“Shut up,” Brassert replied. “You’ll know soon enough.”
His partner remained silent, standing like a stone gargoyle beside her. The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. Brassert poked his head out. There were no signs of activity in the basement hallway. He signaled and the other man snatched the purse from her hand, grabbed her arm, and shoved her through the door. The upper floors of the Hotel Captain Cook, the customer areas, were lit with a soft yellow glow and warm, dark textures. The basement, on the other hand, was the polar opposite in terms of atmosphere. Harsh fluorescent fixtures lit the corridor with a hyperactive flicker that gave Lonnie a headache as the men led her down the hallway toward a door at the end.
Lonnie looked ahead to the doorway. If she took her out onto the street, she might be able to scream out for help. She developed a plan in her mind as she drew closer. She could hit Brassert in the back of his head with a solid palm strike. The blow would stun him. Then she could scream and kick the man behind her in the balls. Then she would bolt away, roll onto the ground, and pull her pistol from her ankle holster, then turn and shoot Brassert and his companion before they recovered. The whole plan worked itself out in her thoughts in the space of less than a second as they drew near the exit.
Brassert slammed the crash bar with a loud bang and the door burst open. Lonnie’s plan dissipated almost instantly when they stepped out. A white utility van was parked just a couple of feet away in an alley behind the hotel. A garbage dumpster blocked the view from one side. A thick cement safety barrier pole jutted from the pavement a foot from the wall. Someone had stuck a yellow smiley face sticker on the side of the dumpster, the line drawn mouth grinning at her plight as if mocking the reality that there was no one to hear her scream, no place to run. The quiet man shoved her toward the open side door of the van. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a brief flash of a sky-blue vehicle, a minivan taxi passing the end of the alley. No way the driver could have seen the pregnant lady being forced into the back of a van by two muscle-bound murderers.
Her hope meter pegged at zero. She had done everything wrong, according to the rules for a hostage crisis. As a trooper, she taught women self-defense classes that emphasized how not to be kidnapped or raped. Now she found herself stuck in the very same situation she thought she knew how to avoid. Having been in more fights and brawls than the vast majority of women would ever experience, she had never imagined herself being caught in a situation like this — locked in a van with two men intent on murdering her and her baby, and no one else, not her friends, not her fellow cops, not her husband had any idea where she was or what was happening.
The middle row seats had been removed from the van, leaving an open space just inside the sliding door. A long blue vinyl bench with no seat belts stretched the width of the compartment at the rear. The front seat area was closed off by wire mesh. All of the glass, with the exception of the windshield, was tinted a dark shade that prohibited prying eyes from seeing anything inside. It was like a cage. Brassert got in the back with her. The other man climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine, then put it in gear and moved down the alley.
“Where are you taking me?” Lonnie demanded.
“You’re going to meet my whole family,” Brassert said. An evil glint sparked in his eyes. He put the knife to her chin, then put his hand on her plump, tender breast and squeezed. She winced as a sour pain shot through her chest. “All my bros are gonna get a piece of that ass for what you did to me, you dink bitch. Then I’m gonna slice you and your baby to pieces, real slow. And then I’m tear apart your baby’s corpse in front of you before you die.”
The boldness of his statement hit her like ton of bricks. He made no pretense. He was solely focused on terror and revenge. For the first time in her career as a law enforcement officer, Lonnie Wyatt Johnson was terrified — totally, unabashedly terrified.
As the van started into the street, it lurched sideways, a loud crunch exploded with deafening force. It slammed to a sudden stop, pitching Lonnie and Brassert forward off the seat. The knife at her throat slashed across her skin. A shriek of pain and fear escaped involuntarily from her lips as she tumbled to the open floor space with Brassert. In the split second of flight through the van’s interior she Lonnie wrapped her left arm around her belly to protect the baby from the fall, kicked her leg back behind toward her butt, yanked her pants leg up and whipped the small Walther into her hand. The pistol came out with a “schlick” sound as the steel slid out of the fitted leather ankle holster. The round mass of her belly made it impossible to breathe as she maneuvered in the tight space. She forced herself to keep moving, flipping the safety, thumbing the hammer back and fingering the trigger all at once. Not knowing the extent of the cut on her throat, she feared her life was draining out. Lonnie was not going to let Brassert touch her baby. She would fight to the last second of life.
He roared in a rage and raised the knife above her body, tensing to plunge it into her. She pointed the pistol and squeezed the trigger again and again until the slide locked back on the empty chamber, all seven rounds into Brassert’s torso and face. The shots exploded with the force of thunder inside the cramped space of the van. The murderer jerked his hands to his face and throat as scores of eighth-inch pellets ripped through his skin and cracked against the ribs, facial bones, and teeth. One of his eyes burst, and fluid and blood sprayed Lonnie as she tried to squirm away.
As the shots rang out the driver jerked his attention from the blue minivan that had rammed him to the rearview mirror. He whipped a pistol up and started to turn towards Lonnie. His attention suddenly turned back to the driver of the blue minivan taxi who had jumped out of his vehicle, flailing his arms angrily and swearing in a throaty-sounding foreign language. Brassert’s partner started to swing the pistol toward the oncoming cabbie when the cursing foreigner man reached inside the driver’s window and jabbed at his face with an unexpected ferocity. The kidnapper stiffened abruptly and froze in place. His arms dropped to his sides as Lonnie fired her last round into Brassert.
As the boom of her shots died away, above the intense ringing in her ears Lonnie heard the minivan's engine accelerate gradually. No tire squealing or loud revving — it just drove away as if nothing unusual had happened.
Brassert finally stopped his thrashing and sagged into a lifeless heap on the floor beside Lonnie, trapping her leg beneath his dead weight. Sirens shrieked closer as the police responded to the shots and 911 calls of people who saw the accident.
Someone opened the doors to the van. Lonnie could not raise herself to see who was there. Then she heard the shouts of police officers, and the shadow of the person backed away, raising their hands. She heard voices but could not make out anything being said. After what simultaneously seemed like both an instant and an eternity, a paramedic climbed partway into the van. He saw Lonnie and the mess that had been Leonard Brassert and recoiled in shock. Another paramedic joined the first and they helped Lonnie out, leading her to a waiting ambulance. They spoke to her, but she stared at them in dull confusion, her brain unable to process the words. She thought she may have answered, but was not certain she actually said anything or whether they replied. Numb and trembling, she turned back toward the van and saw Brassert’s nameless companion sitting upright, eyes gaping, staring out the windshield, his eyes frozen in a shocked expression above the knife buried to its hilt in his open mouth, pinning him to the seat back.