Second Chance - Ryan Lock #8 Page 19

Carmen shot him a wry look. “That’s comforting.”

  “I’m just saying. Hostages are an added complication. If we’re alive, they have a reason to keep us that way. At least for now.”

  She didn’t look reassured. But there wasn’t any time to add anything to what he’d already said. The truck was rolling to a stop again. Lock could hear a voice through a PA system ordering the driver and passengers to keep their hands where they could be seen.

  69

  Along with the other four men in the double-cab pickup truck, Padre placed his hands on the dashboard, and waited for further instruction from one of the four California Highway Patrol cops manning the roadblock.

  “Okay, driver, toss the keys out of the window onto the ground. Then keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The driver glanced at Padre. Padre’s left hand dropped from the dash. He fumbled in his front pants pocket, dug out a set of keys, and palmed them off to the driver.

  “Passenger, keep your hands where they are visible!”

  Padre shrugged and put his hands back on the dash. “Go ahead,” he told the driver. “Just like we planned for.”

  Stifling a giggle, the driver left the truck’s key fob in the ignition, took Padre’s keys and tossed them as far as he could from the truck.

  One of the CHP officers began to move out from the protection of his vehicle door. His colleagues, guns trained on the truck, provided cover.

  Padre, smirking, watched the cop walk toward the keys. When the cop was within a few yards of picking up the keys, Padre’s hand reached down to his webbing.

  “Passenger! Keep your hands where––––”

  Padre’s hand came back from the webbing. His fingers wrapped round a grey-black grenade. He removed the pin. His left hand kept pressure on the safety lever as he grasped the grenade with his right. Carefully, he passed it to the driver as the cop on the PA went ballistic.

  Padre put his hands back on the dash, waggling his fingers in the air for effect, making clear he wasn’t holding anything. The driver repeated his key toss. The grenade sailed through the open window. It arced high over the approaching cop’s head.

  The grenade landed with a dull thud two feet beyond the keys. The occupants of the pickup ducked beneath the dashboard. They squirmed behind seats and into the footwells as the cops opened up on the truck.

  The driver fired the engine, and threw the vehicle into reverse. The cop nearest the grenade, finally realizing what he was looking at, began to scramble back toward his patrol car.

  The grenade exploded as the pickup’s driver reversed as fast as he could. The blast wave from the explosion lifted the retreating police officer up into the air. Shrapnel ripped through his lower legs, shearing through his right ankle and separating foot from leg. His screams were primal and raw.

  The pickup stopped. The doors popped open. The driver stayed at the wheel as the other occupants, Padre included, split for either side of the narrow road and threw themselves into drainage culverts. Shouldering their rifles, they opened up on the remaining three cops.

  After the first burst of gunfire, Padre tapped the shoulder of the man nearest to him. The man sprayed covering fire toward the two CHP patrol cars as Padre ran down the culvert to get a better angle.

  The cops struggled to return fire. One reached for a shotgun in the front of his vehicle. As he lifted it out, Padre popped up almost parallel to him. Before the cop could bring the shotgun to bear, Padre unleased a targeted three-round burst that sent the cop tumbling back into his vehicle, blood pouring from a head wound.

  The surviving two cops were back up behind the furthermost patrol car. One raised his hand in a gesture of surrender. That only intensified the incoming fire. Padre was joined by one of his buddies. Together they started toward the two cops. One pinned them down with covering fire while the other advanced. Then they switched.

  Less than a minute later, Padre called a halt. A few more rounds popped off. Finally, the guns fell silent. Padre walked across to the patrol cars. Three officers were dead. One was crawling down the road on his hands and knees, bleeding heavily from his stomach, trying to escape the bloodbath.

  Padre calmly drew his Glock from the holster on his hip. The cop turned as Padre’s shadow fell over him. “Come on. I have a wife. Kids.”

  Padre raised the Glock and pointed it at the officer’s face. “I hear you,” he said, squeezing the trigger.

  Padre took a step back as the cop slumped, dead, onto the road. “Damn shame,” he said to himself. With no sense of urgency, he strode back past the two patrol cars and the three other dead officers. The pickup drove to meet him. Padre climbed back into the cab.

  As the door swung shut, the driver buried the gas pedal. The truck took off, swerving round the patrol cars. Soon, the scene of the massacre was a distant dot behind them.

  70

  Their faces pressed to the truck bed, Lock managed to reach his hands out toward Carmen. The tips of his fingers found hers. She was shaking uncontrollably. He didn’t blame her. Terror was the natural reaction to their predicament. After what had seemed like an eternity, but could only have been four or five minutes, the shooting had stopped, and the truck moved off at speed.

  The sudden acceleration sent them in opposite directions. Lock’s fingertips parted from Carmen’s.

  “Hey,” he called. “You hear me?”

  Her voice came back to him, muffled, like he was sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool. The ringing in his ears was back with a vengeance.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “We’re still alive.”

  She didn’t reply. He rolled over onto his side so that he could see her. She was curled up into a fetal ball. It was the first time he’d seen her like that. She had survived the kidnapping and come out the other side. But the fire fight at the road block seemed to have tipped her over the edge. Now he had to find a way to pull her back.

  “Carmen, I need you to listen to me.”

  Her eyes opened. It was a start. At least she was capable of a response.

  “You’re tough. Coming this far proves that.”

  She looked at him. Her eyes focused. Another good sign. She was still present. Her body might have folded in on itself but her mind hadn’t, not yet anyway.

  “These guys could have killed us by now but they haven’t. Even back there at the roadblock.”

  She was still looking at him. He could only hope he was getting through.

  “We could be dead. But we’re not. That means we have hope we’ll come out of this. But I need you to hang tough. Can you do that?”

  Her eyes flecked with tears, she gave the most minimal of nods.

  “Good,” said Lock. “Now, if we can figure out why they’ve kept us alive maybe that will help us get out of this.”

  He had made the connection only as he’d said it, but it made sense. Perhaps the only thing that did. They weren’t alive on a whim. These weren’t people who spared other human beings out of the goodness of their hearts. Carmen and he were alive for a reason. And, Lock guessed, that reason was because this crew of killers weren’t finished with them. Not yet anyway.

  71

  “You know that I could do whatever the hell I want to her, right?”

  Lock shifted uneasily in the hard wooden seat, his hands secured behind him, as Chance paced back and forth in front of him. Carmen was seated against the far wall of the office. A glass panel that ran the length of the opposite wall revealed the warehouse floor beneath.

  Chance had changed out of her orange prison scrubs into jeans, sneakers, and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a Stormfront logo. Lock knew from previous research that Stormfront was a major neo-Nazi/white nationalist internet forum. He imagined that right now Chance’s escape, and the subsequent mayhem, would be the number-one trending topic of discussion on that particular portal.

  “You can do what you want with both of us,” said Lock, ceding ground. There was no point in antagonizing Chance or any o
f her buddies. Not right now anyway.

  “Damn straight I can,” said Chance, pulling a small hunting knife from the back pocket of her denims and prowling over toward Carmen where she placed the tip under Carmen’s chin.

  Lock did his best to remain stony-faced. Any reaction from him might hype Chance up even more. And she didn’t need any more hyping.

  Carmen broke the silence, fixing Chance with an even gaze. “I was on your side.”

  It was enough to distract Chance from whatever she was going to do with the knife. She dropped her hand back to her side. “That’s what I thought. Then I saw that picture of you with this sack of shit over here.”

  “It was a coincidence. Nothing more,” said Lock. “I had no idea Carmen’s legal firm was representing you, and even if I had, what difference would it have made?”

  Chance stalked her way back to Lock. The blade caught a shaft of light and twinkled in front of his eyes as she brought it up to his face. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I’m not asking you to believe anything, but it’s the truth,” Lock replied flatly. He felt a lot calmer with the knife at his own throat rather than at Carmen’s.

  He tilted his head back so that he made eye contact with Chance. “What is it you want from us?”

  Chance smiled. “Not us. You. It’s what I want from you.” Her eyes slid over to Carmen. “She’s just here to make sure that you’ll do it.”

  Lock didn’t greet the news with any sense of reassurance. The way she had said it left him in no doubt that whatever Chance wanted it wasn’t going to be good.

  72

  Lock stared at the photographs laid out on the table in front of him. Standing in a semi-circle around him were Chance, along with the bearded man he’d heard called Padre, and a handful of others ‒ he’d recognized a voice as belonging to one of Carmen’s original kidnappers. He could tell that, besides briefing him in the mission they wanted him to complete in exchange for Carmen’s safe release, they were mostly here to savor his reaction.

  “This will be a piece of a cake for a man like you,” said Padre, jabbing a skull-ringed finger at a photograph that showed the main entrance to the Temple Emanuel synagogue in Beverly Hills.

  Padre was correct. For a man such as Lock, walking into a public place with minimal security and murdering innocent unarmed men, women and children wouldn’t be difficult. Nor would it have proven difficult for anyone with even a modicum of training. Terrorism of this type didn’t take skill or courage so much as a complete absence of humanity or morals.

  Trying to stay cool, Lock glanced up at Chance and Padre. “If it’s so easy then why don’t you do it?”

  Chance shot him a sugary smile. “What? And take all the fun out of watching you do it?”

  Lock had to hand it to her. There was a twisted simplicity in what she wanted him to do. He had been expecting she had wanted him taken, with Carmen, so that they could make him suffer. If the authorities, or Ty, didn’t get to them in time, he’d figured a long bout of physical torture for both of them, followed by a single bullet at the back of the ear. This, though, was on a whole other level.

  Chance might wish Lock dead, but she obviously wanted to take more than his life. She wanted to tarnish his memory, along with everything he’d ever stood for. His being murdered by a bunch of neo-Nazis out to settle an old score was one thing. His being convicted and imprisoned for the slaughter of innocent people at worship was something else entirely.

  At the same time, he knew that refusal would carry a penalty. The only question was what form it would take.

  “And what if I say no?” Lock asked his captors, as he glanced up from the photo-montage of the synagogue and surrounding area.

  The smirks that greeted his question told him that this was something they had already given thought to. Padre delivered the answer. “Me, some of the boys and your lady-love go in a room and have some fun. Don’t worry, you’ll have a front-row seat. And once we’re done running that train on her, we’ll really set to work showing her some tough love.”

  Lock stared at him and didn’t break eye contact. He had a feeling that Padre wasn’t given to idle threats. Then again neither was Lock.

  “That answer your question?” Padre asked him.

  “It does,” said Lock.

  The immediate choice was obvious. He had to buy time until he could figure something else out. Saying no now wouldn’t do that. It would seal Carmen’s fate. But he had to sell it to them. They knew what they were asking him to do went against everything in him. That was why he had to make a yes that came with conditions.

  Lock made a show of taking a deep breath, followed by a slow exhale. His hand touched the edge of one of the pictures. He counted to five before looking up at his captors.

  “Friday prayers?” Lock asked. “That’s when it’ll busiest, right?”

  Padre nodded.

  “I’ll need a number.”

  That question was met with puzzled expressions.

  “A number?” Chance asked.

  “I’m not going to go inside and stay shooting until the cops show and I take a bullet myself. I’ll do this, but it can’t be a suicide mission. I need an exit strategy, which means that you have to provide me with a number.”

  More blank expressions.

  “How many do you want to die?” Lock said.

  Padre and Chance traded a look. This was seemingly one question that hadn’t been anticipated.

  “And make it realistic,” Lock added. “Something achievable that’ll give me time to get away. Now that I ask, what are you giving me to do the job? It’s going to be tougher with a handgun than a rifle. Ideally, I’ll need both. And I’ll need to know what security is like. You have done proper surveillance, right?”

  Judging by their expressions, the scatter of questions seemed to be selling them the idea that Lock was prepared to commit the atrocity to save Carmen. He had shifted into operational mode, at least as far as they could tell. This was a problem to be solved. His only worry now was that he had acceded to their request too readily.

  Chance must have thought the same. “That quick, huh?”

  “You say that like you gave me a choice here,” Lock said, hoping that his answer would play to Padre’s ego and how convinced he’d been by the threats he’d made.

  “There’s always a choice, Ryan,” Chance said.

  “Not this time,” Lock replied.

  “Would you give us a moment?” said Padre, his sudden bout of politeness unnerving Lock.

  Padre put an arm around Chance and steered her out of the room, leaving Lock with the rest of the motley crew. Less than a minute later, they were back. This time Padre was going to do the talking.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. The synagogue has one armed guard. Two on Fridays. If you like, we can assist with neutralizing them. We’ll give you whatever you feel you need.”

  Lock decided to stick to his script. “What I’ll need will depend on the number of people you want me to kill.”

  Padre looked at Chance. She offered a go-ahead-and-tell-him shrug. It was obvious that during their discussion outside the room they had arrived at a number.

  “Twelve. Doesn’t matter if they’re male or female, young or old,” Padre informed him.

  “No. Younger and female. The old ones are gonna be dead soon anyway, and women breed,” Chance cut in.

  For a moment Lock found himself caught by the raw craziness of the conversation that was taking place. The tone of the discussion was so matter-of-fact. They talked about slaughtering innocent people the way most others would discuss the weekly grocery list. All Lock wanted was for the talk to be over so he could figure out what the hell he was going to do with the time he’d hoped he’d bought himself.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “But once the shooting starts, picking out individual targets can get tricky. This kind of operation isn’t what you’d call an exact science.”

  “Not just shooting,” said Padr
e, his fingers closing around a grenade attached to his webbing. “You can carry a few of these babies too.”

  “What? Throw a couple into a kindergarten as I leave?” said Lock, unable to damp down the sarcasm in his voice.

  “There’s no kindergarten,” one of Padre’s cadre of men observed.

  Chance hadn’t missed the shift in Lock’s tone. “You sure you’ll be able to do this?”

  73

  “They want you to do what?” Carmen whispered, the two of them sitting alone in the room where they were being held, so close that their faces were almost touching.

  They were operating on the assumption that the kidnappers were listening in on their conversation. Or, at the very least, attempting to.

  Lock repeated what he’d just told her.

  “They’re even sicker than I thought. So what do we do?”

  “Play along until I can think of something. I mean, I’m not going to kill innocent people.”

  He waited for her to flinch. His refusal would mean her death as well as his. From her reaction he could see that the thought didn’t trouble her, if it had even occurred in the first place. “Good,” she said. “I’m glad. I couldn’t live if I knew that I was only still here because other people had died.”

  Her words were of cold comfort to Lock. He wasn’t sure he could bear the idea of losing Carmen because of his actions, or inaction, no matter how weak the connection. It had happened to him once, and almost destroyed him. He wasn’t sure he could face something like that again in his life. But maybe he’d have to.

  “Let’s just hope we all survive this,” he said, his words lacking conviction.

  “This might be nothing, but I think I might know why Chance did this,” Carmen said.

  “Not to get back at me?”

  “That was probably just a bonus, but there’s something else.”

  “Just when I was starting to feel flattered,” Lock said.