Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

Maven saw the strap hanging off the bottom of the bay-door handle and took a chance. He launched himself up off one of the rubber truck bumpers built into the exterior of the bay, grasping the strap and firing into the warehouse as his weight rode the door down and closed.

More rounds rapped the inside of the door. Maven spun to the corner, leaning around it. No gunfire there. He sighted on the vehicles, squeezing the trigger, tires bursting air and moisture, the bodies of the cars sinking.

He spun back to the others, grabbing the Olde English case Glade couldn’t handle, and following them into the wetlands, jogging backward, his muzzle on the rear bay door.

They got deep into the weed growth, putting some trees between them and the warehouse. Suarez was biting down on the neck of his armored vest, screaming into it as Termino carried him on his shoulder.

“What the fuck?” said Maven.

“Fucking bikers,” said Glade, breathing hard on the run. “Fucking rather be shot than ripped off.”

One of Suarez’s screams escaped his vest.

“Pass out already,” grumbled Termino.

“How bad?” said Maven.

“Thigh,” said Glade.

Outer thigh, okay, just muscle damage. Inner thigh could mean the femoral artery, bleeding out, death within two minutes. Termino would be drenched in Suarez’s blood if it were the artery.

They hustled through a swampy field of dead, denuded trees, a clearing that had seen a fire. Termino stopped near a drainpipe, close to the cars, parked in the parking lot of an out-of-business windshield-replacement shop. He dumped Suarez onto a bed of grass, and Maven saw the leg wound, blood pulsing down his pants. Termino fished a telephone out from his vest and tossed it to Maven before ripping open Suarez’s jeans around the wound.

Maven opened up the phone; only one number was listed. He pressed SEND and waited, watching Glade open up a case of Olde English. The forty-ounce bottles were filled with tan pills stamped with the image of a smoking eyeball. Glade dumped the ecstasy pills into water streaming out of the basin.

Royce answered, “What is it?”

“Suarez is hit,” said Maven, adrenaline surging with those words.

“How bad?”

“How bad?” Maven asked Termino.

“A round ricocheted off stone,” said Termino, over Suarez’s groaning. “Sliced him deep, but through-and-through.”

“You hear that?” said Maven.

Royce said, “I heard. You get the product?”

Maven looked at Glade starting in on case number two. “We’re dumping it now. He’s hurting bad.”

“Stop. Get the powder.”

Glade had the bag of white in his hand. Maven told him to stop.

Royce said, “Sprinkle some over the wound.”

Maven looked at the cocaine. “You said what?”

“Cocaine started out as a topical anesthetic. Sprinkle it over the wound. And don’t make me fucking repeat myself again.”

Maven seized the bag from Glade and put down the phone. He went to Suarez, whose eyes were closed. Maven dusted Suarez’s bloody leg wound with cocaine the way good restaurants sprinkle sugar over dessert. The white mixed with the blood and adhered to the edges of the gash.

The other two looked at Maven as though he were insane.

Maven picked up the phone again. “Done.”

“Dump the rest, ditch the armor and weapons as planned, and get him back here pronto.”

Maven hung up. “We move,” he said, stripping off his armor.

By the time they got to Suarez, his tension had broken, and they were able to remove his gear. Suarez sat up, examining his wound, touching it gently around the edges.

“Did you coke up my leg?” he said.

They wrapped his leg in a chamois towel from the boot of the switch car and carried him in the rear-alley basement entrance of the Marlborough Street building. Royce was waiting inside their pad with an olive green medical kit full of field surgical tools, syringes, and vials of anesthetic. He had towels laid out and a pitcher of water. He washed the wound and the coke residue, then pumped Suarez’s thigh full of lidocaine before breaking out a suture kit and going to work.

“Who fucked up?” Royce said.

Glade said, “They started shooting—”

“Who fucked up!”

All three of them kneeling around Royce and Suarez, no one said anything. Maven still didn’t know what had happened, he wasn’t there. But even he felt the tension in the room turning toward Glade. And nobody rising to his defense.

Glade said, “Fuck you, guys. I’m going to let them draw on me?”

Royce said, “You haven’t learned anything this whole time?” The gash was so deep, Royce had to sew the inside of the leg first. “They’re bikers, professional psychos. You gave them what they want. You had control of the situation, and you fucked it up. And left some of your buddy’s DNA at the scene of the crime.” Royce tied off the inside and irrigated the wound again. “From now on, Maven, you’re inside with Termino. You handle the approach.”

Glade soured as if he’d been punched. He stood and walked away, and Royce kept working over Suarez as though he didn’t notice.

“How’s the pain now, ’Lito?”

Suarez said, “My leg wants to go to a disco.”

Maven felt cold. Part of it was the fading adrenaline, but mostly it was the realization that the untouchables had finally got touched. Their winning streak hadn’t ended, but it could have. The dynamics within the crew were changing.

Royce prepared another needle for sewing. “Always fucking fun until somebody gets hurt.”

Maven turned to stand, and then saw Danielle behind them, at the open door, looking down at Royce sewing up Suarez’s leg.

No disgust. No surprise. No expression at all.

She said nothing and backed out into the hallway, gone before anyone else saw her.

Tia’s was a seasonal bar set under an awning against the high brick wall of the waterfront Marriott Long Wharf. It was that moment when the sun goes down and the city lights start to come up, and everything feels balanced and good. Young professionals crowded the rail, waiting for patio tables to open up. Guys wearing sandals with dress pants, girls in flip-flops and short skirts. All of them drinking candy-colored booze. Jolly Ranchers and Jager Bombs, Midori and Cointreau. Shots called Quick Fuck and Juicy Pussy. Red Bull and whatever. Kids like their poison sweet.

“I went to a peace rally once,” said Samara Bahaar, sipping a Bacardi and Diet through two cocktail straws. “On the Common.”

“Yeah?” he said.

She wore a top with two stringy shoulder straps over tanned, smooth skin. “Banners, chants, the whole thing. It was packed.”

Maven nodded. “Sounds like fun.”

“I mean, we knew it wasn’t the sixties anymore. But it was good. We got tapas after.” Her nose wrinkled a little as she played with the ice in her drink and thought. “All I hear about nowadays is soldiers returning and having problems.”

“You know what it’s like? Being over there, it was just like going on a trip. Picking up souvenirs and whatnot, weird stuff. But you’re so busy looking over your shoulder all the time, you just throw them in your suitcase. Then you get home. You’re tired, unpacking sucks. So the suitcase sits for a while. Easier to walk around it than open it. When you finally get to unpacking, you start pulling out all this crazy shit you forgot you put in there, and it’s, like — you’re home now, and there’s absolutely no place for it here. But it’s, like, yours, you can’t throw it out. So?”

“You’re stuck with it.”

“Got to find a place. I found a place. Maybe I’m just lucky.”

“So could you, like, kick anybody’s ass in this joint?”