From out of the outlands
Part eight
Police file
It started with the bitch Sarah.
She got me rattled with her talk about marraige, corning me in the bedroom like I’d done something wrong.
“Don’t you love me, Denny?” she asked, shaking my thoughts about what I had to do later.
“What’s that?” I mumbled.
“I asked if you loved me?”
“Sure,” I said – though love wasn’t exactly what I’d call it. Why did every bitch thinking fucking equalled love? I knew the next word before they came out of her mouth: Marriage.
“When are you going to marry me, then?” she asked.
I should have smacked her like I normally did when she got into moods like this. But with the job coming up later, I didn’t want to jinx myself or have Momma call the cops for all the screaming.
Not that Momma meant to take Sarah’s side; she was just afraid I’d kill the scrawny bitch.
“Sarah’s too fair for that kind of thing,” she’d tell me. “She ain’t like me and your father. We can take your beatings, she can’t.”
I didn’t hit either of them much because they learned pretty quick not to get on my wrong side. Both bitched a lot when I first hooked up with the gang. They even wondered where I got cash to get my implants and why I sometimes came home with blood on my clothes – when it was clear I wasn’t bleeding.
With me and Sarah living in the room next door to my parents, we barely had any privacy, and both knew when I took to beating Sarah – even when she only whimpered.
Her screaming was loud enough for the cops to hear and the job I had to do later, I couldn’t do from a jail cell.
So I played it cool and said: “We’ll get to it soner or later.”
“Why not now?” she asked. “Why can’t we get married like your brother did.”
Then, I almost did hit her.
I wasn’t about to tell her how his bitch trapped him into the ceremony, but getting herself knocked up, and Momma guilt-tripped him into doing the right thing. I didn’t want to give my bitch an ideas.
I had learned a lot from my brother about what not to do.
Besides, if the job went as I thought it would, I wouldn’t be seeing the bitch again for me to worry about beating her or marrying her or anything.
I told her to let me think on it some, then I got up and got dressed, which was a mistake. Momma was in the kitchen waiting for me, and she was peeved.
“There’s money missing out of my dresser,” she told me. “You know anything about it?”
Of course I knew about it and she knew I knew, but wanted to hear it coming straight out of my mouth, and when I shook my head, she got more peeved in that sickly, caring way of hers.
“I just don’t know about you, Denny,” she said. “If it isn’t the family money you’re taking, then its stuff missing from around the house. I found my good silver platter in the hock shop window this week. I just hope you aren’t hooked on drugs again. I couldn’t handle another scene like that. Why can’t you get a job like your brother? I hear his place is hiring and I’m sure he could put in a good word for you.”
“I don’t need no job with Dave,” I shouted, as if my big brother would put in a good word for anybody, let alone me. He was always looking out for himself.
When our old man went out on a binge, Dave didn’t lift a hand to stop him, even when Momma cried about it, and we all knew just how likely it was some gang would use the old man for target practice out on the street.
It was me that went and fetched him back, not Dave.
“But you need a job, Denny,” Momma insisted.
“I got a job,” I told her. “That’s where I’m going later.”
And I swear, I thought Momma would die from the joy of it, and she snapped off a few Hail Marys in thanks. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t the kind of job she thought.
I wasn’t as stupid as my brother, taking on a job that kept him sweating over boxes of booze, taking gruff from the liquor store owner who thought a pay check meant he owned Dave.
I wasn’t going to wait for some paltry pay check when I could take what I wanted from the register and the safe, and if I got enough, I wouldn’t have to ever come back to this house or see any of these people again. Where as Dave slaved for a liquor store, I was going to rob me one.
I wouldn’t have to hear about what a saint my brother was. Or about marrying a bitch like Sarah.
The whole thing, of course, hinged on my getting ahold of my old man’s gun. While I had a pistol of my own, it wasn’t nothing compared to the fire power store guards had. No guard was going to quiver over me sticking a 25 caliber pistol in his face. But my old man’s gun was different, a relic from the LA Wars, a powerful piece of war machinery the military tried to snatch back after the conflict ended, but couldn’t get from every. It would blow down a building if set full tilt. Any guard who saw me coming around with it, wouldn’t want to face me down.
Momma kept the gun in the room upstairs, not because she thought she would ever use it, but because it reminded her of my old man – and with him off in the VA Hospital getting himself rehabilitated, she wanted to keep as much of his stuff together as possible, just to have in case he didn’t come back. But she locked it all up as if it was a museum – adding a host of locks to make sure I couldn’t just pick my way in. And to make matters worse, she sent the keys off to my old man in the hospital, figuring that would be the last place I went. Maybe she figured I hock that stuff like I had everything else.
But I found a way in.
So later, when she took her nap, I eased in through the back of a closet, a hole I cut right through one wall into the back of the closet in her special room. So it was no problem getting out of the house.
But marriage thing must have jinxed me good.
I thought the store guards would be too scared to mess with me. I never figured they’d be so stupid as to outgun me. Both were too young to remember the war or to recognize the fire power I had. So when they started to shoot, I had to shoot back, leaving their body parts strewn across the front of that store along with half the armored plating management had installed to keep someone like me from getting in.
I didn’t even get near the money. I would have needed a bulldozer to get through the debris. And with the alarms going off all around me, the most I could do was run.
I’d never run like that in my life – the cops on my heals like a pack of dogs, snipping off shots each time they came around a corner of an alley.
I kept thinking about Momma’s Hail Marys and said a few of my own, promising that if I got through this I would do anything she wanted, even marry that bitch, Sarah, if that’s what it took.
Well, I got away. Partly because I knew the streets and alleys better than any cop, weaving through them like a rat through a maze. Somewhere in that race I made a point of dumping the gun, so I came out miles later, acted straight and hoped no one had picked up my retina pattern or DNA during the scene.
I got home to find Momma crying.
“What’s the matter, Momma?” I asked.
“It’s your brother,” she said, looking up at me with eyes bubbling over with grief even I couldn’t argue with. “Someone blew him up in his store.”
***********
The woman's hair lacked any sign of platium when she opened the back door for the police. Brown was the color, Vincent guessed, though even that seemed a poor choice for the limp rag than hung around her brutralized face. She looked worn and broken, and greeted Vincent with a worried smile.
“Are you okay?” Vincent asked, as he slid in through the narrow opening, followed by Roth, and then -- with the door opening slightly wider -- Ranch.
“As okay as I can be,” she said, moving to close the door again. “This is all you brought?''
“No,” Vincent said. “I have a team of two watching the front of the house. Ranch will stay here while Roth and I go upstairs to make the arrest.”
“You make it sound so simple,” the woman said, her black eyes and swollen jaw better than they had been when Vincent had seen her in the Bowery. Cromwell had obviously ceased the worst of his assault on her.
“It can be if he cooperates,” Vincent said. “Does he have security in the house?”
The woman nodded. “Two new men, worse than Bosk's crew. I think my uncle hired from the Outlands. These two are mean, and they've more than hinted at what I might do for them in my spare time.”
“Where are they?” Vincent asked.
“On the second floor. My uncle gave them the floor to themselves. They've turned it into a pig sty.”
“All right, then, we deal with them first,” Vincent said, glancing at Roth, wondering if she was up to the task – yet knowing perfectly well she was, perhaps better situated than Vincent himself.
“There is something you should know,” Cromwell's neice said. “My uncle has some guns.”
“Oh?'”Vincent said. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” she said. “But I dared not get word to you.”
“It's all right,” Vincent said. “We'll deal with it.”
But his mind raced with the visions of what an armed Cromwell meant. Vincent was less worried about any of his team being shot, as much as one of his team shooting Cromwell. Why hadn't the fool left such things up to his security? Maybe he knew what Vincent wanted and deliberately made it impossible to take the man alive.
“Ranch, open communitications with the others,” Vincent said. “Set up your station here. Feed it all to my head set.”
Ranch nodded, stripped off his jacket, to reveal a pocketed vest beneath, from which he removed the components to a master radio. He also removed the heavy automatic rifle from his back holster, and sat himself, back to the back door, machine gun craddled in his lap as he assembled the radio unit.
Static rose into Vincent's earpiece. He could hear his own breathing coming back at him through his laple microphone, the increased rate of breathing typical of pre-operation jitters.
“Can you hear me, Chief?” Ranch asked stupidly, since Vincent was still standing in the same room -- although Ranch's voice echoed in the earpiece.
“Quite clearly,” Vincent said. “Can you patch us into Eliot?”
“Right now,” Ranch said, fiddling with a small control pad, his large fingers struggling to manipulate the small buttons. Vincent heard static, then Eloit’s voice.
“Chief? Are you reading me?” Eliot asked. “We’re getting your visual here, but no audio.”
“Ranch?” Vincent asked. “Is there a problem?”
“I’m working on it,” Ranch said. “But I’m no techy like Eloit. He said I wouldn’t have a problem.”
Then, Eloit responded.
“Of course you’re no techy,” the man on the far end said. “I can hear you just fine. It’s the chief I can’t hear. Why don’t you push the conference button. Then I’ll get the audio from everybody. It doesn’t take a techy to push a button.”
“All right, I didn’t mean to get you riled,” Ranch said, studying the buttons, his thick black brows folding down towards the bridge of his large nose as he tried to read the fine print. Finally, he punched a button. “Is that better?”
“Eliot?” Vincent said. “Can you hear me now?”
“Loud and clear, Chief,” Eloit said.
“How about outside? Do you have contact with the barrier patrol?”
“Theyţre patched in and monitoring,” Eliot said. “But I can’t guarentee the connection will stay up when and if an alarm goes up. These eletronics here are pretty sophisticated. The neighborhood has spent a lot of money buying the best. If I was doing security here, I would have a back up system as well as a means of casting a web of interference. If so, we may get cut off in both areas, once someone figures out what we’re doing.”
“Thank’s for the warning,” Vincent said. “We’ll try to do all this as quietly as possible. I would rather not have to resort to letting you operate the internal gates. That’s only a backup. If everything goes right, we’ll stroll out of here as easily as we strolled in.”
“I hope so,” Eliot said.
“You worry too much. Can you patch us into Johnson and Garcia?”
“We can hear you, chief,” Johnson said.
“Are you in position?”
“All set,” Garcia said. “Johnson’s watching the front door. I’m watching the street. If anyone comes out, we’ve got them covered. If anyone comes to help, we’ll warn you.”
“Good,” Vincent said, glancing towards Roth. “Are you ready?”
“Absolutely,” she said, hoisting her pistol.
“All right,” Vincent said to Cromwell’s niece. “Why don’t you run down the layout of the Second floor, and where you think we’ll find the two security men.”
Cromwell’s niece explained the floor plan to the service portion of the house, with a separate entrance for servants Vincent hadn’t reckoned on a third entrance. He didn’t like it.
“Garcia?” Vincent said. “You’ve got to move.”
“But what about the street?” Garcia asked. “I don’t want to leave Johnson blind. If someone comes up while heţs watching the front door, it could mean bad news.”
“I know,” Vincent said. “But I’m hoping we can get this whole thing over with so quickly, there won’t be time for anyone to come. Johnson, just keep an eye on the door. We’ll get out as quickly as possible to cover your flank.”
Vincent turned to Cromwell’s niece. “How can Garcia get to the second floor door?”
The woman gave Vincent instructions, he relayed them to Garcia, then he and Roth got ready to climb the stairs, waiting for Garcia to get in place. Standing there at the bottom of the stairs, he squinted up, something about this whole operation now seemingly out of control. He should have known more. How did he know there were only two men on the second floor and not a dozen? Could he trust Cromwell’s niece? Was her information reliable or even up to date? With that third door, anyone could have come and gone without her knowing. He turned to her and motioned her close.
“Do they trust you upstairs?” he asked.
“Trust me?” she said. “I guess so. Why?”
“Would they be suspicious if you walked up there and back?”
“I shouldn’t see why that would be suspicious. I’m often in and out of the kitchen.”
“Do it,” Vincent said. “Take a look around and make sure there are only two, and...” Vincent unpinned the camera transmiitter from his lapel and pinned it to her blouse. “Take that with you. Eliot?”
“Yes, chief?”
“Are you still getting an image from my camera?”
“Sure am,” Eliot said. “I’ve got a pretty picture of you on my screen.”
“Good. Keep an eye on the screen. Study it. She can tell me the number of people upstairs. But you can recognize anything that might be amiss.”
“What do want me to look for in particular, chief?”
“Signs of a trap.”
Cromwell’s niece started up the stairs, one careful step at a time, rising as if she felt reluctant to step through the door at the top, pausing at the door to stare back. She squinted, and for the first time, Vincent detected fear in her eyes, fear hidden behind an innocent expression, fear of the kind Vincent had seen in the eyes of numerous battered women. Cops dredded that look, learning from experience what it meant, how little the officer could trust that look or woman to stand behind him in a crisis. Such women wearing such looks always sided with the abuser when blow came to blow, brainwashed by the violence into some form of perverted love.
“Be careful,” Vincent said, though he wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself.
“Don’t worry,” she said, then turned back to the door, twisting open the door knob with great care, calling out ahead to say she was coming up. “It’s me, Hillary.”
“What do you see, Eliot?? Vincent immediately demanded, the moment the door closed again.
A long pause insued. Vincent glanced sharply at Ranch, but the big man only shrugged. But it wasn’t the connection, it was Eliot.
“I donţt like it, Chief,” the techy’s voice came on after a moment. “I don’t see anybody, but it all looks bad. Things have been moved, furniture put against the walls, leaving clear unobtrusive line of sight in all the rooms.”
“Which means they knew we were coming?”
“It seems they suspect something if not knowing. I’m not sure you would have gotten into the house or us into the neighborhood if they knew our plans.”
“Which means it wasn’t Bosk,” Vincent said, the information confirming what he’d feared from Hillary’s glance.
“So what do you we do now?” Roth asked. “Call it off?”
“Eliot?”
“Yeah, chief?”
“Can you patch me into Hudson?”
“Absolutely” Eliot said. “He's been hounding me for a patch through since you left here”
“For a reason?”
“Not reason enough to break code,” Eliot said. “He's a nervous nelly.”
“Well, now we have reason. Patch it.”
Vincent waited a moment for the transmission to get through, imagining the face of his top captain growing redder and more furious behind his horn rimmed glassed, pacing back and forth in the small armored van with all the patience of a caged animal.
“Chief?” Hudson's voice said.
“Right here,” Vincent said.
“Are you all right?”
“For the moment. But we have problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“We may have walked into a trap.”
“What?”
“Relax, Lucas,” Vincent said. “We haven't set it off yet. But we're too close to doing so. I have an ugly feeling we can't withdraw without getting ourselves in deeper.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get an attack team ready.”
“You want us to come in?”
“Not yet, not until I say so. But the minute I give a shout, I want you over the wall with every body that you can spare. Air and ground. You got me?”
“Absolutely, chief. Is there anything else?”
“Yeah, pray.” Vincent said. “Eliot?”
“Yeah, chief?”
“Can you keep the line open to Hudson?”
“Not direct to you. But from here.”
“That's good enough. Tell Kowoski to be on guard. I've got an ugly feeling you're going to get hit before this is all over and I'd hate to lose communications with the outside....”
A cry came over the ear phone.
“Who was that?” Vincent demanded. “Garcia?”
“I'm okay, chief?”
“Johnson?”
No reply came.
“All right, everybody, it's started,” Vincent said, speaking louder than he intended, hearing the panic rising into his own voice. He breathed deeply, and brought that panic under control. This was no worse than he had a right to expect, coming into enemy territory like this. “Garcia, get down here.”
The second cry lasted longer, and this time there was little doubt about Garcia's fate. Death sounded instantly in that cry, echoing in the radio frequency as well as Vincent's imagination.
Ranch rose from the door, the radio hook up drooping from his side as he picked up his heavy weapon.
“We can't stay in here,” he said, making a move towards the back door.
“No,” Vincent shouted. “Not that way. They'll expect us to go that way”
“Which way then?” asked Roth, whose face had grown pale, though her eyes seemed more furious than ever.
“Up,” Vincent said, jerking his thumb towards the stairs.
“That's likely to be full of guards,” Ranch said.
“Maybe,” Vincent said. “Maybe not. I'd surround the house first, then come inside. Wouldn't you? Eliot?”
“Yes, chief?”
“Do you still have a visual upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“What's the status?”
“Largely the same. Something's hidden there. But God knows what.”
“There's someone at the door here,” Ranch announced, automatic rifle up against his chest, muzzle pointed towards the ceiling.
“We don't have a choice,” Vincent said. “Up we go.”
Roth led the way, followed by Vincent, and then Ranch – who had barred the door with an additional chair under the handle, and backed up each step with his rifled aimed at it. Roth paused at the top, edged open the door, then, kneeling, pushed her pistol through, spying out the interior. Vincent crept up, standing to one side, his own pistol pointed through the gap, at a spot slightly higher along the jam.
“Move through, I'll cover you,” Vincent told Roth as Ranch reached them, and the sound of banging sounded from below, banging and shouting, and then finally the thud of bullets striking wood – in an attempt to shoot off the lock.
Roth took a deep breath, then fell through the doorway, crawling quickly through her face in a grimace as if expecting a flurry of bullets -- which did not come. She crawled to the first doorway on the left, rolled inside, and then, after obviously checking the room out and finding it clear, eased up, standing just inside with her pistol ready.
“Nothing so far,” she whispered, her voice coming over Vincent's ear piece, breathless and frightened. :Your turn, chief. I'll cover you.”
Vincent nodded, and then, stepped through the door, crouching immediately, his pistol ready, waiting and willing to open fire. But the floor now seemed abandoned. Where was Cromwell's niece?
“Eliot?”
“Yes, Chief?”
“Do you have a report on the camera?”
“Yes, chief. It's recording a beautiful picture of you.”
“Of me?”
“On a slight angle, from -- one, two, the third door down on the right.”
Vincent stared over and saw the sweater hanging on the door knob, the sweater to which he had affixed the camera.
“All right,” he said. “We check the floor and make it secure. Ranch, get up here.”
Ranch appeared.
“Secure that door. Can you disable that stairway?”
“Sure, chief,” Ranch said. “I've got some dime grenades. But are you sure you want to destroy our only avenue of retreat?”
That was the miltary man speaking, a man who had struggled with the war's in L.A. and learned to give himself a way out of any situation. But Vincent had been trained in the streets, he knew that they had to move forward out of the trap, not back, setting it off without getting caught in it, and allowing the others a way in behind them was the greater danger to their safety, than not having that way out.
“Blow the stairs,” Vincent said. “Or rather, make it so we can blow them when we want them blown.”
Ranch eyed Vincent with a bit of deviousness in his eyes, then he grinned. “Got you, Chief,” he said, and then disappeared.
“Roth” Vincent said. “Let's see how many other ways there are onto this floor. Check each room, and be careful. I wouldn't put it passed the other people to boobytrap this place ahead of us.”
Roth moved as Vincent covered the hall, leap frogging to the next door on the left, and when she'd secured that room, Vincent rushed for the first door on the right, a utility closet of some sort, full of mops and buckets and various shelves full of cleansers. The dim light showed little else. But he could sense something there in the shadow, something small, something crouched behind one of the buckets. He took a careful step towards it and out rushed a terrified cat, as black as a halloween cat, with gold eyes like two glittering coins. It vanished into the hall, leaping ahead of them into anther doorway. Vincent eased back into the hall as Roth grinned at him.
“Not a cat lover, eh, chief?”
“No,” Vincent admitted. “Especially since it nearly gave me a heart attack."
One by one they searched the rooms, finding them all empty, leaving Vincent to scratch his head.
“I don't get it,” he said. “They wouldn't have abandoned this floor if they wanted to trap us.”
“I smell something, chief?” Roth said.
“Smell... My God! Gas. Masks.”
Vincent grabbed a small clear shell from his side pouch and shoved it over his nose and mouth, feeling the sting of something deadly at his eyes. Roth had gotten her mask on, too, as had Ranch. A queer sense of panic began to grow on Vincent. He'd expected resistance from Cromwell, but not this. It was almost as if Cromwell had wanted Vincent to come to him, in order to put an end to this pesty cop's pursuit, killing two good men already, adding them to the list of his other victims. Suddenly, the panic evaporated, and Vincent wasn't scared, he was angry.
That son of a bitch knew if Vincent died in this and the whole mission fell apart, the local networks would spread the new of the invasion all over the optic airwaves, making it impossible for anyone to ever convict Cromwell of anything. Indeed, the murder of Vincent and his team would allow the mayor to run stronger in all the neighborhoods, owing Cromwell for the favor.
“Someone coming here, chief,” Ranch said, monitoring the basement via a small tv receiver. “About a dozen armed men coming up the stairs.”
A boom sounded, as a small explosive went off downstairs. The whole house shook at the stairs with their half dozen occupants crashed back down, killing all or at least maiming them, as well as cutting off the basement as a possible threat.
“Come on,” Vincent said, charging towards the last door in the hall, a door locked from the other side, a door that likely led to another set of stairs. He paused a foot from it, aimed his gun at the door handled and quickly fired off two shots, shattering the wood and the lock as his two officers, Roth and Ranch covered him. The door eased open, revealing a dark passage outside. Someone moved. Ranch fired. The stranger in the dark fell, a weapon clattering to the floor. Roth shoved her way passed Vincent and into the hallway, firing as she went, catching two more of the wall guards as they sluggishly tried to escape. Both died and tumbled down the stairs to another open doorway, a doorway that led to the street. Flashes rose from hidden positions outside. Roth, Vincent and Ranch answered them. One more body fell. Then Roth slammed the door, bolting it, then looked to Vincent.
“Up,” Vincent said, jerking his thumb towards the flight of stairs that rose from the front door towards the third floor of the building. “I'm not leaving this place without Cromwell.”
“Chief?” Eliot called.
“What it is, Eliot?”
“Kowowski says we're being attacked here. What do we do?”
Vincent cursed. Everything was falling apart, as if Cromwell or someone else knew where to strike.
“Get out,” Vincent told Eliot. “I won't risk any more people. Get out, then tell Hudson to come over the wall in force. If we're going to have a war here, I want us to have fire power.”
“But we'll be leaving you inside without communications to us,” Eliot complained.
“Can't be helped,” Vincent said. “You don't have enough firepower to hold off that location for long. I'd rather you leave and come back with Hudson. Just have him get to us as quickly as possible. We're going up to snag Cromwell. If he's still in the building. In either case, it'll be easier for us to escape from the roof. Now go. Pick up contact when you're back on this side with Hudson.”
Then, Vincent broke contact. Someone was pounding at the door. Roth fired through it. The pounding stopped. But someone on the other side fired back, splintering wood and metal, sending bits of lead buzzing around the stairwell.
“Up,” Vincent said. Roth led. Vincent followed. Ranch pulled up the rear, climbing backwards as he fired another series of rounds through the door. At the top of the stairs, Roth and Vincent came upon another door, a metal door that wouldn't be opened to gun fire.
“You have any more explosives, Ranch?” Vincent asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Ranch said with a grin. “I'm a walking arsinal.”
“Can you knock this down?”
The huge man squinted at the door, shuddering a little. “The thing's meant to be bomb proof,” Ranch said. “I can do it. But we risking knocking down this whole side of the building if I try.”
“Do it,” Vincent said. “What the hell do I care about the building.”
“Well, chief, you should care, since we're in the middle of it and we could wind up as bad as those suckers in the basement.”
“Can't be helped. Just blow the door. We'll have to take our chances.”
Ranch stared at Vincent for a moment, then shrugged, pulling plastic from his pouch as he climbed back up to the door, his machine gun rifle dangling from its strap at his side. He put the plastic around where the hinges were on the other side, then around the bottom, where the concusion would send that part of the door in, while the top popped out. A moment later, he came back down to where Vincent and Roth stood.
“All set, chief,” he said. “But we all should go back downstairs.”
“Okay,” Vincent said. “But one at a time and quickly. That outside door won't stand much more shooting.”
But no shots came from outside. The army was obviously cautious about making a frontal attack on a team as well equiped as Vincent's was. They would wait on further orders, laying seige to the house instead. After all, time was on their side. They could wait forever.
Or could they?
Someone somewhere in Chelsea had to know the police department wouldn't stand for their chief being trapped here, and that Hudson or someone like him would come flying to the rescue with half the NYPD. Maybe even a report of it had come already, though Vincent could hear no helicopters or machine guns, or alarm bells sounding.
Which did puzzle him.
“Ranch,” he said. “Is there anyway we can reach the outside on these trancievers of ours?”
“Sure,” Ranch said. “We have the capasity.”
“Even if they're jamming the channels?”
“I don't know much about that. But the reason we've kept so low a profile was to avoid being overheard. I'm sure if we didn't mind someone else listening in, we could blast a message out.”
“And outside could blast a message back to us?”
“Hell, yeah, they got more power than God.”
“Then maybe we ought to contact Hudson before we blast that door. I need information. We should have heard something from the outside already. Even if it's only the report of fighting.”
Ranch nodded, fished the linkup box from his belt, fiddled with a dial or two. “Talk away, chief,” he said.
“Hudson? This is Vincent. Can you hear me?”
A surge of static crackled over Vincent's headset, making him whince, and deep in the middle of that, the sound of Hudson's voice came, indistinct, floating in and out with the waves of noise.
“Hudson! Talk up. I can barely hear you.”
“I said.... Not talk long...Mayor's out...No rescue coming...DA issued warrant for your....”
Then Hudson's voice faded away and Vincent sagged against the wall of the stairs.
“Did you get all that?” he asked the other two.
Ranch nodded. So did Roth.
“Do you know what it means for us?”
“Sort of,” Ranch said.
“It means we're the criminals now. The mayor got himself sprung, and taken over city hall again. He's cancelled our rescue. It means we're stranded here.”
“What should we do?” Roth asked. “Surrender?”
Her eyes seemed full of fire.
“That would be the smart thing,” Vincent said. “I would be the one tried and convicted. You two were only following my orders.”
“What're the other choices?” Ranch asked.
“To get out on our own,” Vincent said.
“But won't we be arrested once we escape?” Roth asked.
“Yes,” Vincent said. “Unless we brought Cromwell out with us, and we could prove the mayor deliberately tried to destroy our case. But chances are slim we can get out as it is, and I'd say nearly impossible to find Cromwell and drag him out with us.”
“Unless of course he's behind that door up there,” Ranch said.
“I wouldn't be,” Vincent said.
“But that place is built like a fortress,” Roth said. “And if Cromwell is as arrogant as he seems, he probably would want to watch us get killed or arrested, and from the luxury of his own home.”
“All right,” Vincent said. “I'll put it up for a vote. Once we blow that door, I doubt we'll have the option to surrender. The storm troopers will charge in, shooting, and we'll have to fight our way out, whether or not we have Cromwell.”
“I say we blow the door,” Ranch said.
“I agree,” said Roth.
Vincent was proud of both of them and grinned.
“Do it, then,” he said.
Ranch pressed the appropriate button. A pop sounded. No more than that. At least, the explosion started at nothing, and worked itself up into a roar, seeming like a voice crying from a distance, the echoes of it making it become louder. As with the sound, even the vibration did not shake the house at first, just one subtle shake, then as if beginning an earthquake, other shaking started, and from around the curve, dust flowed down the stairs like water, dust, and then heat, and then concussion. Vincent felt something hammer him in the chest and drive him back into the closed door at the bottom of the stairs. And just like that, it ended. Dust settling. The three figures rising from its filth like figures out of a landslide.
“Is everybody all right?” Vincent asked.
“Check,” Ranch said.
Roth held up her thumb in ascent. The impact seemed greater outside the building. Voices sounded from beyond the door, footsteps crashed along the side and front of the building, evidence of a growing panic among those laying siege to the house.
“They didn't expect that,” Vincent said, laughing as he circled around the curve and confronted the devastation. The explosion had torn the door off its hinges, twisting into something resembling a liguish stick. The ceiling had fallen. The remains clogged the stairs with burnt wood and shattered plaster, which crunched under Vincent's boot as he climbed. Behind him, the footsteps of the other sounded, as they reached the disaster. Smoke and dust filled the air. Vincent stepped through into the plush interior of the apartment above, an apartment Vincent immediately recognized from his previous visit -- only now it lacked the rich scent of polished wood and expensive tobbaco. It smelled like war, and deeper through the maze of hall, he heard someone yelling, Cromwell's panicked voice shouting into a telephone or out a window for someone -- anyone -- to come save him.
“This way,” Vincent said in a hushed voice that carried to the others via the radio. “But hurry. Sooner or later our friends outside are going to kick down that door and try to rescue our friend. He's our ticket out. We need to get a hold of them before the others reach us. Roth, you take that way. Ranch, you stay here and cover the door. I'll take the long way around. He probably has another door somewhere, but it's likely bolted up to keep us from getting in. Be careful. I don't want to lose any more good people on this bastard.”
All of them had studied the design of the building and knew that the third floor circled around on itself, a long hallway that went around the plush central living area -- which formed an island at the center. All the doors except those descending to the servants areas below or exiting the building itself, were to the right as Vincent moved, each opening into a room, and that room opening into other rooms, all thickly carpetted, all strangely vacant. The woodwork like something out of a professors dreams, bookshelves loaded with impressive gold bound volumes. Had Cromwell actually read any of them or had he purchased them for show? He seemed arrogant enough to have read them, a discipile of Fredrick Nicheche and Ann Rand, a superman of intellect and finanical wealth, immune to the laws of ordinary people.
Something moved in the next room and Vincent froze, then shoved his pistol into the room, swung it around until he saw a pale faced servant croaching in the corner.
“Don't shoot me,” the man pleaded. “I only work here.”
“Yeah, I'm sure,” Vincent said, lifting his pistol a little. “Where's your master?”
The man jerked his thumb towards the room connecting to this one, a room to which this was a den of sorts, or a smoking area.
“What's in there?” Vincent asked.
“The library,” the man whispered.
“Ah, now that's a room I've seen before,” Vincent said, then whispered into the microphone for Ranch to come.
“What about the door, chief?” Ranch asked. “There's people out here trying to get in.”
“Let them come. I need to trap a rat.”
Ranch appeared a moment later. Vincent directed him to cover the hall.
“The bastard will try and slip out the back and come around as I go through the library. You just greet him with your automatic and keep him pinned till I come around.”
“What if he doesn't go that way?”
“Then Roth will snag him coming around the other way. You hear that Roth?”
“Got ya, chief.”
Then, Vincent slowly moved passed the trembling servant and through the door into the library, the room so much richer than the rest of the house, Vincent knew it had to be Cromwell's favorite. Even the smell of tobaco was richer here, seeped into the wood and paper as if the room was one large pipe bowl, broken in by years of smoking the finest blends.
If Vincent had expected Cromwell to run, he was disappointed. But he was shocked, too, when he stepped into the room to find Cromwell seated behind the desk, a silver plated revolver in one hand, his neice's neck in the other. The pistol was aimed at her head.
“You try and get me she's dead,” Cromwell said in a voice only marginly shaken. He did not need to kill her or keep Vincent at bay forever. He just needed time for rescue to arrive.
“But she was helping you,” Vincent said, lifting his pistol so that its muzzle remained targetted on the man. “Why should I give a shit about her.”
“You shouldn't,” Cromwell said, glaring at Vincent, yet wise enough to glance occassionally at the other door, his desk situated in the corner so he could keep both doors covered. “But you do. That's the romantic part of you. To you, she's still a person, not a tool. That's the mistake you made. You didn't count on my power over her.”
“No,” Vincent said, trying not to look at the woman and face now thick with welts and the marks of his fingers around her neck, a living example of all those other women. He did not want to see her eyes and the conflicted loyalty they contained, the love and hate that all victims had for their abusers. Vincent, instead, stared at Cromwell, stared into the man's eyes, aware of the weapon, but watching for the moment when the eyes gave clue to the finger pulling the trigger. The eyes always did. They were the triggering mechanism that set death into motion.
Roth appeared at the other door.
“Tell your female cop to behave herself,” Cromwell commanded, shifting his silver pistol.
Vincent motioned Roth to hold. She didn't like it. She held back the way a car stops for a sudden traffic light, bolting slightly, not quite able to stop on a dime.
“Now what?” Vincent asked.
“Now we wait until wall security gets here.”
“I'm surprised you didn't have people on this floor with you,” Vincent said. “But then that's your arrogance again, the arrogance of all you wall people, believing the walls themselves can protect you from the world, hating to depend too much on people, hating the idea that you might someday have to come to terms with those living on the other side.”
“Shut up!” Cromwell shouted. “I don't...”
His attention wandered with his shout. He did not see Roth until she was in the air. His pistol turned automatically towards her, its report rocking the room the way the door explosion had failed to do, the huge pistol's bullet shattering Roth's face mask despite its claim at being bullet proof. The cop killing bullet nearly did whatits advertisements claimed it could do. But the man never got off a second shot. Vincent was an instant behind Roth, and onto the man and the gun before Crowell could turn the weapon towards Vincent or his neice again, Vincent's pistol striking down on the huge man's wrist, creating a yelp, forcing the man's fingers to explode open and release the weapon.
Then, Vincent struck the man's face with the pistol, across one cheek, then the other, repeating this again and again until he found Ranch's arms yanking him back from the mangled faced-body.
“Enough chief,” Ranch whispered. “You don't want to kill him, remember?”
Vincent nodded, then stepped back, leaving Cromwell to slump forward, his neice's continually screaming now just background noise as the sound of thudding feet sounded from the hall. Vincent sighed. He had his man but still had a long way to go before bringing him back. Ranch moved back to the other room, leaning along one side of the hallway door. His heavy machine rifle loosed a few rounds, answered by a few muffled lower calber responses.
Roth staggered up. She was shaken. A red streak showed the passage of the bullet across her cheek.
“You okay?” Vincent asked.
“Yes,” Roth said, but she did not sound convinced.
“All right,” Vincent said, dragging the bulky man out of his chair. “On we go with the show.”
Cromwell glared up at Vincent, his bloodied face only making him look meaner than before. “Go? Where the hell do you think you'll take me? Those are my men out there. They have orders to kill you all.”
“Even if we have you as a shield?” Vincent asked.
“Don't be stupid,” the man said. “You're in the heart of Chelsea, not that slum you call the Outlands. You can't expect to carry me the whole way out.”
“I'm not carrying you anywhere,” Vincent said. “You have two feet. You'll walk.”
“Like hell I will.”
This time Vincent struck the man's nose, both nostrils spouting bubbles of red with the impact.
“Up!” Vincent said, egnoring the man's howl of pain. “I said up or I'll do worse to you.”
“I'll see you pay for this!” Cromwell growled, but rose from his chair, sluggisly, his eyes a little glazed from the pain of blows. He worked his way around the desk, Vincent pushing the muzzle of his nine millimeter deep into the small of his back. Ranch's rifle let loose another string of rounds, answered immediately, by a growing number of pistols.
“Come on, Ranch,” Vincent said, as he flipped up the interior map of the building, recorded from earlier, a detailed architechual drawing that showed an elevator, another set of stairs – and oddly, an unexplained doorways and passage down to the basement. Vincent had seen the detail on other studies of the plans, but never questioned them, recogizing it as a model to the device he himself had installed in his own home -- one that had saved his life less than twenty four hours earlier, and would like save his life now.
“What about her?” Ranch asked, making a firing retreat back to the library, nodding his head towards Cromwell's neice.
Vincent studied her. He wanted their disappearance to puzzle their attackers, since Cromwell wouldn't likely in trust the secret of his private escape to many people, let along a bunch of hired thugs. For a moment, Vincent thought of the easiest solution, one more bullet placed strategically between her brows, ending her misery and betrayal. Yet for some reason, that answer eluded him, seemingly the coward's way out. She was a victim, too, just as much as any of the women Cromwell had killed, most likely raped and tortured by her uncle, adopting the victim's sense of misplaced loyalty that had allowed her to lure Vincent inside. He refused to add one more death to Cromwell's collection.
“She comes with us,” Vincent said. “Now let's move.”
Holstering his automatic, Vincent waved Cromwell and his neice towards the door through which Roth had come, waving Cromwell's heavy caliber pistol like a traffic director's baton. Behind Vincent and beyond Ranch, grey uniformed guards in full battle gear crashed into the room, firing as they came, dying under Ranch's response despite their heavy armor.
“This way,” Vincent yelled. “We have to make it quick.”
But the wall where the plans showed an escape hatch looked blank, just a portrait sitting on the wall over a flat surface. Vincent tried to yank the frame from its hook and found it frozen in place. The key was somewhere in the complicated swirls of modern art, a coded sequence of color buttons to which only Cromwell had the combination.
“Punch it out,” Vincent told him, pointing the silver pistol's wide barrell against the man's broken nose.
Cromwell laughed. “Why should I? What do I get out of this if I do?”
“Your life,” Vincent said.
“For now, you mean,” Cromwell said. “But once outside, you'll do what you want with me. You'll turn me over to a jury of street people and they'll get even for their poverty, by hanging me.”
“We don't hang murders any more,” Vincent said. “And we hardly ever kill them unless they're too sick to cure.”
“But you'll put me away in a jail full of savages and disease, and if the savages don't devour me, one of the diseases will. I'd be much better off having you shoot me right now.”
“They're coming around the other way chief," Ranch yelled from a defensive posture near the door to the library. The sound of advancing feet echoed loudly, seemingly from every direction.
“Fine,” Vincent said. “If that's the way you want it.”
“No!” Hilda screamed. “Don't kill him. I know the combination.”
Vincent motioned her towards the painting.. He hadn't suspected such a close relationship between the two. It sickened him a little. Although he now had an avenu of escape, he felt no hope for her redemption. He had two pathetic creatures to bring back to justice.
Ranch's rifle sounded again, the empty shells scattering along the floor with an extended burst.
“I can't hold them back much longer, chief,” he said. “They're coming down the all and through the room.”
But Hilda had begun to tap out the code, setting sections of the painting aglow. A moment later, the faint outline of a door appeared, larger than the escape hatch in Vincent's house, one designed to provide comfort. In fact, when the door opened, they found a cushioned chair, with a hand break attached. But a chair that wouldn't sit four of them no matter how they positioned themselves. Ranch glanced back, and seemed to catch the drift immediately.
“I'll stay, chief,” he said.
“No,” Vincent said. “We all go or none.”
“You can't do that,” Ranch insisted. “Besides, someone needs to hold them off here while you get out the other end. Someone has to close this door to make it look as if you just vanished into thin air.”
All this was true, Vincent thought. But he had already lost most of his team here and Ranch was one of his most trusted people, someone he would miss greatly on the other side. It seemed too high a price to pay for the likes of Cromwell and his niece. Yet justice demanded its due and Ranch's words sounded right. Vincent nodded, pushed his two companions into the seat, climbed in after them, then waved goodbye to his fellow officer as he released the hand break and the seat skidded down the twisting passage into the dark. The echo of continued gunfire faded as the door closed above them and the seat rumbled along its metal glides, down into the heart of something possibly more dredful than above. Suppose Cromwell had informed someone of this escape? Supposed guns waited at the bottom rather than hope of escape?
Vincent cut off this line of thinking, wondering what he would do even if he found no opposition below. He had the map of the street in his small visor. But the alarm was up, inner gates closed, he couldn't drag these two over each to get them all the way out. Then, they slid into light, back out into the garage area and several vehicles. The sight of these stunnded Vincent. He hadn't figured on Cromwell's having access to his own private fleet. But, of course, the man would need his own vehicle to do what he did, to come and go as he pleased, to kill and scoot home unnoticed again. But where in Chelsea was this garage and did the man also have a private gate out -- in case of emergency?
Vincent yanked up the hand break, even though the seat had come to a full and gentle stop at the bottom. He glanced to the right and noted a traditional set of doors, doors that opened no doubt into one of the main passages. But on the other side, another door waited, one fitted with a more traditional coding device.
“Where does that go?” Vincent asked when all three had climbed out of their little coach.
“None of your business,” Cromwell snapped.
“Fuck you,” Vincent said, striking the man a half a dozen times before Hilda yelled.
“It goes out!” she said, grabbing Vincent's wrist to keep him from striking Cromwell again. Blood dripped down the pistol's barrell, and Cromwell's face swelled from the blows, both cheek bones now as broken as his nose.
“It goes out a tunnel,” she said.
“To where? Out beyond the wall?”
She shook her head. “Not completely. It comes out near the main gate.”
That was no good, Vincent thought. The main gate could stop any vehicle. Vincent wanted one of the side gates, the less fortified entrances which he could talk his way through, or make a dash through before the enemy could bring force against him. And yet, this tunnel would save him a lot of problems, winding under many of the inner gates. Maybe he could make a break through the front door of this place. After all, the wall was meant to keep people out, not keep them in, and no one would suspect them of having gotten so far passed so many check points.
“Open it,” Vincent told Hilda.
This time she shook her head. “I don't know this code.”
“He does?” Vincent asked, nodding at Cromwell.
“Yes,” she said.
“Open it,” Vincent told Cromwell.
“Like hell I will,” Cromwell said. “This is as far as your little trip takes us.”
Vincent thought to hit the man again, then changed his mind. Cromwell's stare said no number of blows would make him change his mind, hardened by years of business disapline, in some ways, a matter for admiration, as if this part of the man was seperated from the other, two men walking side by side inside one brain. But all that was for the shrinks to deal with, Vincent simply had to bring him home.
“All right,” he said. “So we do it the hard way. Into the limo. We'll drive through the city. You, Hilda, behind the wheel. Try to remember that if you say anything stupid, your uncle will be the first to die.”
In Cromwell went, crawling over the plush interior on all fours, his face still bleeding, leaving a trail of red dots across the floor as Vincent climbed in behind him. The limo's design disguised its amour capable of defying all the most skilled and powerful attacks. It was unlikely the security guards had anything large enough to blow through its shielding. But the vehile couldn't move through armored gates, and Vincent would likely find himself in a
stalemate, security trapping the limo between two inner gates to out wait Vincent.
Or would they?
“Open up the control panel,” he told Hilda through intercom. A huge panel slid open, revealing several screens and numerous of control pads. Now Vincent needed Eliot more than ever. Then, he saw the plug in for his head set, a radio system infinately more powerful than the small within-sight system he had aroiund his head, a unit powerful enough to blast its message out beyond the wall, despite interference. He slipped the plug into the jack, and then calibrated the transmitter.
“Hudson?” he whispered into mouth piece. “Can you hear me, Hudson?”
Static flickered in his ear piece. But a moment later, Hudson's gruff voice boomed. “Is that you, chief?”
“Afirmative,” Vincent said.
“Are you all right?”
“I'm unhunt,” Vincent said. “Everyone but Roth are dead, and she’s been wounded. I've got Cromwell here, and his neice and we're about to make a run through the homeland. But I don't know how far we can get in this buggy. How's the chances for a fly in to pull us out?”
“Not good, chief,” Hudson said. “The mayor's back and he's gotten hold of the governor. The high court has issued a warrant for your arrest and the state guard's on its way in to enforce it. We couldn't put anything in the air without getting shot to hell.”
“Then I can't expect help?”
“I didn't say that, chief,” Hudson said. “But we'd better not talk about that over an unsecured channel. Do you have a scrambler on board?”
Vincent glanced at Cromwell, Cromwell growled. Vincent then hit the intercom to Hilda. “What kind of scrambler do we have on board?”
“Only the commerial kind,” the woman said.
“It'll have to do,” Vincent said and relayed the information to Hudson. A moment later, they talked again.
“We have a team on the ground coming in,” said Hudson. “All volunteers.”
“That's crazy. You'll all face charges later.”
“Not if we bring out your man,” said Hudson. “And that's what we intend to do. A number of the boys went through the military, fought in the L.A. wars. They know the score. They can get in if you can get to one of the side gates.”
“Which one?”
“The west is closest to Cromwell's place. I suggest you make for that.”
“Okay,” Vincent said. “We'll be there.”
“And chief?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”