Red rain 2.0 (32 page)

Vassily comes very fast and very violent. The Spetsnaz way.

Only not for me. Not yet.

I'm cruising downtown a few nights after my Dugal deal, on my way to Annie's, when I catch the squeal over my police scanner. "Officers down, North Avenue and Green-mount."

Shit. Not "officer." Officers.

Swerve wildly across three lanes of the Jones Falls Expressway, ignoring a massive squeal of rubber as other cars brake hard and pissed drivers lean on their horns, and just manage to skid unhit up onto the North Avenue exit. Gun it east. It's less than half a mile. I know it's bad when I'm still blocks away. Too many strobing lights, too many meat wagons.

Badge my way past the cops still stretching yellow tape. Dog's sitting on the sidewalk, slumped back against the age-blackened tall stone wall of the huge cemetery that occupies the southeast block of Greenmount and North. His eyes are open, staring at nothing. I start to run.

Big jolt when he suddenly turns his head, brinks, nods. I'd thought he was greased, thought the guys moving around to tag and bag four other bodies would get to his next.

"Went down like you said, nigger," Dog tells me when I crouch beside him. "Outta nowhere, never seen it coming. Kevlar? Shit. My three guys? Never got their Uzis off Safe.

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Three in the face each before they could move a fuckin' finger."

"Goddamn. You okay, though?"

"How else I be talkin' with you, fool?"

"I see four down, not three. Civilian get in the way?"

"Nah. A Spets-shit. Three-man team of hitters. Holed my homies first. They done doin' that, I double-tap one of the fucks with hollow points. Dome shots. But that's fuckin' it, and pure luck, man. They that fast, man. Other two, they vanish. Over the wall and up through the cemetery. Like they ghosts or some shit. Never had time for a look, never had another shot."

Dog swivels his head side to side, like he isn't believing what he just saw. Shook bad. Never seen him anything but totally chill before.

"Why not me first, Luther?"

"'Cause you niggers all look alike to whitey, man. You always telling me that. The hitters have you made, you woulda been first."

"Was always frontin' on you, dude," Dog laughs. Weak. "Never really believed that old-time racist shit. Spent too much time in all-black 'hoods, I guess. Maybe I believe it now."

"Don't. Some whities ain't that dumb. You got two Russians know your face now. Hope you know theirs, 'cause this is the start, not the end."

"Yeah." Dog nods. "Just this afternoon I hear somethin' funny. Every one of the Russian fucks we busted in the stables? They nowhere, man. They disappeared."

"Except Nick," I say.

"Where that fuck at?"

"Well, his head landed on Dugal's desk via UPS. The rest of him, who knows?"

Dog laughs hard. "Body parts in three states, Nick and all his fucks. Must be what saved my ass just now. Any of them coulda made me."

"Yeah."

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"Man, his own crew! That Vassily, he like to party
hard,
don't he? You down with that, Luther?"

"I got my party favors ready," I say. Dog searches my eyes for a long moment. Then he smiles. "I believe you do."

Not quite ready, I'm thinking after I leave Dog and head toward Federal Hill. Not quite.

Been trying to get inside Vassily's head. Shooter knows he's a target. Shooter knows he's got to keep moving, jig here, jag there. But he'll do it in his territory, where he knows the ground. So we search, we find, we draw him out, we hit Shooter there.

Typical. Crude and violent, no finesse, that Spetsnaz style. So I'll do just what Vassily expects, for just long enough to convince him he's right, long enough so he's sure I've gone purely defensive. Then I'll suddenly flip it, do what he'll never expect—move fast and violent but silent on him. An assault where he stays. Where he feels safe. In Brighton Beach.

Got all my dispositions clear in my mind. I've chilled Helen with a bullshit story about being on night shifts for the next few weeks. We do some nooners at my place, I keep her happy enough. It'll be a while before she clicks to anything strange going on. I'm hoping it'll be over before she does. If it is Helen's sketch, if she's connected and gives up anything to Vassily, it'll be disinformation only.

I've calculated the risk to Annie, decided it'll be close enough to zero, and over coffee in her kitchen that night tell her just enough to get her to agree to let me sleep over in one of the many bedrooms in her place if I suddenly come calling one night. Any room I want, she says—just as long as I don't get any ideas about slipping into hers. I grin back at her. She's only trying to stay light about something she senses isn't.

In the days that follow, I use the bus or the Grand Cherokee with PA plates. Never park the Cherokee too close to home. Leave it in a mall lot nearby. Check in with Dog

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every day, sometimes twice a day. He's feeling nothing, hearing nothing from his undercover in the gang crew or anyone else. No Russians anywhere, far as Dog knows.

My duffle with that dull black aluminum case—as well as two Gl-issue fragmentation grenades—moves with me.

I finally reach JoeBoy. He's been off on some secret shit, but yeah, he can get what I ask him for, no problem. "Sounds like you're having some fun. Me, I'm bored shitless," he says. "Mind if I take my furlough, spend it with you?" I do mind. He gets it, unlike everybody else I've been dealing with. Disappointed, yeah. He agrees to package the stuff, send it wherever I tell him.

A week goes by. Seems like a month. Nothing. No tails I can detect. No phone calls from Brighton. Very quiet where Dog stays. Not a single gang hit, not one drive-by, but the street price of smack is soaring, he says. Sudden increase in folks signing up at methadone clinics.

Then a call at home. On the landline phone, not my cell. Pulse goes up the usual fifteen beats per minute. I'm cool. 1 let it ring once more while I switch on the tape recorder. Then I pick it up.

"So you are home, maggot!" Jesus, it's Gunny.

"Where else would I be?"

"Some friends of yours said out of town. Told your momma that when they dropped by this morning, wondered I if she knew where her little boy might possibly be. Nice friends you got, Luther. They frightened your momma pretty
bad."

"What'd you do?"

"Wasted the motherfuckers."

He had. I get the story from the Virginia state troopers who pick me up not ten miles off the Nice Bridge heading toward Tyding's Landing. Needed the speed, couldn't detect any tails, so I left the Cherokee in a mall lot and took my car. Gunny must have told the troopers to watch for a TT. Didn't warn them I'd be doing 110 on a 55-limit highway, though.

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It takes another three miles and lots of flashing lights for them to catch up and make the pull-over. I'm thinking a speeding stop as the window glides down, I already got my license, registration and badge out when the trooper's Maglite hits my eyes, blinding me.

"Y'all must be Ewing," I hear.

"Yeah, yeah, see the license, the badge? Mind getting your light outta my face, sir?"

"Sorry about that." The light goes off. "Well now, Mr. Ewing, if y'all don't mind, I'm gonna ride shotgun with you here in this racecar, and you're gonna follow my partner in the cruiser."

"I gotta get down to Tyding's Landing. It's important."

"Your daddy ain't there," the trooper says, opening the passenger door and squeezing himself in. "This thing German? Thought Germans were big folks. Why'd they go and put the kiddy seat up front?"

"Where's my father?" I ask, pulling out and tailgating the cruiser, which moves pretty smartly up to seventy-five and holds the speed, lights still flashing.

"Saint Mary's Hospital, but he's okay. Took a shot to the leg. You shoulda seen what he done to the folks who fired on him. They're not in no hospital, nosir. My chief'd like to ask y'all what you might know about this commotion."

"Where's my mother?" I'm dreading the answer.

"She's real fine. She's fine and safe. Your daddy'U tell ya. Yessir. Your daddy is not a man I'd want to get on the wrong side of."

"So what went down?"

"Shit, three Russkis did. Your daddy had a thirty-round clip in that M16 of his. We counted the holes. Every last one of the thirty ended up in one or another of those pecker-heads. They look like possums that tried crossing the highway at night just about the time an eighteen-wheeler had the right of way."

About nine this morning, the trooper tells me, a black Lincoln Town Car apparently turned off the highway and

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took the shell drive down to the house. Gunny, the trooper goes on, says he was over to this pond where some girl you brought down for a visit popped a granddaddy snapper he'd been after for two years. Says he reckoned that granddaddy wasn't living in that pond all alone, must have had him a mate, and the reason he'd always missed was because his eyes were just not what they used to be. So he'd had a 4X scope mounted on the 16. Went to the pond early, tossed his bait, waited around a while, no snapper takes it. Probably already asleep in the mud. So he's walking home with a full clip, he sees three white guys in suits in his yard, one of them reaching in the door, trying to grab your mamma. She's yelling blue murder. Well, they see Gunny coming, pull pistols, start shooting at him. Dumb fucks, he says, thinking they're going to hit him seventy-five yards out with pistols.

So, Gunny says, he just brings up the 16 to his shoulder, gets a real pretty picture through that nice new scope, drops the guy at the door with one in the head, puts a few more into the body on the way down. The other two peckerheads, they keep shooting, but they're moving fast for that Lincoln. So Gunny keeps the crosshairs traveling with them, empties his clip. Hardly notices he's taken one in the leg until he tries to walk to the house.

"Your mamma phones 911, we show up, and it looks like what happened's exactly what your daddy says happened,'' the trooper concludes. "The peckerheads all had New York driver's licenses, they all had semi-auto pistols, there was 9 millimeter brass right near 'em. And they were sure as hell shot to shit. What your daddy can't say, and my chief wants to ask you, is why?"

So it wasn't an assassination. Vassily wanted them dead, he'd have sent shooters with AKSUs. It was a snatch. Or suppossed to've been, if Gunny hadn't busted caps and stopped it cold. Vassily wants hostages? Wants to draw me out that way? Means one thing, I think. The big fuck is worried. He doesn't feel confident his hitters can take me down

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even in Baltimore. Good. He's unsettled. Unsettled men make mistakes. He's just made a big one.

I spend five minutes drinking coffee with the state police captain in the hospital lobby. He's a tall, thin black man with a face as devoid of expression as any I've seen, but the white troopers call him "Cap" with lots of respect. I tell him as little as I can get away with—narc working undercover in Baltimore, recently involved in a major heroin bust, the dealers being Russian mobsters from New York. The Russians must have somehow ID'd me, done some digging about my family, come on down looking for me, or for information about me. I give him Dugal's name and numbers so he can confirm.

He declines with a wave of his hand.

"I've known Gunny a bunch of years now. He said y'all was Special Forces once, now a cop. I didn't doubt his account of this morning. Just wanted to hear from you what it was all about," Cap says. "Now I do believe I know all I need to. We don't see much like this, in these parts. Can't say I appreciate you bringin' this shit down here. Then again, ain't your fault. More likely a sign you done a hell of a good job. We'll look after Gunny real good, real close, 'til y'all let me know we don't need to anymore. Go see your daddy now."

I get up, ready to head for Gunny's room. The Cap takes my arm, moves up close. "I was you, I'd be wonderin' how in hell them Russians even knew I had a mamma and a pappa, let alone where they livin'. I was you, I'd be thinkin' pretty hard that maybe somebody on my side up there Baltimore way, he got hisself a big mouth. Big dangerous mouth. Kind of mouth needs to be shut. Permanent like? Y'all catch my drift."

"Sure do, Cap. Thanks."

Helen.

"Luther, you dickhead, you musta fucked up real bad, whatever it was you were doing. Leavin' assholes like the ones I greased still runnin' around," Gunny booms when I

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enter his room. "What kind of piss-poor squad you workin' with? Am I gonna have to come up there and straighten out a major clusterfuck?"

"Real, real sorry, Gunny. Jesus, I am sorry." I tell him more or less what I told the trooper captain. Aside from a single intravenous and a fat bandage on his thigh, he looks like absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened that day. He looks like he had some fun, like when we popped that snapper. But his face turns grave when I repeat the last thing Cap said.

"Bend me over and pop my can! Now things coming clear. You best watch your back real close, Luther. You got a traitor near you. Find him. Terminate him."