Rough Men
Authors: Aric Davis
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Aric Davis
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612186535
ISBN-10: 161218653X
Dedicated to the memory of Officer Trevor Slot
A
lex pushed the magazine into the Glock, pulled back the slide to verify the still-chambered round of .45 ACP ammunition, and then hit the magazine release again.
His hands were made of nervous energy, and messing with the gun was as good a way to burn it off as any. The blunt he’d split with Rob an hour earlier had made him go from relaxed, to paranoid, to lazy, and now he was back to paranoid. He sighed and set the rechecked gun onto the console of the van.
“What the fuck is your problem?” called Chris from the bucket seat behind Alex in the ancient Dodge Caravan. “You acting like you didn’t already get your pussy wet, homey.”
Alex considered the words, then did his best to ignore them. Killing that so-called snitch bitch earlier in the month had not been on his list of things to do in life. In fact, every moment since then had felt almost dreamlike, as if killing that girl—and she was just a girl, Chris and Mumbo had both confirmed that when they started fucking her a year ago, when she was just fifteen—had been something that had happened to some other Alex. An Alex who didn’t regret every second since then, an Alex who wasn’t sitting in a van waiting for the manager to leave a Lake Michigan Credit Union, the same manager who had been getting head on a consistent basis from the snitch bitch, the same manager who had wanted to be long gone when they went hot. Also, the same manager who had been paid off so well that he was willing to give up everything to let them run this shit.
Alex looked at the Glock one more time, heard Mumbo’s cell phone ring on the kind of ringer that sounded like an old house phone, and then they all watched the manager leave the credit union.
The plan was simple. Alex, Mumbo, and Chris were going to walk into the building while Rob drove around it. The manager had been intentionally getting sloppy about the vault for just over six months, so when the blame game started, he would just look like a shitty employee, not like someone who was in on the action. Alex didn’t think it was going to make much of a difference. The dudes that set this whole thing up had made it very clear to him that he could come along for the ride and get paid or crash and burn. Alex figured the guy was fucked no matter the take from the credit union; he didn’t see any way that he was going to get to just walk away.
Rob gave him a look that said,
Get on with it
, and Alex stopped worrying about managers. He stuffed the Glock in a loose jacket pocket and got out of the van. He had a black duffel in his left hand and took a moment to pull a stocking cap over his face. Chris and Mumbo were doing the same thing with their own ski masks, but neither of them had bothered to try to disguise their guns.
Mumbo was carrying an AK-47 with a folding stock and a short barrel. Chris had a pistol that he’d said was called “the Judge,” a Brazilian shotgun in pistol form, which could fire .45 pistol loads as well as .410 shotshells. Alex followed their lead and took the Glock from his pocket before following Mumbo through the door and into the building.
Their sudden appearance shocked the packed room quiet, and then a little girl began to scream. Mumbo was rushing past him to the center of the room, and Chris vaulted over a teller’s desk. “Get the fuck back!” he screamed. “Get away from your fucking desks right now!”
Alex could see three loan officers sitting at desks to his left. One of them had been meeting with a client. This guy, the client,
and one of the other loan officers rose and moved away from their desks. The one who wasn’t moving, a slick-looking younger guy who looked like he should’ve been selling cars, had both hands under his desk, and without thinking, Alex raised the Glock and shot him twice in the chest.
The explosions were louder than hell in the small building, and now it felt like everyone was screaming, and Chris was repeating his mantras of “Get the fuck down!” and “Stay the fuck away from your desks!”
Alex leaped over the row of teller desks and joined Chris, who called to Mumbo, “You got this?”
“You know I do,” said Mumbo. “Now hurry the fuck up.”
Alex followed Chris to the waiting vault. It was open just as it was supposed to be, and on one of the walls was a rack of banded bills—hundreds, fifties, and twenties. Alex fell to his knees and began throwing money into his duffel bag, the duffel becoming heavy with bills almost instantly. The sound of gunfire began pouring in from the main floor of the credit union, and then Mumbo was yelling something undistinguishable.
Realizing that Chris wasn’t gathering money with him, Alex looked over his shoulder at him. Chris was pulling some things, papers it looked like, from a safety deposit box with a pair of keys still dangling from its lock. Chris locked eyes with him, then turned back to slam the box closed before tossing it onto the floor and wheeling toward Alex, knocking a shelf of money all over the floor as he did so.
Alex and Chris were scurrying like rats, filling their bags until they were impossibly full and then sprinting from the vault together. Mumbo had turned the credit union to a hellhole in the ninety seconds they’d been gone. Two tellers were dead and so were the remaining loan officers, as well as the customer one of them had been talking to when they’d entered.
“Jesus,” said Chris, “the fuck happened?”
Mumbo just grunted, and then they were out of the bank, running to Rob as he pulled the van around, exactly two minutes after they’d entered the building.
They yanked open the doors and piled in, throwing the bags into the backseat.
Alex felt like his heart was going to pound free from his chest.
That was like being in a fucking movie
. Killing the man in the bank hadn’t felt like doing the snitch—they both deserved it, but the fucker in the bank had been trying to burn them, maybe even thought he had before he’d gotten shot. Alex set the Glock on his lap and pulled the mask off of his face as the van ripped free from the parking lot.
“What happened in there?” said Rob. “Sounded like I was back in Iraq, shit hitting the fan, am I right?”
“We had to put heat on some motherfuckers,” said Mumbo. “They wasn’t listening good enough.”
“I hope it was worth it,” said Rob. “Every fucking cop in the county is going to be on this shit.”
“Calm down,” said Chris. “What happened was only what had to happen, you knew that going in. Hey, don’t forget, you turn up there, after that light.”
“Do you want to fucking drive?” Rob said, scowling. “You asked me to drive, now let me drive.”
Barely audible sirens could be heard in the distance, and Alex looked over his shoulder. Between Mumbo and Chris, he could see traffic at a standstill by the credit union, but no cops, at least not yet.
Rob turned onto their road, and Alex could see the old barn where they’d stashed the other car and the shit to burn the van. “Hurry up,” called Chris. “We need to get the fuck out of this car.”
Rob just grunted in response and gravel flew under their wheels as they pulled into the farm’s forgotten driveway. The barn doors away from the road were open and waiting, and Rob
pulled right in, stopping with a lurch that almost knocked Alex’s Glock to the floor.
Alex was second out of the van, after Chris, and Mumbo was handing them the bags from the back. By the time Alex got to the Impala, Rob had already gotten the trunk open, and he threw his bag in. Chris set his in after Alex, and almost as an afterthought, Alex looked at Chris and said, “What was up with that safety deposit box, dude?”
Chris looked over his shoulder at Mumbo, who was still next to the van, then turned back to Alex. He raised the Judge, and Alex didn’t even have time to react before thunder from the gun took apart half of his head.
