4 Real Dangerous Place Read online

  “No . . .” MacAvoy pulled himself together. “The dead ones are the heroes.” He signed the kid’s book and pushed it across the table. His hand trembled as he took a sip of water from the glass on the table.

  “Colonel?” Myers leaned down to him. “You want to take a break?”

  “Negative,” said MacAvoy. “I’m having a great time. Just great. Don’t forget about the scotch.”

  He went back into his book-signing routine.

  Myers stepped away when he heard his cell phone ring. Taking the phone from inside his jacket, he listened for a moment, then shook his head.

  “I’m afraid the colonel can’t talk right now,” said Myers. “He’s kind of busy –” His brow creased as he listened. “What? Excuse me?” He turned toward MacAvoy and held out the phone. “Colonel? You, uh, better take this. It sounds . . . uh, kind of important . . .”

  The other man looked up at him, then reached out and took the phone. “MacAvoy here.” He listened for a few seconds, then nodded. “Send it. I’ll be waiting.”

  When MacAvoy shoved his chair back and stood, the gun show promoter came running up. “Is there something wrong?”

  “I’m sorry.” The colonel’s face was just as grizzled and hard as before, but his squinting eyes gleamed now. “But I have to leave.”

  “Leave? But – what about . . . what about all these people?” The promoter flapped his hand toward the line in front of the table.

  “They’ll have to wait,” MacAvoy told him. “There’s a helicopter coming here to pick me up. You’d better go make sure there’s space for it to touch down in the parking lot.”

  The crowd stared at the colonel’s back as he strode away.”

  Myers caught up with him. “What the hell’s this all about?”

  “The tour’s over.” MacAvoy kept on striding across the convention center. “I hope that doesn’t get you in trouble with the publisher. But that’s the way it is.”

  “Are you kidding?” Myers followed him out the exit. “This is a public relations dream. Whatever’s going on.”

  He took out his phone, flipped it open, and punched in a speed-dial number. “Like that lady in there said –” His smile widened. “Give ’em hell.”

  They both looked up as the sound of a police helicopter approached.

  SEVEN

  AFTER RICHTER had finished making all his arrangements with the police captain, about who he wanted brought there to the scene, he handed the cell phone back to Feldman.

  “Get Cray on the line.”

  Feldman punched in a long-distance number, then gave the phone back to the other man.

  “Richter here.” Gazing across the lanes of trapped vehicles, he spoke as soon as the call connected. “The cork is in the bottle.”

  He flipped the phone closed. That had been all he’d needed to say.

  † † †

  This guy Cray was another one who got left out of the movie. But he wound up being a big deal in my life, that’s for sure.

  Not right then, though. When Cray got the call from his partner Richter, telling him that the bottle had been all set up on the freeway, he was up north, just outside of Seattle, in a low-rent industrial area a couple of miles away from a commercial airport. That had been where he and Richter had done most of their planning and preparation for their big day.

  Cray didn’t have to make any reply to Richter. He tossed his own cell phone onto his work bench, then switched off his welding torch and pushed his dark-tinted goggles up. His face was just as hard and humorless as his partner’s, but his hair was still dark and long enough to be tied back behind his neck.

  He turned, hearing a vehicle approaching outside the little industrial unit. A courier van halted outside the rolled-up shop door. Cray wiped his greasy hands with a shop rag as he watched the van’s brown-uniformed driver climb down from behind the steering wheel.

  “Got something for pick-up?” The driver jabbed his pen at his electronic clipboard device.

  Cray nodded. “Yeah, it’s in the back. Come on.”

  He led the driver into the back.

  “Here you go –”

  The driver looked around the unlit space, not seeing any taped-up carton, ready to go. Standing behind him, Cray reached into his own coveralls and pulled out a .22 pistol.

  Those are enough, if you know what you’re doing. Cray did; the courier driver never even knew what hit him. He sprawled face-down on the bare concrete, the clipboard skittering away from his hand.

  Blood seeped out of the back of the corpse’s skull as Cray dragged it behind a stack of boxes.

  He quickly stripped the body, then pulled off his own coveralls. A few minutes later, wearing the brown courier service uniform, he backed the van up to the open doorway.

  What he had been finishing up work on, when Richter had called, was something that air-freight companies call an igloo, although it doesn’t look much like something Eskimos would live in. It’s a quarter-round reinforced aluminum container, the perfect size and shape to be loaded into a commercial jetliner’s cargo space, like a short section of a quonset hut cut down the middle, and just about big enough to for somebody to stand up inside, as long as they kept their head ducked. You ship something by Federal Express, an igloo like that is what your package gets thrown into.

  Using a forklift, Cray picked up the igloo and loaded it into the rear of the courier service van. He backed the forklift away, just far enough so that he could climb down and slam the van’s doors shut.

  He didn’t bother closing up the industrial unit. He wouldn’t be coming back. He just got behind the steering wheel, put the van into gear, and headed for the airport.

  When Cray got there, he leaned out and punched a security code into the control box. The chain-link gate slid open. He drove the van over to one of the planes lined up on the apron, its cargo bay door open.

  Up in the cockpit, the pilot and copilot were logging in their flight plan. They looked up when they heard the noises coming from behind them.

  “I thought we’d finished loading.” The pilot glanced over his shoulder.

  “So did I.” The copilot got up from his seat. “I’ll go check it out.”

  By the time he got back to the cargo area, Cray had finished loading the igloo aboard, using the lift outside the plane.

  “What’s this?”

  Cray looked over at him and shrugged. “Hell if I know, buddy.”

  “Nobody told us there was anything more coming onboard.” Like most pilot types, he didn’t like surprises. “Sure you got the right plane? Let me see the cargo manifest.”

  “Don’t blow a gasket,” said Cray. “I just go where they tell me. Not my fault they didn’t call you.” He reached inside the courier service uniform. “Here’s the manifest –”

  He brought out the gun instead. The copilot’s eyes widened when he saw it, but that was all the reaction there was time for. Cray cooked him, one round straight to the heart.

  In the cockpit, the pilot wasn’t sure what he’d just heard. Another plane had been taking off, the roar of its engines masking the gunshot. He frowned as he glanced over his shoulder toward the cargo area, wondering what was going on back there.

  Cray pushed the copilot’s body to one side, then finished securing the igloo at the side of the plane’s cargo area. He punched the buttons at the side of the loading door, sealing up the space, then headed toward the cockpit.

  The pilot turned around in surprise when Cray entered. “What are you doing here? Where’s –”

  Cray raised the gun. “Change in flight plans,” he said.

  A few minutes later, the flight controller’s voice came over the radio. “Flight UD457, you’re clear for take-off on runway B8 . . .”

  In the pilot’s chair, with the corpse shoved behind, Cray pulled back on the engine throttle controls. As he taxied the plane around toward the runway, he was seized by a spasm of coughing. He pressed the uniform sleeve against his mouth. When he finally
pulled the sleeve away, it was stained with a dark, tarry fluid. He looked at it for a moment, then wiped off as much of it as he could with the handkerchief he found in one of the uniform pockets. He tossed the blackened handkerchief on top of the dead pilot behind him.

  As the plane lifted into the air, somebody painfully stirred on the floor of its cargo area. Maybe if Cray had been in better shape, he would’ve taken the time to make sure that the copilot was actually dead.

  EIGHT

  LIKE I SAID, that was all stuff happening somewhere else. I had to be concerned with what was going on now, right here on the freeway.

  By the time Richter’s crew had gotten their bottle set up, with all of us trapped inside it, I had been rummaging around, patting the pockets of my jacket, looking for my own cell phone. My brother Donnie didn’t have one on him, due to his school program having a strict no-phones policy for the students – there’d been way too many parents calling up the kids during the day, messing up the lesson plans. But I figured the bus driver Connie almost certainly had one on her. I didn’t have her number, of course, but I figured that if I called the school, they’d be able to get hold of her. And that way I’d be able to find out if Donnie was all right. I’d have to get through to them fast, though, before all the other parents, or guardians like me, heard the news about what was going on and jammed up the school’s phone line.

  “Damn.” I realized it wasn’t going to happen.

  “What’s wrong?” Elton leaned forward from the back of the panel truck.

  “My cell phone. I don’t have it. It’s in my shoulder bag, with the rest of my stuff.”

  “Oh. You mean in the limo?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I threw it in there with my .357, when I got out to meet those Japanese businessmen. Fat lot of good any of it does me now.” Just thinking about it irritated me. The bag was probably still there, sitting on the limo floor up by Ferdie the driver, with Karsh and the others having no idea what was in it.

  “Real hit men,” drawled Elton, “keep track of their gear. Especially the guns.”

  “Don’t even start,” I said. “At least I had another one up my skirt, ’til these guys took it away. What’d you have?”

  “Got a point there.” He gave a nod. “’Spose I could’ve shoved one inside my boxer shorts.” He turned his smile on me. “If there’d been room, that is.”

  “Like I said – don’t start.” I had better things to do, like keeping an eye on what was going on around us.

  As things turned out, actually having my cell phone with me wouldn’t have helped much, anyway. Because Richter and his bunch were moving right along to the next stage in their plans.

  The portable radio tower we had seen them setting up, outside the jackknifed big rig they were using for their command post, was just about completed. Richter’s electronics guy Feldman was sweating as he worked, hooking up and adjusting more pieces of assorted equipment. A couple of gasoline-powered electrical generators were cranking away next to the truck, providing the power for the set-up.

  Richter and Mozel looked over Feldman’s shoulder when he finally fired up the control deck, with all its buttons and switches. A computer monitor screen filled with graphic images of all the vehicles trapped on the freeway.

  “Scan for phones,” ordered Richter. “I want ’em all.”

  Feldman shook his head as he fussed with the scanner. “Won’t work if they’re turned off.”

  That amused Richter. “If you were in one of those cars and you had a phone, would it be turned off right now?”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to be jamming them, anyway –”

  “He’s right,” said Mozel. “What the hell difference does it make? What’s the deal with the phones? We’re bulletproof here. Who cares if these people call? What are they gonna say – Help, help, the bad guys have got us?”

  Richter turned his cold gaze toward Mozel. “I care,” he said quietly. “If the jamming transmitter goes down, then we’ve got two hundred people on the line, telling the police exactly what we’re doing.” He turned back toward Feldman. “I told you – scan for the phones.”

  With a shrug, Feldman pushed a pair of buttons on the equipment. On the monitor screen, a red scanning line swept across the images of the vehicles.

  All down the freeway lanes, the phones in people’s hands rang, chirped, and buzzed, one after another.

  In the limo, Karsh had his phone up to his ear as he shouted into it. “Look, I don’t care what it takes, just get me the hell out of –”

  There was a sudden loud burst of static from the cell phone. Karsh winced in pain and yanked the cell phone away from himself.

  Back over at Richter’s command post, Feldman leaned intently toward the monitor on top of his pile of electronic equipment. On the screen, pulsing red concentric circles appeared on the graphic images of the bottled-up vehicles.

  “Okay . . .” Feldman tapped his forefinger on the screen. “We’ve got center lane, vehicles three, four, nine, and twelve. Left lane, vehicles seven, eight, and nine. Right lane . . .”

  Standing behind Feldman, Richter repeated the vehicle positions into a handheld radio. “Center, three, four, nine, twelve . . .”

  His crew moved down between the lanes, confiscating cell phones from the trapped drivers. Even in Los Angeles, somebody sticks an assault rifle in your face, you’re going to hand the phone over, no matter how important it is to you.

  Staring out through the limo’s shattered side window, Karsh and his girlfriend Alice watched as one of the crew turned away from the next car over. The guy had about a half-dozen phones stuffed in his jacket pockets, from the cars he had already hit, like some sort of heavily armed trick-or-treater on Hallowe’en.

  The crew guy stepped over to the limo and stuck his hand through the window, right in Karsh’s face. He didn’t have to say anything – Karsh flipped his cell phone closed and dropped it into the guy’s palm.

  There were some other agendas going on. Mozel, that thug I’d already had a run-in with, pointed with the muzzle of his assault rifle over toward our panel truck.

  “Search that one.” He was talking to another couple of Richter’s crew. I never did learn the names of those two. I always just thought of them in my head as Short and Tall.

  “Why?” Short did more talking than his buddy. “Nothing showed up on the scanner –”

  “She was packing; Richter told me about it,” said Mozel. “That’s reason enough.”

  “Okay.” Short nodded to Tall, and the two men started over toward us. “If it makes you happy . . .”

  I kept my hands on top of the steering wheel as the two came over to the driver’s side of the panel truck. They didn’t look too concerned about me. They kept their rifles slung by the straps over their shoulders.

  With a couple of Richter’s crew up close like this, I got a better look at what they were armed with. The tall one had a French FAMAS F1, that looked like it’d seen a lot of use. I wasn’t surprised by that; I knew there were a lot of those floating around these days, all black-marketed out of Djibouti and Senegal. What Short was carrying inspired some hardware lust in me, though – a nice-looking Tavor MTAR-21. I always figured those Israeli-made Micro Tavors were just the thing for somebody my size.

  “You having a good day?” Short didn’t stand much higher than I did. From where I was sitting, I had to look down at him as he stood outside the truck. “We’re trying to make this process as easy on everybody as possible.”

  “I’m . . . okay.” I gave a slow, wary nod.

  “That’s good. That’s really good, miss.” Just behind him, his buddy Tall bent down so he could peer around inside the panel truck’s front seat. “You got a cell phone?”

  Another nod, without saying anything. I figured the more scared and nervous I acted, the more reassured these guys would be, that I didn’t represent any threat to them.

  “If you could be so kind –” Short smiled at me. “Just hand it over.�
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  I reached into the glove compartment, pulled out Elton’s phone and gave it to him.

  He flipped it open, pushed a couple buttons, then frowned. “Doesn’t seem to be working too well.”

  “The battery’s dead.” That was my guess. “I forgot to plug it into the charger last night.”

  “That’s not good.” He shook his head. “Should always keep your phone charged.” His smile turned into something that might have been interpreted as kindly, if he hadn’t also been toting an assault rifle. “Never know when you might get into some kind of emergency. Like this one.” Short dropped the phone into his jacket pocket. “Don’t worry about it, though. We’ll get you on your way soon enough.”