The bartender smiled. “Funny, most cops can get that off the Internet. So, doesn’t mean shit that you know it. You come in here with your cop haircuts and your cop eyes and spout some shit you memorized.”
Eric laughed. “I can promise you that we are not cops.”
“If you’re not cops, you’re something worse. Federals, maybe. Either way, you need to move along. You’re done here.”
He heard the scraping of chairs behind them. John and Kelly turned and he knew the four men had stood and were coming their way.
The bartender lunged forward, his hand scrabbling for something under the bar. Eric drove his arm forward, the palm of his hand not stopping until there was a popping crunch in the man’s nose. He turned to see John hit the two young men like an offensive lineman, driving them back.
Kelly jumped from his bar stool and tried to tackle the two bikers when one of them struck Eric a glancing blow to his head, knocking him to the floor.
He shook his head and caught the other biker along the neck with the heel of his hand and the man sank to his knees, stunned. He turned to see the other biker kick Kelly in the ribs with his boot. Kelly grunted in pain and doubled over.
John was rolling on the floor with the two young men, then he jerked up and came down with his knee into the one’s chest. There was a sickening crack as the sternum broke and the man went limp.
The second man tried to punch John in the crotch. John jerked backwards and the man staggered up and tried to kick him, but John smoothly pulled his M11 and put two bullets through the man’s chest and another in the middle of his face, blood spraying from the back of the man’s head.
Kelly was still struggling with the other biker until he caught the man’s foot and twisted, knocking him to the floor. Before the man could react, Kelly was on him, gouging his eyes, then twisted the screaming man around and put him in a choke hold, squeezing against his neck to stop the blood flow to the man’s brain.
Eric turned to the other biker, the one he thought stunned, but apparently not stunned well enough. The man flipped open a serrated knife and took a lunging stab at him. He kicked the man’s hand and felt the wrist break as the man gasped. The man went for his revolver but Eric knocked it away, then grabbed him by his leather jacket and jerked him upright. “Where’s Dyer?”
The man winced in pain and shook his head. “Fuck you!”
John screamed, “Eric!”
He turned as the bartender came up from behind the bar with a sawed-off shotgun. He jumped back, spinning as he went, and the roar of the shotgun deafened him. Hot fire raked across his right arm and knew he was hit, but then he heard the double wham of John’s M11.
The bartender slumped onto the bar, his dead weight pinning him to the bar-top. The biker that Eric fought lay dead on the floor, caught by the brunt of two barrels of double-ought buckshot, the side of his head and shoulder bloody hamburger. He turned as Kelly continued squeezing the other biker’s neck, his eyes red and bloody from ruptured blood vessels, then a crunch as Kelly dropped the dead man to the floor.
He grasped his arm, cradling it. The pain burned up and into his shoulder, but he knew it was a flesh wound. He shook his head, trying to clear the dizziness. “John, check the bathrooms. Kelly, check in the back. Dyer’s got to be here, somewhere.”
Kelly nodded and left through the back.
John kicked in the door to the men’s bathroom, looking for Dyer.
He removed his jacket, gingerly pulling it over his right arm, then took the first-aid kit from his jacket. He tore open the small packet and sprinkled powder on the bloody wound. It burned like fire, but the clotting agent kicked in, staunching the blood-flow, the painkiller reducing the burning fire to a dull throb.
“Steeljaw? You need help?” Martin asked.
“Negative. Hold your position. Anyone tries coming in, shoot them.”
“Roger that. Any wounded?”
“Just me. Hurts, but I’m fine.”
John came out shaking his head, then did the same sweep of the women’s bathroom. “Clear,” he hollered
Kelly reentered the bar. “There’s no one in the back,” he said. “Just a door to the alley.”
Eric’s ear-piece crackled. “Roger was watching the back, no one came out. Dyer’s got to be inside,” Martin insisted.
It didn’t make any sense. “I don’t know where the hell he could be.”
“We need to check the back,” Kelly said. “Sometimes they have stairs to basement storage.”
John crept around the bar and checked the bartender for a pulse. “He’s gone.”
“So are these four,” Kelly said.
John lifted a rug from the floor and threw it over the dead bartender. “Yep, there’s a trapdoor.” He motioned for Kelly to follow him.
Eric struggled to his feet. “I’m going, too,” he said.
“You’re injured,” Kelly said. “We got this.”
Eric gritted his teeth. “I’m going.” He stepped around the bar and saw the trapdoor, heavy wood planks nailed together with an iron ring in the corner.
John lifted the door and Eric peered down the stairwell. “It’s dark down there.”
John flicked a switch that turned on the light below, and they carefully lowered themselves on the steeply pitched stairs to the dirty cement floor.
The basement was brimming with beer cases stacked to the ceiling. Eric pointed to a steel-plated door, the only other thing in the basement. “A reinforced door? He’s in there.”
“How are we going to get in?” Kelly asked. “The breaching charges are in the van.” He inspected the wall, looking for hinges.
John put his hand on Eric’s arm. “I can open it. Activate the pump.”
Eric looked from the door to John, then nodded. “Clark, we need an enhancement.”
“Roger that,” Clark replied. There was a long pause. “Pump activated.”
John shuddered and his eyes widened. “Oh yeah,” he breathed. “That’s the stuff.”
“You sure you can open it?” Eric asked. “It’s damned big.”
John clenched his fists. “Stay back.” He stepped to the far wall and then sprang across the room, a rolling wave of energy. He hit the door with his shoulder, a moving blur.
There was a crash and a pinging noise as the hinge pins sheared off. The door exploded inward, thrown completely into the room and against the far wall with a mighty crash. Eric followed John, Kelly right behind him, their pistols drawn. A long table with twelve chairs filled most of the room, but it was the chair at the far end that caught his attention.
Everett Dyer, the head of the APR, sat at the head of the table. He was a tall man in his late sixties, his face a mass of wrinkles and liver spots, his hair a badly dyed comb-over.
Dyer had preached for years for strict racial separation and the FBI had investigated him for a string of bombings at universities across the country, targeting professors of ethnic studies, but somehow Dyer always got off.
Eric knew what made Dyer dangerous. He was a true believer. He patterned the APR both as a political party and a religious party. He invoked the Federalist Papers while preaching from the pulpit. His message about racial separation played well with the bigots.
No, Dyer was dangerous, and now he sat, impassive, his left hand on the table, his right hand holding a device in his skeletal grip.
“Good morning, gentlemen. I’m assuming you’re here to arrest me or kill me,” Dyer said, his voice barely a whisper.
“We’re not here to do either. We just need some information,” he said.
Dyer tilted his head and laughed softly. “You killed the men above, yet you are not here to kill me?”
“They drew first,” Eric said. “We just defended ourselves. It didn’t have to go that way.”
“Do you know what this device is?” Dyer asked.