Survivalist - 23 - Call To Battle (16 page)

The interior of the store was tailor-made for an ambush, a box canyon, but manmade.

Angie was talking, but evidently not for Annie’s benefit, but so that Tim and Ed Shaw would clearly understand that the hoped for robbery or mugging attempt was happening. “Do you think those men who are so close behind us want to hurt us, Annie?”

“Could be. What a yucky-looking store, and right here in the middle of the block. You’d think they’d do something about it, whoever owned it. Let’s see if we can find the owner.”

“The owner of the store? Thafs a good idea,” Angie enthused with admirable dramatic fervor.

They were halfway along the store’s length now and as Annie looked back she saw the six men from the street, two of them standing in the doorway, the other four walking after them. And when she made eye contact with one of them, first that man then the other three started whistiing, shouting, “Hey, chickie! Wanna party? Or you jus’ wanna gimme all your money and jewelry and clothes and maybe I don’ touch you, huh?”

There was laughter, dirty-sounding.

From deep within her, memories surfaced, of a helicopter ride more than one hundred twenty-five years ago with a man from the Eden Project who was really a Soviet agent, a man who’d bound her into the seat of the helicopter and much later tried to rape her.

She shivered.

As she looked ahead, she saw that Angie was stopped dead in her tracks, bare hands in the air. Annie sidestepped so she could look around Angie. Poking out from between two stacks of boxes was an energy rifle, a pair of enormous hands holding it and a skinny upper body and animal-like race. “You bitches move, I

blow your fuckin’ heads right off. All I’d screw myself outa’s the earrings and I could live with it.”

This couldn’t be part of Angie’s plan, to have someone get the drop on her. Even if Inspector Shaw and his son arrived in only a minute, both of them could be dead by then.

“Let go of the purse,” the man with the energy rifle ordered Annie.

“This purse?”

“Let go o’ the fuckin’ purse!”

Annie glanced over her shoulder. The four men who’d entered the store after them were fewer than a dozen feet away, but no weapons drawn. Annie said, “So, I’ll let go of the purse.” She let it fall away, twist-drawing the little Firestar from inside the waistband of her skirt, wiping down the ambidextrous safety with her left thumb as she shouted to Angie, “Hit the floor!” and fired.

Tim Shaw heard the shot and kept running, his ear ringing with the sound. The listening devices both women wore were ultrasensitive and Shaw ripped the plug from his ear before another shot deafened him.

He glanced across the street. Ed was running diagonally from the corner, gesturing wildly with his left hand toward the store front at the center of the block, Ed’s .45 in his right hand.

Tim Shaw was about a minute ahead of his son, nearly to the front of the store now, his own .45 coming into his fist, his badge in his left hand, clipping it to his belt. “Police! Outa the way, damnit!” People spread away from him in waves, to right and left as Shaw’s feet hammered the last few yards of pavement toward the store front. He thumbed back the Colt’s hammer.

He saw a face peer out then pull back.

There were more shots from inside the building.

As Shaw started to slow, two men darted from the front of the store, one of them holding an energy pistol, the other holding a knife.

Shaw stabbed the .45 toward the one with the energy pistol and shot him twice in the back, sending him sprawling face-first into the gutter. If the bullets didn’t kill the guy, Shaw thought, the stuff floating around in the gutter sure would. The one with the knife kept rabbiting into the street.

Shaw shouted to his son, “Eddy! Get the little bastard!”

“Right!”

“Got a shiv! Be careful!” Shaw shouted, reaching the store front, pulling a loaded spare magazine from under his jacket, clamping it tight in his teeth.

Shaw dropped into a crouch, trying to take advantage of what litde cover there was below the level of the plate glass and the gratings as he charged the doorway. People in Sugar Street were running everywhere, the few tourists here screaming or shouting, the locals just escaping.

More gunfire emanated from within the store.

Shaw edged forward toward the open doorway. Shots, directed toward him this time, the plate glass near him shattering, huge shards of it crashing downward. Shaw could stay where he was and risk getting cut in half or try to make it inside without taking a bullet. He ran inside, firing his .45, aiming high so he wouldn’t hit Mrs. Rubenstein or Angie.

Shaw hit the floor behind some crates and dropped to his knees, buttoning out the partially spent magazine up the butt of the pistol and replacing it with the one clamped in his teeth. “Police! Throw down your weapons, damnit!”

“Fuck you!”

Shaw shrugged his shoulders.

He heard Angie’s voice, shouting, “Tim! Four guys in here! Got us-” Gunfire again, rapid and heavy Shaw screwed his hat down tighter on his head. Angie shouted again. “Got us pinned down, but we’ve got the back door cut off.”

“Fuckin’ wonderful,” Tim Shaw said under his breath “We got ‘em trapped.”

Shaw thumbed up the safety on the Colt, setting it down onto the floor beside him, pulling the little three-inch barreled Centennial out of the pocket of his raincoat. He shifted the revolver into his left hand, putting the .45 back into his right. He thumbed down the Colt’s safety. “All right you guys, listen up. We can do this the easy way or the hard way; don’t mean shit to me! All I want’s information. You gimme what I want, you drop your weapons, you walk.

You don’t, you might die. What’s it gonna be? I don’t have all day, huh!”

Nothing for a few seconds. Then the same guy who’d shouted, shouted again. “Yo, cop!” “Yo, shithead! Whatchya want?” “What information ya want?”

“I gotta talk with a schmuck by the name of Yuri. Know him?” “Never heard of him!”

Tun Shaw shrugged his shoulders, called back, “Gee, that’s too bad, ya know. Now I’m gonna have to kill all you guys, ya know? What a bummer, huh?!”

“Hey, dad!”

Tim Shaw shot a glance toward the doorway and the sound of the voice. Behind what litde cover there was, he saw Ed, a .45 in his fist, his right knee on the neck of the guy who’d rabbited out of the store, the guy’s hands cuffed behind him.

“Way to go, Eddy!” Shaw shouted to his son. Then he turned his head and shouted toward the interior of the store: “The reinforcements are here, guys. Start rememberin’ Yuri or start gettin’ whacked. What time you had just ran out.”

It was as if everyone waited for a beat. The only sounds were the street noises, and those far away, outside of the building, the street as empty as a ghost town in an old western movie.

In about another thirty seconds, there’d be sirens; in about two minutes there’d be uniformed cops. Tim Shaw needed at least a minute to get the information he wanted and then let these guys walk if they played ball.

Then the same voice came back: “Whatchya wanna know about Yuri, cop?”

“His favorite fragrance so I can buy him a gift, asshole! Throw your piece out and get your buddies to do the same, then stand up, hands up and where I can see you guys. Then ya tell me what I wanna know and ya walk. Not before.”

Without exposing himself to hostile fire more than he had to, Shaw could see most of the corridor between the crates, almost all the way back to the rear of the store. And he saw a gun-just a regular, good old-fashioned gun and not an energy pistol-skate across the floor and come to a stop against a packing crate.

Then there was another one, just like the first. Both Lancers, either stolen from an armory or from a well-off citizen; punks like these didn’t buy guns, at least not from legitimate gunshops. There came an energy pistol, then another energy pistol and an Eden bayonet.

Tm touched, guys,” Shaw said “Step out with your hands up. Mrs. Rubenstein, Angie-keep ‘em covered.”

“We got ‘em, Tim!” Angie called back.

Shaw could see the four men now, coming out, hands high over their heads. If he hadn’t given his word, he would have popped them and rid the world of four scumbags. But he shrugged his shoulders and stepped into the litde corridor between the boxes and crates, a handgun in each fist. Sirens were growing louder on the air. “So, before I forget my part of this, tell me where to find Yuri. And if you guys aren’t makin’ tracks before the uniform guys get here, there’s no deal. So, talk fast.”

“Yuri’s over on Maui, man, with his litde sister; she’s real sick.”

“And you give me a pain in the ass, junior,” Shaw said, grinning. He walked up to the one who’d talked, a man of about twenty or so, his hair so greasy-looking it shined, his trousers so tight they looked like they were spray painted on. Shaw laid the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson up against the man’s right temple. “Play it straight and you walk; lie to me and if I don’t catch it now and blow ya away, I’ll hunt ya down and do it then. You can’t hide from me, not ever, got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.”

“Where’s Yuri-and just so we don’t labor under any misapprehensions here, the Yuri I want is the guy who sells designer drugs and is all pals with the Nazis. That Yuri. Know him?”

“Yeah, man.”

Tm old enough to be your father, God forbid. Don’t call me man. “Yes, sir.”

“Better. Where’s Yuri?”

“1322 Lanai Avenue, apartment 63.”

“Truth?”

“So help me, man-sir!”

Shaw flexed his fist on the butt of the Smith & Wesson. “One

other little thing. This goes for all four you guys, right? I ever catch any of you tryin’ a mugging again, you go down; not to some luxury jail cell, either. You really go down, six feet under good old Hawaiian soil. We understand each other?” “Yes, sir.”

“Get into a job training program or somethin’-just get outa my life.” Shaw lowered the revolver and looked past the four toward Annie Rubenstein and Angie. “Okay with you girls these guys split?”

Annie Rubenstein smiled, nodded her head. “Whatever, Tim,” Angie said.

“Step aside, ladies, and let these guys take a hike the back way.” Then he looked at the four. “You guys wanna do that?”

“Yes sir,” said the only one of the four who’d yet spoken.

“Remember. Let your consciences be your guides and if you cross me I kill ya. Hit the road.”

The four started edging away. One of them started to reach for his gun, but not in any way that was threatening. Shaw laughed, “Be serious, huh!”

As the four ran along the corridor between the rows of boxes, the sounds of the sirens got so loud they had to be just outside the front entrance. Shaw walked back toward the two women.

There was a dead man with an energy rifle in his fists, nested in some of the boxes, two neat bulletholes in him, one in the chest and one in the thorax. “Those shots were pretty close together. Microphone picked it up as one shot. Which one of you charming ladies, uh-“

Angie grinned and nodded her head toward Mrs. Rubenstein.

Tim Shaw just shook his head. “Angie, stay with Eddy and help him out. Mrs. Rubenstein, wanna come with me to 1322 Lanai, apartment 63?”

“I was hoping you’d ask.”

A gun in each hand, he nodded toward the rear of the store. “Shall we?” Once he found Yuri, he’d have a line on the Nazis that hit the school. He thought he should warn Mrs. Rubenstein, and as he slipped his revolver away, the .45 in his left hand now, he said to her, “You realize you might be an accomplice to a killing?”

“A killing?”

He held the door for her as they entered the alley. Garbage and empty boxes were everywhere, but the four bad guys weren’t anywhere to be seen. “Well, Yuri isn’t exacdy your model citizen, and if I find out he knew about the school thing, well, he’d get a lawyer and eventually he’d walk because I don’t have any probablexause.”

“Then the law’s as screwed up as my father said it used to be in the Twentieth Century?”

“Ohh, no. But some people get around almost any law. Yuri’s one of those guys.”

“The killing thing?”

“Yeah?” Shaw responded.

“Only if you have to, huh?”

“Believe me, Mrs. Rubenstein, that’s the only way it’d ever go down. And I like your style lady.”

From the top of the catwalk, James Darkwood saw the true meaning of the word “revenge” more graphically than he could ever have imagined it. The men and women whom he had liberated from the cage were killing everyone on the lower level, shooting them or bludgeoning them to death, ripping clothes from the bodies of the dead to cover their own nakedness, running on.

Darkwood looked to the lower level only occasionally, his eyes and his weapon on the tunnel, waiting for the inevitable. He gave things another minute at the maximum.

And this time, as he turned to look over the catwalk, he shouted, “Lefs get out of here! Now! Tm leaving! Anybody who wants out with me comes now!”

To the casual observer, Darkwood realized his actions in freeing these captives might have appeared to be altruistic in nature. But they were not. Quite selfishly, he wanted to free those people because it would make him feel good to do so; and, any of these people he could get away with him might well provide highly valuable intelligence data concerning the experiments going on in Mixing Room Nine of Plant 234.

Darkwood took one last look back. People were already starting up the ladder for the catwalk. James Darkwood stepped into the tunnel, starting forward at a good pace, his energy rifle trained on the far end of the tunnel for that inevitable moment when the first security forces would come storming through.

He was almost right under the overhead hatch leading to the roof when the door at the far end of the tunnel opened.

It was too long a shot for an energy rifle, but Darkwood fired anyway and the door slammed shut. About another minute and they’d try again, probably with gas that the standard masks like the one Darkwood wore wouldn’t filter out. “Up here!” Darkwood shouted, gesturing to the ladder with his free hand. And then he started up the ladder. “And hurry!”

The going was slower, holding his weapon, just as it had been on the ladder leading up to the catwalk, but he felt better holding it. If the security people were good, there’d be a reception waiting for him and the escapees on the roof. He hoped the security people weren’t good.