Good. He won’t be expecting it when I take him and his empire out at the kneecaps, either.
Chapter Twelve
Roscoe and the others changed tactics the next morning. They added four more men to the recon team, spreading out among the four most common places Dr. Riley seemed to use, all of them libraries. Papa wasn’t fond of halving their unit at the safe house, but agreed if they were going to find and bring her in, they needed more manpower dedicated to the effort.
Roscoe and Niner, along with Lima and Quack, had ended up drawing the La Habra library. As they left the safe house a few minutes after seven that Sunday morning to go set up their surveillance, they noticed more smoke in the distance, but a little closer than the day before.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Roscoe said.
“Doesn’t matter. We have a job to do.”
“I don’t like the idea of getting overrun when it’s just the four of us.” Roscoe and Niner had drawn the short straw on vehicles, getting a cranky truck neither man liked to drive, a diesel that had seen better days, with a barely functioning solar hybrid engine. And it was low on diesel fuel, with no gas stations in their immediate area selling diesel. It had an extended cab with a full backseat, about the only good thing the men could say about it.
“We’ve faced worse odds,” Niner said.
“Yeah, but against people we were pretty sure didn’t have any kind of weapons other than rocks and sticks. This is LA. I’m betting some of the gangs have rocket launchers.”
“Then I suggest we don’t find and piss any of them off.”
When the four of them reached the library and scouted it out, Roscoe drew the short straw and had to stand out in front of the library first, including wearing a surgical mask over his lower face. He sat in the little puddle of available shade on a round planter there, staring at his tablet. “I really shouldn’t have picked a black T-shirt for today,” he mumbled over the radio. “It’s farking hot.”
“Suck it up,” Niner told him. “Civvie duds, remember? It was either this or camo, and we didn’t have time for laundry.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember. It’s just damn hot in the sun is all.”
An amused-sounding Lima piped up over the radio. “A little time in a posh safe house, and suddenly he’s a prima donna.”
“Fuck you,” Roscoe shot back. Although yeah, the safe house, compared to some of the places they’d stayed in the four years since their unit was formed, was like a five-star hotel.
Hell, anywhere they’d stayed with a roof over their head and indoor plumbing was posh by their standards. Electricity and a lack of deadly bugs or reptiles would elevate it to three-star status by default.
The school’s lab made it the perfect place, although he suspected with the way LA was heading, it wouldn’t be long before they were forced to leave. With or without Dr. Perkins.
They swapped out watch duties between the four of them. When Roscoe’s turn came up again at nine-thirty, he felt himself on edge. A couple of times, they’d heard gunfire. Not close enough to make them abandon their station and leave the area, but close enough he was glad he had a concealed nine millimeter in his waistband.
He also felt watched, in a strange way he couldn’t explain. Other library Wi-Fi patrons had come and gone throughout the morning, but he would have sworn he saw the same guy walk by twice.
He jumped when somewhere to their west, maybe only a few blocks away, he heard a distinctive thwump followed by a fireball and smoke rolling up toward the sky.
“Fuck! What the hell was that?”
“Sounded like an explosion,” Quack said.
A woman came running up to him from that direction, and it took him a second to realize as she pulled down her surgical mask that she was the woman they were looking for. The forty-two-year-old woman’s long, natural blonde hair had been dyed dark brown and chopped short, but the hazel eyes were the same.
A surge of adrenaline shot through him. “Dr. Perkins?” he asked.
She nodded. “Can we please go? Now? I don’t know what that was, but it scared the hell out of me, and I think those men are following me!” She glanced over her shoulder, and there were three men now running in their direction, including the one Roscoe had spotted earlier.
“Roger roger.” Roscoe grabbed her arm and started running with her toward where Niner was waiting just around the corner in the truck. “Got her!” he yelled on the radio. “Coming in hot, three bogeys on our tails. Drop your wang, gang. Time to fly.”
A flurry of radio traffic from the other three men burst into his ear as Roscoe drew his gun and turned.
Yep, the three men were definitely after them. He popped off three shots in their direction while barely slowing, enough cover fire to make the men duck and giving him and Dr. Perkins time to get around the corner.
He heard a squeal of tires from behind them that he suspected were Quack and Lima roaring in from their vantage point across the street and a block over, down a side street. Niner had their truck running, passenger door open.
Behind them, another pop-pop-pop of gunfire, followed by return fire.
Roscoe practically picked Dr. Perkins up and tossed her into the cab as he dove in behind her, covering her body with his. The force of Niner taking off made the passenger door swing shut.
“Hold on, doc!” Roscoe yelled, trying to keep his arms around her. “It might get rough.”
Niner plowed through an intersection, to the sound of tires squealing behind them. Roscoe looked to see Lima and Quack had spun their vehicle in a three-sixty now that they were on the move, and had headed back toward the gunmen.
“Who the fark were those guys?” Roscoe asked her.
“I don’t know! I’d come to the library earlier, waiting for you, but I saw them walk by and I wasn’t sure. None of them had a black T-shirt on. Then I saw yours and I knew.”
Niner took a hard corner. “Hold on. This bitch drifts about as good as a brick, and I’d rather not roll her.”
“Get in the backseat and get down,” Roscoe told the woman, boosting her over the front seat with one hand while turning to look behind them again. There was a vehicle after them now, a small red two-door. “One on our ass, Niner. Hit the gas!”
“This ain’t a farking Ferrari, asshole!” Niner yelled back. “Try laying down some cover, whydoncha?”
He didn’t want to, because there were pedestrians around. “Buckle up, doc,” he yelled at Dr. Perkins, reaching for his own seat belt and rolling down the window. “And stay the fuck down!”
The car drew closer and Roscoe took a shot, mentally counting his rounds left in the mag. It was a lucky shot, punching a hole in the windshield and making the car swerve, buying them time to get around another corner and down the street.
“Lima! Quack! Where the fark’d you go?” Roscoe screamed over the radio.
“On your six, trying to catch that fucking little red car.”
“Move it!” The red car rounded the corner, the passenger apparently kicking at the windshield and trying to dislodge it so the driver could see. The red car’s driver took the corner wide and sideswiped a truck parked along the curb, but only clipped it enough to slow it down.
“Turn left!” Roscoe yelled. “Now!”
They powered through the turn as Roscoe saw Lima drift around the corner behind the red car in a squeal of tires and smoke. As the red car was going to come after them, Quack opened up with a carbine from the passenger window, making the driver swerve and miss the turn to follow them.
“Punch it. Now,” Roscoe said. We can lose them.”
“What part of ‘this bitch don’t move’ did I not make clear to you?” Niner yelled back. “It’s a fucking solar.”
Roscoe searched the dash and hit the button for the diesel crossover, his heart coming up into his throat when the engine hitched and coughed before catching and picking up again.
“Fucking asshole, you wanna drive?” Niner yelled at him.
&nbs
p; “No, I want you to drive!”
“Are they gone?” Dr. Perkins asked from the backseat.
“I don’t know yet,” Roscoe said. “We need to take some more evasive action.” Even though they’d headed west and north and appeared to have shaken their pursuers, they couldn’t chance being followed.
“I have to go back to my room and get my research,” she said. “I hid the thumb drives. I didn’t want them on me in case the wrong people got me.”
Fark, it couldn’t ever be easy, could it? “Where’s it at?” Roscoe asked her.
She gave them an address in south Santa Fe Springs, just north of Norwalk, which was actually on the way back toward the safe house from their present location.
“Okay. We’ll get there, in and out. You need anything else, we’ll come back for it later. Got it?”
She nodded. Niner took evasive action, several more turns and twists that got them out of the area. Roscoe didn’t like that there appeared to be even more patches of fresh smoke breaking out across the city, and closer than before.
Something hit him, now that they weren’t being shot at. He looked over the back of the seat at the scientist. “What’d you mean by my black T-shirt?”
* * * *
Dolce and Mark were up and watching the TV at dawn Sunday morning. Despite martial law and the curfews, violence was starting to spill over from the western half of the city.
“Okay, let’s finish packing before you go out,” he said. “Get everything ready and by the door. When you come back, we’ll make one trip down. I know you don’t like the elevator, so I’ll ride down it, you take the stairs. Park by the front door and we’ll load and go. Be out of here well before dark. Okay?”
“Sounds like a plan.” By eight o’clock, she’d helped him get everything ready, and they ate breakfast.
“Do you need anything out of your apartment?” he said.
“Yeah, but I’ll grab it on my way back up,” she said. “One last trip.” She didn’t want to add the silent prayer that she hoped maybe, just maybe, her roommates would have returned by then.
She knew better.
Voicing it would only make her sad. And angry.
She headed out, breathing a sigh of relief when the car started without trouble. She had almost a full tank of gas still, getting by on the solar as much as possible. She was relieved to see the grocery store closest to their building was open.
When she walked in, however, she realized it’d already been picked over pretty well. She hit three more stores with only marginally better luck in a lengthening radius that made her ever more nervous the farther she traveled from the apartment.
Maybe I need to just go back, get Mark, and leave.
They had food they could take with them. Hell, they’d both been in the military and eaten grosser things than green beans cold from a can. Not like that would kill them.
She opted to try one more store, even though it was uncomfortably far from the apartment under the worsening conditions. It wasn’t on the main bus route that ran through the neighborhood, so maybe it wouldn’t be quite so picked over.
Trying not to look over to the west, where the fires had covered the horizon with smoke, she focused her attention on the street ahead of her. It would suck if she got into an accident now, when it looked like escape was doable.
She also tried not to think about venturing toward the CTSC yard in Downey. It was just a couple of miles away, at this point.
A couple of miles closer to the riots.
Who am I kidding? I’m no hero.
As part of a military unit, sure, she could fight. But she hadn’t been in infantry. She’d only gone after the marksman classification because she’d been good at it and it gave her a little more pay at the time.
She damn sure couldn’t take on a mob alone.
When she arrived at the store, she was glad to see they had a slightly better selection in the way of nonperishables, but not much. Enough that, combined with what they had, it would last them a couple of days, easily.
Feeling a little more relieved, she returned to her car with her purchases and dumped them in the trunk. They’d organize it all later when they packed it. Then she got behind the wheel, turned the key…
And swore up a blue streak that the damned thing wouldn’t start. Even switching it over to gas mode didn’t help.
Fark.
She popped the hood and got out, bending over the fender and hoping it was just a loose ignition wire like it had been the other day. Probably because she was deep in thought, busy trying to diagnose that problem, that she wasn’t paying attention to anything else. Like how there was a noise niggling at the corner of her mind, maybe something she should be paying attention to, but wasn’t. Like maybe why there was a sudden rush of people getting the hell out of the parking lot.
When she finally popped her head up to look, she heard the thwump and saw the fireball head skyward not far to the west.
“Oh, fuck!” she whispered. Now she knew what that other sound was, people yelling, screaming in the distance. And the gunfire sounded louder and more frequent.
Closer.
Not a single damn siren to be heard anywhere.
“Come on come on come on!” she screamed at the car as she leaned under the hood again.
* * * *
“Your T-shirt,” Dr. Perkins said. “And you were at the planter. That was the code I told Jerald Arbeid in the e-mail I sent him. How I’d recognize you.”
Roscoe exchanged a brief glance with Niner before turning to look at her. “Uh, you want to back up, lady? What e-mail? We’ve got Q and Sin—Dr. Quong and Dr. McInnis—back at our safe house. We’ve been trying to find you and bring you in to safety.”
She looked downright terrified now. “You aren’t the men the network sent?”
“Network?”
Another fireball exploding just blocks to their left caught them off guard. Niner had to swerve to avoid a car that pulled out in front of him and took off because he’d been distracted looking toward the explosion.
“Dammit, we need to get back to the safe house right now,” Roscoe said. “We’ll have to come back for her shit later.”
“You think I don’t know that—oh, fuck!” Niner slid to a stop, traffic ahead of them backed up, too.
A few blocks beyond that, what looked like chaos.
“Back up!” Roscoe screamed at him. “Go go go!”
“What’s wrong?” Dr. Perkins asked.
“Get back down, doc,” Roscoe said. “We’re not in the clear yet.”
Niner made a U-turn and veered off that street onto a side street, reversing their course. They’d have to head farther east before going north again.
And then, as they came up on a grocery store plaza, the engine coughed and died.
“No no no no no! Motherfucker!” Niner pounded on the steering wheel before coasting the truck into the nearly deserted lot.
“Switch it to solar! It’s out of farking fuel.”
He switched it, but still the engine didn’t want to catch.
“Shit!”
There was a woman standing at the only other car parked there, the hood of her car up, her focus to the west.
When Roscoe opened the door and got out, he saw—and heard—what had her keen attention.
A mob was closing in, likely heading for the store.
“Shit! Hey, lady! We’re out of diesel, but the solar switch won’t take!”
“No good, mine’s gas. Farking full tank, too, dammit. Ignition’s farked.” Carrying a small tool bag, she ran over toward their truck. “Pop the hood.”
“What?”
“I’m a mechanic. Pop the farking hood.”
She yanked the hood up as Niner got out, sidearm drawn as he stared toward the west. “You think you can get it started?”
She tossed him her keys. “Get my shit out of the trunk, please. I’ll get it started.” She glanced at him. “Move it! They’ll be here any minute!”
>
He and Niner both ran to grab what was a paltry amount of groceries out of her trunk. They were relieved to hear the truck rumble to life as they returned, throwing her shit in the bed of the truck as she jumped into the backseat with Dr. Perkins.
Roscoe ended up behind the wheel this time, and as the first of the mob hit the edge of the parking lot, he was flooring it and heading away, out the east exit.
Niner looked through the back window. Dr. Perkins was crying. “Oh my god!” she whispered, sounding sick. “There’s Kiters among them, I think.”
Behind them, in the rearview mirror, Roscoe saw a couple of National Guard trucks pull up in front of the mob and begin firing on them, driving them back.
Then they turned the corner and the parking lot was out of sight.
“Alpha Mike Foxtrot,” the woman muttered as she pulled down her face mask and stared out the back window at the carnage disappearing behind them.
“What?” the doctor shrieked at her.
“AMF,” Niner clarified. “Short for adios, motherfucker.”
Roscoe didn’t have time to ponder if their new passenger was former military or not. Wasn’t the first time he’d heard that slang, but he could never remember hearing it from a civvie who’d never served.
Dr. Perkins’ voice bore the shrill edge of panic. “So who are you people if Arbeid didn’t send you for me?”
“We told you,” Niner said, taking over since Roscoe was concentrating on them not dying in a wreck or running into another mob, “we’ve been looking for you. The other two docs already with us told us all about North Korea and the camp commander and the local magistrate—everything. We’re trying to gather as many of you as we can together in one safe place so you guys can develop a vaccine for this crap.”
* * * *
Dolce considered herself a pretty quick study of situations. The lady looked terrified—even with the surgical mask covering the lower half of her face—for reasons other than the clusterfuck behind them. About a second or two from being batshit crazy with fear, if Dolce had to guess. The men were hot and hunky, and likely former military, from their builds and that they actually knew what the hell she’d meant when she’d muttered that phrase.