Night of Thunder

Vern removed the girl from the bedroom with an insincere smile to her cowed family and took her into the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet, his arm draped across her shoulders. The door was closed.

“Now, sweetie.”

“I don’t like this,” she said, her eyes looking nervously around.

“Now, sweetie, you just calm down. Does Vern look like a man who could hurt a cute little thing like Hannah Ng?”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“Sweetie, I would never hurt you. In fact, to relax, I want you to think about ice cream. What’s your favorite flavor?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think.”

“Strawberry. Mine too. Now what do you do with a nice big pink strawberry ice cream.”

The girl had shut her eyes. He held her by the arm.

“You lick it. Isn’t that what you do?”

He forced her to her knees.

“You lick it, nice and hard. Ummm, good. Now, Hannah, let’s pretend we got us a nice ice cream right here right now-”

“Let’s go,” called Ernie from the living room.

Damn!

Vern leaned down and gave the little Asian girl a kiss on the cheek.

“I’ll be back for you. We got some fun ahead.”

He raced through the apartment, out the open sliding doors, crossed the lawn, and caught up with his cousin just as Ernie hit the parking lot. They slipped between cars, and Vern saw ahead of him two men coming down the building steps on the other side of the parking lot, lit in the glow of the stairwell. Who the hell was the other guy? Too bad for him, he’s dead too. He indexed his finger above the trigger guard of his Glock for fast application, and he and Ernie described a straight line on the interception of the two targets who, heading on the oblique, were obviously going to a car somewhere farther down in the lot.

Didn’t matter. Was easy. Them boys didn’t know a thing, didn’t have a prayer or a hope. Bang bang, it’d be over. He watched them, as everything seemed to accelerate in time, noting one was the lanky, gray-headed older guy, a Mr. Swagger Pap said, who had been their quarry so many times before and who Pap said killed Carmody and B.J. The other, a beefier guy, police beef in a suit with a thatch of hair, who was talking into a phone.

The Grumleys had their guns out, but the rule was, get close as you can, then get closer, get close enough to touch, get close enough so missing isn’t on the table, shoot ’em fast in the guts, shoot ’em down, then lean over ’em for the head shot, blow their brains out, shoot your gun empty, then get the hell out of town.

It was happening now, it was happening fast, his gun came up, his finger flew to trigger, it was so easy, they picked up their speed on the unsuspecting marks, almost running now.

“Look out,” came a cry from behind, “they’re killers, look out!”

It was a young girl’s voice.

As they raced down the stairwell, Nick held a slight lead and Bob could hear him talking urgently into his cell.

“Officer, this is Special Agent Nick Memphis, FBI, Fed ID 12-054. Lancer, you’ve got to patch me through to the speedway command center, whoever’s in charge. We believe there’s going to be a robbery assault at your location. No, no, I’ve got SWAT operators inbound from Knoxville, but it’ll be a time before they’re on scene. This is a heavy ten-fifty-two by an armed team, maybe with automatic weapons, all units should be alert and ready to move on the sound of the gunfire, somewhere in the speedway vicinity. Please patch me through to your command center, and I will need airborne transportation to the site and need a rendezvous point and-”

They cleared the building, slid through the darkness to Nick’s car, though Bob didn’t know which one it was, and seemed almost to be on the run when Bob heard a voice from across the way screaming, “Look out, they’re killers, look out.” In that same second he saw two hunched men rushing at him, guns out, guns upfront. A gun flashed, there was no noise, but the brightness of the muzzle flash displayed the urgent mug of a handsome-ugly guy and Bob knew Nick was hit. Stricken, he muttered an animal noise, lost a step and all rhythm, and was struggling for his own gun.

It happened fast, faster by far than the speed of coherent thought, faster almost than the pulse rate that was in any event suspended by blood chemicals, and each of the four at close range in the dark devolved into creatures of instinct and training, and the victory would go to the one with the best instinct and the most training. The determining factor was distance; up close, skill counted for nothing, but at ten feet out in the dark, it wasn’t just who shot fast, but who shot best, who had the knack to hit movers in bad light on the fly.