Kill switch tom rollins.., p.17
Kill Switch (Tom Rollins Thrillers Book 14), page 17
“There’s a truck there,” she says, pointing. Tom sees it. “It’ll have a thicker body. They open up on this and they’re gonna cut us down.”
Tom nods. He changes magazine on the AR15 and then says, “Go,” while he stands and opens fire. Orlando and his team are getting close. Most of them take cover behind a nearby van. Corey dives over the partition between lanes and lies flat. Tom’s bullets ping off the metalwork. He continues to fire as he runs backward, joining the others at the truck.
He sees a cop car approaching. It’s driving fast, coming up the wrong side of the bridge in the southbound lanes. Tom thinks the lanes heading northbound must be backed all the way up if the cruiser has had to use the other side of the bridge. Its siren is not blaring, and its lights are not flashing.
“We’ve got company,” Tom says, ducking behind the truck.
“Who?” Nina says.
“Cops. No sirens. Only one car.”
She looks at him. “Simon?”
“Could be. They’re not out yet.”
“More cops will be coming.”
“Does that really help us?” Tom says.
“That’s good, right?” Jack says. He’s been listening in. “If the cops come, they can help us.”
“Not these ones,” Tom says. “If they’re who we think they are. The fact they’ve turned up without their sirens going, that concerns me.”
“Besides,” Nina says, “we’re not exactly the city’s favourite people right now. They see us, they’re gonna open fire. Doesn’t matter whether we’re with you or not.”
Tom looks around. He’s noticed a momentary pause in the shooting. He can see beyond the worst of the crash zone. It’s clear. It’s still a long way to the end of the bridge. Even then, they still need to get deep into Marin County to meet up with Jack’s people. It’s still a long way to safety, and a long way with nothing to hide behind. He can see people running, fleeing the gunfight.
He checks the abandoned cars nearby that haven’t been caught up in the crash. Engines are still running. That means the keys are still inside. Only problem is, they’re too far away to reach without being gunned down.
Nina lies flat and looks under the truck. “It’s Simon and his people,” she says.
“What are they doing?” Jack says.
She doesn’t answer Jack. She looks at Tom. Her face is grim. “They’re talking with Orlando and his team. It looks like they might be familiar with each other.” She gets up off the ground. “We either need to kill them or find a way off this goddamn bridge.”
Tom is still looking around. The closest vehicle to the right has nothing between it and them. It’s a killing zone. It would also be a tight squeeze to get through the crash zone. Off to the left, in the southbound lane, there’s a minivan idling. The way behind it is clear. The way to it, save for the barrier, is covered. It’s further away, and it’ll be a long run, but it’s their better chance.
“We’re gonna have to run,” Tom says. “This time, we stick together.”
47
Orlando had a close call in the van, when Rollins first opened up on them through the windshield. Stuart got through into the back before him. Orlando followed close behind. He heard the rifle open up. Eddie was standing. He was close, ready to move out. Too eager. Orlando grabbed him and twisted, using him as a shield. He felt Eddie’s body vibrate as the bullets thudded into him. Orlando fell back, Eddie on top. The rest of the team were already lying flat in preparation. They didn’t see what Orlando did. Didn’t see him sacrifice Eddie for his own life.
His team can use Eddie’s death as motivation. Orlando, for his part, feels nothing. He knew Eddie, Eddie answered to him, and now Eddie is dead. The circle of life. He’s lost two men today, both because of Rollins, and he feels more for Rollins himself than he does for either of them. He craves vengeance, though not necessarily for his men, the same way the others will. No, he wants it for what Rollins and Nina have caused. The issues they have created, and the headache they have given him.
They’re pinned down, now, with the Fielders. They’re not going anywhere, not unless they want to risk sudden perforations from Orlando and his men’s M4s. Plus, Simon and his people have arrived.
Orlando points toward the truck, talking to Simon. “They’re currently concealing themselves behind that vehicle,” he says. “With you here, we have the numbers to keep them pinned and simultaneously flank them. We have them now. There’s no escape.”
Simon looks around, taking in the rest of the team, as well as the death and destruction on the bridge. He wipes sweat from his brow. He’s in over his head, and he knows it. “What about –” He has to clear his throat to continue. “What about the senator and his family?”
Orlando feels Stuart’s eyes upon him, waiting to see how he responds. Harris and Corey are nearby, M4’s pointing toward the truck, ready to open fire should any of their targets present themselves.
“Rollins and Perry still have them,” Orlando says. “At this point, we have no way of knowing if they’re still alive or not. If I’m honest, it doesn’t look good right now. In their desperation, trapped like this, they may have already killed the family.”
Simon swallows. He looks back at his people. The woman, Christie Llewellyn, looks sick. “Bastards,” she mutters.
“If you and your people keep them pinned, my team can flank them, deal with them once and for all, put this whole nightmare to rest. The Fielder family have the best chance if we’re the ones getting the drop on them all. If they’re still alive, that is.”
Simon looks up, away from the bridge, into the sky. Orlando knows what he’s looking at. He can hear it, too. The chopper he called in is approaching.
He also hears sirens. They’re coming from the south, from San Francisco, but they’re still a way off. There’s time enough for them to finish here.
“Is that a helicopter?” Simon says.
“The media?” Christie says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Orlando says. “It’s ours, but forget about it. We can’t wait for it to get here. We need to act now. Do you understand?”
Simon tears his eyes away. He manages an uncertain nod. “More cops are coming,” he says. “I can hear them. Shouldn’t we wait for them to get here?” Simon is concerned. He didn’t expect things to get this far. He didn’t expect to reach a crash site on the Golden Gate Bridge and see so many dead bodies strewn upon the road. He thought they’d corner Rollins and Nina somewhere quiet, do them there. He never expected it to get to this level. He never thought he’d have to ‘rescue’ a senator and his family.
Orlando slaps him. Simon blinks. The cops behind him seize up, shocked. Christie glares. Orlando thinks he can hear her growl. “We don’t have time for you to shit your pants,” Orlando says. “We need to do this now. The Fielder family can’t afford for us to wait.”
Before Orlando can further impress the importance of immediate action, before Simon has a chance to respond, Corey calls out. “They’re moving!” He opens fire and Harris soon joins him. Stuart moves up beside them. Simon and the other cops pull out their handguns.
Orlando watches. He sees Rollins and Nina returning fire as they run between vehicles, firing back when they’re able. They keep the Fielder family between them, covering them.
Orlando clenches his jaw. He looks at Simon and the cops. They’ve seen the same thing he has. Simon is holding out a hand to the others to keep them from shooting, his eyes narrowed, his gun lowered. He turns to Orlando. “What are your people doing?” he says. “The family are alive. Nina is keeping them alive! She’s covering them. They both are. What’s happening here?”
Orlando doesn’t have time for this. He guns down Simon. The cop drops to the ground in a burst of blood.
Christie reacts first. She fires back. Two rounds hit Orlando in the vest, close together, near his heart. Orlando stumbles back but doesn’t go down. Stuart has spun at the nearby shooting. He turns his rifle on the cops, blasting them. “You good?” he says to Orlando.
Orlando spits out the corner of his mouth. The cops were a waste of time. They’ve cost them time, and gained them nothing in return. The helicopter is getting closer. Corey and Harris have ceased shooting. They’re looking back to see what he says.
“Cops are coming,” Orlando says. “We need to end this before they get here.”
48
At a pause in the shooting, Tom hears the helicopter approaching. He glances toward it, a quick look. He can’t afford to take his eyes away from what he’s doing for too long. It’s an Mi-17, dark green in colour. There’s no way to tell whom it’s here for, but Tom doesn’t plan on waiting around to find out.
He saw Orlando and his people gun down the cops. Saw how Orlando stumbled back, shot in the vest. Nina saw it, too. She looked at Tom, wide-eyed. They didn’t understand what was happening, but there was nothing they could do for them. They needed use the distraction to their advantage.
They get to the minivan in the southbound lane and jump inside. Tom gets behind the wheel. Like before, Nina is beside him and the Fielder family are in the back. Before they can close the doors, he’s turning the vehicle around. He floors the pedal, speeding down the bridge in the wrong lane. There’s nothing coming. People at the end have pulled up and prevented anyone else from getting on.
Tom starts blaring the horn. He doesn’t slow as he approaches. People scatter for their cars, desperate to get them out of the way before the speeding madman can reach them.
“There’s a pretty solid barrier all the way down, separating these roads,” Nina says, bracing herself against the door and the dash. “How are we going to navigate that?”
“We’d better hope people get out of the way,” Tom says.
“There’s gaps between the barrier when we’re off the bridge,” Jack says, leaning forward. “That’s probably not as solid, right?”
“I’ve seen people go through them,” Nina says. “The cars would get pretty messed up, though.”
“Well, this isn’t our car,” Tom says. “Apologies to the owner, but if it has to get damaged, then so be it.”
“Could we separate them?” Jack says. “The barriers, I mean. Could we pull a pin or something?”
Nina nods. “Yeah, yeah, we can do that. Get ourselves into the proper lane. It’s clear on that side.”
The gathering at the end of the bridge has parted, people having pulled aside, thinking that they’re escaping from the crash and whatever else is happening on the bridge – which they are. They probably just don’t realise that the passengers of this vehicle were an integral part of the gunfight.
Tom wants to look in the mirror, to see what the helicopter is doing, but he can’t. He needs to focus on the road, and only the road.
Tom pulls the minivan to the right, close to the barrier. Nina jumps out and Jack follows her. They pull connecting pins from the barriers and push them aside, wide enough for the minivan to pull through. Tom does, and then they push the barrier back into place to keep anyone from following with ease. When they’re back inside, Tom starts driving again. The road ahead of them is clear. On the other side, the southbound lanes are gridlocked as far as they can see.
“Do you have directions?” Tom says to Jack.
“Keep going straight for now,” Jack says, wiping sweat from his mouth. There’s dirt on his hands from working at the pins, and it leaves a smudge on his lips and his cheek. “I’ll tell you when there’s a turn.”
49
Orlando sees Rollins and the others escape. His men all look to him. The cops are drawing closer.
“What do we do?” Stuart says.
“They’re heading for Marin County,” Corey says. “And they’re going fast. If I don’t get to my laptop right now we’re gonna lose them.”
“We could follow them in the chopper,” Stuart says.
“Depends on where they go,” Corey says. “And hasn’t this already caused enough mess?” He gestures to the bridge. “We’re already gonna struggle to explain this away. We ride a chopper around Marin County and try to mow down a minivan carrying a senator and his family, how do we spin that? It’s getting late but it might as well be broad daylight. We’re not operating in the shadows here anymore.”
Orlando doesn’t answer. Tony, the helicopter pilot, contacts him on his radio. Orlando doesn’t respond immediately. The sirens are getting closer. “I think it’s too late to explain anything away at this point,” he says. He motions to Stuart and Corey. “Go keep the cops at bay.”
They don’t question him. They follow commands. They do as he says. As they open fire on the approaching cruisers, causing them to swerve and hit their brakes, Orlando pulls out the radio. “Pick us up,” he says.
“From where?” the pilot says. “It’s wild down there. We can’t land on the bridge.”
“Then throw us down a rope,” Orlando says. He puts the radio away. Harris is looking back at him, thumbs through his vest. “Get the computers out of the van,” Orlando says. “And then blow it.”
Harris grins, then nods. As he runs off to the van, Orlando speaks to Stuart and Corey through their earpieces. The chopper is hovering above them, unrolling a rope ladder down to them. “Harris is blowing the van. We’re out of here.”
Orlando starts climbing the ladder, swaying with the motion of the hovering chopper. It gets louder as he ascends, deafening. He looks back, continuing to climb. Stuart and Corey continue to lay down suppressing fire. The front three cruisers are decimated. Orlando spots a couple of dead uniforms, lying bloodied on the road. The rest of them are sheltering behind their vehicles, taking poorly aimed potshots.
Harris is out of the van. He has the two laptops. He throws a couple of grenades inside and then runs for the ladder. The van blows. Throwing the grenades into the van wasn’t an effort to destroy the van entirely. It’ll destroy a lot of evidence present, though, and mangle Eddie’s body. It’ll give forensics something to keep them busy while Orlando and the rest of the survivors extricate themselves from this shitshow situation.
As Harris climbs, Stuart and Corey start making their way to the ladder. Orlando reaches the top and climbs inside. The co-pilot hands him a headset.
“Where we going?” Chet, the co-pilot, says once Orlando has it on.
“Anywhere but here,” he says. He takes a seat and straps himself in, opening and closing his fists. He grits his teeth until his jaw aches. He switches channels on the headset and calls Hanley.
Hanley sounds exasperated when he answers. “What’s going on out there?” he says. “Where are you? What’s that noise?”
“We’re getting out,” Orlando says.
“Are you in a helicopter?”
“This whole thing has gone south. Rollins was the wrong man to use. Nina Perry wasn’t any slouch, either. I hold up my hands and admit we made a mistake.”
Harris gets aboard the chopper. He straps himself in, looking at Orlando, seeing that he’s talking.
Hanley is breathing hard. “Where does this leave me?” he says finally. “Jack is still alive. Everyone that matters is still fucking breathing. We were promised a lot of money to deal with this problem.” Orlando can imagine him pacing, sweating, running his hands back through his hair and tugging at his collar. “This can be traced back to us. It can be traced back to me. Do you understand how serious this is? We should have pulled the damn plug the second Rollins and the woman got away.”
“We did all we could, but when a mission is a failure, it’s a failure,” Orlando says.
“Damn it, Orlando, what do we do?”
Orlando runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth. There’s a bitter, burning taste in his throat. Stuart is next onto the chopper, and Corey is soon behind him. Corey brings up the rope as the chopper veers to the right, leaving the bridge.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Orlando says, thinking of the payday they’re not going to see. “When this all dies down, I’m going to kill Rollins. This is personal for me, now. I’m going to track him down, and then I’m going to follow him. I’m going to always be with him. And then, when he least suspects it, I’m going to tear his fucking spine out.”
“That’s all well and good, but I doubt I’ll ever receive the satisfaction of hearing about it while I’m rotting in a prison cell.”
“Mm,” Orlando says. “If Rollins and Nina were able to figure out who the target was, they’re probably going to figure out why, especially if they’re with Fielder. And if that’s the case, they’re going to work it out sooner than you’re expecting. If you’ve got any sense, you should start moving. Kiss your old life goodbye. You need to disappear.”
Even over the noise of the chopper, Orlando can hear Hanley grinding his teeth. “Come and get me,” he says.
“Come get you?” Orlando repeats.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Come and get me.”
“You’re still in Nevada?”
“I’m at home. You’re in a chopper, right? What’s that, a couple of hours? Damn it, I pay you. You work for me. Come and get me.”
Orlando switches channel, talks to the pilot. “We need to go to Nevada,” he says. “You got the fuel for that?”
“Nevada?” the pilot says. “Yeah, we’ve got the fuel for it. We’ll have to refuel when we get there, but I know a place. You got an address?”
Orlando relays it to him, then gets back on to Hanley. “We’re on our way. You’ve got two hours. Pack your shit and be ready for us.”
50
LC Security are based out of Los Angeles, but they have a safehouse in Marin County. Jack directs Tom to it. It’s on the side of a hill, the nearest neighbour two miles away.
Tom has made sure that Orlando and his team have not been following them. His eyes have checked on the mirrors regularly, and Nina has been watching, too. They’ve made sure to check the sky, but the only helicopters they’ve seen have been flying toward the bridge. News choppers, presumably. No one has followed them through Marin County.
