4 Real Dangerous Place Read online

  If the driver of the car behind saw a crippled kid fall from the bus’s back window, he either didn’t believe it or was too preoccupied with his own problems to take notice. Or maybe he was just rooting for the gutsy kid to make a break for it.

  What was important, though, was that nobody on Richter’s crew saw Donnie escaping. He was agile enough to twist himself about so that he landed on one shoulder rather than his head – not that it probably would have mattered. He was also smart enough to not immediately start crawling away from the spot, but instead roll under the bus’s rear bumper so he could wait and see if anybody was on to him and what he was doing.

  Given what Karsh’s girlfriend Alice was doing right at that moment, it wouldn’t have been Tullis. Any thought of keeping watch on the school bus or any of the other vehicles was straight out of his head. He didn’t even notice Richter’s second-in-command Mozel come striding over – tipped off by the hubbub rocking the school bus, he’d spotted that action from all the way over at the jackknifed truck.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed Tullis by the shoulder and yanked him away from Alice.

  “Give me a break –” Tullis grabbed onto his own belt, to keep his trousers from falling down around his ankles. “We were almost done!”

  “I’ll give you done.” Mozel shoved him toward the front of the school bus. “You’re supposed to be over there, guarding those damn kids. Now move it!”

  Tullis sulkily followed orders as Mozel grabbed Alice by one arm and shoved her back inside the limo.

  “Hey! Watch it –”

  “Shut up.” Mozel slammed the limo door shut.

  As Tullis glared at the kids in the bus, they started settling back down in their seats, some of them scared, others smirking like that little punk Mitchell.

  Mozel began walking away. The passenger door on the other side of the limo popped open. Karsh stuck his head out and called over the top of the limo to Mozel.

  “Hey – hey, buddy! Can I talk to you?”

  Mozel whirled around, assault rifle raised. “Get back inside,” he growled. “Now.”

  “Just want to have a word with you, that’s all.” Karsh was talking fast. “Just a word.”

  “I told you –”

  “Don’t be too hard on your associate there.” Karsh pointed back toward Tullis. “He was just trying to get a little something for himself. That’s all. Like everybody wants, right?”

  “I’m losing patience with you.”

  “Just hear me out,” said Karsh. “This is an interesting situation. I mean – the whole deal.” He gestured around at the freeway and the motionless cars. “You know what kind of movie rights you could nail down? Talking big money, pal. We can make a deal, you and I. I can green light it, I have the juice.”

  “Yeah?” Mozel’s brow creased with the weight of the notion settling inside his head. “Are you talking feature film?”

  “Well . . . maybe.” Karsh made vague little motions with his hands, palms upraised. “That would take a lot more doing. Financing could be tricky. But definitely broadcast or cable.”

  “So like made-for-TV. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “That’s right. Just think about it –”

  “Already have, pal.” Mozel stepped close to the limo, raised the rifle, and thrust its butt into Karsh’s face. He shoved Karsh back inside, slammed the door, and stalked off. “Fucking producers,” he muttered. “Like I’d be interested in that crap . . .”

  Inside the limo, Alice looked over at Karsh’s bloodied face. “You didn’t do any better than I did.”

  Karsh mopped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. “Shut the hell up.”

  Underneath the bus’s rear bumper, my brother Donnie waited until all the shouting voices were silent. Then he moved out, crawling soldier-style with his elbows digging into the freeway concrete, keeping to the dark spaces between the cars.

  PART TWO

  Guns are a girl’s best friend.

  – Cole’s Book of Wisdom

  FOURTEEN

  IT WAS RIGHT about then, down in the police command post, that Colonel MacAvoy decided to get some things straight. If he was going to sort out this mess, there was a bunch of stuff he needed to know more about.

  Standing over by the video monitors, Cammon and her mouthpiece Weiss were intently scrutinizing the view of the freeway bottle and the dairy truck that seemed to be so important to them.

  “Dr. Cammon –” MacAvoy walked right up to them. “We need to talk.”

  She didn’t even turn around. It was Weiss who glanced over his shoulder and gave MacAvoy a hard look.

  “Don’t you have something else to do, Colonel? Dr. Cammon doesn’t want –”

  MacAvoy pulled Weiss the rest of the way around, then put the flat of his hand against the other man’s chest. He gave Weiss a hard shove and knocked him over, sprawling in the middle of the street pavement where the command post had been set up.

  “Stay right there,” ordered MacAvoy. “Don’t move.”

  That action got Cammon’s attention. She turned around from the monitors and glared at the colonel with slitted eyes.

  “Been a while, Doctor.” He gave her an equally cold non-smile. “How’ve you been?”

  She said nothing, but her gaze turned even more murderous.

  “Still working on the HoBo?” MacAvoy’s smile evaporated. “Because that’s what we’re talking about – isn’t it?”

  Now we’re deep into the stuff that got left out of the movie. Stuff that the government would prefer you didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t until a lot later, after it was all over and I was poking around with some of my sources, that I found out that was how Cammon and the others who had been in on its development spelled it, with that capital H and capital B like that. The cops in the command post tent, when they heard MacAvoy say it, probably wondered why he was asking about some vagrant. They didn’t know yet, what it really was.

  But Cammon and Weiss knew what the colonel was talking about. With both of them, their eyes went wide in surprise when MacAvoy spoke the word. He wasn’t supposed to know about it, either.

  Raising himself from where the colonel had knocked him down, Weiss whipped a pistol from inside his jacket and pointed it straight at MacAvoy’s head.

  “Back off,” said Weiss. “I’m authorized to take the necessary measures –”

  “Get real.” Unfazed, MacAvoy looked at the man with amused contempt. “Even when there aren’t a thousand police around, you desk job types are all talk.”

  “What the hell’s going on over here?” Glover stomped over. “Are you people nuts? You can’t just –”

  A gunshot went off – but not from Weiss’s piece. Both MacAvoy and Glover hit the deck as the bullet ripped through the tent fabric above their heads. They looked over and saw that Cammon had both shaking hands around a huge gun, her carryall bag lolling open at her feet. Before she could fire again, the tent was jammed with SWAT team members, all pointing their weapons at her and Weiss.

  Glover got up, brushed himself off, and took away Cammon and Weiss’s guns.

  “Good call, Colonel.” Glover glanced over at MacAvoy. “Next time, give me a heads up.”

  † † †

  Elton and I heard the gunshot as well, faint from somewhere in the distance.

  “What was that?” Frowning, Elton peered through the panel truck windshield. “Didn’t sound like it came from up here.”

  “I don’t know – maybe somebody got too excited, on the street.” I was mainly concerned about the countdown on that little device Richter had held up for everybody to see. Minutes were slipping by, and I didn’t see any sign that the authorities were delivering whatever it was that he wanted. Pretty soon, it would be time for Richter’s crew to torch another car and its driver, then toss the flaming wreck over the guardrail.

  I drummed my fingers on top of the steering wheel in front of me. Being a hostage for a bunch of homicidal
maniacs, just sitting here and wondering if it would be my number that came up next, wasn’t going down too well with me. I know it’s a personal failing, and I promise I’ll work on it some day, but I have to admit that since I started killing people for a living, I’ve been a little on the impatient side. It just always seems to me that there’s a better alternative with people than putting up with their crap.

  “Not trying to get on your case, sweetheart. But –” Elton had noticed me getting increasingly twitchy. “Getting all cranked up isn’t going to help us any.”

  “Easy for you to say. I gotta think about my little brother, too, you know.”

  “Not going to do him any good, either, if you get yourself popped. Just because you couldn’t sit tight and wait for your best shot to do something. Whatever happens to you, it’s likely to happen to me as well. Then your brother doesn’t have a friend in the world up here. He’ll be on his own. You good with that?”

  “No, but still . . .” Crap. I knew he was right. “I’m not good with sitting here doing nothing.”

  “That’s how you can tell you’re still new at this game.” Elton settled down in the passenger seat, arms folded across his chest, eyes half-lidded as though he were about to drift into sleep. “Sometimes you just gotta wait it out. So you’ll be ready when the time comes.”

  “Yeah? And what if some other time comes up instead? And these bastards head over here and light us up like a Fourth of July fireworks display?”

  Elton shrugged. “Can’t do anything about it if they do. So in the meantime, you might as well take it easy.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, stewing in disgust. This seemed like a pretty messed-up world to me, where you can be perfectly willing to kill people, you even know exactly which ones should get it, and you still can’t just get up and do the job. Who set things up this way?

  † † †

  Worse, there were others who figured they could move things along.

  Like that little snot Mitchell, aboard the school bus.

  Right about now, after all the commotion about watching Alice and Richter’s boy Tullis put their moves on each other had died down, Mitchell noticed something. He saw the empty wheelchair abandoned back at the bus’s rear seat and the emergency exit window ajar, then he looked around at all the other kids. It took him two seconds to see it was Donnie who was gone.

  “Hey! Hey, mister!” Kneeling on one of the seats, Mitchell pulled down one of the side windows. He yelled at Tullis, standing outside with his assault rifle slung at his side. “There’s somebody –”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Connie looked over from the driver’s seat. “Get away from there!”

  “There’s somebody gone!” Mitchell squirmed and fought as Connie tried to drag him away from the window. “Somebody ran off!”

  Tullis’s brow creased as he looked up at the bus. Then he went over, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  “What’s going on?” He pointed the rifle at Connie. “Who’s missing?”

  “Nobody –” Connie had one of Mitchell’s arms twisted behind him. “He just needs to go to the bathroom. That’s all.”

  “Do not!” Mitchell struggled harder to get out of her grasp. “It’s that Donnie kid – that one in the wheelchair. He got out –”

  Connie turned him around far enough that she could clop him in the face. Not a real hit, but enough to get his attention.

  “You . . .” Mitchell rubbed his face in amazement. It was probably the first time in his life that an adult had given him what he actually needed. “You hit me!”

  Tullis didn’t care much about that. He reached down and grabbed the front of Mitchell’s shirt and yanked him away from Connie.

  “You got something to say, kid –” Mitchell dangled on his tiptoes as Tullis brought his face close. “You can tell it to me.”

  “He ran away!” Mitchell waved wildly toward the rear of the bus. “He got out and ran away –”

  Tullis looked and saw the empty wheelchair and the opened emergency exit. “Shit!” He tossed Mitchell away and turned quickly toward the bus door.

  “Wait a minute!” Connie called after him. “Don’t be an idiot –”

  He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “What did you say?”

  “Think about it.” She didn’t know what was going on, either, but she must’ve figured that nothing good would come from bringing the attention of Richter’s crew over toward her and the kids. “Your buddy is already mad at you for that business at the limo. What do you think he’ll do if he finds out you let one of these kids get loose?”

  That halted Tullis in his place, the gears almost visibly turning inside his head.

  “Look, it’s just one little boy.” Connie saw that she had him thinking. “What harm can he do? What’s the difference? He’s gone – no reason us getting in trouble for it, is there?”

  After a moment, Tullis slowly nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But that’s it. One more of these little bastards gets out, I’ll take care of the mess myself. Understand?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  “You’d better.” Shaking his head in disgust, Tullis stomped out of the bus.

  † † †

  There were some other conversations going on that were even less pleasant. But productive, in their way.

  “Okay –” Glover loomed over that Cammon woman, handcuffed into a chair in the police command post. “I need to know exactly what’s going on around here. And I need to know now.”

  “You’re really exceeding your authority, Captain.” Weiss was handcuffed into the chair next to her. “I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of trouble you’re buying for yourself, just by asking that question.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” replied Glover coolly. “I’ve got a hundred or so people up on that freeway, and I don’t even know yet what those bastards who’ve got ’em want.” He glanced at his watch. “And right now, we’re down to about fifteen minutes before they take out another citizen.”

  “I’ve told you already.” Cammon spoke up, glowering at the police captain. “They’re not important. Disregard them. Whatever it takes, you need to get that dairy truck out of there.”

  “Why? What’s it got in it?”

  She clammed up again, jaw tightening in silent anger.

  “That information is on a strict need-to-know basis.” Weiss had the ability to bluster even with his hands cuffed behind him. “You’re out of the loop, Captain.”

  “Mister, I own this loop. And if you don’t start filling me in –”

  “Don’t bother.” MacAvoy had been listening to the confrontation from a couple feet away. “You won’t get anything out of them.”

  “You don’t think so?” Glover looked over at him. “I can be very persuasive. Especially when the clock’s ticking.”

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

  “I’m warning you, Colonel –” That was Weiss again.

  “There’s not much you can do to me now.” MacAvoy turned back toward the police captain. “Here’s the deal.”

  “Colonel –”

  MacAvoy had a reputation for being a cool customer, who didn’t lose it in tight situations. So I have to figure he really wanted to do what he did next. Which was to backhand Weiss across the face, hard enough to topple the man over in the chair he was cuffed to.

  “You people are the whole reason we’re in this mess.” MacAvoy stood over Weiss, jabbing a finger at him. “So if we have to defuse it without your cooperation, that’s fine by me. And we’ll sort out the consequences after we get those people out of there.”

  “It’s classified information.” Weiss wasn’t able to wipe away the trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “You have no right –”

  “That’s why I left it out of the book I wrote.” MacAvoy reached down and pulled Weiss sitting upright again. He bent down and looked the man straight in the face. �
�That was part of the deal, when I got cut loose. But I was also told – by your boss Dr. Cammon, as a matter of fact – that the HoBo project had been canceled. That it would never go operational. That was the only reason I agreed to stay silent about it.”