This time, by unspoken agreement, the two talkers were exercising their tactical acumen as they began withdrawing toward the exit. With the short range, width of the hall and lack of cover, being shot at by a shotgun, or a . 357 didn’t make much difference. I was trying to jump onto the gurney and launch myself at the two when my toe caught on the bottom of Dad’s body, turning my heroic rush into a face-plant on Father.
The men’s cover fire worked on Lisa and Horace. Lisa, being more exposed, had to dive flat. Horace crouch-ran to Rachel. Rachel, with her submachine gun, was firing a steady stream of bullets from between the gurney’s top surface and bottom shelf. Her shots shattered shotgun guy’s shins and blasted off his knee caps.
As that bastard screamed and toppled forward, Rachel emptied the magazine into both his thighs and his right hip. By the copious nature of the blood spray, an artery had been clipped, if not severed. Horace grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me off the gurney, down to his side. Lisa fired off a few shots at the vanishing leader, but he was already out the door.
Rachel was rifling the closest EMS’s headless body, looking for a fresh clip for the M-11.
“Don’t,” Horace cautioned her. Lisa was running to the door.
“Rachel, leave the gun and follow me,” I commanded.
“Wait,” Horace called out. He was in an impossible situation. The bold Assistant ME began looking for any survivors, starting with the diplomat.
Detective Capella was chasing after a possible cop-killer. I was already running after Lisa and Horace couldn’t ride herd on Rachel, catch me and support Lisa all at once. Rachel muttered [OKH] ‘dirty goat’ at my fleeting form. I was sure its true meaning was far nastier.
“Da-darn it,” Horace grimaced as he started rushing after the three of us.
I doubted it was any consolation to Horace that Lisa shot me an evil look when I caught up to her at the loading dock. There were no cars peeling away and had the bad guy fled out the huge doors 15 meters away, she would have seen him. Rachel arrived next.
“Secure my Father’s body,” I instructed. She wasn’t pleased but she wasn’t talking back either.
Horace showed up last of all. He was talking over his walky-talky, updating the Chicago PD on all the crazy, tragic crap that had gone down. Rachel slipped past Horace on her way back to Dad. The unspoken order was for her to re-arm and stay close, something she couldn’t do under Horace’s watchful gaze. Lisa and Horace were working out a plan to take their perpetrator down and it didn’t include me. I was a civilian after all.
My thinking was traipsing in a different direction. They were thinking criminal evasion. I was thinking stone cold, bad-ass killer. He may have already killed one police officer in cold blood. Why not make it three? There was also the mathematics of it all. Two guns are more likely to hit a target than one – I had learned that bit of tactical insight from my time with Aya.
My disadvantage was my advantage. I didn’t have a gun so I didn’t have to position myself so I could shoot at anyone else.
“Here I go,” I alerted the two officers. My body was flying onto the loading deck before they could stop me. My cockamamie idea saved my life.
Maybe he thought I stumbled and lost my piece. Maybe, at the last second, he saw through my deception. Maybe he was wondering what the last episode of ‘Defiance’ would be like. We’ll never know. According to Lisa, he was tracking my fall with his . 357 Magnum. He didn’t shoot because he only had two bullets left, hadn’t been able to reload yet and his Berretta 9 mm back-up pistol was on the other side of his body.
Two bullets – two cops, he was probably sure he could beat me to death. Anyway, when he figured out the sacrificial lamb was the unarmed me, he returned his aim to the entryway, Lisa and Horace. The guy wasn’t behind any sort of cover. He was pressed against the wall so he wouldn’t be able to bring his other pistol into play inside that first split second.
When Lisa shot him, it had to hurt, but didn’t put him down. She shot again – missed. He shot, missed, shot again hitting Lisa and knocking her back and down. The leader pivoted off the wall, bringing his Berretta to bare on Investigator Brewster. A lifetime inside the blink of an eye – Horace’s bullet hit the criminal – major brain splatter. Poor Horace.
Horace was falling onto his side, taking a wild shot and hoping to keep the gunman from shooting Lisa and I when he accidentally ended the man’s existence. The lead bad guy’s final shot zipped passed Horace’s left shoulder, over my legs and ricocheted off the loading dock wall and into space.
Good old Lisa, she staggered to her feet then stumbled over to the gunman, seeking some signs of life. He was alive. Horace’s . 45 slug had ‘only’ removed the top half of his brain so the heart and lungs were still being told to beat and breath. As she was making her own call for Emergency Services, a piece of the man’s skull that had been clinging to the wall plopped down.
That broke Horace. He began vomiting. I rolled over to a sitting position. Rachel peeked in then utilized her blue tooth to stop the rest of the SD team from swarming me in a public building. Cops began showing up. As soon as Detective Capella had made her initial report and dealt with the traumatic injuries among the survivors, she turned on me.
“Are you insane!” she screamed at yours truly.
“Yes,” I muttered. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for over an hour now.”
“This is not a joking matter,” Lisa moved into my personal space. Was I really so far gone I didn’t want sex? Nah… I could do her. “I could have killed people.”
“To be fair,” I stood up, “you didn’t kill anyone.” The policeman was clinging to life, the ‘diplomat’ had been saved by his body armor and the second talker’s prospects didn’t look promising. “Horace buried two and I’m betting the guy Rachel shot isn’t going to survive having both his femoral arteries cut.
Two decades of Law & Order has taught me that some sort of Internal Affair’s investigation is going to happen. I imagine there is a great deal of surveillance video so you should be vindicated quickly. We are still going to part ways for a while,” I pointed out. “Take care.” I made to leave.
“Where do you think you are going?” Lisa grabbed my arm. “You were involved in a gunfight in a major municipal building. You can’t walk away.”
“Yes I can,” I grunted. “Horace, I’ve pointed you at the dead bodies,” I told the Burnham investigator.
“Good luck,” I patted him on the shoulder. The look he came back with wasn’t one of resigned defeat. Oh no, he was going to figure out what the fuck was going on, or else. The rest of the Chicago PD wasn’t letting to let us leave either, so off Rachel and I were taken to the closest Precinct where we were non-communicative.
(Back with the Feds)
Theodora rescued me and Rachel into Federal custody where we were equally useless. It didn’t take me long to figure out that, compared to Rachel, I was being downright verbose. If me being a jackass was a bonus for the Feds, they didn’t exhibit an ounce of appreciation. I really loved Special Agent John Rios getting all ‘super ass-kicker’ on me.
I was looking at ‘serious’ federal jail time. I was a ‘domestic terrorist’ and under the Patriot Act… then I fell out of my chair laughing. I was fatigued – my ability to separate desire from reality was fading plus I always fought back with my wits before my fists.
“I’ve been awake for thirty-six hours,” I chuckled as I regained my seat.
“What is your excuse for being delusional?” I snorted.
“I trip up cocky bastards like you all the time,” John sat on the table, hovering above me. “You think you’ve got all the angles covered. You don’t, Mr. Nyilas. People like you take things for granted, screw up and then you are all turning on each other like rats.”
“Ugh,” I sighed. “Fine, Brainiac, what am I doing wrong? To clarify the question for you, what crime am I involved with that makes me a criminal, a terrorist, or a criminal terrorist?”
“Guns, Cael Nyilas,” John sneered. “With all the people running around with all those firearms, it is pretty freaking obvious.”
“Wow… uh… John…” I started.
“Special Agent Rios,” John interrupted.
“John, and I’m calling you John in the hopes that you will get pissy like a little school wench and storm out in a tantrum,” I continued, “did my Father have any illegal guns on his premises that weren’t brought in by one of his attackers?”
“Why did such heavily armed assailants show up unless they were expecting a nasty firefight?” Rios stabbed a finger at me.
“Ask Horace and Lisa,” I grinned. “As soon as they finish their Internal Affairs investigation, I might help them figure that out.
They are honest, hard-working law enforcement agents, unlike you, you mentally-bereft catamite,” I finished. “I want my lawyer. Now scoot and don’t let the Patriot Act hit you in the fundamentals on the way out.” John glared then left. Time passed, my Havenstone-hired lawyer sat down with me and we went over the case.
Winslow Pratt was from a nice law firm. He also knew nothing about what was going on, or he gave me no signal he knew jack about real events. He wanted to know the truth. I told him my Dad had been murdered, I had come from my home in New York City to Chicago/Burnham to bury him and settle his estate. What did I want? To see my family home, to get a good night’s sleep and go home without being shot at again.
He encouraged me to trust him. I asked why. He said he was my lawyer. I repeated, ‘why should I trust you’. He could only help me if I told him everything.
“If that’s the case, you are clearly substandard and you are fired. Good bye,” I dismissed him.
“Mr. Nyilas, you don’t understand the serious nature of your case,” Winslow kept at it.
“I’ll make it easy on you,” I shook my head. “What do the cops know?”