I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (36 page)

Curtis, Profitt, and Matt jumped over the front steps. All three moved out fast without looking back, triple-timing along the driveway and staying close to the trees on their way toward Five’s position.

The trailer shook like an earthquake as the three men ran past the twisted doorframe, stomped the threshold and leapt outside. Their helmets moved left and they were gone.

Mouse could feel the warm rush of her blood flowing down her neck. Oddly, the knee had stopping hurting. She tried to gather her legs underneath her to stand. Nothing happened. A total disconnect. Her body had vanished from her stomach down to her toes.

Mouse stuck her tongue out and tasted the blood. She inhaled deeply and pressed her torso into a pushup, dragging her body toward the sunlight. They were out there, the men, but they no longer mattered to her.

With two more desperate tugs, her fingers caught hold of the frame on the metal entry steps. Her breathing was labored. She knew, yet nothing processed, nothing except her need to get outside. Mouse heaved her weight forward, tumbling hard over the steps until she was settled, face-up, looking into the blue sky. She had no idea that her legs were akimbo.

Four listened through the headset and burst out from behind the trailer. Before Spencer could react, Four had tossed a large canister inside the obliterated doorframe.

BRASS. Breathe, Relax, Aim, Stop, Squeeze. Spencer’s bullet caught Four mid-stride as he hauled ass down the driveway with the big shotgun, trying to catch up to the others. The shot pierced beneath the right earlobe, entering the brain stem and killing the brain while the body continued running. After three steps, Billy flopped sideways. The soles of his boots dug into the ground beside the gravel.

A loud, hollow boom raised Spencer’s eyes toward Mercy’s trailer. The siding had blown away. Sections of roof were lifted sixty feet up in a roiling inferno, churning jet-black smoke. The roof drifted back in slow motion, floating down like sheet metal sails.

Mouse’s exposed skin shriveled like plastic in a microwave oven as the heat flashed over her. Her lips, nose, and eyelids were seared instantly. Her blackened legs were even worse, covered by bubbling pustules that stretched and burst like fat boiling in a cauldron. Fire raced up individual hairs on her head like sparklers. A sheet of hot metal landed on top of her.

*****

“It’s the wrong way,’” their pilot screamed into his mic. “You’re going the wrong way.” Curtis, Profitt, and Matt were facing ahead. They missed it; only the pilot saw Four drop.

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

“Six!”

“No!” their pilot screamed. “Not Six! Six is down. Repeat. Six is down!”

Spencer switched the trigger setting onto automatic fire then rose from cover and emptied the remaining clip into the fuselage where the tail boom connected behind the main bay. In every helicopter he knew, that was where the fuel tank was situated.

The spot where he had just been standing crackled with incoming rounds. In the meadow below, the pilot lifted his skids off the ground and dropped them again; no fucking around, he was leaving whether they boarded or not. “Get the fuck on because I’m gone. Now! You hear me? Now!”

The open slide door was on the opposite side of the chopper; Spencer sighted but could see only boots hitting the far skid as One, Two, and Three flung themselves on. The pilot pulled back on his joystick and lifted airborne.

Spencer glanced back toward the flaming trailer and then rushed down the berm, out into the open meadow, dropping the spent clip in full stride. While the helicopter elevated, Spencer set his feet and fired again, continuing to concentrate his aim on the fuel tank.

“Crap,” the pilot exclaimed. He knew right away that Spencer’s fire had cut through the fuel line. The engine was stalling, starved for fuel just as he demanded maximum power. He had no time to explain the dynamics of RPM and lift, or how no helicopter pilot in the world could respond to a dead stick at seventy feet. “Brace!” he shouted behind him. “Hard landing!”

The skids slammed into the grow site’s soft newly worked soil. One of the rotor blades cracked against the hickory tree; the collision shifted its velocity, spinning it backwards, obliterating the cockpit and cutting the pilot in half. It continued flying through the trees, leaving nothing behind, no pilot, no controls, only a metal-framed aperture covered by a red spray where the front of the helicopter had been. When the tail spun around, the rotor caught the greenhouse, wrapping layers of clear plastic and black plastic sheeting around the tail boom. It continued to spin, snapping through the plastic, making the sound of baseball cards on bicycle spokes. The skids caught on the newly stretched concertina wire, balling around the cabin’s battered fuselage in a lethal mess.

Profitt felt his pelvis snap at impact. Compression fractures crushed every lumbar vertebra. His mic was caught against his shirt collar. “I’m fucked,” he tried to call out, but he could only puff into it; the pain left him unable to move even his jaw.

“Hold tight, Terry,” Three called. He reached out, but the Assistant Team Leader blinked his red eyes to tell him not to touch.

Three was whole. Bruised, but operational. He felt one rib crunch as he lifted his Team Leader up off the helicopter’s deck, but he nodded at One that he was good; he could handle it. For a few seconds, the helicopter thrashed, metal screeched, plastic flapped like tarps in a windstorm. Then all was silent.

“Boss?” Three called out, getting his face in front of his TL for orders. Curtis was concentrating his senses to fight past pain. He felt like a red hot metal rod had been pushed through his right knee.

Anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament had burst like breaking rubber bands. He didn’t need to touch it to know his patella was floating freely just beneath the skin. He laughed. “Fuck me.”

He could manage, nodding aggressively. “I’m good.” He was still in the fight.

Matt pressed his gun barrel into the crack to force open the sliding door. He could pry it just eight inches. The stench of fuel wafted inside. He pulled off his helmet and tossed it aside to get better air.

The TL pulled Three back from the narrow opening. He pressed his remaining clip into Three’s hand then patted Two for his ATL’s remaining ammunition. Two stretched his jaw wide, screaming without a sound when Curtis touched him. “Sorry Terry. Got to.”

He retrieved two more magazines, slapping them into Three’s palm, their eyes meeting as he exerted himself to command, to control, himself. “When I fire, go!” he instructed almost gently. “Lay down cover. I’ll follow. We go get this fucker and then we come back for Terry.”

Three nodded then Curtis turned and stretched his weapon out into the door, opening fire in scattered waist-level bursts. He reached back and slapped Three on the back, who dived through the open hatch where the cockpit had been, already firing before his heavy frame hit the dirt.

Spencer sprinted over the driveway to Five, flipped him onto his back and rapidly patted up and down his torso, snatching clips, wallet, cell phone, a serrated combat blade, two canister grenades, identifying scattered bursts from two separate HKs. Their buffering fire disgusted him; trained men blindly wasting critical ammo, firing at nothing to show their force. What they really conveyed was desperation.

He maneuvered at a bent run toward the crash site, letting them continue to burn through their clips. Spencer moved along behind the two long poplar trunks, efficiently flanking them. Working his way to the embankment, he squatted low behind laurels and gooseberry bushes until the tangled crash site opened out in front of him. Through the trees he could see torn plastic sheeting flapping from the tail rotor like a shredded flag.

Three, the biggest body on their squad, the one who took down the trailer door, was stomach-down in a prone firing position with his legs opened behind him in a wide vee. He was aiming a full 180 degrees opposite from Spencer’s position.

Spencer held the Heckler-Koch to his cheek and rose, firing a burst that strafed an impact line running from Three’s crotch up his spine. A bullet burst his skull like a watermelon, splattering brains in a six-foot wide fan. The blood mist speckled red over the green foliage.

Spencer fired a following burst through the cockpit hatch into the fuselage. As he ran past the wreck, he pitched the canister grenade inside backhand before diving for cover behind the hickory’s trunk.

Profitt, Two, saw the grenade land at his feet. His eyes opened wide, only his limbs wouldn’t respond.  Curtis, the Team Leader, turned and stretched out his leg, reaching his foot toward the grenade, missing. In one do-or-die motion he lunged and managed to clear the canister out of the fuselage. His effort amounted to nothing. The combustible fumes coming from forty gallons of leaking fuel ignited in a soft
whoosh
that shook the forest. A red-hot ball roiled skyward, leaving only scarred skeletal remains behind, human and machine.

*****

Spencer got up and ran hard toward the blackened floor and gnarled metal that had been the single-wide home, had been XMercy’s home. He stopped on the way, kneeling and rapidly patting down Four’s body. One hip pouch held twenty twelve-gauge shells, slugs. He considered the shotgun, rejected it, and kept searching without a pause. Wallet. Cell phone. Multi-tool.

The Honda motorcycle was gone. Spencer could see what remained of the blue tarp. It was melted black over what looked like a giant spider that had been put to the flames. The Polaris was on fire. But through the burnt skeleton of the trailer, it looked like the 4Runner was still intact. It was scorched black all along the passenger side, but the tires remained inflated, the windows were in one piece.

He started moving toward the SUV when movement caught the corner of his eye. Something was alive, caught beneath a section of charred metal siding.

Spencer flipped the siding clear and recoiled from the grizzled, unrecognizable sight before squatting to bring his face close. His brain told him that it was impossible, that the cooked flesh could not be alive.

“Mouse? Can you hear me?” He wasn’t certain that her ears remained.

“Humm,” Mouse whimpered.

Alarm bells sounding from the direction of Glen Jean were ringing, calling for the volunteer firefighters.

“There’s help coming,” he told her.

“Why?” she asked him. Her voice was an airy whine.

“I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Mouse repeated.

“Me,” he admitted. “They came for me.” Spencer lifted his ears. In the distance he could hear a siren. “It’s my fault! I’m sorry, Mouse. I’m so sorry!”

“Buh why?” she panted.

“Because I am Dimitri Vosilych,” he whispered into her ear. “I did it. All of it.”

Mouse’s lungs deflated in a long dry wheeze. Spencer rose onto one knee. She was gone.

Did she hear him?

He scanned around him, taking in the smoldering trailer, the burning helicopter wreckage; Four’s prone body face-down in the gravel.

“You dumbass,” he cursed himself. “Like you could stop everything and get away. You caused this!”

The approaching sirens were getting louder. For a second, he considered sitting down, giving up. Then his training took over. Spencer blew out his lungs, inhaled, and centered himself.

Never give up!

He moved the 4Runner, dropped the Heckler-Koch onto the passenger seat, heaped atop the additional clips, cell phones, and wallets. The car keys dropped into his hands when he let down the visor.

It started on the first try.

He assessed its worthiness on the fly, reversing and spinning the wheels around the wreckage. On the driveway, he shifted and plunged the pedal down to the floor.

Four minutes from start to finish, he calculated.
Six combatants plus pilot.
He had done that.

“Get it together,” he shouted. The adrenalin crash was standard; massive secretions had to be dissipating from his system, but he had no time to reflect on what was normal and what wasn’t.

Mission mode.
He raced down the gravel to get out before first responders arrived then jammed the brakes. He had nearly missed it and was suddenly furious at himself, screeching the 4Runner to a stop. All three cell phones were powered up.

“Dumbass! You’re delivering a GPS trail!”

He pulled the sim cards out from each phone and separated the batteries to keep them from pinging location, then gunned the motor. Debriefing would have to come later, if he ever had the time. Right now, he needed to make distance.

Route 19, two lanes north and two south, offered the faster path, but red and blue police lights flashed in the rear view mirror, moving toward the farm. He swung the 4Runner past the hardware store where a crowd eating maple bars stood outside looking to the northwest. The volunteer firefighters fired up the one engine as he went by. In a minute he was across Glen Jean, heading east alongside Dunloup Creek past the spot where he had caught the trout only a few short hours before.

*****

You let yourself dream.
He sped along, traveling at ninety miles per hour. His ankle and knee were serviceable as he worked the pedals, braking minimally along curves and passing everything that came up ahead of him. He continued east along the New River east and north on a long loop that took him back to the west before it crossed Route 19 fifteen miles north of the farm. On 19, he continued speeding northbound; sheriffs and state police had converged on Glen Jean from Beckley, Charleston, and as far away as Morgantown, leaving him a nearly empty highway with ten miles to the county line. Radio reporting was already focusing on the scourge of drug activity after a deadly shootout and explosions rocked this bucolic section of Fayette County. But no mention of his name.

“I am Dimitri Vosilych,” he said to himself. The prison, the waterboarding, a trained commando unit with no insignia. He pulled onto a side road after a signpost showed a mile before the junction to Highway 79; he needed to do the math; as it was, he was only going away, not moving toward anything at all.
Jesus, Mercy. Aw, Mouse.

All three wallets held North Carolina driving licenses; Fayetteville, NC, addresses, all within spitting distance of Bragg. He should have taken the time to look at their arms; he would have bet money on them being a sword and three lightning bolts; he could recognize Special Forces from a mile away.

Their credit cards were worthless to him; he might as well tell them right where to find him. Almost eleven hundred in cash that he tried to pocket before realizing the sweat pants had no pockets. He folded the bills and pushed the wad past the Emporio waistband down inside his briefs.

No company cards, no family photos.
Black Ops or private?
They had broadcast their intentions. He wasn’t giving them any more consideration than they would have given to him.

“You were after me! Me, not them! You motherfuckers!”

Commandos follow orders. Whatever they did, they were the extended arm of whoever had made him disappear, whoever had the pull to run a torture prison literally under the government’s nose. Whoever that was, they would never quit. They would buy more hired guns and keep coming.