Blue Moonlight (26 page)

Right beside me is the janitor closet, the door to which is wide open. As if divine Providence were looking down upon me, there’s a roll of gray duct tape sitting out on a shelf, along with dozens of rolls of commercial-grade toilet paper. I grab the tape and hand it to them. But before they go to work on him, I reach into his chest pocket, pull out the flash drive, and stuff it back into my coat pocket along with the other flash drive.

“Call 911!” I shout before exiting the bathroom for the ladies’ room.

Out in the main lobby of the building, women and girls are running from the ladies’ room. People are racing for the doors. The sound of breaking glass can be heard above the screams in the ladies’ room. When I slip inside, I see Boris and Mr. Personality kicking in the doors on the stalls. They turn and look at me as I enter into the brightly lit restroom.

On cue they raise up their weapons.

I raise up mine.

No one shoots.

I shift my aim from Boris to Mr. Personality and back again.

No one’s saying a word.

When the first cop enters into the bathroom behind me, I drop to my knees. Two exploding rounds take out the cop. I fire from down on my knees and nail Boris in the thigh, just above the place where I disintegrated his kneecap almost a year ago. He goes down on his ass.

But Mr. Personality has kicked open the last stall door, dragged Lola out by her hair, and jammed the barrel of his pistol against the side of her head.

I drop Zumbo’s automatic and raise up my hands. “Don’t hurt her,” I say.

“I won’t,” Mr. Personality says, raising his first smile since they kidnapped us earlier. “First, I wish to make her my bitch,
da
?”

We exit the ladies’ room.

Boris shoots off a couple of rounds for effect. The deafening rounds reverberate inside the lobby, and the people who remain inside the building hit the floor. There’s a cop standing directly outside the side entrance. He’s using his radio, no doubt calling for backup. Boris hobbles through the first set of automatic sliding glass doors and shoots the cop in the head through the plate glass of the second set. Un-fucking-lucky cop.

Parked up along the curb is the cop’s blue-and-white cruiser.

Boris limps toward the open door and the dash-mounted radio that’s spitting out chatter about a SWAT team on its way. Raising his automatic, he pumps two rounds into the radio. Then he pulls the short-barreled riot shotgun from its housing between the bucket seats and grips it in his free hand.

“We need a car,” Boris spits, his face pale, blood dripping down his leg. “Something fast and big.”

He yanks on Lola’s hair. She winces in pain.

“I’m going to kick you in the balls when this is over,” she snarls.

Overhead, the sound of choppers arriving on the scene.

“How about the cop car?” I suggest, my hands raised over my head.

“No, motherfucker,” Boris answers, slapping me upside the head with the pistol barrel. “It will be equipped with LoJack. They will follow.”

My head grows light and the sharp pain seeps into my brain. Not now. Not. Fucking. Now. I concentrate with all my might, as if I can will the bullet in my brain not to press up against my cerebral cortex. Down and out I’ll go. I need to keep my shit together for Lola.

Mr. Personality extends his pistol hand and points to a full-sized, white Ford Bronco that’s being gassed up. “White Bronco!” he shouts.

“Just like O.J.,” remarks a smiling Boris. “Mr. Juice.”

The choppers are closing in, along with a train of screaming cop cars racing north along Highway 87. I’m hoping they get here before we make it to the Bronco. I’m also hoping that Crockett got my text and is planning our rescue.

Boris, in all his pain, cracks a smile. “Let’s do it,” he says. “Go! O.J.! Go!”

Stupid fucking Russians.

We race for the white Bronco.

There’s a typical dad gassing up the vehicle, not the actual soccer mom. The gas pumps are located a pretty good distance from the rest stop building, but the scene is nonetheless surreal. The dad is gassing up despite the obvious emergency going down in the very near distance. People are stubborn. People live in denial. He’s midthirties, dressed in pressed Levi’s, a yellow crewneck sweater under a Windbreaker. Taking the family out for a nice week of foliage watching up in the Catskills. It was probably hard to get time off from the office. Nothing’s going to stop him or ruin his plans. Until now.

“Grab your family and run!” I scream, just seconds before Boris turns and whacks me once more with the pistol barrel.

“Fuck up, Moonlight!” he shouts.

My head rings. “It’s
shut
up, Boris.
Shut
up!”

The driver tosses us only a glancing look. Two leather-clad Russians wielding weapons are coming at him, holding a woman hostage by the hair and another dazed and confused head case at gunpoint, and Soccer Dad keeps on fueling.

“Fucking
run
!” I shout out again, for which I receive yet another blow of the gun barrel.

This time it does the trick.

The dad opens the door on the Bronco’s backseat, yanks a child into his arms while his wife exits the passenger seat screaming. All three run for the patch of green that separates the highway from the rest stop gas pumps.

To the sound of choppers on the horizon, Mr. Personality shoves Lola into the backseat and forces me to sit up front with Boris, who, despite the deep thigh wound on his leg, insists on driving. Without bothering to return the hose to the gas pump, Boris fires up the engine and peels out. In the side mirror, I can see the hose snap off at the metal coupling, sending out a burst of sparks that ignite the pump and the excess fuel that’s leaked all over the pavement.

As we near the on-ramp the fuel catches fire and flashes. The entire island of pumps explodes, rocking the Bronco and sending the already panicked bystanders flat on their bellies.

“Van Damage.” Mr. Personality chuckles, poking me in the head with the pistol barrel. “We are badass motherfuckers. Say it, Moonlight. We are badass motherfuckers.”

Then, turning to Lola.

“You say it too, bitch…badass motherfucker.”

“Fuck you,” Lola says through clenched teeth.

“Just do it, Lo,” I say. “Badass motherfucker. That’s what you are, Mr. Personality.”

“You can learn from boyfriend,” Mr. Personality says. “But right now, I am boyfriend,
da
?”

I turn enough to see into the backseat through the corner of my left eye. Mr. Personality is trying to raise up Lola’s skirt with the pistol barrel, while he’s groping her left breast with his free hand.

She spits in his face.

He slaps her and resumes his groping.

That’s when the Bronco locks up, sending us all careening forward.

“Stupid fuck!” shouts Mr. Personality at Boris. “Why you stop on highway?”

Cars and trucks blare their horns and swerve around us. I’m bracing myself for a severe collision.

“We did not think to retrieve flash drive from Zumbo!” Boris screams, while throwing the Bronco into reverse. He’s backing the vehicle onto the soft shoulder. He’s proceeding to make a three-point turn while occupying the right lane on a major highway packed with all manner of vehicles doing anywhere from sixty to ninety per.

I look down at Boris’s leg.

It’s soaked with blood. His face is pale. He’s not thinking clearly. But then, he’s right. They forgot all about the flash drive.

They also have no idea it’s in my coat pocket.

He turns the opposite way onto the right lane and guns it.

That’s when I see the tractor trailer heading straight for us.

Boris steers to the right.

The confused truck operator steers to his left.

We’re heading directly for one another.

“Fuck!” Boris shouts. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

He steers left.

The trucker steers right.

Still heading for one another.

“Take foot off gas, stupid motherfucker!” screams Mr. Personality.

Boris might be trying to remove his foot. But his thigh is shot through. He’s got the pedal to the heavy metal as the Bronco races at the semi. Boris knows he’s about to die because he closes his eyes and throws his hands up over his face.

“Lola,” I say, turning. “Get down. Go flat onto the floor.”

She does it. Mr. Personality doesn’t quite seem to care. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights as the truck and the Bronco prepare to kiss grilles.

That’s when I grab the wheel from Boris, yank it counterclockwise, fishtailing the back end of the Bronco directly into the semi’s front grille.

There’s an explosion. The shattering of glass and the crunch of metal against metal. I’m tossed around on the floor of the Bronco like the little steel ball inside a can of spray paint. Time moves especially slowly during an automobile accident. It’s like one of those old grammar school reel-to-reel projectors slowed down so that events occur frame by frame instead of in one quick linear event.

There’s the collision with the semi.

The hard-left snapping/spin fishtail motion of the Bronco.

The tossing of my body up against the underside of the dash.

My going in and out of consciousness, knowing that I may never wake up from the darkness once it overtakes me.

My trying to reach out for Lola, but knowing it’s impossible…

My. Reaching. Out.

My blacking out…