The Rackham Files (10 page)

And the reason why nobody was shooting at me from the truck was that the Toyota's impact had shoved the entire rig back, not by much, but enough to crimp the already tight fit of transfer hoses. The guys in respirators were wrestling with a hose and shouting, though I couldn't understand a word. As I stood unprotected in the shadow of the shed Meltzer pounded up, an Ingram burp gun in hand. I guess he didn't expect me to be standing so close in plain sight as he rounded the shed.

Because Meltzer was six feet away when he pivoted toward me, it was an execution of sorts. The truth is, we both hesitated; but my earlier suspicions about his dealings with Quent must have given me an edge. Meltzer took my first round in the chest with a jolt that made dust leap from his shirt, and went down backward after my second round into his throat, and I risked darting farther into the open because I needed his weapon.

A burst of three or four rounds grooved the pavement as I leaped back. I saw a familiar face above a black-leather jacket, almost hidden behind the remains of the Freightliner's fender, holding another of those murderous little Ingrams one-handed. I fired once, but only sent particles of fiberglass flying, and Norm Goldman's face disappeared.

He called, "Majub!"

I heard running footsteps, and whirled to the shed's metal-faced door before they could flank me. With those big red tanks standing nearby I had a good idea what was in the shed, so I put the muzzle of my Glock near the hasp and angled it so it
might
not send a round flying around inside. The footsteps halted with my first round, maybe because the guy thought I could see him. I had to fire twice more before the hasp's loop failed, and took some scratches through my glove from shrapnel, but by the time I knew that, I was inside the shed fumbling with two weapons. A drumming rattle on the shed didn't sound promising.

From behind the Freightliner's bulk, Norm's voice: "You couldn't leave it alone, could you?"

I didn't answer. I was scanning the shed's interior, which was lit by a skylight bubble. About half of the machinery there was familiar stuff to me: big battery-powered industrial grinders and drills, a hefty Airco gas-welding outfit, a long worktable with insulated top, a resistance-welding transformer, and tubes with various kinds of wire protruding, welding and brazing rod. Above the table were ranks of wrenches, fittings, bolts, a paint sprayer—the hardware needed to repair or revise an industrial facility.

And I could hear Norm shouting, and voices answering. Simultaneous with gunshots from outside, several sets of holes appeared in both sides of the shed at roughly waist height.

Norm yelled again, this time in English. "Goddammit, Majub, don't waste it!"

And the response in another slightly familiar voice and genuinely English English: "Sorry, guv. We do have the long magazines." So Mike Kaplan's name was also Majub.
What's in a name? Protective coloration,
I thought. Noises like the tearing of old canvas came from somewhere near. I squatted and lined up one eye with a bullet hole, but not too near the hole. By moving around, I caught sight of my wrecked Toyota. Norm and a guy in coveralls were ripping the fiberglass away as best they could. It might take them ten minutes to change that tire if I let them.

I darted to the end of the shed nearest the action and put a blind short burst from the Ingram through the wall, with only a fair guess at my targets. Because I stood three feet from the plastic wall, I didn't get perforated when an answering burst tore a hole the size of my fist in the wall.

I had taken out one man and there were several more. They seemed partial to Ingrams, about thirty rounds apiece, meaning I was in deep shit. And when I heard the hiss of gas under pressure, the hair stood up on my nape. Those big red torpedoes just outside were painted to indicate acetylene. I hadn't noticed where the oxygen tanks were, but they had to be near because of the long twinned red and black hoses screwed into the welding torch.

And acetylene, escaping inside that shed from a bullet-nicked hose, could blow that entire structure halfway to Sunnyvale the next time I fired, or when an incoming round struck a spark. I darted toward the hiss, wondering if I could repair the damage with tape, and saw that it was the black oxygen hose, not the red one, which had been cut. A slightly oxy-rich atmosphere wasn't a problem, but if I'd had any idea of using a torch somehow, it was no longer an option.

Outside, angry jabbers and furious pounding suggested that Goldman's crew was jacking up the Freightliner's left front for a tire change. It would be only a matter of minutes before they managed it, and another round through the shed reminded me that Kaplan was deployed to keep me busy. From the shafts of sunlight that suddenly appeared inside when he fired, I could tell he was slowly circling the shed, clockwise.

That long workbench with its insulated top must have weighed five hundred pounds, but only its weight anchored it down. If I could tip it over, it should stop anything short of a rifle bullet if and when Kaplan tried to rush the door, and I could fire back from cover. Maybe.

I took off my jacket to free my shoulders and tried to tip the table quietly, but when I had the damn thing halfway over, another round from Kaplan whapped the tabletop a foot from me and I flinched like a weenie. The muted slam of the tabletop's edge was like a wrecking ball against the concrete floor. My shirt tore away under the arms so badly that only the leather straps of my Bianchi holster kept it from hanging off like a cape.

Then I scurried behind the table and tried to visualize where Kaplan might be. Ten seconds later another round ricocheted off a vise bolted to the tabletop. But I saw the hole where the slug had entered, made a rough judgment of its path, and recalled that Kaplan was still moving clockwise. He had fired from about my seven o'clock position, so I used Meltzer's Ingram and squeezed off three rounds toward seven-thirty. The astonished thunderstorm of his curses that followed was Wagnerian opera to me, but his real reply was a hysterical burst of almost a dozen rounds. A whole shelf of hardware cascaded to the floor behind me, and I crouched on the concrete.

Maybe I hadn't hurt Kaplan badly, but he didn't fire again for a full minute. A handful of taps, dies, and brass fittings rolled underfoot, the kind of fittings that were used for flammable gases because brass won't spark. I stood up and found that I could see through the nearest bullet hole toward the Freightliner. My good buddy Norm was barely visible, wrestling a new tire into position. I thought I could puncture it, too, then recalled that late-model tires would reseal themselves after anything less than an outright collision. Then I noticed that the end of that four-inch railing of brightly painted yellow pipe was within a foot of the truck. The pipe was capped; one of those extra precautions metalworkers take to prevent interior corrosion in a salt-air environment.

And that made me rush to another hole at the end of the shed to see if the other end was capped.

It was.

Which meant, if there weren't any holes in the rail of pipe, I just—might—be able to use it as a very long pressure tank.

I duck-walked back behind the overturned table and routed the hoses with the welding torch along the floor, where they couldn't be struck again. Among all the stuff underfoot were fittings sized to match those that screwed the hoses into the torch, and taps intended to create threads in drilled holes of a dozen sizes. Five minutes before, they'd all been neatly arranged, but now I had to scavenge among the scattered hardware. Not a lot different, I admitted to myself, from the chaos I sometimes faced in my own workshop. My best guess was that I'd never face it again.

Another round from Kaplan struck within inches of the big battery-powered drill I was about to grab, and the new shaft of sunlight sparkled off a set of long drill bits, and I gave unspoken thanks to Mike-Majub while promising myself I would kill him.

I knelt and used a half dozen rounds from the Ingram to blow a ragged hole in the wall at shin height, hearing a couple of ricochets. My Glock wasn't all that big, but its grip gouged me as I wallowed around on my right side, so I laid the weapon on the floor where it would still be handy.

Lying on my side, I could see the near face of the pipe rail in sunlight six inches away, with bright new bullet scars in its yellow paint. Like the big acetylene tanks outside, its steel was too thick to be penetrated by anything less than armor-piercing rounds. That's what carbide-tipped drill bits are for.

One of the scars was deep enough to let me start the drill bit I eyeballed as a match for the correct brass fitting, and while I was chucking the long bit that was the thickness of my pinkie, I heard Mike-Majub yelling about the "bloody helo." A moment later I understood, and for a few seconds I allowed myself to hope I wouldn't have to continue what seemed likely to become my own personal mass murder-and-suicide project. The yelling was all about the rapid
thwock-thwock-thwock-thwock-thwock
of an approaching helicopter.

It quickly became so loud the shed reverberated with the racket from overhead, so loud that dust sifted from the ceiling, so loud I couldn't even hear the song of the drill as it chewed, too slowly, through the side of the pipe rail just inches outside the shed wall. Someone was shouting again, in English I thought, though I couldn't make out more than a few words. A few single rounds were fired from different directions and then the catastrophic whack of rotor blades faded a bit and I could understand, and my heart sank.

" . . . Telling you news crews don't carry fucking weapons, look at the fucking logo! Don't waste any more ammunition on it," Norm yelled angrily.

So it was only some TV station's eye in the sky; lots of cameras, but no arms. As a cop I used to wish those guys were forbidden to listen to police frequencies. This time, as the noise of the circling newsgeek continued in the distance, I gave thanks for the diversion and hoped they'd at least get a close-up of me as I rose past them.

The bit suddenly cut through and I hauled it back, burning my wrist with the hot drill bit in my haste to fumble the hardened steel tap into place. Of course I couldn't twist the tap in with my fingers, but in my near panic, that's what I tried.

Another round hit the shed, and this time the steel-faced door opened a few inches. Bad news, because now the shooter could see inside a little. I wriggled to my knees and looked around for the special holder that grips a tap for leverage. No such luck. But another round spanged off the door, and in the increased daylight I spotted that bad seed among good tools, a pair of common pliers. They would have to do.

Because I was on my knees at the end of the overturned table and reaching for the pliers when Mike-Majub rushed the door, I only had time to grovel as he kicked the door open and raked the place with fire. I don't think he even saw me, and he didn't seem to care, emptying his magazine and then, grinning like a madman, grabbing a handgun from his belt as he dropped the useless Ingram.

Meanwhile, I had fumbled at my Bianchi and then realized the Glock lay on the floor, fifteen feet behind me. But I was sweating like a horse, and the irritant in my right armpit was now hanging loose, and the tatters of my shirt didn't impede my grasp of Bobby Rooney's tiny palmful of bad news. Tape and all, it came away in my hand as I rolled onto my back, and the grinning wide-eyed maniac in the doorway spied my movement. We fired together.

Though chips of concrete spattered my face, he missed. I didn't. He folded from the waist and went forward onto his knees, then his face. The top of his head was an arm's length from me and I had made a silent promise to him ten minutes previous and now, with the other barrel, I honored it.

Blinking specks of concrete from my vision, eyes streaming, I grabbed the pliers, stood up, vaulted over the tabletop, and kicked the door shut before scrambling back to the mess I had made. Pliers are an awful tool for inserting a steel tap, but they'll do the job. Chasing a thread—cutting it into the material—requires care and, usually, backing the tap out every turn or so. I wondered who was moaning softly until I realized it was me, and I quit the backing-out routine when I heard the Freightliner's starter growl.

Then Norm Goldman called out: "Let him go, Majub, it won't matter."

The tap rotated freely now. I backed it out quickly. "If he answers, I'll blow his head off," I shouted, and managed to start the little brass fitting by feel, into the threaded hole I had made. When it was finger-tight I forced it another turn with the pliers. Then I pulled the torch to me with its twinned slender snakes of hose, one of them still hissing. To keep Norm talking so I'd know where he was: "Some Jews you turned out to be," I complained. "Who am I really talking to?"

The Freightliner snicked into gear, revved up, and an almighty screech of rending metal followed. The engine idled again while Norm shouted some kind of gabble. Then, while someone strained at the wreckage and I adjusted the pliers at the butt of the torch: "I am called Daud al-Sadiq, my friend, but my true name is revenge."

"Love your camouflage," I called back. Now a louder hiss as the acetylene fitting loosened at the torch while I continued to untwist it. With the sudden unmistakable perfume of acetone came a rush of acetylene, which has no true odor of its own. The fitting came loose in my hands and I shoved the hose through the hole, to fumble blindly for the fitting. "I especially like that 'my friend' bullshit" I called.

"In my twenty years of life in the bowels of Satan I have been a true friend to many," Norm-Daud called back in a tone of reproach, everything in his voice more formal, more rhetorical than usual. Now it became faintly whimsical. "Including Jews. You'd be surprised."

"No I wouldn't," I called, knowing that if a hot round came through now it would turn me into a Roman candle. My own voice boomed and bellowed in the shed. "How else could you learn to pass yourself off as your own enemy?" I tried to mate the fittings without being able to see them. Cross-threaded them; felt sweat running into my eyes; realized some of it was blood; got the damned fittings apart and began anew.