Tiger (21 page)

TIGER STEPPED OUT OF THE BATHROOM AND approached Sweet, who was having a close, personal discussion with one of the local crime bosses. Tiger swept his right hand down by his hip, feeling the butt of the handgun there and reassuring himself again that he would be able to draw it quickly. He had covered half the distance to his target, Sweet, when the room went dark. It appeared the power outage was not restricted to the room they were in—the intense pulse of music from the rave downstairs had gone quiet as well.

Sweet's soldiers were young but they were also well trained—without panicking, they immediately produced at least half a dozen bright flashlights and gathered tightly around Sweet, surrounding him with a human shield that would make a shot at him almost impossible. The room came to life with sounds of radio communication, at least three of the boys holding walkie-talkies that they were now using to get a fix on the security situation. Tiger heard the word
generator
mentioned several times, with voices on the other end of the line saying that they were converging on the generator and would have it back on in just a few seconds.

Tiger stood his ground in the center of the room, with no choice but to hold off on his attack. The calm vigilance of Sweet's team turned to full alert when a barrage of gunfire rang out—four long autobursts from an assault rifle outside the building. The gunfire was followed by the sound of shattering glass and then loud, shrieking screams from the hundreds of partiers below, already half out of their minds with dope and now caught up in full panic.

“GO!!!” one of Sweet's security boys shouted. “EVERYONE MOVE!”

Tiger could only watch as the team hustled Sweet to the door and out of the room like a cadre of veteran Secret Service agents, following a key principle:
when in doubt, get the package out
. Tiger hadn't even come close to taking a shot. What would Divine be thinking at that moment? That Tiger had somehow tried to cross him?

If so, Wally was as good as dead.

Shit!

The local bosses stayed close to Sweet and raced away also, with one security man staying until everyone was out. The kid—hyperalert and twitchy—motioned for Tiger to exit in front of him, and Tiger hurried to the door as if obeying the command. At the last second, he pulled up short and crouched low, delivering a surprise punch to the kid's solar plexus. The kid dropped to the floor, out cold.

Tiger snatched away his assault rifle and flashlight.

What next? Sweet was probably halfway out of the factory already, on his way to his waiting helicopter. Should Tiger hurry after him and try to take a shot? He'd never be able to get close enough. Unless . . . if someone were able to disable Sweet's helicopter, the target would be grounded, and Tiger would be back in play. Tiger had to do something to let Divine know that he was still in the hunt and trying to fulfill his part of the deal.

He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, realizing that he had never actually completed the first text he'd been instructed to send—the one confirming that he was in position and ready to carry out the hit. Now he erased the first message and entered a new one as quickly as he could:
Target on the move. Take out helicopter and I will find a way to finish
. Tiger was about to press the “send” button but paused. Something was bothering him—the same feeling that had stopped him from sending his first text message earlier.

The confirmation text didn't really make sense—it was an extra moving part in the operation that served no real purpose. Why would Divine need to know his position? From his spot on the nearby hilltop he would know right away whether or not Tiger had taken his shot on Sweet.

And then Tiger understood. In a moment of revelation, he remembered his first trip to the factory site with Rachel, how she had trekked down to the factory without him, a daypack slung over her shoulder. When she had returned to him on the hilltop, her pack was gone—she'd left it behind, somewhere inside the factory.

Tiger began sweeping the room with his flashlight, and it only took a moment to find the spot—the same location he would have chosen himself. The far wall of the room had a section that had been patched over several times, so one more piece of scrap board on the plaster would never be noticed. Tiger moved to the spot and used all his strength to pull away the board, which had been secured with four or five rusty old nails. In the empty spot behind it sat Rachel's backpack.

Very carefully, Tiger pulled the pack out and set it on the floor. He unzipped the pack and found what he already knew would be there: somewhere between fifteen and twenty pounds of plastic explosives, with a cell phone attached to a detonator.

Of course. Once Tiger had been seen entering the tower, anything that happened after that could be blamed on him. He'd been told to confirm his arrival on the top floor with a text message, and sending it would have blown the entire factory tower off the map, probably killing hundreds of local party kids at the same time. Tiger would be dead, unable to tell his own version of the story.

Tiger shut off the power on the bomb's cell phone and zipped the pack up, tossing it over his shoulder—if Sweet had been slowed down on the way to his helicopter, the plastic explosives might be a weapon Tiger could use against him. Divine had schemed to blow Tiger up along with Sweet, but that didn't change the mission: if Tiger couldn't take out Sweet, Wally would pay the price.

With the bomb on his back and the assault rifle in his hands, Tiger charged out of the room. Racing down the tower's staircase, he arrived at the ground floor and was greeted by absolute chaos. Hundreds of drugged-up, half-naked teenagers were screaming at the top of their lungs and fighting each other to get out of the building in a primal frenzy of self-preservation. The crazed throng had knocked down several of the tiki torches as they rushed across the floor, the flames hitting the dry, old factory floor and setting it on fire, causing even more panic than the bursts of gunfire that had set off the stampede in the first place.

Tiger fought his way through the crowd and saw that a window on the east wall had been smashed, teenagers diving through it desperately and cutting themselves on the glass edges in the process. Tiger headed in the direction of the noise and launched himself out the window, nicking his face on the glass.

He raced toward the area inside the south fence where Sweet's helicopter was waiting. Before he could get anywhere near that spot, he heard the high-pitched turbine engines begin to whine and the rotors whirring to life. Within seconds he saw the sleek aircraft lifting off, fifty yards in front of him. Tiger shouldered his assault rifle and took aim, but as he checked the ground ahead he saw dozens of the local party kids racing away, moving across the area directly beneath the chopper.

If he got lucky and actually shot down the helicopter, dozens of those kids would die as it crashed to the ground in flames. Tiger hesitated, his finger tight on the trigger of his weapon. Until that moment, he had assumed that he would do absolutely anything to save his sister. But that wasn't turning out to be true. He imagined Wally in his position, gun poised and ready to unleash hell—and he knew in his heart that she would never do that, not for anyone.

Maybe he and his sister were more alike than Tiger had realized. He tried to shake off his hesitation, finding Sweet's helicopter in his sights again and tightening his finger on the trigger of his rifle. He willed himself to pull it back the last millimeter and save Wally from Divine's wrath.

But he couldn't do it. Tiger lowered his weapon and buried his face in his hands, howling in agony. One chance to save his sister, and he couldn't bring himself to do it. Did he even know who he was anymore? Tiger was left with only one option: another helicopter would be taking off soon, and he would need to stop it. He took off, racing across the factory grounds as fast as he could.

WALLY STOOD NEAR THE PERIMETER FENCE AND watched as anarchy unfolded in front of her. Partiers ran in every direction, most heading for the gate they had used to enter the compound. She saw a pack of Sweet's security team hustle to a helicopter on the far side of the complex, and she felt sure that Sweet himself was in the middle of that pack, still alive and making his escape with seven or eight of his most trusted soldiers. The rest of his “men” gathered in groups and headed for the half dozen or so heavy vehicles that they had parked inside the compound fence.

Wally had succeeded in breaking up the rave, and she hoped she'd also prevented Tiger from making a suicidal assassination attempt on Sweet. Everything she had seen of her brother in action told her that if he had taken his shot, Sweet would not still be alive.

Now she had to find him. What would Tiger do next, now that his opportunity to kill Sweet had passed? He would find a way to get back to the Ranch and free Wally—Tiger had no reason to know that she had escaped. How would he reach the Ranch? In the fastest way possible. Wally imagined him “borrowing” one of the cars parked outside the complex and racing the forty miles or so east.

She heard a massive crashing sound and saw that Sweet's remaining soldiers were escaping the site by plowing their vehicles straight into the cyclone fence, tearing it out of the ground and pulling it along with them as they raced away. Hundreds of kids saw the opening and headed in that direction also, away from the jammed gate on the other side of the grounds. As Wally watched the mass exodus, she caught sight of a figure moving quickly across the complex, sprinting through the horde of escaping teenagers and toward the opening in the fence, his long, dark hair flying free.

“TIGER!!!” Wally shouted as loud as she could, but with all the action going on, there was no chance of her voice reaching him. As he approached the fence, he headed north at full speed—the opposite direction from the service road that everyone else would be using. Where was he headed? Wally raced after him, hoping he couldn't keep up his pace. She would never be able to catch up otherwise.

As she moved through the mass of fleeing teenagers, Wally only made it ten or twenty yards when one of the kids running beside her—a young girl wearing only cutoff shorts and a lacy black bra—suddenly spun around and fell to the dirt without a sound, a bullet hole in the side of her head. Wally instinctively ducked but continued running after Tiger, all the while trying to deduce where the bullet had come from.

The girl's wound had been large, but Wally hadn't heard a gunshot—it had to have been a sniper shot taken at long range—and it wasn't hard to figure out who was doing the shooting. Now that his plan to kill Sweet had failed, Divine would want to erase all evidence of his plot, and that evidence included both Wally and Tiger. She hoped Tiger, far ahead of her still, would realize the danger and try to keep out of harm's way.

Wally had dumped the assault rifle she'd used to shoot out the factory windows, but she still had the sentry's automatic handgun in her belt. She pulled it out now and held it low to her side as she kept running, keeping her head on a swivel in case any of Divine's men came to get her at close range.

More shots came—Wally sensed one bullet missing her by inches, and it struck a guy near her in the leg. He fell down screaming in fear and pain, gripping his gushing wound. Wally's mind raced—it made her sick that others were taking the bullets meant for her. She ran on, hoping to separate herself from the pack of kids. She'd lost sight of Tiger but persevered in the same direction.

She spotted a black Jeep Cherokee ahead, the last in the line of Sweet's vehicles that had torn through the fence. Progress off the grounds was stalled by the mass of other cars trying to get out of the valley, so the Cherokee was moving slowly. Wally caught up with the car, running alongside as she hunched down to use the vehicle as a shield from more sniper shots. She traveled a hundred yards that way until she noticed another vehicle coming straight at them, moving toward the factory at high speed.

It was a Humvee—just fifty yards away now—charging straight for her. The tanklike vehicle's paint was charred and bubbled on one side, looking like it had just been set on fire—which it had been when Wally had ignited the gas fire at the Ranch. When the Humvee was just twenty yards away, she was able to see through the windshield and recognized the face behind the wheel.

Alabama wore a crazed look, and Kyle sat beside him, bloody and battered after his violent escape from the moving Escalade. Kyle looked as focused and angry as Alabama.

Wally jumped out of the way at the last second, and the Humvee blasted at full force into the Cherokee, demolishing the vehicle and all of Sweet's security men inside. There was nothing for her to do but keep running. The service road she was running on curved away, but she was sure Tiger had been heading toward the hill at the south side of the valley. She peeled away from the road and ran in that direction.

A quick glance behind her revealed that the Humvee had separated from the destroyed Cherokee and was still tailing her. Wally continued on, her lungs burning as she reached the trees and climbed the steep hill out of the valley. She could hear the Humvee behind her still, its progress slowed by the dense forest in its path—there were crashing and ripping sounds as Alabama kept speeding forward, swerving to avoid trees when he could and plowing through those that he could not.

Finally there came the sound of a massive crash, and the engine noises from the Humvee stopped cold—probably sucked into a ditch or stopped behind trees that were too close together for the vehicle to pass through. Wally kept running even as autoblasts of gunfire came from behind, strafing the woods and ripping into tree trunks all around her. Alabama and Kyle were giving chase on foot now and blazing away with their weapons as they ran. Wally fired her handgun in their direction, hoping to slow them down.

She kept climbing, desperately exhausted now, and came within twenty feet of the top of the hill, where the trees disappeared and there was a very steep slope of loose rock, still damp and muddy from the rain the previous night. Wally stuck her gun under her belt and climbed up the cliff on all fours, struggling to gain purchase on the slope as the loose rocks dug into her hands. She could hear Alabama and Kyle ascending the slope too, gasping for breath as they came up close behind her.

Wally reached the top of the slope and tried to climb back up onto her feet, but a hand reached out and tripped her. She tumbled to the ground and turned, looking up to see that it was Kyle, his gun pointed directly at her. The chase had opened the wounds in his shoulder and neck again, and the blood seeped down his arm and the front of his shirt. His face appeared even more ghostly than it had been when they raced away from the Ranch together.

“You said you'd find me, Wally . . . ” Kyle said, gasping for breath and barely able to stand, yet still able to relish the moment. “But I found you.”

Wally was about to reach for the gun that was lodged under her belt, but it had slipped out when she'd fallen to the ground and she couldn't find it. It didn't matter. A huge hand grabbed Kyle from behind, powerful fingers digging into his wounded shoulder and sending him tumbling back down the cliff. It was Alabama. He was unwilling to let Kyle deprive him of his rightful kill. Alabama was a disgusting sight by now, the bandages on his facial burns dangling off him to reveal oozing, infected sores underneath.

“Hello again, bitch,” he said, still struggling for breath.

“Hello, asshole,” she said, a fatalistic calm overcoming her.

“I'm tired,” Alabama said.

“Yeah, well . . . you look like hell.”

He managed a grunt of a laugh.

“It's a damn waste,” he said, “putting down a creature like you. No one ever beat me even once, and you did twice. A damn waste, I say.”

He raised his gun and pointed it at her chest, but before he could pull the trigger there came a shot from below, and Alabama's chest exploded as a bullet blasted clear through him. He stood eerily still, then, looked down at the open wound for a moment as if baffled. He turned around slowly, facing the downward slope.

“You spoiled piece of shit,” he gurgled.

More shots rang out, ripping into him, but Alabama ignored them, leaping off the edge of the slope and disappearing from view. Wally climbed back to her feet and peered over the edge, where she saw Alabama battling Kyle hand to hand, going at it with everything they had left. She scanned the ground and finally found her gun in the dirt. She raised it up, but she was so drained of energy that she could barely hold it steady.

Looking down at the two men struggling, Wally was overcome by a feeling that things were just as they were meant to be, that she had no part in what was taking place between them. The burden of taking another life was something she could do without this time. Wally turned and staggered away, heading in a direction that she hoped would lead to Tiger.