Headhunters (21 page)

I saw the passenger window of Burr’s Suburban glide down and
realized that he couldn’t see me through the darkened glass of the Cadillac. He
presumed I was in the lead car. He was going after Geoff.

“Geoff! On your left! He’s right th—“ was all I managed to
get out.

I tried to react then, but before I could, Burr leaned out
the window and aimed a monstrous weapon at the back of Geoff’s car. It was a
Penn Arms 40mm grenade launcher, with combat grips and a thick black ring of
six shells in the middle. Unlike a rocket launcher, Burr would be able to fire
again and again.

The weapon went off with a heart-stopping crump. The back of
Geoff’s car exploded in a fireball and lifted the vehicle into the air, sending
it tumbling, cartwheeling forward down the road. The concussion of the blast
rocked my car and I struggled to regain control. Windows shattered in nearby
vehicles. My nightvision was lost and I had to steer the car half-blind,
rubbing my eye with the heel of my hand, trying to regain my sight.

Geoff’s car was rolling, falling, end-over-end down the
road. I had to break hard to avoid it and swerve into the left lane. I passed
the flaming wreck and in that moment knew that I’d lost another friend. I’d
told them… no, promised them, that we’d all go home. What the hell had I done?

My eyes cleared enough that I could see the black Suburban
ahead. It slewed in the road, skidding to a stop across both lanes of traffic.
I could make out through the darkness and my half-blinded vision that Mitchell
Burr was exiting the vehicle and running to the front of the SUV to fire the
grenade launcher at me now.

I knew the man’s character completely in that moment. Burr
was not a human being. He was somehow less. He’d relinquished his mantel
somewhere along the line and abandoned it for this… barbarism. Animalistic
killing and ruthless behavior. I had sworn I’d never become that. This was a
man to whom bullets and bloodshed and bombs represented freedom in name only.
He hid his cowardice behind this veil of toughness, but he was not a man. He
would bomb schoolyards and murder women and children and men without
hesitating. And Kendrick had been willing to put the DHS files in this man’s
hands.

I raised the Glock over the steering wheel and fired,
stomping down on the gas pedal as I did so. The shots were deafening in the car
and the muzzleflash burst forward, kissing the windshield that spiderwebbed
under the impact of the hollowpoint bullets. I saw Burr jerk once, twice as I
fired, then my vision was gone and I saw nothing until the front fender of the
Suburban filled it a split second before the Cadillac collided. The truck
seemed to hop sideways at the impact, once then twice. The airbag deployed and
smashed me in the face, snapping my head back, shoving my gunhand away.

The airbag began to deflate and I found the Glock on the
seat beside me and forced my hand to reach out and grasp the grip. I looked up,
willing my eyes to focus and saw Burr’s driver, still behind the wheel,
recovering from the collision. I aimed, painfully slowly it seemed to me, and
pulled the trigger twice.

I pushed the door open and stepped out. I walked around the
car, holding the Glock out in front of me, looking for Burr. I found him
quickly. The Suburban’s impact had knocked him to the ground and the front tire
was now resting on Burr’s chest. His sightless eyes stared at nothing and I had
to look away. I didn’t want to remember him when I dreamed. He wasn’t worth it.

The driver was dead and I pulled him out of the Suburban
with considerable effort. It was grating me to think of the time I was losing.
Jessica out there somewhere. Billy… Nan… I couldn’t lose anymore that day.
Please, God… not anymore. I heaved myself up into the driver’s seat and looked
to my left, back the way I’d come and saw the burning wreck of Geoff’s car.

I’d left fallen comrades in my wake and had not had time to
grieve. I turned the ignition and the Suburban growled to life. I put it in
gear and drove over Burr’s body and turned south. Toward the bridge.

I keyed the button for my throat mike.

“Geoff’s down,” I said, my voice trembling despite myself.
“Repeat, Geoff’s down.” The radio broadcast stayed open and I knew that
Kendrick was listening, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I heard Billy
in the background.

“God damn it…” he whispered. There seemed nothing else to
say. Jess was crying and as much as I wanted to comfort her, I had none to
give. We were dying, one by one, all of us. With the finish line in sight. We
were all going to die.

“Did you finish things with Mitchell Burr?” Kendrick’s voice
came on finally. He was not teasing me. Not taunting, but almost… teaching.

“You know I did,” I replied. I didn’t want to be his student
here. I had no interest in learning the ways that Kendrick and his agents
worked, but perhaps to see the day through, I had no choice.

“Good,” Kendrick said, his voice was congratulatory and yet
commiserating. He seemed to know that the task came at a high price.

“Is Jessica Madison on this frequency?” Kendrick asked. My
chest clenched hearing him say her name.

“This is Jessica,” she said. “Who’s this?”

“My name is Randall Kendrick. I believe you know who I am.”

“I do,” she replied.

My mouth went dry and I struggled to interrupt, to say
anything. At that moment, a police helicopter roared over my head, rotors
beating the air, lights glinting and then disappearing up ahead and I groaned
at my inability to keep pace. I pushed the gas pedal down harder and the Suburban
leapt forward.

“He’s going to get you killed,” Kendrick said. “You know
that, don’t you?”

“Shut up, Kendrick!” I shouted. But he didn’t, he continued
unphased.

“Simon Parks… is death. He’s gotten people killed. Everyone
around him. Your friend in the car… the man in Jacobson Tower… Tom Ellis… Chris
Swenson… even his wife…”

“Go to hell, Kendrick…” I said.

“I’m certain that I will, son,” Kendrick replied. “But
you’ll have to hold the door for me…”

The bridge was just up ahead. I could almost see it.

“Keep going, Jess,” I said. “We’re almost there.”

“Jessica…” Kendrick breathed. “He’ll seal your fate, too, if
you let him. He drove his wife to kill herself, do you know that? He was never
there for her, and when he finally was, he made her kill herself…”

“That’s a damn lie!” I shouted.

“Simon, what—?” Jess began to ask. Her resolve was cracking.
He was wearing her down. I had to find a way to turn the tables.

“Kendrick, you were the one that pushed me to investigate
Burr,” I said. “Seems to me like it was in your best interest to take my wife
away so I’d have no interruptions… So, I’d be just like you…”

The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I was
saying. Could it be possible that Kendrick had something to do with Claire’s
death? The sounds of Kendrick’s soft chuckle filled my head.

“You’d love for that to be the case, wouldn’t you, son? That
would make me the villain here. How Hollywood-esque… how picture perfect… but
the problem, Simon, is deeper than that. No, son, I didn’t kill Claire. You
did. If you’re looking for a villain here… find a mirror. Because it’s you.”

“I… didn’t…” I struggled, drowning to find the words.

“Simon?” It was Jessica. She was doubting me. I could hear
it and it broke my heart.

“Jessica, please… please keep going.”

I could see the van now. Billy’s FBI issue surveillance van
looming large in the dawning sun. It wound its way through traffic up ahead and
was nearing the bridge. I feared for a split second that Jess would turn at the
last second, would lose faith in me. The moment hung in the air as I
approached, flying down Michigan Ave. And just when I thought she might turn
that steering wheel, Jessica stayed her course and accelerated forward onto the
bridge.

“I love you, Simon,” Jessica said, her voice firm and full
of courage.

“I love you, too, Jess,” I replied.

“How sweet…” Kendrick injected into our radio transmission.
“Do it now…”

I wondered who he was talking to, but only for a split
second and then I saw a second Black Suburban burst from a side street out in
front of me. The vehicle was an identical match to the one I was driving and
almost certainly held the rest of Burr’s crew. The SUV skidded into a turn, falling
in behind the van and my heart dropped. I floored the accelerator and the
engine of the CTS screamed and I bolted forward, speeding through traffic,
desperately trying to catch up. I saw the police roadblock ahead. I saw it and
I knew Jess saw it. What troubled me is that the men in the other Suburban saw
it too but they didn’t stop. Didn’t slow.

The passenger window came down on the SUV and a horrible
feeling of déjà vu crept over me, wrapping its icy fingers around my gut. I
aimed the Glock and knew I could never make the shot. I couldn’t hit the
shooter before he fired. I’d miss or hit a cop. I drove faster, somehow willing
the car to get there now, right fucking now… go, Go, GO!

The grenade launcher belched and the van bucked at the
explosion, flames blooming from up beneath its frame. The van slewed to the
side, first one way, then the other and before it recovered, the launcher fired
again, hitting the van broadside. Fire erupted and chunks of red hot metal
shrieked through the air, seeming to tear it apart. The van was out of control
and in one gut-wrenching moment, the squeals of its tires ceased as the van
left the ground and seemed to hang in the air.

I thought of the people inside.

Jessica.

Billy.

Nan.

Oh dear God, help them, please, I pleaded.

I imagined my heart beating in my chest while the van
turned, six feet off the ground, its tires having finally given up all hopes of
traction. And at last, it crashed to the blacktop road, flipping side over side
over side, spinning in the air, impossibly fast it seemed.

It’s happening again, I thought. Just like Claire. She’s
crashing just like Claire and I’ve killed her. I’ve done it again. She’s dead.
Jessica’s dead and it’s all because of me…

The van flipped one last time, tottered on one set of wheels
and then the twisted wreckage fell in a horrible, hollow clang onto its side
and finally lay at rest. Smoke twisted up from the gaping hole in its side
where the shell had exploded. The van lay no more than thirty feet from the
police barricade. Officers stood impotently by, looking at one another, their
minds too dazed by what they had just witnessed to move.

I had become so focused on the van… no, on Jessica… that I’d
lost perspective of the Suburban. The SUV braked hard and at the speed I was
traveling, I had no hope of stopping.

In truth, I had no will to stop. No desire to continue on if
Jessica was gone. I’d kill these bastards for what they’d done to her. They had
not known Jessica. Nor Nan or Billy. They killed because they could. And God
help me, if they took my Jessica from me, it was only right that they reap the
whirlwind that followed.

I accelerated toward the back of the SUV, aiming, targeting
them. The men inside were agents of Mitchell Burr. They deserved what was
coming. The engine thrummed and the RPM gauge stretched upward, upward… and I
rear ended the SUV and prayed for death…

Chapter Twenty

I was dead. I was convinced of that.
Not in the way that you believe that a bone may be broken after a bad fall. I
was as convinced of my mortality as I was convinced that there was gravity.
There was no need at all to discuss the issue, it simply was.

Before that day, I had heard accounts of near death
experiences. People often proclaimed that they saw a bright light at the end of
the tunnel… it was not that way for me and so I knew without a doubt that my
life was over.

It was as if I was waking from a deep sleep. I could smell
something. A scent of something baking… it seemed so familiar to me and yet I
struggled to grasp what it was, as if I didn’t have the words to articulate it.
Then it came to me as I drifted up into consciousness what the smell was.

It was bread. Fresh baked bread. Claire used to bake bread
when we had first been married. When we were poor as she called it. She would
bake bread and we’d sit in our bedroom on top of the covers, eating slices of
warm buttered bread. We made ridiculous yummy noises and closed our eyes, just
enjoying our time together.

How had I ever forgotten that? It was never truly forgotten,
of course, but the memory had gotten buried under… stuff. My heart ached for
that time and so I woke to smell of the baking bread. I opened my eyes and saw
her then.

Claire.

She was in the kitchen of our first apartment, baking bread
again the way that she had all those years ago. I saw her so clearly and all
the thoughts and images I’d had of her in my dreams and nightmares in the
months and years after her death all fell away. I saw her as she truly had
been. My wife Claire…

She turned and saw me.  I expected a reaction, a reproach
but none came. Just a smile. A turning up at the corners of her mouth that said
that she was expecting me… as if there could be no other result. One day soon I
would follow after her,  she knew that and had been comfortable to wait.

“Hi,” I said. I didn’t know what to say after that, so I
said what I knew to say.

“Hi,” she said back, and seemed genuinely happy to see me.

I walked further into the kitchen and saw her take a fresh
loaf of bread out with her old hotpads with the cows on them. She’d always
loved cows. It was one of her things.

She looked up at me then and I wanted to say something, but
couldn’t. I didn’t know where to begin or what to say. But she seemed to know
something that she had to share.

“You’re early,” she said with a smile.

“I’m early?” I repeated. I felt like a fool saying her words
back to her, but a good-natured fool. There was no guile in her voice or mine
and I wondered at the last time we’d talked that way in life. I felt the tears
begin to well, then slide down my cheeks and I didn’t bother to try to stop
them.

I thought she’d ask me about the children. How could I do
what I had done and leave  the children behind? I didn’t know how to answer
that. In truth, if somehow I carried death with me like a disease, sharing it
with everyone around me like Kendrick had said, then perhaps it was best that I
not see the children again. I didn’t know how to tell Claire that and
thankfully she didn’t ask.

“You’re early,” she said again, but her words didn’t hold a
bite of antagonism. “Simon, you’re not ready yet… you’re not done.”

I opened my mouth to say more, but struggled.

“I don’t want to leave here,” I said.

“I know,” Claire smiled.

“I want to stay,” I said.

“I’d like that,” Claire replied and she reached forward,
touching my arm with her hand. My skin tingled at her touch. I’d forgotten how
much I missed it. Then it was gone.

“But not today, Simon,” she said, still smiling, but with
finality in her voice, “Not today.”

I felt the darkness surround me then and I let it swallow me,
the soft light of the kitchen and Claire falling away. I tried to get back to
her but I couldn’t. Everything went black.

I awoke then. Consciousness coming to me before I opened my
eyes. I could hear the sounds of traffic, cars and buses and the warbling of an
ambulance siren, and somewhere far above, I heard a helicopter. I could hear
voices, shouts and commands and the footfalls of men running.

I realized that I was lying on my left side, my head lying
against the driver’s side window. My head ached and I felt a sharp burning high
on my forehead from a cut. I realized it then…

I was alive.

I was alive and I was very unhappy about it.

The frame of the Suburban rocked and I could feel someone
trying to ascend the side of the SUV. The front windshield had been
spider-webbed during the collision with the other vehicle and so whoever was
climbing up the side of the Suburban was trying to see if I was still alive.

Everything came back to me in a rush. The collision with the
SUV, my vehicle flipping onto its left side. Think, I had to think… Burr’s men
would probably still be alive. Kendrick and his agents would be coming to
attempt retrieval of our files from the van…

Oh shit, the van…

Jessica was in the van. Billy… Nan… I didn’t know if anyone
could have survived the grenade attack that the van had undergone, but I had to
find out. But first, I had to deal with whomever was scaling the SUV and coming
looking for me.

My head was woozy, but I quickly found the Glock that was
strapped into a shoulder holster under my jacket. I let my right hand fall to
that position and unsnapped the release. I kept my eyes closed, feigning
unconsciousness but peeked the slightest bit up toward the passenger door that
was pointed skyward now.

A shadow appeared through the window. I could make out the
shape and a moment later, that he had a gun trained on me. Probably not an EMT,
I decided. The figure jerked on the door handle once, then twice, then managed
to get the door to creak open with a grinding squeal of metal. He pushed it
open as far as it would go, then looked back down at me. I wasn’t moving. He
lowered his pistol and looked closer, trying to decide if I was dead or faking.
I decided to show him.

The man had been one of Burr’s people and I’d recognized him
from the elevator in the Jacobson Tower. As he leaned closer, the muzzle of his
pistol slid away from my direction and I took the opportunity to make my move.

I jerked the Glock from its holster and fired once. The 9mm
slug hit the man in the center of the forehead and he spilled backwards out of
the doorway. I heard silence for a half second, then the sound of his body
hitting the pavement outside the Suburban.

Whether I wanted to or not, I was committed now. I unbuckled
and struggled out of my seat. I stood on the driver’s door, my world having
taken a 90 degree turn to the left. I knew that my attackers would expect me to
follow the first man out the way he’d fallen. I decided to surprise them. I
kicked the windshield that was already broken and it buckled in its frame. I
kicked it again and it came loose enough that I could squeeze my way out.

I could survey the scene then and it looked like a warzone.
My Suburban was on its left side in the middle of the Michigan Avenue Bridge.
Burr’s SUV was jammed into the railing, having slid to stop after I’d
rear-ended them. To my right was the van, still smoking from the grenade
attack.

The passenger door of Burr’s SUV was open. I looked back and
saw the passenger lying on his back where I’d dropped him. Back to the SUV, the
driver must have still been inside. I lifted the Glock with both hands and
pointed it at the driver’s side door.

“Drop the gun, Simon!” It was Ken Gibson, standing in the
police barricade. He was yelling to me, but not willing to come out and stop
me.

“Keep them back, Ken,” I said. My voice had changed,
sounding strange even to my own ears. It was low and rough, like a cemetery
worker’s shovel biting into the dirt. A horrible sound… a harbinger of
mortality. Ken kept the cops back.

I raised the Glock out in front of me, centering the front
site on the driver’s side door. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew the
remaining gunman would come from there. And a second after the thought passed
through my mind, he did.

Burr’s man burst from the driver’s door, moving to my left,
raising his gun as he did so. He was unsteady on his feet, stumbling, but
putting on a good act. I considered that he might be wearing a Kevlar vest and
so I aimed above it. I fired and the bullet hit the gunman in the throat,
exploding his artery in a gout of blood. His face went slack in surprise and he
made a helpless effort to cover the wound with his hand, but the blood poured
out between his fingers. He looked at me then and I continued to walk toward
him. He opened his mouth to make a plea for assistance and gave only a gurgling
choke. I shot him again and the bullet dumped him over backwards into a pile of
elbows and knees.

I was walking toward him still, but saw a reflection in the
side window of the Suburban. It was an eerie, dreamlike reflection of a man. A
man with a gun. A gun held in a hand with scraped knuckles. His eyes were black
and devoid of emotion, his mouth a bloodless scar under a broken nose. The gash
at his hairline was pouring blood down his face, painting half of it a deathly
crimson like warpaint and in the middle of the stream of blood was one of those
dead eyes, the white of it stark in contrast.

Jesus, I thought, that guy’s fucked up… He’s dead and
doesn’t even know it… then a second later… God, that’s me.

I looked down at the gunman laying on the bridge and took
his SIG automatic from his twitching fingers and fired one round into his head.
At last he stopped moving.

I heard the cars approaching behind me then. Two, no… three
black sedans. I turned, looked and saw them. It was Kendrick. Kendrick and his
attack dogs. Agents sent to kill me… to kill us.

If they had their way, they’d kill me on this bridge and
seize the digital data tapes in the van. All of our work… all of our suffering…
would be for nothing. Ron Crawford… Geoff Spanner… we would not die here for
nothing.

I was alive.

Alive and pissed off about it.

If Kendrick was right about what he’d said, that I carried
death with me like a disease, then I wanted to infect everyone of these
bastards from Blackthorn. Everyone who stood with Randall Kendrick. I wanted
nothing more than to share my affliction and make them feel my pain. Death is
coming, boys, I thought. It’s coming for you.

I watched the Blackthorn cars slide to a stop at the end of
the bridge, sealing us in. I was standing in the middle of the kill zone. And
there was no place else I would rather have been. My mind flashed a thought
from something Randall had showed me once when we’d been colleagues. It was
from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare… “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of
war.”

Caesar… Brutus… I shook my head to clear it and watched
three pairs of agents exit the cars, then Kendrick… and then Isabelle. He was
pulling out all the stops. One agent leveled an H&K G36 rifle at me over
the hood of his car. It was Agent Vaughn. I bolted for the driver’s side door
of the Suburban the gunman had just emerged from and dove onto the seat.
Bullets punched into the Suburban’s frame. I scrambled across the seat,
smashing my groin on the center console as I went, then unlatched the passenger
door and spilled out onto the pavement. The grenade launcher that had been on
the floor by the passenger’s feet fell out after me and hit the pavement with a
solid thump. I regarded it for a moment.

I could hear the rotors of the police helicopter beating the
air, then the shadow of it passed overhead. They were surveying the scene. On
the next pass they’d deploy and drop a SWAT team into the kill zone. I had to
stop Kendrick’s people before that happened. No one else was going to die for
me that day.

I stood on the far side of the Suburban and looked through
the windows. Agents were approaching in a cover formation. I leveled both
pistols at them through the glass and fired, pulling the trigger again and
again. The glass shattered and the agents hit the ground for cover. Two of them
went down for good.

I jammed the pistols into the back of my belt, grabbed the
grenade launcher from where it had fallen and ran for the bridge rail in a low
crouch. Once there, I swung my leg over and vertigo ran through me with a nasty
chill. I had no time. The other leg went over and I dropped into space, held
over the river below only by my fingertips.

I waited for a beat, then two, then three. At last I heard
footsteps approaching, but not the railing… toward the Suburban. I pulled
myself up and my arms screamed in agony, but I gave no heed to the pains of my
body. My pain just didn’t matter. I pulled up and hooked my left arm around a
railing support and peered over the top.

One agent was rounding the back of the Suburban, rifle held
ready for a tactical assault. And then another agent came to the door that I’d
dived into.  I recognized him, it was Agent Vaughn. Vaughn who had killed Chris
Swenson and planted his body in my house. He was looking for me. Time that he
found me.

I pulled the sling of the grenade launcher from my shoulder
with one hand and managed to get a hand on the pistol grip. I heaved my arm
over the railing, aiming at the back end of the Suburban. The movement caught
Vaughn’s attention and his face screwed into a mask of surprise and rage. He
lifted his rifle, aiming for me but I fired first. But not at him.

The grenade shot forth with a loud crump. I tracked the
trail of its path in a line of smoke left in its wake. The grenade punched into
the body of the Suburban near the gas tank. The vehicle exploded with Vaughn in
it and I imagined being able to hear him scream, but it was likely more hope
than actual hearing.