CROSSOVER
By Leviathan
Part Four
There are some people who are simply obeyed, no questions asked. Police
get argued with, firefighters are sometimes shot at, and even the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security find themselves frequently at odds with
civilians over even the simplest of instructions. So if you want to get someone
away from their home with no questions asked, there's really only one choice.
“Mrs. Sanchez? Chuck Finlay, Metro
Dade Gas and Electric.” Sam smiled down at her. “I'm here about the leak.”
“Leak?” Rosa Sanchez frowned at the
tall, burley man with the handsome smile. “What leak, what are you talking
about?”
“You didn't receive the call?” His
eyes widened. “They probably decided not to risk the spark from the phone
ringing. This is more serious than I thought!”
“What? You mean a gas leak?”
“Yes!” Sam's face was grim, now, his
voice urgent. “I'd say we can risk ten minutes to get what you'll need, but we
have to get you away from here!”
“That doesn't make any sense!” Mrs.
Sanchez cried. “I don't smell gas!”
“That's the worst part!” answered
Sam quickly. “You know, natural gas is colorless and odorless. The smell you
associate with gas is an ingredient we mix in to alert you in case of a leak.
If you don't smell it, then that means the leak has escaped that safety
measure!” He squeezed past her, into the house. “Now come on! Pack up some
clothes, and if there are any photographs or anything, get them together
quickly!”
Eight minutes later, Sam was placing
the third cardboard box into the back seat of the rental, and closing the front
passenger door firmly beside Rosa Sanchez. She was a trim, handsome, brown-skinned woman, maybe ten
years his senior, with warm brown eyes and streaks of silver in her space-black
hair. She looked at him through the car window, then past him toward her house,
sucking her lower lip between her teeth.
“It's a lovely house,” Sam told her
as he climbed behind the wheel, “and it would be a shame to lose it, but it's
not worth your life.”
“No,” she agreed, quietly. “It just
seems incre兊le, unbelievable, that mi casa – the house where I loved my
Fernando and raised Elpidio – could just
volar, just blow up! It just seems
impossible.”
“I know how you feel,” said Sam, as
he pulled away from the house, hating himself for the lie, for dragging an
innocent woman in a heartbeat away from the home she loved with his phony tale
of explosive peril in the placid home. “But with that gas leak, it really could
go sky-high at any moment.”
As he finished speaking, a flicker
of movement drew his eyes. The house seemed to deform in the rear-view mirror,
as if it had been a shaped rubber balloon that was suddenly, savagely being
over-inflated, and it seemed as if the shallow roof tried to take off like a
rocket before crumbling in the center to be engulfed by the fireball. Glass
windows were shattering all through the block, and Sam heard himself uttering a
high-pitched, almost squealing yelp of surprise as he swung the wheel to turn
them down a side-street, the shock wave helping slew the rear end of the car
around before he gunned it and got them into the lee of the neighboring houses.
Rosa and Sam stared at one another a
moment with wide, awed eyes, both of their brains racing with the knowledge of
how briefly they'd been out and away. Then, as they heard the distant sound of
planks and other debris hitting the pavement – and neighboring houses – Rosa
Sanchez bust into tears.
“Mike, I'm telling ya,” Sam said
into the cell phone, pacing back and forth in Madeline Westen's back yard.
Madeline was in the kitchen with Rosa, making her coffee. “It was the
goddamnedest thing I ever saw. No sooner had I told her the house could blow up
at any second than the damn thing blew up!”
Michael chuckled grimly. “Sam, you
must use this power only for good.”
“Oh, yeah, Mike, that's really
funny!” Sam looked back at the kitchen window, the shadow of Madeline moving
behind the curtain. “Listen, are you going to come out here and talk to your
mom, and Mrs. Sanchez? She's got it that I'm not from the gas company, and my
saving her life wins me some time, but she wants to know what the Hell's going
on.”
“I'll be there, Sam,” said Michael,
calmly. “I just have to pick up Yusuf first. Mom should be able to keep her
occupied.”
“Okay, Mike,” said Sam. “But don't
take too long, okay?”
“Soon as I can, Sam,” said Michael,
and the phone signaled the end of the call.
Scorched Earth is a military strategy that's lost a lot of popularity
since Sherman burned Atlanta. It's messy, it's cruel, it's wasteful, and it
makes it a lot harder to make today's foe into tomorrow's friend. In covert
conflicts, it's even less popular, because it draws so much official attention.
But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and terrorist
organizations think they thrive on public atrocities, so when they start what
should be a secret fight, they tend to fight it as if it was just another
attack. With that mindset, Scorched Earth makes sense.
Have I mentioned that I really hate
fighting terrorists?
The strip club was nearly empty.
Yusuf sat in the same seat, drinking milk from a tall tumbler. The same
stripper danced her way languidly along the narrow stage, moving instinctively
in time to the music, eyes closed and head swaying dreamily, her body shining
with oil.
Michael slipped into the seat beside
him. “We have to go, Muhammad. Right now.”
“I heard about the bar,” the small,
dark man replied. “As if anybody hasn't. More blood on my hands.”
“The good news is that we got your
mother out of her house. I've got a place for you. Call it a safe-house. She's
there now. Come on.”
They started for the door, and
suddenly, Yusuf stopped. He dug in a pocket, and pulled out a handful of bills.
Michael saw Benjamin Franklin on one of them. “Just a moment,” he said to
Michael. “Please.”
Michael nodded, and Yusuf walked
briskly to the dancer, holding up the cash. Her eyes widened as she looked at
it.
“Go home,” said Yusuf. “I have been
rude to you. There is danger. Go home.” He turned to the bartender. “Close up.
Go home. Please.”
The bartender shook his head, spat a
few derisive words of Spanish, and Yusuf replied quickly. The bartender turned
away, polishing glasses. Yusuf looked back up to the dancer.
“Please,” he said.
Her eyes were wide as she looked at
him. He shook the money at her again.
“I... All right.” She reached, took
the money. “Thank you.”
She trotted quickly through the door
into the back room, and the bartender snarled.
“Listen to them, friend,” said
Michael, and he and Yusuf were out the door.
The Charger was turning out of the
parking lot when the driver dove out of the rusty AMC Pacer they were passing,
letting it run, unmanned, toward the wall of the bar.
A lot of people talk about the evils of violence on television and in the movies. The real problem, though,
is not that they're too violent, but not violent enough. The violence of
popular entertainment is sanitized, and as a result, people think that violence
has no consequences. Take explosions. When Bruce Willis is running full-tilt
away from an exploding car, truck, bus, spaceship or planet, it seems as if all
he has to avoid are the flames and the shrapnel of that car, truck, bus,
spaceship or planet, and he'll be fine. The fact of the matter is that what
kills people in explosions is the simple brute force of the blast itself.
Remember, that's what rendered the car, truck, bus, spaceship or planet into
shrapnel.
The shock wave kills, and your job
is to make sure that there's something solid between you and it before it can.
Michael stamped down on the
accelerator as hard as he could, and slewed the Charger around to the left,
leaping into the alley between a pawn shop and a locksmith. He put a hand on
the back of Yusuf's slender neck and pushed him down toward the floorboards,
and the shattering crash of the explosion rocked the car against the nearest
brick wall.
Michael looked at the crushed
side-view mirror hanging from the driver's-side door and cringed. For a car
this old, they weren't that easy to find.
Yusuf straightened up, and looked at
Michael. “We have to go back. Make sure she-- Make sure they got out!”
Michael regarded him for a moment.
Clients were always telling him what to do. He hated it when they were right.
He slammed the car into reverse, and screeched into a quick turn out of the
alley to face back toward the strip club. The building had mostly collapsed,
and flames roiled upward into thick, heavy black smoke. A swarthy man in jeans
and an aloha shirt stood in the
entrance of the parking lot, looking back at them, holding an Uzi.
One thing that you have to remember
about weapons is that, for all the finesse and skill using them involves, there
is a point at which any of them comes down to sheer brute force, and the
bigger, stronger guy wins. The more weight behind the sword thrust, the more
power behind the stroke. Bullets weigh a few ounces a piece. A 1974 Dodge
Charger weighs around a half-ton.
Again, Michael floored the gas, and
the Charger leaped forward toward the gunman. He stared for a terrified second,
and then jumped left. Michael savagely swung the driver's door open, and caught
him on the hip, flinging him viciously against the dumpster. The clang! his head made was loud in
their ears, even over the screech of the Charger's brakes and the roar of the
flames.
Yusuf rolled out of the passenger
side as Michael did the driver's, and Michael stared at him for a moment, then
nodded, and they trotted together towards the staff-only door on the side of
the building.
The only reason they weren't blinded
and suffocated with smoke was that much of the ceiling was now open to the sky,
and they struggled through to the door marked “Lockers.”
Inside, the row of metal lockers,
bent obscenely by the force that threw them, lay pressed against the wall
opposite their anchors, and from the ridiculously small place underneath, one
slender brown hand reached. Michael felt for a pulse, and the hand moved, and
they heard the woman's cry for help. The far plywood wall of the locker room
was warping, smoldering. The flames would be through soon.
Michael looked at the lockers, the
hand, and Yusuf's slight frame.
“All right, listen, Mohammad. I'm
going to try to get some of the weight of these lockers off her, You get her by
the wrist and try to slide her out.” Yusuf nodded.
“Ma'am?” Michael called.
“Chantale!” cried the woman's voice,
weakly, and Michael smiled grimly. The human impulse to make the insane normal
with social niceties was an old friend.
“All right, Chantale. I'm Michael,
and the man you've seen here so much is Mohammad. We're going to try to get you
out. It's risky, because we don't know how you're hurt, but if you stay here,
you'll burn, okay? This is probably going to hurt like hell, but try not to
fight us.”
He got his back turned to the
lockers, and bent at the knees, reaching back to grasp the edge of the lockers
with his hands. “Ready?”
“Not really,” said Chantale, and
Yusuf squatted down to grasp her wrist in both his hands. Her fingers wrapped
hard around his left wrist in return.
Michael counted to three, and heaved
upwards, using the muscles in his legs, and there was a loud metal-tearing
sound, and Chantale screamed loudly, once. There was a sound from the plywood
wall behind him, a soft Whoosh!
and Michael knew the wall was igniting. The lockers shifted upward, and Michael
bellowed, “Pull, Mohammad, pull hard!”
Yusuf backed up, step by step,
hauling the screaming Chantale with him. She had pulled on a white tee-shirt,
but it was tearing down the front, a jagged piece of metal hooked into it, and
she shrieked as it started to tear into her breast. Yusuf released her wrist
and darted in, pressing her skin back, gently, pressing her flesh down off the
ragged points, and then he palmed her breast gently so that the back of his
hand would scrape along the metal as he pulled her by her armpit. Once her
breast was past the deadly metallic fangs, he moved back, his hands under her
arms pulling her more quickly. Her left leg was smashed inside her blue jeans.
The pantleg looked like a denim sack of lumpy cream-o-wheat.
Yusuf lifted her by the grip he had
and Michael approached and reached down for her legs. He grasped her right knee
easily, and then said, “I'm sorry, Chantale, hurt is too small a word.”
He took the ruin of her left thigh
in his other hand, and and straightened. She screamed, sharp and loud, and
Yusuf said, very tenderly, “That is good, Chantale, scream it out, it helps.”
Then they were out of the building
and half-trotting toward Michael's car, and set her down on the alley floor,
leaning back against the wall. She panted with her pain, teeth gritted, and
slowly opened her eyes. Michael had found the Uzi and brought it back. There
was an approaching howl of sirens.
“Ramon?” asked Chantale.
“The bartender?” said Michael, and
on her slight nod, he shook his head. “Didn't see him, but I don't think there's
much hope.”
The sirens were louder. Michael
looked over at the form of the car-bomber. Unconscious? Dead? He couldn't
chance it. He handed the Uzi to Chantale, and jerked his head toward the supine
form. “Don't let him leave before the police arrive.”
“He done this?” Her voice was hard,
and the Uzi swung up to point at the still form, muscles in her arm and hand
rigid.
“No, Chantale,” said Yusuf, one
gentle hand on her arm. “Trust me now. Trust me. No.”
She looked at him for a long moment,
then her left hand was fisting his shirt, pulling him closer, and her lips met
his cheek. “Thank you, sir.”
“Come on,” Michael said, as the
sirens approached. Yusuf hesitated a second, then dove back into the Charger,
and Michael was back in the driver's seat, starting the engine, putting the car
into reverse yet again.
They missed the police by less than
twenty seconds.
Michael's phone rang almost
immediately after, and he scooped it easily out of his pocket, glancing at the
display as he raised it. “Yeah, Sam!”
“Bad news, Mike.” Sam's voice was
quiet. “Your mom's place is crawling with feds. DHS, mainly. You're red-hot as
of right now. I'd ditch that Charger if I was you.”
“Gotcha,” said Michael, pressing the
button as he slid the phone back into his pocket. He glanced over at Yusuf.
“We're going to have to change some plans on the fly.”
He swung right, and drove toward the
city's center.
