Next Day of the Condor, Page 3

  She whispered: “You keep doing stuff like that, you’ll ruin your tough guy act.”

  “Be your cover,” Vin told her. “Besides, looks like he’s one of the men and women who pay when we fuck up our job. Or some politician fucks it up for us.”

  He shrugged.

  “Do what should be done, nothing special about that,” he told her sounding so much like her father.

  But only he heard the beep…beep…beep of machines webbed to a hospital bed as he said: “Probably I owe guys like him something beyond coulda and shoulda.”

  She understood what he said but not what he meant.

  Just walk beside him. Figure out what you can.

  “My car’s still there,” she said as they started down one ramp to the parking lot.

  The red Japanese motion machine, squatting way over by the north border fence and the white gazebo where exiting the Turnpike Southbound came a black hearse.

  The black hearse parked in a row of cars near Malati’s red ride. As the hearse glided to a stop, Condor envisioned the YOU ARE HERE map mounted on the wall between the bathrooms. Nick Logar was one of the few rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike that serviced traffic going both directions. The padded black-clad driver got out of the hearse, opened its back door. If he’d forgotten something at this rest stop from when he left earlier behind the Southbound suspect cell phone photo couple, Mr. Black Costume would have had to drive about ten miles before he could exit, get back on the Turnpike north, then drive here, but…But then he would have needed to drive past this place or through it, go further north to another exit turnaround, again maybe ten miles away in order to come back and exit southbound back into the rest stop, into here.

  Why make that long circle drive?

  What’s that sound? thought Condor as he and Malati neared the bottom of the ramp to the parking lot where two burly men stood with unlit cigarettes dangling from their lips. The man wearing the COUNTY SCHOOLS windbreaker pulled a silver lighter from his left front shirt pocket, clicked it open and thumbed its wheel to summon a flame and ignite the white papered cancer sticks, barely a pause as that bus driver said:

  “Couldn’t believe it, twenty minutes from the school if the traffic held, sure as shit ain’t holding now, shut down and backed up behind me, so I got off lucky, whump, ‘bus starts to shake, what the fuck, get it to this exit and wrestle it down over there, at least get the kids where they can pee, but my tires got four little black steel like…like stars or some other pointy things, and with three flats, we barely made it here.”

  Malati felt Vin drift her away from her waiting car, into the front parking lot.

  “Listen!” he said. Made them stop and stand still, absolutely still.

  “To what?”

  “There’s no whooshing.”

  He faced the unseen empty lanes of the expressway going south, turned to look past the hulk of the rest stop facility to the unseen empty expressway lanes going north.

  Heard that silence.

  Felt his own thundering heart.

  From deep inside Malati came the whisper: “We’ve got to go now.”

  They looked across rows of parked vehicles toward her distant red car.

  Saw ordinary human beings, everyday people strolling to and fro, the guy in black walking toward the facility from the hearse. A honeymoon couple laughed.

  The new husband aimed his cell phone camera.

  The happy bride raised her face to the open sky.

  Like a red mist flowered her skull as she flipped to the parking lot pavement.

  The husband almost dropped his cell phone before a crimson fountain from his spine burst out of his blue-shirted chest.

  Time became a child’s clear marble dropped into a swimming pool…

  …to slowly sink.

  Not seeing what I’m seeing! Malati’s mind registered her package, her responsibility, her…Condor call him Vin: he lunged before the second shot’s Crack!

  What she saw over rows of parked cars at an ordinary New Jersey Turnpike rest stop on an ordinary autumn Halloween was the not-so-far-away guy in black.

  What she saw was that ordinary American boy face behind an assault rifle.

  A gorilla roared from where the bus driver and the salesman were smoking.

  The gunman sprayed bullets at what he heard.

  The salesman and bus driver dropped twitching, bleeding, moaning, dying near the concrete ramp to where the children were.

  Condor pulled the young fed’ down between two parked cars.

  Yelled: “Can you get a good shot?”

  “I don’t have a gun! I’m not that kind of spy! And you’re a crazy old man!”

  Machinegun fire. Screams.

  “Fucking Brooklyn.” Condor waved her between two cars, stayed low as he scrambled two more cars over, eased his head above the hood of steel shelter.

  The shooter looked like the robot of death. Padding under his black shirt and pants: Had to be ballistic armor. Working the assault rifle, thumbing the release to drop the spent magazine to the parking lot pavement, reaching in a pouch to pull out an expanded capacity mag’ and slap it home: that movie star reload let Condor see a combat pump shotgun strapped across the robot’s chest.

  The robot stalked toward where Condor and Malati hid.

  Gotchya! whirled the other way to rat-a-tat-tat a line of bullet holes through the food court’s wall of windows. Condor spotted a pistol SWAT-style strapped to the shooter’s right leg, a combat knife sheathed on his left ankle, strapped-on pouches. Is that a computer tablet dangling from his belt?

  Condor dropped between the cars.

  Malati said: “What’s he doing?”

  “Killing people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he can.”

  The machinegun buzzed like a monster’s vibrating tongue.

  “Did you see his hearse?” said Condor.

  Malati started to rise—

  Got jerked down. “You don’t know where he’s looking! You got no diversion!”

  She shuddered in his grasp.

  Condor said: “Shiny metal where the coffin should ride. ‘Think they’re bins.”

  “Bins?”

  “The bus driver pulled black steel stars out of his tires. Caltrops. Tactical steel road tire spikes. State troopers and Army ambushers scatter them on the highway.”

  Somewhere in the parking lot a woman screamed like a fleeing banshee.

  Malati shook her head. “What does that have to do with bins and where would—”

  The machinegun roared.

  No more banshee screaming.

  “Maybe he got the spikes on Amazon,” said Condor. “Get lots, rig metal bins in the coffin space. Cut holes in the back of the hearse, driver-controllable lids on the bins. He drove every stretch of road every direction out of here, probably weaving lane to lane to cover all drivable asphalt, picking his release spots just past or just before the rest stop exits and entrances, dropping, what, couple thousand of those things. A few flat tires, cars crashing into each other, stopped, and it’s the mother of all backups every way in or out of here, walls of steel. He’s isolated his kill zone. Stalled any rescue or escape.”

  BOOM! The robot switched to his shotgun.

  Malati waved her arm: “When he’s shooting the other way we can make it across the parking lot toward the Turnpike! Short fence, hop it, run, hide—”

  She saw where Condor was looking.

  The empty school bus.

  She said: “All those kids.”

  He said: “All us everybody.”

  Machinegun bullets cut a line over their heads like the contrail of a jet on its way across this cool blue sky.

  Her spine tensed. Her mind pushed against her forehead.

  He said: “Cell phone!”

  Pressed against her ear. “911 is…Due to a high volume—”

  “Half the people here. Unless he’s got a jammer.”

  “You can buy those?”


  “You tell me, you’re the one from the real world.”

  Car windows shatter. Bullets whine.

  Why now? Why here? Why me?

  Why not.

  Her eyes were welded wide. “Where is he? Is he coming—Wait!”

  Malati swooped the screen of her cell phone. Eased her cell above the car.

  Camera app, the phone like a periscope lens scanning the sounds of gunfire.

  Like a movie.

  “He’s moving toward the main doors!”

  Standing tall, man, striding toward the funnel for the fools—Whoops: fat guy in parking lot, where’d he pop up from, pulling at the passenger door on that green car bullets’ burst and he’s dancing and spraying red and sliding down to dead, motherfucker.

  The side fire door of the rest stop facility flies open.

  Half a dozen people charge out.

  Crying tires as a silver SUV lunges out of its parking lot space.

  Malati’s cell phone showed the shooter drop flat on the pavement.

  He fumbled with the book-sized computer thing lashed to his belt.

  Silver SUV slows for six people running to its—

  FLASH! by the green dumpsters then came the BOOM! of garage-mixed explosive gel shelled by ball bearings and old nails as the paper sack bomb exploded.

  Take that, Columbine motherfuckers! The shooter keyboarded the tablet lashed to his waist so it was re-primed to send a wireless signal to any of his other planted bombs.

  Windshield blasted glass slivers blinded the silver SUV’s driver, an engaged office manager/volunteer at a Paterson, N.J. soup kitchen.

  Bomb shrapnel hit three of the runners, bodies crashed to the pavement. The other three runners staggered—arm, the blast blew off the arm of a mother of two lawyer on her way to a deposition, she crumpled, bled out.

  Like a cat person on TV, the shooter rocketed off the pavement.

  Saw two targets staggering beside a drifting silver SUV.

  Sprayed them with bullets. Nailed one, the other, ah fuck him, let him stagger away, maybe he’s hit, certain he’s damaged.

  The shooter tossed something like a rock toward the FIRE EXIT side of the facility.

  Pop! Purple smoke grenade, rescue me surplus, that store off the Interstate.

  “The grenade’s to scare us,” said Condor. “Keep the people inside.”

  Death’s robot faced the stairs and ramps up to the main doors.

  Malati stared at the huddled-beside-her silver-haired man in the black jacket who knew, who had to know: “What are we going to do?”

  “Be crazier.”

  “’Easy for you to say.”

  The robot of death. At the bottom of the ramp where the bus driver sprawled over another smoker’s corpse.

  Marching out of the main doors: Two women. Teachers. Marching down the ramp straight toward the shooter. Commanding: “Stop! Stop this!”

  Behind them, running down the other concrete ramp:

  Kids, scared, crying, stumbling down to the parking lot as the young man from Teach For America and some other citizen urge the twenty-one children forward, go, run, run!

  The main doors whir open.

  Out rolls Warren.

  Wheelchair. Army jacket. Fuck you face.

  Ready to charge. Ready to be diversion. Ready to take it to you, motherfucker.

  Keep going kids! Run, run!

  The shooter’s stopped. Standing still. Assault rifle hanging on its sling.

  Two teachers close on him, the maybe maybe prayer on their faces.

  The robot drew his handgun Bam! Bam-Bam!

  Schoolteachers collapsed in a heap atop a bus driver.

  Tidy you want me to be tidy you want tidy I give you tidy!

  Warren yelled and spun himself charge onto the ramp.

  Bam! A third eye blasted into Warren.

  The shooter aimed two-handed toward the main doors where Teach For America and some other guy lined up in the V front sight of a 15-shots semi-automatic pistol.

  Count five blasted rounds into those two bodies, dropped them in a pile, tidy.

  Wheelchair, carrying dead Warren, obeying inertia, rolling down the ramp—

  Stopped as the shooter slammed his gun bore on the ribs under the Army jacket.

  Why waste a bullet on this Army jacket guy with a red mush forehead?

  He shoved the wheelchair. His force sent it freewheeling up to the flat landing outside the main doors. The burdened wheelchair spun sideways, stopped.

  As twenty-one children stampede amidst parked cars.

  The assault rifle sprayed zinging lead toward them.

  But kids are short.

  Bullets crashed through cars’ windows, punched into steel chassis.

  The shooter dropped to the ground.

  Stared under rows of parked cars. Undercarriages of mufflers and pipes. Tires propped the cars at least six inches off the pavement and made a slit of scenery.

  There, ‘few rows away: running children’s legs and feet.

  The assault rifle fired a long sweep of bullets under the cars.

  Zing ripped out from the under the metal that hid Condor and Malati, cut right between where they were crouched, right past the knocked-over ‘bucks cup she’d only God knows why just let go of. Slugs slammed into another parked car, punched a hole in one door and out the other. A tire blew. Bullets ricocheted off parking lot asphalt.

  Is that smell—

  Two kids. Frozen in the lane between parked cars. Bullets zinged past their legs—one wore brown cords his mom picked out, one wore her favorite blue jeans.

  The girl pushed her classmate away from the shooter: “Split up!”

  She turned to run the other way than the boy so the bad guy couldn’t—

  Saw two crouching-down adults waving their hands.

  Ran between the cars, into the arms of the Grampa guy.

  “Got you!” he said as she burrowed her face into his leather jacket.

  No wet no red she’s not shot. Condor saw a Halloween pumpkin bucket looped through the belt on her blue jeans, a red jacket, white blouse. “It’s not a dorky costume!” she’d insisted that morning as she did what she was ‘posed to and ate her scrambled eggies: “It’s the idea of the flag and it’s ’posed to make you think!” But that glitter on her seven-year-old face? That, she said, “that’s me.” Didn’t notice her mother not cry.

  Machinegun roars sliced the air.

  The second grader looked back to where she’d been.

  Whispered: “Run, Johnny.”

  The shooter slapped fresh ammo into the assault rifle. Seen it. He’d seen running snot nose kids scramble onto the shutdown school bus across the parking lot. You can’t hide from me. He machine-gunned the bus. Bullets banged through the yellow metal.

  Malati held her cell phone above their parked cars cover.

  “He’s turning toward—I think he’s going to go into the building, the food court!”

  Risk it: Condor peeked over the car. Saw the black robot at the facility’s main doors. Saw the dead vet in his wheelchair. Saw bodies heaped at the bottom of the ramp: bus driver who smoked, women. Saw the food court’s bullet-holed tinted dark windows.

  He glared at the little girl with the big brown eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Phyllis Azar seven years old live at—”

  Create focus.

  “You’re here. Now. With us.”

  The seven-year-old girl nodded: The silver-haired guy sounded like a principal!

  Empower your asset to gain their trust.

  Condor said: “What do you want me to call you?”

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Paced steady rhythm shots hit the building.

  Suppression fire as the black clad shooter neared the main doors.

  “Daddy calls me Punkin.” She shrugged at the orange plastic pumpkin bucket she’d looped to herself with her belt special so no way would she lose it.

  “Punkin, I’m—Condor, Vin, doesn’t matter, she’s Mal
ati.”

  A bullet ricocheted off a car roof.

  Punkin said: “We going to be OK?”

  The big girl woman nodded yes as Mr. Silver Hair said: “We might get hurt.”

  “Might get dead.” Punkin shook her head. “That would suck.”

  Malati watched her cell phone: “He’s standing at the main doors!”

  In the canyon of car metal next row over: a side mirror of an SUV dangled upside down, its cracked glass captured the reflection of a trapped man, woman, child.

  Malati inhaled that sight of yesterday, today, tomorrow.

  “Condor!” yelled Malati: “Smell that oh my God! Why didn’t it it’s going to—”

  Like a piano chord exploded the meds’ weight on his mind.

  A lightning flash of seeing.

  He grabbed the belt around the little girl NEVER NOBODY ‘POSED TO and he’s jerking it undone saying: “’Fifty-fifty shot at next to no chance in Hell and Punkin!”

  She locked on him as he said: “We got one chance to save anybody!”

  Punkin gave him a nod from her bones.

  “But you gotta do one thing you’re not ’posed to.”

  Punkin didn’t blink.

  Condor told her: “You have to say a bad word.”

  The shooter paused outside the main doors. To his left were a heap of bodies he’d dropped with his pistol—good fucking shots. Behind him near the top of the ramp was the listless wheelchair full of some dead older guy wearing an Army jacket.

  Crucial question: Which gun?

  Level up cool. Now it’s your game.

  Nothing like a shotgun for close quarters tactical situations.

  He let the black military-cool rifle dangle on its sling, wrapped his right hand around the pistol-grip of the black steel and plastic Italian-made shotgun manufactured after America’s 1994 assault weapons ban expired.

  And just for a moment, felt regret.

  While he loved the high-tech look of his semi-automatic 12 gauge that fed new shells into the chamber after each shot, the ratchet-clack of pumping a fresh shell into an old-school “regular” shotgun was epic. But besides slowing his rate of fire, a pump shotgun made him clumsy, so as much as he appreciated cool, he knew he’d been smart to go semi-auto, out with the old, in with new. Right tool, right job.

  Like he expected, he saw no one standing beyond the closed glass doors.