Tomás began spinning when the first word of the shout from behind reached his ears. He also dropped low, bringing his gun around to find the…there! Jorge had also turned and was aiming at the same target.
Thom knew they were turning to fire, but there were people scrambling all over the place, running in front of him toward the door and toward a window someone had smashed out. He shifted his aim a little to the left, drawing a bead on the one who was closest to firing, and squeezed the trigger. The power of the 10mm kicked his hands back, causing a fiery pain on his right hand that had never happened before. But that was inconsequential. He was in a fight for his life, in a test of speed. His mind directed his finger to squeeze the trigger again….
But nothing happened. It was strange. He could feel his eyes widen at the surprise. He looked at his weapon, still held at eye level. The slide was forward, no obvious jam, but what was that on his thumb? Blood? What was—
The first shot entered Thom Danbrook’s torso just below the sternum and continued through his lean body, exiting out the back with a vital portion of his spine. The muscles below his chest immediately registered the cessation of controlling signals from the brain and began to relax. But before that effect could be manifested, seven more shots were fired, three of them connecting. One shattered his right elbow. A second hit low, doing massive damage to his left hip. The third was a gut shot that punctured intestines and fragmented into several pieces, peppering the liver four times.
Thom fell backward, his weapon still in his gun hand, and crumpled like a rag doll against the counter, his mouth open in surprise and his eyes staring at the floor.
“Get it,” Jorge ordered as he pulled the Browning and stuffed the empty Ruger in his waistband. He centered the pistol on the fallen cop—What did the guy yell? “Something” agent? — to make sure that Tomás could get what they had come for.
Tomás turned back to Portero and spread his coat, checking the inside pockets. Nothing. It had to be…the shirt pocket. There was a rectangular bulge, which he reached in and retrieved. “Got it.”
“Come on.”
Sullivan’s eyes were locked on the scene, his hands holding the Chrysler’s wheel with a death grip. Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I was supposed to be there!
The two men were moving outside, a crowd of terrified lunchtime eaters preceding them. Were they coming for him? He was not about to wait and find out. Traffic ahead was not moving, so he cranked the wheel all the way to the left and floored it, heading across traffic for the alley.
The last of Art’s bacon-chili cheese dog was on its way to his stomach when the distinctive sound of gunfire echoed through from the back of Pink’s. “What the hell?”
Frankie drew her weapon first, followed quickly by Art. “Call nine-one-one,” she said calmly to the cook, her eyes looking through the back windows. Where’s Thom?
“Let’s check it out,” Art said. He led off through the inside of the hot dog stand’s small interior dining room, which opened to a parking lot on the alley at the rear. He stopped at the building’s corner and listened. Screams told him where to go. “Clampett’s.” Oh, my God.
They moved quickly through the lot toward the back of the restaurant across the alley, Art in the lead as he and Frankie—
“Jesus!” Art swore, the right-side tires of a beat-up car almost taking his toes off. “You get the plate?”
“Partial,” Frankie said, her eyes watching the gold sedan speed away from them. It could be whoever did the shooting, or just someone trying to get out of the line of fire.
Art walked quickly along the windowless wall at the building’s east side, his gun to the front. Frankie was behind him, her attention focused to the rear. A good number of people were running east on Melrose, passing the alley entrance in front of Art. That was a sure sign that trouble was to the west. “Where the hell is Danbrook?”
He reached the corner just in time to see two men jogging across Melrose toward a van on the opposite side. One went around the back, out of Art’s view, and the other went for the driver’s door, his free hand holding a…
“FREEZE!” It was an automatic response cops have when a weapon is sighted. Art brought his 10mm up to eye level in a two-handed grip, his knees bending slightly, centering it on the—Damn! Another wave of frenzied pedestrians rushed past, just feet from the barrel of his Smith. He instinctively cleared them, lifting the barrel skyward, waiting for them to—
“COVER!” he screamed at the sight of the gun pointing directly at him from across the street. His body started down as the first shot rang out, sending the world into a weird kind of slow motion that blocks out all things not directly related to one’s survival. Art heard another shot, and he rolled to the right, trying to get closer to the stuccoed wall of the restaurant. And another shot, which he heard impact just above his head.
Then the sound of tires grabbing at asphalt broke the trancelike state, and his head came up. He saw the van, a white windowless model, cross to his front, going east on Melrose. His weapon was pointed at it, but he knew he couldn’t fire at it as it sped away. There were just too many people around, and the thought of sending a two ton vehicle crashing into a crowd was not his idea of a successful felony stop.
“Goddammit!” Art swore, jumping up from prone using his free hand for a push-off of the alley’s rough surface.
“You okay?” Frankie asked from behind.
“Yeah. You?”
“Close one,” she commented, her breath coming in mild heaves. Getting shot at had the tendency to do that to a person.
“I got a good look at it,” Art said as he moved around the corner to Clampett’s front. It was all glass. He looked inside carefully and saw, not two feet through the glass, the recipient of the gunfire. His eyes swept left across the dining room toward the entrance, looking for… No. NO! “Thom’s down!”
They raced to the entrance, keeping their weapons out as they entered the almost-empty restaurant. The only obviously live person they saw was a young blond woman standing less than ten feet from the man slumped against the window, her eyes locked on the body, both hands covering her mouth.
“Thom!” Frankie holstered her weapon and dropped to her knees, easing her former partner’s weapon from his fingers and laying it on the counter above. “Thom. Thom. Can you hear me?” She could see his chest moving, and his eyes didn’t have the far-off look of someone on the edge of death. She had seen that before. Thom didn’t have that. She was sure of it. He couldn’t look that way. She wouldn’t let him. Would not let him!
Art swept the room as his partner did what she could for Thom. He walked to the other victim, passing the obviously catatonic woman standing among the upended tables and chairs. This guy was dead. No question about it. The brain matter that hadn’t been blasted through the back of his head to the wall behind was dropping in tiny, bloody clumps from the exit wound.
The door to the kitchen, on Art’s left, opened slightly. He trained his weapon on it, but only a frightened, weeping busboy was behind it.
“I call… I call the policia.” He buried his head in his hands and stood against the wall.
“Anyone else in the kitchen?”
The young man took several deep, heaving breaths. “No. The men who do this, they run.” He pointed to the front door. “They do this. Why?”