Blue Rubicon (18 page)

Now came the real pain. When the Taser was
touched to a person like this, the electricity only arced from one probe to the
other. It didn’t affect the nervous system, it was a means of pain compliance.
Have someone lying on their hands refusing to give them up to be handcuffed and
arrested? Drive stun them in the shoulder with the Taser.

I skipped the chorus and was just getting
to
‘cooking MCs like a pound of bacon’
when he started on my chest, a
second or so at a time. I hadn’t experienced this before and the pain was
unbelievable. The same crackling sound flowed through me, picking away at my
fragile mind with each click.

The figure flashed in front of me again,
his hood removed but his face buried in his hands. Between the clicking of the
electricity and the involuntary screams of pain I swore I could hear him
crying, the word ‘sorry’ spoken softly again and again. But he reached out, his
ethereal hand meeting my shoulder and I felt strength I’d long since lost.

Unconsciousness was just moments away each
time—my world was fading to black but I was ready to fight again. I had to.
Warren didn’t give me the chance to black out, he prodded me with the Taser
every time I started to slip away. He moved it about my chest, to my arms, to
my legs, up to my neck and then finally, to the one place he’d avoided. He
paused for a moment and stared me in the eyes before he pushed the taser into
the fly of my jeans.

I bit down hard on my teeth, trying not to
scream. It was like being kicked in the testicles, but by a horse wearing
steel-toed, spiked boots. The pain lasted for a long time after, but up in the
abdomen where it always hurt after a hit to the boys. I’d never learned why it
hurt so much there, and I tried to think about that to take my mind away from
the pain. (Incidentally, I looked it up later. The copious amount of nerves in
the testicles run to the abdominal cavity, where the testicles had descended
from.)

He stopped there, satisfied that I’d been
through enough and was ready to talk. His stubborn eyes didn’t move, they met
mine and stayed without blinking. I stared back, doing everything in my power
to unnerve him before I started back into my song.

He reached out with the Taser but was
stopped by the sound of a heavy truck pulling up outside.

“You’re lucky, asshole,” he said as he
turned and walked away, Taser in hand.

The pain in my abdomen was horrendous and
it kept bringing forth waves of nausea I fought to suppress. It just kept
coming, forcing itself on me until I knew I couldn’t fight it anymore. I had to
stay strong, I couldn’t show weakness.

It was one of the most disgusting things
I’d ever done, but it was necessary. I couldn’t hold my body back anymore and I
vomited into my closed mouth, held my mouth shut despite the taste. I took a
breath through my nose and swallowed hard, then twice more. My stomach didn’t
like the plan and it tried to bring everything back up again but I steeled
myself and breathed slowly through my nose. When the feeling passed I was left
with a disgusting memory and a horrible taste in my mouth.

If Warren had come in to a pile of vomit on
the ground, I would have lost. I couldn’t let that happen.

A number of bangs sounded from outside,
loud even with the solid concrete walls. They were quick, too fast to be a
standard semi-automatic pistol. More shots came, slower this time.

It was a firefight.

The cavalry had come.

THE SHOTS RANG OUT, TOO fast and too varied
for me to know what types of guns were in play or who was winning. Sweat pooled
in my palms and dripped to the floor, my heart pounded hard in my chest, louder
than the gunshots. It was over, I’d be free soon.

Warren came running out from the back room,
stopped for a second and turned back the way he’d come.

“Take care of Munroe,” he said, his voice
raised above the din. He spun back around and sprinted to another room. I saw
the shape of someone come toward the door, slow but steady movements brought
them out of the room and toward me. Now was my only chance, I couldn’t cross my
fingers and hope that I was saved in time.

Drastic times, as they say.

I extended my left thumb and laid it on the
back of the chair, then took a deep breath and clenched my teeth hard enough to
hear a filling crack. With one deft movement I drove my hand down and heard the
snap as my thumb bent backward. Tears came to my eyes and I clenched my teeth
harder to block the pain.

I moved my right hand to my left, bent my
thumb back down and pressed it to my palm. It moved inward unnaturally and
rested in my hand. My hand throbbed and I couldn’t move it without pain—my
right hand was left to do the work. I squeezed the fingers of my left hand
together and pushed it backward, sliding the cuffs over the fingers and broken
thumb.

The knife sat in front of me, but I would
have to get it before my executioner could see what I was doing. The odds were
slim. I sat as still as possible and watched as he closed the gap between us.

I coughed loudly to cover the sound of the empty
handcuff ratcheting, not that I needed to with the gun battle ongoing. There
were two strands on cuffs, the double strand and the single strand—the single
rotated around and clicked through the base to lock the cuff into place. I
pushed the single strand through, the circle shrinking until the metal went all
the way through the base and swung free on the other side. At least they hadn’t
been double-locked, if they had been the single wouldn’t have moved at all.

I held the open cuff tight in my right hand,
the single strand out and locked open by my grip, its teeth bared and ready to
strike.

Now I just had to hope he was the up close
and personal type of killer. I hadn’t recognized him at first, but now I knew
who he was.

My old friend. The angry rookie. Gregory
Adams. I wondered how much his hand would tremble holding the gun this time.

The firefight continued on outside and he
seemed to flinch at every shot. He stood in front of me now, just a few feet
away. His shaking hand went behind his back and came forward with a pistol, a
revolver this time. Stupid, but not stupid enough to use his service pistol.

He held it out, less than a foot from my
face.

“At least my first time using it will be a
good one,” he said. His eyes were cold as ice. He’d resigned his conscious to
the task but the subconscious wasn’t so easily convinced. The gun bounced in
his right hand and he brought his left up to steady it.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I didn’t. I stared unblinking into his and
watched the ice melt.

“Close your fucking eyes, nigger.”

Once was bad enough, twice… No.

In one movement I stood up, pushed the gun
away with my left arm and drove the pointed end of the open handcuff into his
left temple with my right hand. He pulled the trigger as the gun moved to my
left, but the shot missed. I pulled my right hand back, the teeth on the cuff
had gone in smooth, but now the sound of them grinding against his skull as the
metal came out was unmistakable. Adams dropped lifelessly to my feet.

The left side of my neck was burning. I
reached up and felt the unmistakable warmth and wetness of fresh blood. My
finger prodded at the wound, blasts of pain shooting to my brain. It was more
than a graze, but still shallow enough to not worry much about.

I bent down and pulled the gun from Adams’s
hand.

His once icy eyes stared back at me,
whatever spark had existed was long gone.

He was dead.

I knelt down and dragged my fingertips
across his eyelids, closing his eyes for the final time. It was an act of
respect that maybe he didn’t deserve, but it kept me feeling human.

Warren peeked his head out from the door he
had entered, a quick check to ensure the job was done. When he saw me standing
over a corpse he bolted back into the room, slamming the door behind him.

I pushed the cylinder out of the gun and
checked—still five rounds left, only one shell bore the divot left from the
firing pin. I snapped the cylinder back into place, held the gun in my right
hand and began moving toward the door at the end of the open room.

Silence reigned. The firefight was over.

I took cover behind a pillar and watched
the door, waiting for any sign of movement. Nothing came. Within a minute the
door at the front of the building was breached and laser sights leveled on my
chest. The sight of tactical greens calmed my nerves immediately.

“It’s Munroe,” I said, the gun raised high
above my head. They moved toward me, the act of clearing the room made easy by
the emptiness of it. One knelt at the body I had left behind, felt for a pulse
then stood up and rejoined the team. Four men in a diamond formation, the rear
guard facing back to the door.

“You good?”

Muted stripes and a crown emblazoned a
patch on his shoulders.

“I’ll live, Staff.” He looked down to my
left leg, to the knife I had forgotten about. “Right,” I said, then took hold
of the blade and removed it. It had been in there long enough I didn’t have to
worry about much in the way of bleeding, and it hadn’t hit anything vital. If
it had cut the femoral artery I would have been dead ages ago.

“How many are in here?” he said.

“I don’t know. There’s one in the back
room.” I pointed to the door he’d come out of. “He’s dangerous, and probably
armed.”

The Staff Sergeant nodded, gave a hand
signal and the team moved forward. I stood where I was—it was best to leave it
to the big boys. I heard him say something into his radio as he walked away,
but his voice was too quiet for me to understand.

A different door opened, the one Warren and
Adams had come out of earlier, and a man with a shotgun stood in the threshold.
He was gone in a flash, the sight of a tactical unit enough to scare just about
anybody. The Staff Sergeant gave another signal and the team moved toward the
door he had come from.

Warren was safe for now, a new threat had
presented itself. The sound of the door opening again drew my attention and I
turned to see Kara and Chen walk in, guns drawn and ready.

When they saw me they both started running,
guns level in their hands despite their speed.

“Link, fuck are you okay?” Chen said as he
approached. I didn’t have time to answer before Kara wrapped her arms around
me.

“Shit, not so tight,” I said. Her body
pressed against me and brought new pain to the old cuts and Taser burns.

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” she said,
tears in her face.

“I’m not that easy to kill.” My eyes moved
to Chen, to two holes in his shirt and blood on his left forearm. “Shit, Chen,
are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m just glad it was a
pistol I got hit with, in the chest at least. I think it was the rifle I took
to the arm.” He pointed to his arm and even with the mix of dried and fresh
blood, the entry wound was clear. He turned his body to show the rear of his
arm—there was a larger hole in the back where the bullet had torn its way out.

“You need an ambulance, now,” I said,
watching as blood kept coming out of the wound.

“They’ve got their hands full already,
Link. Dan took a rifle round to the chest, he’s alive but it punctured his
lung.”

“And Vern is dead.” Veronica Davis,
Carter’s ex-girlfriend and a cop with a heart of gold.

“Shit,” I said, not knowing what else to
say. I knew there were more injuries and casualties to report, but we’d have to
finish later. “Warren’s in the back room.” I pointed to the door again. “TRU
went through a different door after someone with a shotgun.”

“Link, wait.” I looked at Kara and knew
right away it wasn’t good news. “George is dead.”

I couldn’t breathe. My old partner, my new
boss… my mentor. “They… they killed him?”

Kara couldn’t look me in the eyes. She
tried to speak but nothing came out.

“We did, Link.” I looked at Chen. “I’m
sorry, but he was on their side.”

There was no way. George was one of the few
people I really looked up to in the service, there was no way.

Kara mustered her strength. “He and two
others opened fire on us when we pulled up. The guns they had, Link… there was
no other way. I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t her fault, it was his. Son of a
bitch. He lied to me. And when I called him to tell him I was going to be gone,
he knew. So why didn’t he tell them I’d taken Kat and the kids to Poland? Maybe
there’d still been decency left in him.

I didn’t want to speak, I just pointed to
the door.

“Warren.” It was Kara who spoke, and I
wanted to tell her to sound a little less enthused.

We formed a triangle, Kara and I watching
the front and sides and Chen watching the rear. I knew the rear was secure and
Chen was worse off than I was right now. His arm was useless, there was no way
he had taken that shot without damage to the bones and tendons.

We closed in on the door, ready for
anything. It was a thin-framed wall, the type seen in office buildings, with
just a cheap wooden door. Kara did the honours, a size seven boot busting the
door open with one kick. Warren was cowering behind a desk, only the upper part
of his back visible.

“Stand up.” Kara gave the order and Warren
did as he was told, turning as he stood. He faced us now. His eyes panned over
to Kara and there was no hiding his fear.

“Don’t kill me,” he said, his hands
outstretched and shaking.

“Put your hands above your head,” she said.
He readily complied. “Now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”

He couldn’t breathe. He was staring down
the barrel of a pistol, one that held a bullet long marked for him.

“You killed my mother, raped her and left
for dead, you son of a bitch. You torched his house, could have killed his wife
and kids and now you’ve been fucking torturing him. I could shoot you now, say
you reached for a gun and no one here would say different.

“You fucking left her for dead. I was only
six and you took her from me.” She was crying now, torrents rushed down her
cheeks. “The report said she probably took two hours to bleed out, unable to
move. Did you even know you paralyzed her? You beat her so fucking bad you
broke her back.”

The tears were becoming too much and she
turned her head to meet her free hand, to wipe her eyes clear.

All of a sudden he stopped shaking. He
stared straight at Kara but her eyes weren’t on him. “I’m sorry,” he said as
his right hand dropped quickly behind his back.

“Kara!”

A single shot rang out and Warren lurched
backward. His right hand came forward, his left shot up to his shoulder where
the bullet was now lodged.

“I’m not letting you off that easy. Hands
above your fucking head.” Her eyes were clear again. She’d moved faster than
I’d ever seen, a Wild West quick draw brought the gun up and a shot off before
I could even shoot.

I’d only had time to yell her name.

The wheels were turning in his head but he
made his decision, his left went up followed slowly by his right. He winced in
pain as he lifted his arm, his hand at the level of his head. Kara moved the
barrel of the gun, jerking it up and down in short, staccato movements. It was
a simple message and Warren followed it, his right hand going higher and
higher, the pain visible in every part of his face.

“Don’t fucking move, or the next one won’t
be to the shoulder.” Kara reached to her belt and pulled out a pair of cuffs,
then handed them to me.

I put the revolver I’d taken from Adams
into the front of my pants and took the cuffs. Warren didn’t move as I came
around behind him, pulled a semi-automatic Glock from behind his back and
snapped the cuffs into place. With only my right hand I patted him down, making
sure he wasn’t carrying anything else. He was clear.

“Sit,” I said. He did as he was told,
sitting in the swivel office chair.

I reached for a box-cutter that was sitting
on the desk. I looked him in the eyes and extended the blade.

“My turn.”

There was never any intent to torture him.
Even if he’d done it to me, that was something I could never to do a person.
But he didn’t need to know that. And now, escorting him out to a waiting
cruiser with a large wet spot in his pants, I’d gotten my revenge. I brought
the knife to his cheek and he promptly passed out.