It took a little over two minutes to make it to the fourth floor, two above Frankie. The third had looked like the second. They put it out of their minds that Jackson might be below them.
This level was like the others, but painted brown. Some real wood might have been there long ago.
Art motioned to Eddie to take the left wall. He would take the right. Each would cover the opposite side, especially the windows in each door, as they moved down the corridor. There was no light from the rooms, Eddie saw, deciding that the windows must be boarded up from the inside. Great. It would be dark in there, just like he had thought and feared.
This sucks, Eddie mouthed to Art.
The doorknobs were old, worn brass, probably original furnishings. Art could almost see it being the set for a movie, one of those 1930s private eye flicks. But there was no “So- and-So Bros. Investigations” stenciled on any of the doors. Behind one of them, though, would be a clue — one Marcus Jackson.
Art touched the first knob, twisting it easily with his fingertips. Locked. Eddie did the same. Also locked. Three doors left on each side.
One’s heart almost becomes a separate entity during adrenaline rushes. It pounds so quickly, with a rhythm all its own, that you half expect to see it in front of you. Art’s felt heavy in his chest as it thumped against the Kevlar fabric. He controlled his breathing, as was taught in the academy, or so he thought. In through the nose, deep, short breaths.
It was a bunch of crap. Whoever thought that up had never tried to clear a dingy building while wrapped in body armor. Art looked down, wondering if the vest would work at this close a range. That would depend, he knew, on what Jackson was carrying.
The second doors were clear. Maybe Jackson had done what Frankie said and gone as far away as he could — the last room. They’d see, but there were two doors to check before that.
Oh shit! Art’s door swayed back at his touch. Everything was so damn silent at that instant that he heard Eddie’s doorknob hit the stops — locked.
Then there was a flash, but no sound — he thought. It was so quick. Another flash, and another. And then the sound, three quick explosions — POP POP POP — followed by a trailing roar, like thunder echoing in the mountains. Art was going low, falling into the doorway, his gun coming around, pointing in and up as the room’s interior came into view.
Marcus Jackson stood about five feet inside the doorway, nearest the hinge wall. He was dark, and dressed in equally dark clothes, though there was some light sneaking in from — what were those, boards? — the outside. It shone from above on his shoulders. There was a look of surprise in his white eyes, Art saw very clearly.
Two cracks reverberated off the walls. Art had fired. The man was propelled back and up from the impact, his hat jumping off to the side. He fell against the far wall, making a sick thud as his head struck the solid wood of yesteryear’s construction, and there was the metallic sound of a gun hitting the tile floor.
Then all the sounds absent during the fury of the moment flooded back into Art’s head — sirens, radio calls, traffic sounds from a block away, and…
“Eddie!”
He was slumped on his side against the door. His eyes were semi-open and fluttering, and a strange gurgling hiss came from his mouth in a broken rhythm. And the blood — it was forming in a pool at the top of Eddie’s body, but Art couldn’t see where from.
“Seven Sam, agent down,” Art said calmly into the radio. “Suspect also down.” He backed across the hall close to his partner, keeping his own gun centered on the dark form sprawled on the floor in the room.
Frankie bounded up the steps, followed by the LAPD cop. Their guns were held low, two-handed.
“Oh my God…” Frankie said as she moved down the hall.
“It’s dark in there,” Art said. One hand cradled Eddie’s head.
The motor cop pulled his flashlight. He and Frankie entered the room with both guns aimed in a serious way at Marcus Jackson. He was lying in a heap, his head flopped to one side. Frankie slid the gun away with her foot.
“Cover him,” she instructed the cop. “I’ll cuff him.”
It didn’t appear to be necessary, but it was procedure. Dead or not, a downed suspect was cuffed. Frankie would just as soon make sure he was dead, but…she rolled him over and pulled him away from the wall. There was a pool of blood and a single hole in his back. When she turned him back she saw two distinct entrance wounds in his black T-shirt. Two perfect center mass hits. There was no pulse, she discovered, feeling very soiled by the blood on her hand.
“Check him for weapons and stay with him,” Frankie ordered. She picked up the gun by its barrel and examined it before laying it back down and going into the hall.
“Sir, it’s a .357.”
Art was gently stretching Eddie out flat. He heard a siren approaching and willed it to be the paramedics. Eddie had taken three slugs, though the Kevlar had luckily absorbed two of them. They were dark indentations in the fabric covering, one at the sternum and the other a couple inches above. Jackson wasn’t a trained shooter, not having compensated for the gun barrel’s rise as it recoiled from each shot. They had “stitched” up the vest. The third struck Eddie in the throat, slightly below and to the left of his Adam’s apple.
“Ed, you hang on,” Art said loudly, hoping Ed would hear.
Dan bounded up the stairs. “Paramedics are here… oh Jesus!”
Art felt the bullets, each one, as though they had struck him. His gut hurt. All the agents were there now, standing back as the paramedic firemen started working on their comrade.
“King Four,” Art said into his radio.
“King Four.” The voice was subdued. They had heard the “agent down” broadcast.
“Get a forensics team in there and lock it down tight. Anything obvious?”
“Only a bag of cash. Close to a million, I’d guess. Copy?”
“Ten-four.”
“Who’s down?”
“Eddie — looks bad,” Art answered, knowing he had to be honest. It did look bad.
“Yeah. Ten-four.”
Art looked in the room at the cuffed corpse. What was the toll now? Thirty people dead since this ail started, at least that he knew of, and how many that weren’t known yet. And maybe Eddie. Why? Someone at the top wanted to link this with the hijacking. Just fucking fine. It wasn’t enough that Jackson and his brothers had gotten a cool million for helping with the slaughter at Seventh and Figueroa, and it wasn’t enough that the shooters had sacrificed themselves. Hell, the whole damn thing started with the death of that little girl, an innocent. And why had it come this far? Hadn’t there been enough vengeance, and wouldn’t there be enough funerals? Whole families were destroyed by…
“Oh my God,” Art said aloud. His face showed fear, and anger.
“Sir?” Frankie saw something on his face.
“Frankie, you have the scene. I’ve gotta get to the office.”
“Okay,” she answered.
Art leaned in over one of the paramedics. “Ed, hang in there. I think we figured this one out Just hang on.” He looked to one of the men working on his partner and friend.
“We don’t know,” the paramedic answered the look.
It didn’t reassure Art, but it wasn’t a death warrant. He ran down the stairs, all the way to the bottom, and sprinted past the tangle of emergency vehicles to his car a block way. The vest came off and was tossed across the front seat to the passenger side. Art checked his holster before getting in — it was secured with the snap strap. His weapon had saved his life once again, but he hoped that, unlike the time many years before, his partner would survive.