hands didn’t shake. “Why’d you do it, John?”

“Why do you think?” Hobart said, following Beamon’s lead and stuffing his .45 in his belt.

Beamon relaxed a little. “God and country?”

Hobart laughed. “No, I guess I just wanted to see if I could.”

Beamon exhaled, watching the slight breeze dissolve the cigarette smoke.

“So how do you want to play it, Mark?”

“I guess I’d like you to throw that pistol on the ground and put your hands on top of your head.”

Hobart shook his head. “I don’t think so. Tell you what. Why don’t you just turn around and walk away. No one would blame you for letting me get away, with all that shit going on.”

Beamon took another drag from his cigarette. “I’d blame myself.”

Hobart shook his head again, looking at the ground. “Then I’ll ask you again. How do you want to play it?”

Beamon looked around him. The alley was only about ten feet across—barely wide enough to drive a car through. There were a few windows in the brick buildings that lined the little street, but they were all at least six feet off the ground and covered with chicken wire. A Dumpster overflowed with boxes of rotting vegetables eight feet in front of him and three feet to the side.

There weren’t a hell of a lot of choices. A running gunfight was out of the question—too athletic. Hobart moved with the speed and grace of a college track star and he didn’t even look winded from their cross-town run. Beamon’s knees felt like they were full of gravel, and his heart was still considering vacating his chest cavity.

The Dumpster was interesting. He could dive behind it, leaving Hobart out in the open. But what would be the point of that? Hobart was only about thirty feet from the mouth of the alley and would be long gone by the time Beamon finished pulling the lettuce out of his ears.

That didn’t leave much.

Beamon dropped his cigarette on the ground and crushed it with the toe of his shoe. Hobart was standing with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Beamon hoped he didn’t feel as relaxed as he looked.