Harry stepped forward, took aim once more, and pulled the trigger again. Sleeves’ head snapped backward, and blood and brain matter exploded all over the cement behind him. His body slumped to the left and landed on the loading bay with a soft, almost-inaudible thump.
For a moment, everything was quiet.
Then Koda sucked in a deep gasp of air.
‘Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy FUCK!’ He gaped at Harry, then spun and looked all around the lane. ‘The noise, the noise, the noise – we gotta go!’
Harry paid him no heed. He stepped up to the fallen man, took aim once more, and blasted off two more rounds.
One for each kneecap.
‘Satan’s Prowler style,’ he said.
Then he turned and exited the alley.
Seventy-Eight
The rush-hour grind of Hastings Street was bad, and it was further bogged down by the road construction which seemed to be taking place at two-block intervals. Everywhere Striker looked there were men and women wearing orange reflective vests, sweating from the nonstop summer heat and exhaust fumes. He drove past two of them, all the while scanning every main street and alley they crossed.
‘You see Sleeves anywhere?’
‘No.’ Felicia cursed. ‘How the hell could they lose him?’
Striker made no reply. He was trying to focus on the situation at hand and not to let the frustration swell up on him. The plainclothes unit had lost visual continuity of Sleeves back at William MacDonald Elementary School. The ex-Prowler had cut through the school grounds and failed to exit on the other side. The area had since been cleared, with negative results.
Sleeves was gone.
Striker turned south on Victoria. Less than a half-block later, Felicia looked down at the BirdDog tracker and made a hmm sound.
‘Interesting,’ she said.
Striker cast her a glance. ‘What?’
‘Your plainclothes friends lost track of Sleeves somewhere around the elementary school, and look at this’ – she held up the handheld tracker – ‘Harry and Koda are just a few blocks away.’
Striker studied the screen. ‘They’re back near Semlin again – at the old chop shop, I’ll bet. The Hing-Woo.’
Felicia nodded. ‘Maybe meeting Sleeves.’
Her words ignited him. Striker cranked the wheel, hit the gas and raced around the Franklin Street bend. He turned up Semlin, stopped out front of the Hing-Woo warehouse, and hopped out with the handheld tracking device in hand. When Felicia joined him, he approached the front door of the warehouse and tried the handle.
Locked.
He went to look through the iron-barred window, paused. Sniffed. Then looked at Felicia.
‘You smell that?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘It’s . . . gunpowder?’
Using one hand to hold the tracker, Striker drew his pistol with the other and slowly made his way around the building into the side lane, where the stink grew worse. Ten steps later, he saw someone sprawled out in the loading zone, surrounded by a brownish-red puddle. He stopped hard.
‘Heads up, Feleesh, we got a DB here.’
She drew her pistol. ‘Copy. I got you covered.’
Striker swept his eyes around the lane, checking for threats. But all he saw were some old wooden pallets. An empty loading zone. And some broken bottles of soy sauce in the corner.
‘Cover me to the west,’ he said.
‘Copy, west.’
Striker approached the body.
As he closed the distance, it quickly became apparent that half the victim’s face had been blown away from the gunshot. Both knees had also been shot out. Striker reached the body, leaned forward, and saw the hoodie – it was a dirty white colour with red block lettering across the front:
SNAFU.
‘Ah fuck me, this is Sleeves.’
Felicia came up beside him, gun nestled between both hands. ‘I’ll call it in.’
As she got on her cell and alerted Dispatch, Striker scanned the lane one more time. When he saw nothing, he started west, then stopped. He looked down at the handheld tracking device and saw that the red-car icon representing Harry’s undercover Ford cruiser was still stationary.
And it was right behind him.
He turned around and approached the mouth of the lane, and saw no sign of Harry’s undercover cruiser. Not on the side street. Not in the laneway. And not in the vacant lot where the old car dealership had been torn down.
For a moment he thought the GPS was buggered, or that the mount had dislodged from the vehicle. But then he looked across the way and saw the elevated parking lot of the A&W burger stand.
Up there.
Felicia got off her cell. ‘Patrol’s a block out.’
Striker never took his eyes from the parking lot. ‘Put your back against the wall and hold the area, Feleesh . . . There’s something I need to see over here.’
Seventy-Nine
Harry cut through the front door of the A&W burger stand, trying to get his breath.
Did that happen?
Did that really just fucking happen?
The words raged through his mind. His head felt light. He tried to slow his breathing. Tried to stop the trembling of his hands. But the shakes were hitting him hard now. Really hard.
Did that really just fucking happen?
Koda urged him on. ‘We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta move!’
Harry said nothing. In front of him, rows of people blocked the way. The line-up to the till was twelve deep. And all around him, most of the tables were already full of people eating hamburgers and French fries and onion rings. All he could smell was grease and vinegar and gravy.
‘Move, Harry, we gotta move!’
Robot-like, on autopilot, Harry moved across the tiled floor and pushed his way through the east-side door that led to the parking lot. The thick glass made the door heavy, and when it swung open, hot humid air blasted in his face.
He started for the car.
Slowed.
Stopped.
Something tugged at the back of his mind . . . something Sleeves had said during their cell phone conversation:
I’m on Hastings Street.
It made Harry wonder: Why had Sleeves been looking for them up on Hastings Street when the meeting place was in the alley behind the warehouse? The more he thought about it, the more obvious the answer became – because Sleeves had seen their cruiser parked in the A&W parking lot.
Up ahead, Koda was reaching for the vehicle.
‘WAIT!’ Harry said. ‘Don’t touch that car!’
Koda stopped. Wheeled back. ‘Jesus, what now?’
‘We got to make sure it’s not rigged or nothing.’
The thought of another bomb going off made Koda’s already-white face turn an even sicklier pallor, and he reared away from the vehicle.
‘You check it,’ he said.
Harry offered no response. He approached the undercover cruiser, got down on his hands and knees, and looked beneath the frame. The search took little time. Seconds. And he found something. There, on the top of the leaf spring, was a device – though it was not the one Harry was expecting to see.
He reached under, tried to pry it free, and broke the base of the device right off the mount. He looked at what he was holding and felt a coldness wash over him. Not a bomb, but something equally frightening – a Vancouver Police Department BirdDog.
They were being tracked.