Victor Gischler - Suicide Squeeze

Samson laughed. It sounded forced. “My opinion is that I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“Hey, you called me, remember?”

Samson stabbed a finger at Otis. “ He insisted. And I thought I could salvage a finder’s fee out of all this.”

“I’m surprised at you,” Becker said. “To endure everything you’ve been through, then to be so willing to come up empty-handed. I thought even you had more backbone than that.”

“Look, what do you want from me? I had the damn card in my hands, and I lost it. I blew my chance, okay?”

“You make your own chances in this business, Samson,” Becker said. “Or is a little bad luck all it takes to bust your balls?”

“A little bad-what did you say?”

“Nothing worth a damn comes easy,” she said.

Samson opened his mouth. He was ready to spit something sarcastic. But he closed his mouth again, shook his head. He flopped back down on the sofa, crossed his arms, and wouldn’t look at her or Otis.

Becker knew what he must be thinking. She could read him like a book. All Samson wanted to do was keep living his little life. But there was part of him that wanted to achieve something, and it was at war with the other part that kept saying not to stick his neck out. She studied him sitting there on the couch but couldn’t tell if he was pouting or brooding or deep in thought.

She opened her desk drawer, looking for another pack of cigarettes.

Instead, she saw her father’s six-shooters. She stared at them for long seconds. Goals are nothing. That you pursue them is everything. She’d risked her life before, many times in her special ops days. Could she honestly say that the reasons she’d risked her life those times were any better or worse than now?

Becker decided to let Conner stew a minute. She got up from her desk, went into her bedroom, motioned Otis should follow. She opened a closet. “Help me with these.” They pulled out three metal trunks, heavy, locked tight with thick combination locks. They dragged the trunks into the living room. Becker spun the locks, threw back the lids.

Two contained various weaponry, ammunition. The third held Kevlar vests and electronic equipment. Becker had never had the opportunity to use any of this equipment, all items she thought of as severance pay when the Feds forced her resignation. Our tax dollars at work.

“Shit,” Otis said. “Your Sharper Image catalog has better stuff than mine.”

Conner Samson stood, sighed dramatically, his jaw set, eyes alert and determined. He looked down at the assorted equipment and weaponry. “Okay, tell me the plan again. And be very clear about how easy and safe my part is.”

Ninety minutes later, Conner sat in the Lincoln next to Otis. He still wasn’t sure how he’d been talked into it. Becker had told them what to do. They’d parked at the rear entrance of the hotel, this Kurisaka and his band of chop-saki killers on the top floor. He felt like a second-rate SWAT team guy, half-assed secret agent wanna-be. He felt stupid and clumsy and afraid.

Joellen Becker had draped him in Kevlar. Nylon straps. Buckles. An electronic headset with a single earpiece and a microphone strapped to his throat. Three guns. Three opportunities to shoot off his own foot. Some kind of automatic on the ankle, a small caliber. The little gun felt awkward down there when he walked, so he decided to leave it off and not tell Becker. The other two were nine-millimeter Glocks, one under each arm in lightweight canvas shoulder holsters. A Batman-style utility belt. Conner was scared to death he’d bump into something and blow himself in half.

If my part of the fucking plan is so safe, then why the hell am I wearing a ton of guns?

Better safe than sorry, Becker had told him.

Otis wore the same outfit with two notable differences. One: He also carried a giant, fully automatic twelve-gauge shotgun with an enormous barrel magazine. Conner had not even realized there was such a gun.

The other difference was almost comical. A single Kevlar vest didn’t even come close to covering Otis’s massive chest. In an awkward but serviceable arrangement, Becker had strapped two vests together. The new rig left only a few gaps, dangerous spaces where a lucky shot might find its way through. Better than nothing, thought Conner.

“Five minutes.” Becker’s voice echoed electronic in Conner’s earpiece.

Conner felt a sudden urge to call it off. Why was he doing this? Conner wasn’t sure he even understood himself, didn’t know how to take his jumble of feelings and turn them into words anyone could understand. It had something to do with Tyranny. But it had a lot more to do with himself, like seeing this thing to the finish would somehow snap into focus who he was as a human being. A failed ballplayer, a flunked-out student, a rejected lover. There was nowhere to go but forward, wide-eyed into the open jaws of doom.

But now, he wasn’t sure. Fear.

“Otis, maybe this is a bad idea.”

“Go then,” the big man said. “I’m staying. I know what I’m about.”

“You got that leather bag of money. You could take off.” Take me with you.

“It’s Rocky’s money,” Otis said. “I’d say he’d want to buy revenge with it.”

Becker’s voice again. “It’s go time. Samson, get into position.”

Conner touched the microphone at his throat. “Right.”

He looked at Otis one more time. Otis said nothing, only nodded.

Conner slipped a windbreaker over his gun rig. It was over ninety degrees even in the middle of the night, but he couldn’t chance someone seeing him and calling in the cops.

He left the Lincoln behind, walked fast around the back of the hotel, and found the service entrance Becker told him would be there. His heart pounded in his ears, mouth dry. He didn’t touch the knob. Too soon. It would be locked, maybe even have an alarm.

Becker had told him state-of-the-art, modern hotels had state-of-the-art, modern blind spots and weaknesses. She was parked somewhere with her laptop and her cellular modem, tapping into the hotel’s computer network. Voodoo magic. Again Conner realized how little he understood about so much.

A long buzzzzz followed by a click . Becker’s voice in his ear. “Go, Samson.”

Conner turned the knob and rushed inside. No alarm. He scanned the area. Kitchens to the right. A service elevator to the left. He climbed in, thumbed the throat microphone. “I’m in the service elevator.”

“Okay,” Becker said in his ear. “Is there a keypad or a lock? You’ll either need a key or a code to ride to the top floor.”

“A keypad,” Conner said.

“Good. If you’d have needed a key, you’d be screwed. We can bypass the code. I’ll tell the computer system there’s an emergency evacuation. That’ll unlock all the restricted elevators. But I’ll disable the alarm. Give me a second.”

“How’d you learn to do all this?” Conner asked.

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. Now clam up. I’m working.”

Conner clammed up. Waited.

Then the elevator moved. Up.

Becker’s voice. “I’m going to cue Otis. When he starts his commotion it should pull any guards away from the service elevator and give you a clear path.”

“What if I don’t have a clear path?”

“Then we’ll see what you’re made of, Samson. You’ve just got to have faith Otis will do his job.”

Yeah, Conner knew this play. The suicide squeeze.

Otis sat stone still in the Lincoln, eyes closed. He’d been working on his breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth. He was going to walk face-first into danger, and he’d need his mind straight if he wanted to come out alive. But he had to do this thing. He’d feel Rocky’s ghost haunt him forever if he didn’t.