Robert Crais - Indigo Slam

Jasper would watch Clark, then walk away, then watch some more, then walk away, like he was nervous about all of this and losing his patience. Finally, he said, 'It doesn't have to be perfect, for chrissake.'

Clark stopped working and stared at him. Jasper walked away.

At ten minutes after six that morning I went out into the parking lot and breathed the cool night air and watched the first traces of pink freshen the eastern sky. Moths swarmed around the parking lot lamps, banging into the glass with a steady tap-tap-tap, and I wondered if they welcomed the dawn. At dawn, they could stop slamming their heads into the thing that forever kept them from the light. People don't have a dawn. We just keep slamming away until it kills us.

Clark had worked steadily through the night, and I thought that his pain must be terrible, but, unlike the moths, he was doing it because he loved his son. I guess I would do it, too, and I hoped that the love helped with his pain.

When I went back inside, Clark Hewitt was still working. Billings had fallen asleep.

At eight minutes after seven that morning, Clark brought the plates to the lithograph machine, fitted the portrait plate to the printing cylinder, then filled the inkwell with black ink. He looked at me and said, 'I think we're ready.'

Jasper said, 'About goddamned time.'

Pike was still in his corner. I don't think he had moved for hours. Billings sat up, blew another bubble, then stared at Pike. I think he found Pike odd.

Clark said, 'We'll run some test sheets through, first. Just to see.'

I brought over a bundle of the paper. It made me feel useful.

Clark fitted a stack of the paper into the paper feeder, then ran through two sheets. The big machine made a whirring, snapping sound as the paper went through, and the paper went through faster than I'd expected. It came out smudged and dark. Clark said, 'Sucks.'

He made some adjustments with a little screwdriver, then ran through two more sheets. These looked fine to me, but Clark frowned again. Jasper rolled his eyes. Clark made another adjustment, printed two more sheets that I thought were identical to the last two, but this time he seemed pleased. 'This should do. I think we're ready to print.'

That's when Joe Pike said, 'Listen.'

Billings said, 'What?' He blew an enormous pink bubble.

Jasper said, 'For chrissakes, let's just print the money and get going.'

Pike moved to the lithograph and slapped the shut-off switch. The drum whined down and the humming stopped. Clark said, 'It's going to take a while to reheat.'

Jasper said, 'What are you people talking about?'

Pike held up a finger, his head cocked to the side, and then he took out his gun. 'Listen.'

There might have been the faint squeal of a door hinge, and there might've been the faraway thump of something hard bumping into a doorjamb or a wall. My first thought was that it was Dak and his people, coming to check on us, but it wasn't, and I didn't have time for another thought.

Claude Billings trotted to the door, stepped into the hall, and that's when Alexei Dobcek shot him once through the great pink bubble and blew out the back of his head.

Pike pushed Clark down behind the litho press. I ran for the door, shooting three times into the darkness and once into the wall. Dobcek yelled something in Russian, and he and another guy fell back along the hall into the parking lot. I fired twice more, then pulled Billings back into the big room, but he was already dead. I said, 'The Russians. We're outta here now.'

I saw a flash of men moving in the parking lot, and I heard crashing at the front of the building.

Jasper checked Billings. 'Jesus Christ, how in hell did they find us? How many you see?'

'Five. Maybe more. They were running toward the front, so they'll probably enter that way.'

Clark said, 'But what about the money?'

Pike pulled him to his feet. 'That's over now.'

'What about Charles?'

'If they get you they won't need Charles.'

Jasper snuck a fast look out the door and down the hall that led to the parking lot. That door was closed, and there was probably a man with a gun waiting for whoever opened the door. All the noise was coming from the other hall, which led to the front. Jasper said, 'Shit, man, they've got us boxed.'

Pike said, 'Up.'

I pushed Clark toward the metal stairs and told him to climb. 'There's a stair at the front door and offices on the second floor. If we move through the offices and they stay on the ground, we can come down behind them and get out of here.'

Clark and Jasper and I clattered up the stairs to the catwalk and into the offices as Pike went back to the hall, fired four fast shots in the blind, then followed.

The upstairs offices were dark and hot, and we could hear the Russians moving beneath us, faint and faraway. I thought we were going to make it just fine until a squat guy with a thick mustache turned a corner, saw us, then ducked back behind the corner, shouting. I pushed backward into Jasper and Clark, yelling for them to get back, when the mustache popped out again, snapping off two shots that hit the ceiling above us. I shot back, then Alexei Dobcek darted across my field of fire into an adjoining doorway, firing as he ran. Jasper said, 'This really bites.'

We fell back along the hall, retracing our route onto the catwalk and down the stairs into the warehouse, reaching the bottom just as Dmitri Sautin and the guy with the mustache blew through the catwalk door, firing as they came. Dmitri Sautin was wearing a HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH T-shirt from Disneyland.

I yelled, 'Joe,' and pushed Clark down behind the plate maker as Joe Pike spun around and shot Sautin once with his.357.

The guy with the mustache dove back into the upstairs hall, but Sautin didn't. Sautin weighed three hundred pounds, but the.357 pushed him into the wall and knocked the gun from his hand. He looked down at his chest as red soaked through the HAPPIEST PLACE shirt. He said, 'Alexei?' Then he fell head first over the rail and hit the cement floor like a bag of damp flour.

A blond guy appeared in the hall door, fired twice, then disappeared.

The shooting stopped and no one was shouting and the only sounds in the place were my own heart and a bubbly wheeze from Dmitri Sautin. He coughed twice, and then he started to cry. Jasper was under the stairs.

Dobcek said, 'I think we got you trapped. What do you think?' He said it from behind the catwalk door.

'I thought we had a deal, Dobcek.'

'Da. An' I think you were going to set us up.'

I was looking at the truck door. It was big and electric with a red open-close switch next to it on the wall about twenty feet away from me. All I had to do was run over there, hit the switch, then run back and hope that no one shot me.

Dmitri Sautin managed to roll onto his side, but that was as far as it went. He was crying the way a small child cries, with little gasping whimpers. He said, 'Oo, it hurts, Alexei. I need help.'

Dobcek called back, 'Shut up, fool.'

The sobbing became a wet, phlegmy cough.

Dobcek said, 'You give us Hewitt, maybe we let you live, dah?'

Pike snapped his fingers and pointed at the truck door.

I nodded. Somebody was probably waiting out there to shoot us, but if the door was up at least we could see. If we could see, maybe we could lay down a suppressing fire so that we could get out.

Pike reloaded the Python, and I reloaded the Dan Wesson. I said, 'Jasper, are you in?'

'Sure.'

'Joe.'

Joe Pike swung out from behind the plate maker, popping off two shots at the hall door, then three shots at the catwalk. I moved when he moved, sprinting hard to the door and slapping the big red button. The door started up with a lurch, and Dobcek yelled something and suddenly the Russians upstairs and the Russians in the hall were shooting as hot and as heavy as they could and I knew that they were coming.