“We just closed down an after-hours bar,” Beech said proudly. “Right when we were paying the tab, there was a video on a TV of a guy I swear was you. The guy’s wearing a Yankees baseball cap and shooting up a bunch of bikers in a parking lot. Clive and Ray think the guy in the video is somebody else, so we made a little wager. A hundred bucks says I’m right, the guy is you. I’ll call you back later to confirm. Be safe, my friend.”
He erased the message. This complicated things, and he brewed himself a pot of coffee, then drank a cup while thinking back to the shootout at Echo’s apartment. He was good at taking in his surroundings. He hadn’t noticed any surveillance cameras at the building earlier in the evening, and he’d assumed the owners were too cheap to install them. Had he spotted cameras, he would have shot out their lenses, which had been standard operating procedure when he was a SEAL. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations were fond of sacrificing innocent women and children while secretly filming American soldiers as they mistakenly shot these people to death. The videos were posted on social media and used as recruiting tools. To stop the practice, the SEALs were trained to disable any surveillance cameras they discovered during a mission.
Had someone filmed him from inside the apartment building? That was a distinct possibility, especially considering the quality of videos that could be shot on smartphones.
There was only one way to find out. The best place to start was the news organizations. Opening his laptop, he got on the internet, and first checked CNN, then Fox News, and finally MSNBC. The video wasn’t on the home pages of any of those sites, which made him feel better, if only for a short while.
Next stop was YouTube. He typed the words motorcycle gang shootout into the search engine. This produced a hundred videos of crazed bikers firing at each other in such towns as Waco, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and the South Side of Chicago. He decided to add the word Florida to his search to see what happened.
He hit the jackpot. A video of the shootout from Echo’s apartment had been posted at around midnight the night before. The video was in color, and had been taken from inside the building on an upper floor. Although up for only a few hours, it had already gone viral, and garnered three hundred thousand views.
On the video, the Outlaws could be seen riding in circles around the apartment parking lot. He hadn’t been able to accurately count how many there were earlier in the evening, but did so now. There was an even dozen in all. There was enough light in the lot to reflect their faces, and they all looked good and drunk.
After completing several loops, one of the bikers got bored, and popped a wheelie. The biker did the wheelie in a straight line, then brought the front wheel down, braked, turned around, and popped another wheelie and drove back in the same direction. He had a glazed expression on his face, and was howling at the moon.
The other bikers started doing wheelies with their buddy. The video had audio, and he could faintly hear the bikers’ hoots and hollers beneath the engines’ mighty roars.
In the lower left-hand corner of the screen, he saw himself exit the building with Echo and Hector. They walked down the path to the edge of the parking lot and halted. His Yankees ball cap was pulled down low, the brim hiding his face from the camera.
So far, so good.
On the video, he watched himself raise his gun, and shoot out the bikers’ back tires as they flew past. The resulting mayhem was nothing short of spectacular. Three bikes on the edge of the pack flew over the trunks of parked cars, while those in the middle hurtled into each other, and sent their riders crashing to the pavement. It was a shame they weren’t wearing helmets.
Twelve bikes, and they all went down hard. He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d scripted it. He paused the video and stared at the screen. He was a shadowy figure, and nothing more. No wonder Clive and Ray didn’t think it was him.
But why did Beech?
He resumed the video. Three of the bikers had untangled themselves from their damaged machines and were marching toward him, ready to do battle. On the screen, he turned to confront them. The air caught in his throat. If the camera caught his face — even for an instant — he was screwed. There were dozens of photographs of him on the internet from his police days, including a YouTube video that showed him shooting two guys to death who’d been trying to kidnap a little girl, and it would be easy for someone to make a match.
The fight was short and sweet. He knocked two bikers out cold, while Echo immobilized the third with Mace. Adversaries often let their guard down because of his pot belly. The truth be known, a guy could be of average height and have a gut, and still be absolutely lethal. Only, the average schmuck didn’t know that.
His face wasn’t caught by the camera due to the parking lot’s dim lighting, and partly due to luck. On the screen, he escorted Echo and her baby to his car, and made a hasty getaway.
He paused the video again, and tried to see if the license plate on his car was visible. The numbers and letters were hidden, again by the poor lighting. He was home free, and broke into a smile.
Or was he? Beech had been willing to bet a hundred bucks that it was him on the video, even though his face wasn’t clearly identifiable. What exactly had Beech seen that made him feel it was his old buddy Jon? And would other people see it as well?
He didn’t know. All he could do was deny that it was him, and hope for the best.
He decided to go for a run. The rear of the hotel was connected to a running path, and he needed to clear his head. As he laced up his sneakers, Beth called. The timing wasn’t good, and he guessed she’d seen the video as well.
“Good morning,” he answered cheerfully.
“You are one crazy son of a bitch,” she said.
Chapter 27
Daniels was in her hotel room staring at her laptop, the shootout video having just finished playing. She’d watched it three times, just to be certain the cowboy on the screen was Jon. When she’d decided it was him, she’d made the call.
“What did I do?” he asked innocently.
“You know exactly what you did,” she said, unable to hide the anger in her voice.
“No, I don’t. Please illuminate me.”
“Stop playing games. You opened fire on a motorcycle gang in the parking lot of an apartment complex in New Port Richey last night. A renter in the building filmed the encounter, and posted it on YouTube. The god damn thing has gone viral.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Oh, come on! I knew the moment I saw the video that it was you. Same build, same cocky attitude, and deadly with a handgun. The fact that the shooter’s face is hidden by a Yankees baseball cap doesn’t hide who it was. You did it.”
“It wasn’t me. I hate the Yankees.”
“Are you trying to be cute? Because it’s not working.”
“Your case is flimsy, to use your favorite expression. Lots of guys look like me, and I’m sure plenty know how to handle a firearm. I didn’t shoot up a gang of bikers.”
“No? Well, then let me add this to my argument. The gang that got shot up was the same guys we confronted in the clubhouse in Saint Pete.”
“What a coincidence.”
“The local newspaper posted a story a little while ago. Every single biker suffered a major injury because of what you did. The paper said the gang sustained three broken arms, four broken legs, two concussions, two broken backs, a broken jaw, a crushed pelvis, and a broken neck, not to mention a whole bunch of broken ribs. It’s a miracle that you didn’t kill any of them.”
“That’s sad. I hope they had insurance.”