Hostile Takeover

  They laughed. One of them produced a Ziploc bag full of drugs that could have housed a Thanksgiving turkey.

  “Put your ass in the stratosphere if you want.”

  “I want.”

  I pulled out a stack of hundreds.

  “Nah. Put that away. First taste is always free.”

  He assembled four different pills and a minuscule plastic vial of bluish powder on his dinner plate hand.

  “I call this the V12. You got your Mexican Molly, Dutch Molly, OG Dexy, and a Calcium Channel Blocker to keep your heart rate and blood pressure even while you busting out on all twelve cylinders.”

  “What’s the powder?”

  “Pure ginseng root. Couple hours after the hit you piss all the poison out. Hopefully on the face of the guy you just capped.”

  “Remind me to get your pager number after this. You’re my new best friend.”

  I hit his V12 cocktail, as instructed, and it was everything he promised—high-octane brain clarity and a physical rush that had me convinced I could do anything Iron Man can do but without the suit. Took the cardiac meds next. Worked like a charm. Even. Smooth. Clear.

  “We’re getting close,” Alice said. “Gear up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said and strapped myself with two SIG MPX-K submachine guns, a dozen 9-mm twenty-round mags, and two SIG P226 pistols with eighteen-round mags. And stylish Kevlar body armor, of course.

  “What’d you guys knock over, the Department of Defense?” my new drug dealer best friend asked.

  “Yeah, man,” another one said to me. “We’re keeping this G.I. Joe shit after the gig. Feel me?”

  “You walk away from this gig and you can keep whatever you want,” I said.

  They laughed. Confident. Cocky. These guys had no idea who they were dealing with. We rounded the block and the location was in sight:

  Human Resources, Inc.

  We parked in the loading docks in the back of the building. When Alice, Sue, and I stepped out of the bus, we stood at the entrance of HR for the last time. The street was strangely quiet.

  “Welcome to Human Resources, Inc.,” I said.

  “You’ll go to interesting places,” Alice continued, “meet unique and stimulating people from all walks of life—”

  “And kill them,” Sue said.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  Alice kissed me.

  “I know part of why you did what you did last night was because you’re afraid we won’t make it out of here,” she said, “but I promise you there’s no way we’re going to lose.”

  “Hell no,” Sue said. “Failure is not an option.”

  “We need some kind of Three Musketeers call to arms thing,” I said.

  “Smart-ass.” Alice smiled.

  Our gangsta army filed out, bristling with weapons like urban Marines on an assault mission. We locked and loaded outside because as soon as we breached the doors, it was going to be on, and we needed to be ready. I was ready.

  I was matte steel and composite . . .

  Smooth black Kevlar . . .

  Powder, lead, and fire.

  I was the bullet. And I had a name etched on my dull gray face, just above my gaping hollow-point mouth. That night I was going to break the place and the man that made me.

  52

  We opened the loading dock doors with military breaching charges that didn’t sound like much more than a car backfiring. But we knew it was going to be enough to alert whoever was inside to our presence. When we got inside, we were fully expecting a firefight, but the place was empty. Lights were out on all the floors and there was no sign of life.

  We were about to call it a night when I remembered the subbasement. That part of the building was the original HR back when the rest of it was full of legit businesses. Over the years, Bob had acquired the rest of the building and closed it off. I knew about it because I’m nosy and I used to steal what Bob stored down there—booze, pharmaceuticals, money, guns, ammo, IDs, credit cards, and the occasional stinger missile.

  We used the service stairwells to head down there. When we opened the access door, one of my gangstas peered out onto the subbasement’s main floor. It was dark and all was quiet—a very bad sign.

  “All clear,” he started to say. “Let’s—”

  A metallic zip sound preceded his brains being blown all over us and the back of the stairwell.

  “Follow my lead,” I whispered.

  I slammed two titanium combat knives into the metal fire door and motioned for one of the thugs to grab them like handles. Then I shot the hinges off the door and we advanced into the room, clustered behind the door. Silenced 9-mm rounds were spraying the door and ricocheting all around us. We watched our flanks, blasting anything that moved. We lost one of our crew but managed to take cover in another room with only one access door. We donned night vision specs and I surveyed the scene.

  It was a death trap.

  An unknown number of shooters started blasting and I made everyone lay low while I counted weapons and rounds. Sounded like maybe twenty of them. I knew exactly what subs they had and exactly what sidearms, and since they were going all redcoat on us with the firing line, I was able to guesstimate when they were tapped. As the silenced hellfire started to peter out a bit and I could hear slapping mags, we busted out of there like Pamplona bulls looking to gore-fuck a few tourists. Turned out this was a gangsta specialty. These guys were like Spartan soldiers in a frontal assault. Anyone they didn’t fill with lead they eviscerated with brass-knuckle knives.

  Blood flew like ocean spray on the bow of a ship and bodies fell all around these man mountains in basketball kicks and leather coats the size of a full steer hide. It was beautiful! But I was also on a 50,000-volt high, moving, shooting, cutting, punching, and kicking like Van Damme in fast-forward. And Alice and Sue were right there with me.

  My gangstas were gaining ground and control of the enemy thugs, pushing them back with their fearlessness and new-school Wild West gun-wielding skills. This allowed me to penetrate deeper into the maze, where I heard the sound of voices yelling for help. I tracked down the source of the sound. It was coming from a room behind a locked metal fire door. Alice blew off the hinges with her MPX-K and I kicked the door in. It flopped straight down and skidded across the floor and Alice and I ran in with some of our gangstas.

  That’s when I saw all of the recruits.

  They were zip-tied at the wrists and ankles and lying facedown on the floor. Sue ran in after us.

  “All clear out there,” he said.

  I pointed to the recruits. Then we heard the electronic pop of an M7 blasting cap and the back wall burst into flames . . . followed by the wall next to it, then the next, until the room was engulfed in fire.

  “It’s a trap! We need to get them out of here!” I bellowed.

  “John, look!” Alice yelled.

  Sue and I followed her gaze to the ceiling, which was wired with what appeared to be enough explosives to demo the whole building. They were the C4 charges I had planted at HR long ago. We had a matter of seconds before the heat or flames set them off.

  “Move!”

  We snapped out our blades and cut the zip ties as fast as we could, getting the recruits to their feet, then we ripped the duct tape off their mouths and jerked them back to reality.

  “Go! Now!”

  Everyone sprinted back through the cavernous subbasement maze. There were bodies everywhere and we had to pick our way through them while being blinded and choked out by the smoke. Then one of the members of our street crew ran up to me.

  “Place is crawling with feds outside!”

  “What?”

  “We’re surrounded. My crew and I are going to shoot our way out. Fuck trying to beat a federal rap. Sorry, man. Much respect.”

  He and his crew took off
up the stairs. We followed them back up to the loading bay, where I could see an army of feds and local cops outside with their guns drawn.

  Then the first round of explosives in the subbasement detonated.

  “Get down!” Alice and I both yelled.

  We all hit the deck as the building shook violently from the blast. Outside, the feds and cops scattered, afraid the whole building was coming down on their heads.

  Everyone headed for the loading bay doors. Just as we made it through the doors, one of the cops saw us.

  “Freeze!” he yelled.

  “Move now!” I screamed through the smoke and dust.

  I opened fire on the cops and feds while Alice and the recruits made a run for it. When my mag ran out and I went to reload, the cops scrambled up from their cover positions and opened up on me. I felt a bullet rip through the side of my hip and the sudden agony made me drop my weapon. I had no real cover to speak of and the cops were getting ready to blast me into oblivion when the rest of the explosives in the subbasement detonated. A hail of brick, glass, and wood shrapnel exploded into the street. The concussion knocked the cops on their asses and the loading bay floor collapsed underneath me. I fell to the floor below and hit so hard I was knocked out cold. I’m not sure how long I was out, but eventually I started to see bright lights flashing in my eyes.

  When I finally came to, a firefighter was standing over me, shining a flashlight at my pupils. He draped me carefully over his shoulder and carried me out of the rubble. The EMTs loaded me onto a gurney and two federal agents handcuffed me to it. My eyes searched for Alice and Sue in what looked like the aftermath of an urban war zone, but they were nowhere to be seen. As they quickly wheeled me to an ambulance, I watched Human Resources, Inc. finally implode and disappear from the Manhattan skyline.

  53

  I’ve been in custody now for a couple of weeks while Assistant Director Fletcher and his cronies decided what to do with their favorite insect specimen. Which makes me laugh, because the choices are pretty straightforward: death or a fate worse than death—life in this hole. I’m trying to imagine choking down the creamed spinach, creamed corn, creamed broccoli dinner rotation for the rest of my life, and all I can think of is hanging myself with a rope that I slowly weave out of the horrific cadaver meat they serve in the cafeteria.

  I have one piece of good news. Recently, Assistant Director Fletcher’s office sent me word that they were granting my request to see Alice. As you know, in exchange I had to give them information that led to her capture. Truth be told, I’m really looking forward to seeing her again, because as long as our target is still alive, neither of us has a snowball’s chance in hell at surviving till next quarter—and that’s being generous. Guys like him can do anything they want to anyone they want.

  Anyway, my old buddy Fletch called me personally this morning to tell me that they have Alice in custody and they are bringing her to see me. So, I’m back under the bright fluorescent lights of my windowless cinder-block bug jar at Quantico, handcuffed to the chair and waiting to bask in the dawn’s early light of my fate. I asked for a creepy Hannibal Lecter psycho-ward mask to try to lighten the mood, but Fletch didn’t find that at all amusing. I’m actually a little nervous, which surprises me considering I truly have nothing left to lose. Fletcher walks in, smiling broadly like a dad about to surprise his son with a Red Ryder BB gun on Christmas morning.

  “She’s on her way, John.”

  “Somebody get me a mint,” I joke.

  Fletcher lights a cigarette. He doesn’t offer me one. We hear footsteps coming down the hall. The tension is palpable. There is a knock on the door and Fletcher practically jumps out of his chair to open it. He’s so eager it almost makes me ill. They wheel Alice into the room in a wheelchair. Her upper right arm and lower leg are both in casts.

  “You’ve got five minutes, so make it count,” Fletcher says. “You understand that anything you say is admissible as evidence?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I say.

  Fletcher turns to Alice.

  “Alice?”

  “Yes,” she says quietly, smirking at my partial body cast, which is itching like a son of a bitch.

  “Guess they took the fight out of you in the first round, eh, John?” Fletcher asks, taunting.

  I ignore him.

  “What happened to you?” I ask Alice.

  “Actually, I got pretty banged up during our Wild West show at HR. I was a week away from getting my casts off when, thanks to you, the feds found me this morning . . .”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Please save it, John. I’m here now. You got what you wanted. And as the man said, you’ve got five minutes.”

  She glares at Fletch.

  “Pretty inequitable exchange if you ask me,” she says.

  “Can we have a minute?” I ask him.

  “Sure,” he replies, gloating like a school bully.

  They wheel her up to the table and position her on the opposite end, handcuffing her to the chair and chaining it to the table. A DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS sign is the only thing missing. Fletch and company leave the room but I can see them peering through the steel-reinforced window on the door.

  Alice and I look at each other for a long time, both of us breathing the other in. She softens a bit and even manages a smile.

  “How have you been?” I ask.

  She looks at her leg and arm.

  “Great. You?”

  “Never better.”

  We laugh a little.

  “I’m sorry, Alice.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I know you don’t believe me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because I really do love you.”

  “If you loved me, I wouldn’t be here, John.”

  “You know the opposite is true. And you know you still love me,” I say.

  “Perhaps. But, like a chronic viral infection or a bad president, I’ve learned to live with it,” she says.

  “Don’t be bitter. We both know this is for the best.”

  “For who?”

  “For us.”

  “John, is this why you brought me here? To tell me you’re sorry for bringing me here?”

  “I needed to see you. After today—”

  “Don’t. This is pathetic enough as it is,” she says.

  “Is that all you have to say?” I ask.

  She looks away for a beat, trying to hold back tears.

  “You know, John. You weren’t the only one who made a deal.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I never made any deals.”

  I look at Fletch outside the door. He’s pretending to be interested in his files while I know he’s listening closely to everything we say.

  “I figured since you ratted me out to save your ass, I should use whatever chips I had to stay out of the death row game.”

  Fletcher walks back in the room.

  “I never ratted you out to save my ass.”

  “That’s enough,” he says. “Five minutes are up.”

  “What kind of deal did you make with Alice, Fletcher?”

  “I said that’s enough.”

  “I said I would give him the name of the person who really runs HR,” Alice says defiantly. “And finally get this target off my back.”

  I look at Fletch for verification. He motions for his boys to come in the room and wheel Alice out.

  “In exchange for what?”

  “One of us has to die, John. You realize that, right? They can’t just let both of us keep on breathing after everything we’ve done.”

  “Alice, if you tell him, we both die.”

  “You never give up, do you, John? Maybe I’ll just tell him right now, in front of you, make our little visit that much more special,??
? Alice says.

  “Get her out of here,” Fletcher says, moving closer to my end of the table.

  “Don’t you want to know the answer, Fletch?” she asks.

  “Shut the fuck up, Alice,” I say. “He’s a liar. This is what he’s been gaming for the whole time.”

  She turns to Fletcher. He puts his hand on the back of my chair.

  “Don’t listen to him, Alice,” he says. “And don’t say a word.”

  “Why not, Fletch?”

  “Alice, you’re on thin ice,” Fletcher warns.

  “I know why you don’t want me to say it, Fletch,” she says, leering at him, “because you’re the person running HR . . . and you always have been.”

  54

  Assistant Director Fletcher stares at her for a long beat. Then he looks at me. It’s difficult to tell if he’s angry or shocked or about to have a stroke. Finally, he grins, the corners of his mouth quivering slightly.

  “I’ll be filing both of your cases as enemy combatant status. You’re both going to burn. But not until we drown you for information first. And this conversation is over.”

  “Then you’ll burn with us, Fletch,” I say.

  And I lock his wrist in the handcuff I just took off of mine.

  “What the fuck?” he says, reaching for his gun, which I am now holding.

  I hit him upside the head and knock him into his chair. Agents draw their guns but before they can even think about pulling the trigger, I shoot them both in the feet and drop them, guns clattering, screaming in agony. Then I rest the barrel on Fletcher’s head.

  “Crawl your asses out of here now,” I say to the wounded agents, “or I’ll do him. And lock the door behind you. No one comes in!”

  They comply, moaning like a couple of pansies the whole way.

  “How did you get out of the cuffs?” Alice asks.

  “You’d be surprised at all the fun and useful items you can buy from a prison guard. Those guys are like walking convenience stores.”

  Fletcher goes for the gun. I elbow him in the face and break his nose. Blood gushes down his shirtfront. Storm troopers are assembling outside the door. No doubt the place is going into lockdown. I wheel my chair over to Alice and point the gun at her face.