Ventura was able to hear the rifle shot from the projection booth, was aware even as he pulled his own gun that the flat crack of the small-bore longarm was distinct from the duller, louder handgun sounds—
Wu came up with a gun — it must have been underneath the popcorn tub — and jammed it at Ventura. He fired twice—
Quick and good, too—
The bullets hit Ventura square in the chest, but the titanium trauma plate in the pocket of the blended Kevlar/ spidersilk vest under his shirt stopped the rounds, even though they felt like sledgehammers against his sternum—
Ventura cleared his own weapon and brought it around—
Morrison was up and running, screaming wordlessly—
Wu cursed and got off another round, higher this time, right on the edge of the trauma plate—
More gunshots blasted in the theater—
One-handed, Ventura fired—one-two-three! — letting the recoil raise the muzzle each time, so the shots walked up Wu’s body, in case he was also wearing a vest, so the hits were chest-throat-head—
“Stop, stop, stop—!” Morrison screamed.
Ventura looked up from Wu, saw that Morrison had his own little.22 revolver out and pointed in front of himself as he reached the aisle—
One of Ventura’s best shooters — the ex-SEAL, Blackwell — moved to grab Morrison, to pull him down and out of the line of fire — good, good! — but Morrison was panicked, and he thrust his weapon out at the man—
“Morrison, no!” Ventura screamed. “Don’t—!”
Too late. Morrison pulled the trigger. Blackwell, coming to save the scientist, was five feet away, and even Morrison couldn’t miss every time at that range. At least two or three of the six shots chewed into Blackwell. The vest he wore stopped a couple, but one went high, hit him in the jaw, and Ventura saw a tooth explode from the torn mouth in slow motion as Blackwell’s head jerked to one side—
Ah, shit—!
And he saw with razor-edged and expanded clarity as Blackwell did what any really good trained shooter instinctively did if somebody pointed a gun at him when the situation went hot—
“No!” Ventura screamed, trying to bring his own gun up around, but he was mired in subjective slow-time, and too late.
Blackwell knew Morrison was wearing a vest, and Blackwell didn’t want to die. So even as he fell, wounded, Blackwell lined his pistol up on Morrison and stopped the threat—
He shot him right between the eyes.
The back of Morrison’s head blew out in a spew of brains, blood, and bone.
He was going to be okay, Jay realized. The doctor had taped him up, given him a shot to counteract the puke gas, and another for pain. Every breath he took still hurt his ribs a little under the tape, and his stomach was sore from vomiting, but he was real happy to be feeling anything at all.
It was sure better than the alternative.
The boss said, “What on Earth possessed you to go into the field on your own?”
Jay started to shake his head, but that made him dizzy, so he stopped. He said, “I dunno. Pure stupidity would be my best guess. Not ever gonna happen again, I guarantee that. Reality sucks.”
They were in the hospitial’s lock ward, where one-eyed Fiscus had been transferred after they’d patched him up. He’d been hit twice after firing at the cops, in the side and in the leg, but neither hit was life-threatening once they stopped the bleeding. He was awake, and the boss had flexed his Net Force muscle to get in and question the guy before the mainline boys and the D.C. detectives got there.
Jay and Toni were with Michaels as he walked into the room, and they all nodded at the cop sitting in the chair next to the bed.
“We want some information,” Michaels said to Fiscus.
Full of IV tubes and things clipped to his fingertips or taped to his chest, Fiscus flashed his gap-toothed grin. “People in Hell probably want ice water, too,” he said. His snakeskin patch was gone, and the eye it had hidden had a milky film over it.
“Which you’ll find out all about if you don’t tell me what I want to know,” the boss said. “Way I figure it, you have kidnapping, assaulting a federal officer, attempted murder of a policeman, and a shitload of illegal weapons charges staring you in the face, at the very least. A man your age? You’re going to die in prison.”
That seemed to get his attention.
“And so why the fuck should I help you, I’m gonna die in prison anyhow?”
“It’s real simple. I can make the federal charges go away. No kidnapping, no assault, no visits from the BATF about all that hardware. I might even be able to convince the locals to cut you some slack on the shooting, since you didn’t hit anybody. You could be out in five, six years, maybe.”
Fiscus hesitated for a moment.
Jay could almost see the wheels going inside the man’s head. Don’t do it. Jay beamed his thoughts at Fiscus. Go and rot in jail forever, asshole!
“I can get you a lawyer if you want,” Michaels said.
“No, no lawyers. I’ll take the deal. What do you want to know?”
Michaels nodded.
“What a mess,” Ventura said to himself again. He was on the freeway with the same name as his own, driving in the general direction of Burbank. “What a fucking mess.”
And it was, too. Back in the theater were ten shot-up Chinese agents, all of them either dead or well on the way by now. Two of his men had taken stray bullets from the Chinese, but neither were fatal wounds. Four screenwriters had been hit, one was dead, another one pretty bad, two fairly minor. Blackwell was in bad shape, but he’d probably live, even if he wouldn’t be eating any caramel apples for a few months.
Wu was absolutely dead.
And Morrison was also gone, killed by somebody on his own side.
What a pisser that was.
The wounded civilians were being hauled by cars to the nearest hospital, where they’d be dropped off, the drivers not staying to answer questions. Ventura’s men would be taken to a doctor who was paid to take care of people and keep his mouth shut. The remaining unwounded screenwriters, twenty-three of them, had been stuffed into a storeroom and locked in. Probably half of them were already working on their next movie, one involving a shoot-out in a theater. They wouldn’t starve; there were a lot of candy bars and hot dog buns in there with them.
Outside, team members had distracted the Chinese surveillance team where feasible — a pepper bomb in the carpet truck, a sap of lead shot against the head of the coffee drinker in Starbucks, like that, but thankfully, no more guns.
Everybody else had taken off on prearranged escape routes.
Ventura realized that he could kiss the IMAX theater good-bye. Too bad. It had been making a profit for the first time in three years.
What a crappy, stinking, rotten piece of work this had been. Not only had he lost the client he was supposed to protect, but one of his own men had done it. No choice, really. In Blackwell’s shoes, he’d have probably done exactly the same thing.
I never should have given Morrison that gun.
Yeah, 20/20 hindsight there. Too late to think about that now.
Though there never would be a way to be absolutely sure, Ventura knew what had happened. One of the Chinese agents had gotten careless, since his own people were more adept than to show a gun that was supposed to be hidden. One of the Chinese agents had gotten careless. Whichever of his people who saw the piece must have felt it was being brought into play. All of his shooters had been told to stay cool — unless a weapon came out. The shout of “Gun!” had been the agreed-upon signal for his shooters to take out their targets, and once that happened, all bets were off.