Before the rain, p.25
Before the Rain, page 25
Families with children. Bubbly gangs of pre-teens.
She focused on the pain of the plastic strip biting her wrists. Limiting the circulation to her fingers. Pinching nerves.
Two things worried her about her assignment to stop Jessie. Call them handicaps. First, there were two perps she’d have to battle, what with Hollywood showing up, threatening to kill her. Second, the golden-haired SOB had appropriated both of her weapons.
She rolled into a sitting position. Screw the impediments. Ray and those people below were counting on her to prevent a disaster. Also, her lace-up sneakers provided an opportunity.
Adrenaline helped her concentrate. Her butt flat on the ground, knees up, she reached low between her legs, used her numb fingertips to untie her shoelaces. Took her a while. But next she knotted a left shoelace to a right shoe-lace, positioned the doubled-length ribbon of tough fabric over the plastic strip between her wrists. Then she sawed her feet up and down, knees sticking out and pumping like she rode a child’s tricycle.
In less than half a minute, the back-and-forth rubbing created enough heat to melt the plastic zip tie. Thank you, special agent school. Also, the physical activity and success in freeing herself bumped her confidence.
She rose to her feet. Attitude counted.
She’d asked Ray for the chance to handle Jessie. The chance to risk her life to protect others. And she would. Happy to do what was expected of a law enforcement officer. Scared, too, maybe, but that was part of courage, Uncle Sal taught her. Doing your job despite the fear.
She headed up the hill after Hollywood.
Not that she was tough like Ray. Slightly gangly, a little clumsy, Special Agent S. Hicks considered herself but one of hundreds of thousands of police officers and law enforcement personnel sworn to do the same. In America, carrying a gun and a badge meant personal risk. You weren’t supposed to let fear hold you back.
Hollywood hadn’t gotten far. He wasn’t twenty yards away, not even halfway to the trailer. His back was to her. A tall, well-armed man. But bleeding out, in most likelihood. Already less strength than when he’d hit her so hard in the head.
As quietly as she could, she fast-walked to a group of cactus in Hollywood’s blind spot, forty yards short of the flatbed trailer. Movement by the flatbed twisted her head, and she recognized Jessie Maris and the cannon. Camouflaged behind alfalfa bales edging the trailer. Seven long black barrels, banded as one, protruded from a seam of haystacks.
This was it. Jessie’s position. Ray had picked the spot from the SUV. Too bad she couldn’t call him. All she had to stop this was her wits and her determination.
Hollywood stumbled higher up the hill, angling toward the trailer. His limp had grown more exaggerated in the last minute. The left foot dragged, and bright red blood trickled down his boot. Sunny didn’t think he’d last much longer. A pang of sadness for him appeared in her throat, although she couldn’t understand why.
She was lucky he hadn’t killed her.
She ran to the next saguaro. Hot brassy sunlight colored the air like a transparent film. Flying bugs and winged, airborne seeds danced in a hot, mildly stirring draft. A quiet August morning. Felt like ninety degrees minutes after dawn.
A helicopter buzzed far away. Her heart tapped louder. The adrenaline had bumped her pulse into a steady roar. Sweat formed around her eyes and neck.
She wondered if Hollywood could get to Jessie before his blood supply gave out. Or Jessie shot him. She figured Jessie hadn’t seen him yet, her binoculars searching the amphitheater from the bed of the trailer, but she would soon. This was the first moment Sunny had gotten a good look at Jessie since their meeting in the barn. All Jessie’s notes made the connection and the case seem personal.
Her adversary. An abuse victim.
Hollywood sidestepped to avoid a boulder and his gaze caught Sunny staring at him from behind the saguaro. Without hesitation, he lifted the Sig Sauer, leveling her own pistol at her from thirty-five or forty feet away, Hollywood higher on the slope. Even from that distance, though, she saw the pain on his face, the fear of dying.
He probably understood he’d been losing too much blood.
Another flash of regret zapped through her, sorry Hollywood would never enjoy his fortune. He risked everything for it. But why? The guy had lied, tricked, and punched her. Now he aimed a weapon at her. What a softie she was for feeling anything for him.
In the six-foot fountain grass by the street, her cell phone faintly sang a familiar tune in the quiet morning. A new text had arrived. She guessed the message came from Ray, a signal worked out earlier. King and his family prepared to walk on stage. If busy, she wasn’t expected to answer.
Good thing, because she judged herself extremely busy, hiding behind a cactus, waiting for Hollywood to shoot her.
The buzz of the helicopter became a chop-chop, louder by the second, but still not quite matching the throb of Sunny’s pulse. She breathed now through her mouth. Full fight or flight. She could hope for reinforcements, Johannsen’s promised back-up, but she figured the chopper more likely carried news reporters. Men with microphones instead of guns.
The task of stopping this catastrophe was hers. And she had to do it without a weapon.
A bus or truck engine strained at the bottom of the hill somewhere. The amphitheater crowd broke into applause, a distant hum. And up ahead on the slope, Hollywood collapsed to one knee, the impact loosening his grip on the Sig Sauer. His chin dropped to his chest. If he keeled over, Sunny had to make a charge, get her hands on…
Movement higher and to the left snapped Sunny’s gaze. Jessie had dropped the binoculars to her chest and was removing an extended-length pistol from her waist. She must have noticed Hollywood, or maybe even Sunny. The agent ducked for cover beside a Saguaro.
She realized Jessie’s pistol seemed too long because it had a noise suppressor attached to the muzzle. Jessie lowered herself flat on the trailer, then snuggled against the cannon in a standard prone shooting position. Maybe she expected Hollywood and Sunny to attack in unison. From Jessie’s position, Sunny and Hollywood existed on the same line of sight.
Hollywood staggered back to his feet. He looked wobbly, but lifted the Sig Sauer toward Sunny on a pretty good line. His two-handed grip wavered, though, and he was wide open to a shot from Jessie, his back to the trailer.
“Get out of here,” Hollywood said. “Not another step or I’ll—”
Jessie fired twice—two muzzle flashes and two noisy pops.
Two things happened. Hollywood collapsed again and the saguaro beside Sunny’s ear lost a fist-sized chunk of ribbed flesh.
She caught her breath, staring at the wounded cactus. That sizeable hunk of living vegetation had disappeared like trick photography, and the bullet traveled only ten or twelve inches off line with Sunny’s head.
She flattened herself in the dirt and crawled behind the saguaro. Her heart could not beat any faster. She checked for Hollywood’s prone body. She knew where he was, but couldn’t tell how badly he was injured.
“Throw down your weapon,” Jessie said.
Sunny remembered how many men Jessie had killed at the barn. Then Tommy Moon. And now Hollywood, who most likely was number five. This woman was an excellent marksman.
“Dennis has my weapons,” Sunny said. “I’m unarmed.”
Jessie thought about it, and Sunny’s truth must have made sense. After all, Hollywood had showed up with a different weapon.
“Stand up, raise your hands, and walk toward me,” Jessie said.
Her throat felt frail. Sunny coughed to change the pitch. “I’m thinking you’ve missed your chance to get the congressman. My partner signaled King was headed for the stage a minute ago. He won’t be up there long.”
Jessie lifted her binoculars toward the amphitheater.
Sunny scooted closer to Hollywood.
The helicopter came around again.
“I haven’t missed anything,” Jessie said. “King is still waiting. Even after, I could get his Escalades when he leaves.”
Jessie rose to her feet and let the binoculars rest again on her chest. She aimed her semiautomatic carefully at Sunny. “But you’re right. Time is short. Get up and walk over here.”
Sunny tried to make herself smaller. “That helicopter is the cavalry, Jessie. You should give yourself up.”
Jessie shook her head. “I can’t believe you want to die. Walk over here and get on your knees.”
Sunny gauged the distance between herself and Hollywood at fifteen feet. Three for four bounding steps to her Sig Sauer.
“You have three seconds to start walking,” Jessie said. “Come toward me.”
She ignored Jessie’s semiautomatic to glance one more time at Hollywood and make her choice. Her bloodstream buzzed with adrenaline. Her throat had dried from breathing through her mouth. Fight or flight? Run and dive for the gun, or surrender, get closer to Jessie and the cannon, see what happens next.
She raised her hands higher and walked toward Jessie and the deadly black eye of that noise suppressor. Slowly, on purpose. Shuffling her retied sneakers. Her pulse and juices had been on high so long, being unhurried, keeping a leisurely pace required every atom of her will.
“Stop stalling,” Jessie said. “Or I’ll shoot you.”
“I’m not exactly one-hundred percent.”
She shuffled to a spot five yards from Jessie, her gaze level with the first row of pale green alfalfa stacked along the truck trailer. A glance to her left confirmed the amphitheater was filling with people, and that one man on stage wore a Stetson and a big belly waiting to be introduced. Looked like Ray directly behind him.
“Get on your knees,” Jessie said. “I’m going to kill a slimeball, and I’m going to let you watch.”
Sunny kneeled, balancing herself on the uneven ground. She kept her hands raised above her shoulders, and for some crazy reason, worried again about Hollywood. The bastard had kicked and punched her, lied to her, threatened to kill her, yet she now found him sad, such a handsome, potentially likeable guy, driven to extremes by…greed?
Jessie stared at her. Sunny stared back, wondering if she was about to die.
The one great thing she’d learned from her father’s suicide, an idea she needed to think about more, maybe every day, Sunny believed happiness came from loving and being loved, plus having a job which contributed. You helped somebody with your work. Made a difference somewhere with someone.
Jessie walked near a lever mounted to the trailer, a homemade lever rising waist high beside the cannon’s ammunition drum. The drum not only held unspent shells ready to fire, Sunny knew, but also collected the spent cartridges, a necessary design to keep the expired shell casings from flying into aircraft engines.
Jessie placed an aluminum carpenter’s level on the black barrels of the cannon. Measuring the angle. She nodded her approval.
No more time, Sunny figured. Jessie was about to fire her rain of hell on an unsuspecting crowd, half of them children.
Sunny scrambled to her feet and ran at the trailer. She had to stop Jessie. And she had to crash the party without a weapon.
Her terrible past did not excuse Jessie’s violence against innocent people. An unfortunate woman, a soul perhaps crafted by betrayal, rape, and torture. An adult bent early by a gruesome childhood without love and affection. But her commitment to death, the way she planned or risked children’s lives…
She’d lost her humanity.
Sunny reached the trailer at full speed and tried to use her momentum, throwing her knee up high onto the flatbed, jumping with the other leg, tossing herself onto the platform. Her plan was simple—rip off any one of the cannon’s wires and cables. Of course, to do that, she’d have to avoid Jessie’s bullets.
She successfully landed on the trailer and raised her head to find the threat.
Jessie fired twice.
32
The first gunshot buzzed Sunny’s head and ricocheted low off the truck cab’s rear bumper guard. The second bullet struck her right leg, the limb she’d first kicked up onto the flatbed. High on the outside of her thigh, the blow knocking Sunny off the trailer, tumbling backward.
She crashed hard on the slope. Dazed. Her ears hummed like electrical transformers. The top of her head was hot. Stars, planets, and a maze of tiny white lights zoomed across her blurred vision. But her leg burned as if she sat in a campfire. She explored her leg and the wound with her fingers. A missing chunk on the outside. Like the saguaro minutes ago.
Sunny stayed flat on her back. Breathe. Just breathe.
As predicted by firing range instructors, classroom lecturers, and anyone else who’d ever been shot, the bullet trauma converted her leg into a roaring, crackling fireplace. The worst burning sensation she’d ever experienced, including spilled boiling water. Her eyes teared from the angry, searing heat which refused to fade.
The breathing worked a little. Extra oxygen kicked in basic instincts, including survival. Another shot or two from Jessie’s semiautomatic could explode any second in her direction. If she wanted to live, if she wanted to do her job, protect those innocent people down below, live up to the promise she’d made Ray, she better recover and fight back.
She checked the trailer. No Jessie.
Now, honey. Move.
She tried to stand but couldn’t. The bullet hadn’t broken any bones, maybe, but her leg burned so badly, the pain lingered with such intensity, her large thigh muscles didn’t respond to her brain signals. They were getting their orders from somewhere else.
Unnerving. She’d never experienced such helplessness.
She had to find a way to change position. But how?
Pushing with her good leg, she slid her butt against the nearest trailer wheel. She huddled against the steel and rubber, a tiny bit of cover. Still no sight or sound of Jessie. Why wasn’t Jessie coming after her to finish the job?
She checked her wound again. A chunk of her outer thigh was missing, about the size of an unshelled walnut. More blood this time, but the bullet wasn’t inside her. She covered the wound with her hand and pressed, then kicked herself up to sit higher against the rubber tire, focused on her breathing and locating Jessie. She had to before moving again. But Jessie was nowhere.
Blood oozed steadily from her wounded leg, but the flow didn’t pump in rhythm with her pulse. She’d been luckier than Hollywood. No arteries had been hit. She sucked air as deeply as her lungs allowed, letting the exhale slide out slowly through pursed lips. The sky glowed deep and rich blue, nearly cobalt.
“Sunny.”
Had Hollywood returned to life?
“Sunny,” he said. “Over here.”
There he was, Hollywood on his back and trying to be heard above the swishing blades of a non-military, white-painted helicopter. Glare off the bright morning sun made identification of the chopper impossible from Sunny’s angle. She needed help, and surely those ten minutes had elapsed. Maybe the ‘copter was General Johannsen’s back-up team.
Hollywood waved at her. “Sunny.”
In her peripheral view, Jessie’s feet appeared underneath the trailer, on the opposite side, then all of Jessie’s legs. She was about to jump to the ground.
Sunny jerked her head behind the truck’s rear wheel and held her breath, hoping she wouldn’t give herself away. Jessie must be looking for her. This was it.
She heard Jessie crawl beneath the flatbed, then a metallic squeaking. Equipment working. She peeked, saw Jessie pumping a long handle, lifting the rear of the trailer with a heavy-duty floor jack. Jessie totally focused on the floorjack. She paid no attention to the wheel shielding Sunny. Jessie must have realized she was running out of time. The governor wouldn’t be on stage long.
The helicopter twisted, and she saw they would be no help. The call letters WPZO were painted in gold. It belonged to a Phoenix TV station. If Jessie fired the cannon again, those people would be thrilled to make digital recordings of the death and destruction.
Broadcast the violence for their viewers live.
What went through her head again, there was no one there but her to stop the potential mass murder. Unless she personally prevented the attack, Jessie Maris could unleash hundreds of explosive shells on a crowd of five-thousand humans, half of them children. Not to mention the target she’d sworn to protect, Congressman King.
“Sunny,” Hollywood said.
How many lives were at risk? Thousands of voices sang along now the speeches and long prayer had finished. She could see the top curve of the amphitheater, the image of a saguaro cactus imprinted in the top seal. The congressman’s voice rasped on the microphone, missing all the notes.
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves
Another two minutes, King would be off premises, out the back road in his three Escalades. She’d seen the SUVs turn around while she followed Hollywood up the hill.
Beneath the trailer, Jessie gave up on the floor jack and headed topside. By pumping the long handle up and down, she’d raised the trailer’s rear end at least six inches, maybe more. Up in back meant down in front. The aim of the cannon had lowered considerably.
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
“Sunny.”
Her leg still burned like glowing charcoal against her flesh. The top of her head itched and hurt at the same time. Jessie’s first bullet might have barely missed her.
She hoped her luck held.
