Chemical Burn (39 page)

Chemical Burn

When I came to, four burly men in tactical gear held me suspended head down over the rotating blades of an industrial sized grinder. White dust coated the blades, and the smell of cocaine blew up in my face. I tried to move but only managed to wiggle a little. Under normal circumstances, I might have been able to break free, but I was still wonky from the taser.

“Oh shit,” I said.

“Oh shit is right,” DiMarco growled. He pulled out a cigar and bit off the end. “I’m glad you’re awake. I finally got you, Case. Now you’re going to pay for what you did to Bennie.”

I tore my eyes away from the grinder and looked upside-down at DiMarco. We were inside the vault. There were a dozen crates on either side of the entryway piled high with plastic bags full of white powder on one side and semi-clear crystals on the other. Two large hoppers, one on each side of the grinder, were full of drugs. Augers underneath pushed the narcotics into the grinder. There were three other guards with M-16’s standing between me and the door, and Gino’s driver stood next to the mobster, my vlain in his hand.

That could be a problem.…

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked. I needed to buy some time.

“Case,” DiMarco said, “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my fucking life.” He lit the cigar, eying me thoughtfully. “Flip him over. I want him to go in feet first.”

“If you drop me in there, every person in the lab is gonna hear me go. You can’t tell me all of those people are willing to be accomplices to murder.” I tried to move a bit, but the guys holding me still had a firm grip and my muscles felt like noodles.

“Everyone’s gone, Case. The fire hazard was reason enough to get them to haul ass out of here without an argument. And there isn’t a man in here—” he motioned with the cigar at the guards around the vault, “—who hasn’t lost a friend or three to your meddling.”

Every head in the room nodded.

“Hell, I could sell tickets to this little show. Right boys?” DiMarco added with a chuckle.

The men nodded again, chuckling in a most unsympathetic manner.

“Now turn him over … nice and slow. We don’t want the bastard getting lose, do we?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The four men tightened their grips and then slowly turned me over. I’d been in some bad fixes before, and Mag usually was there to save my ass, but I had no idea where she was. There wasn’t much she could do in this scenario anyway. She’d get shot to pieces before they dropped me into the grinder, anyway. At least Rachel and Marsha had gotten out. I could only hope Xen made it, too. It occurred to me that I needed to work on my planning a little better. Things were so much easier when I worked by myself. And I
was
a little out of practice.

The sliver of a shadow moved in the doorway, a mottled form, but it looked like the head of someone wearing a Ghillie suit.
A wild card
, I thought. If it was who I thought, I had a chance. An idea took shape in my head.

I faced the wall, my feet held together over the grinder. I could survive some pretty severe injuries, but once that little sweet spot at the base of my skull hit those gnashing metal teeth, I was a goner. I looked over my shoulder at DiMarco.

I raised my voice as I spoke, “You know, if the lights were out in here we would be having a very different sort of conversation.”

Gino thought about that for a second. “You might be right. It’s too bad for you they’re not.” Gino looked at the men holding me. “Lower him in … slowly. Let him savor those last few seconds like they were a lifetime.”

“It’s gonna make a hell of a mess in there. What about all your drugs?”

“I’ll have someone hose what’s left of you out of there in the morning. I might even pay them triple overtime. It’ll be worth it knowing there’s nothing left of you but a puddle of blood and shit.”

They lowered me towards the grinders, I struggled, but only weakly. Three feet … two feet …
Come on,
I thought.
Hit the god damn switch!

“Goodbye, Case. It’s been a real pain in the ass knowing you.” The smile on DiMarco’s face made me want to tear his arms off and watch him bleed out.

The lights went out and the scream of the grinder cut off, the rotors slowing rapidly.

“
What the!—
” men shouted in the darkness.

Jalin took over, and I let him flow through me like liquid fire. I twisted with every ounce of strength I had. My four captors shifted to the left as I twisted, moving my body away from the grinding blades below. I felt an arm break free. The men around me discovered they had a tiger by the tail. They were nearly blind, but I could still see well enough to jab my fingers into the eyes of the man holding my leg. He screamed and let go. I brought a knee up into the belly of the man holding my leg as the others tried to grab at me in the dark. With a
WHOOF
of air forced from his lungs the man let go of my leg.

“Shoot the platform!” DiMarco shouted.

I dropped to the steel grate and rolled sideways, knocking one of the guards over as I went. Then the room filled with gunfire. The strobe of multiple muzzle flashes turned the room a flickering orange. The three guards still standing on the platform screamed as bullets ripped into them and I rolled down the steel steps.

I came up beneath the barrel of one of the guards, grabbed the muzzle-grip, and dick-punched him as hard as I could. He squealed like a piglet and dropped to the ground, wrapping his entire body around the agony flaring between his legs. The shooters on the sides figured out that where the trouble was and tracked their aim towards the screaming. The beauty of human eyes is that when they go from bright to dark to flickering muzzle flashes, they’re pretty much as useful as cauliflower in a gun fight. Rifle in hand, I dropped to the ground and tumbled towards the nearest gunman. As I came up, I spotted the shadows of DiMarco and his driver darting out through the vault door. I heard someone slap a panel outside, then a buzzer sounded, and the door started closing.

“Dammit!” I growled. I punched the nearest guard in the throat, heard him gurgle, and then hurled the rifle as hard as I could towards the last guard. The stock caught him in the temple and he went down hard.

The door was nearly closed.

I leapt, turning sideways in mid-air, and sailed through rapidly shrinking space. My body brushed against the door and jam as I passed through, nearly pinned in the gap.

With a massive
BOOM!
the door slammed shut behind me. Something yanked me up short.

I turned to see my coat caught in the door. I yanked on it once just as something hit me hard in the mid-section. I
WHOOFED
with an impact as pain lanced through my insides. I looked down and realized someone had stabbed me in the belly.

I looked up to see DiMarco’s driver holding the weapon just as a hammering fist crashed into my temple, smashing me back into the door. I slid to the floor, and pressed a hand against my seeping belly wound. Shaking my head, I tried to focus on the driver, but all I could see was a big blurry shadow.

“Cut his head off!” DiMarco shouted. I spotted his blur standing in the doorway of the limo, using the door as a shield.

DiMarco’s driver raised the vlain, ready to slash down at me.

Where the hell is the guy in the Ghillie suit?

Still dazed, my reflexes kicked in as the driver approached. I swung my leg hard into his ankles and brought him down. The guy was good. He’d already rolled out of the way as my heel slammed down where his head had been. Blood poured from my belly, but the driver didn’t give me time to worry about it.

He rose in the semi-darkness, moving in slowly with the vlain held in front of him. He was obviously a knife fighter, and the thing looked far too comfortable in his hands. I tried to stand, but got caught up in my coat. If I kicked out or swung at him, all he’d have to do is block with the vlain. I’d end up dicing myself into little pieces. That thing would cut through me as easily as it did everything else.

“Fuck,” I grumbled, looking around for an easy way out. I quickly realized I’d have to do it the hard way, and it was going to hurt. In one motion I pulled my knees to my chest and punched downwards with both fists. My knuckles hammered into the grate, cutting the flesh to the bone, but the force propelled me up a foot. I twisted my legs underneath and stood against the wall.

Blood poured down the deep gashes across my knuckles as I waited for the bastard to come at me. Pinned as I was, at least he’d be overconfident. I couldn’t dodge worth a damn, which meant only one thing. I put my back against the vault door and waited. I thought about trying to slip out of the coat and rush him, but to do that my arms would be pinned behind me long enough for him to open me up like a side of beef.

“Double or nothing,” I said, goading him on. I came up in a rather stiff fighting stance, the best I could manage pinned against the door like that. Now all I had to do was stay conscious and not lose anything important.

DiMarco’s driver smiled as he approached. “I’m gonna fuck you up,” he said. “I’m the one who trained Tommy. He was a punk compared to me.” He raised the vlain and slashed at my head. I ducked beneath it and threw a punch at his face, but he stepped back, looking for an opening. He slid in slowly, keeping his feet on the ground. As he came within reach, I feinted a kick at his mid-section and pulled it up short to keep his down-swing with the vlain from taking my leg off.

I had only one way to end this. I took a deep breath, lowered my hands, and gave him an opening a mile wide. I focused first on the vlain and then beyond it. His attack would start with his eyes. Life may be about the smiles, but violence begins with the portals to our souls.

A flicker, his eyes narrowing, shifting left then right. A microscopic twitch.

The vlain moved in towards my shoulder. I threw out a weak block, enough to make contact with his forearm, which I knew he would pull back. He spun, arm extending as the vlain came around to take what he thought would be an exposed side.

I stepped out, my coat coming taut ten inches from the door. I reached up and grabbed his wrist as it came around. I placed my palm at the back of his neck and twisted, using my coat as leverage. With every ounce of strength, I smashed his face into the armored steel door with a wet smack and crunch of nose and cheek bones. With one hand still gripped around his wrist, I grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his face into the door a few more times as his body went slack. I let him slide down the wall as I pried my vlain out of his hand.

Gripping it, I slashed down and cut myself loose from the door. As I turned I heard the receiver of a pistol slide back and snap click into place. DiMarco stood in the door of the limo with a .45 pointed at me.

“You motherfucker,” he growled. “Now I’ve got you.”

I held still. “DiMarco, if you miss me, you could blow the whole place up.”

“I’m a pretty good shot, Case. I won’t miss, and this thing has soft nose hollow points. They’ll make a mess of your insides, but they ain’t coming out the other side.”

“I would not do that if I were you,” a deep voice said from the far side of the limo. The words echoed through the facility as a shadow moved towards the door. It was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard—next to Rachel’s voice, of course.

DiMarco and I turned to see a man in a Ghillie suit moving towards the doorway. He had his Kalashnikov pointed at DiMarco.

“Now drop the weapon!” he ordered. The way he said it had law enforcement written all over it.

“Empty threat pal,” DiMarco said. “Like Case said, one spark will blow the place sky high.”

“It would, but I too am a very good shot, Mister DiMarco.” He sighted down the rifle. “From where I’m standing, the bullet will go through your head, pass through the glass of those labs behind you, and settle somewhere safely inside.” His finger moved to the trigger. “Besides, I am in the door and you are not. By the smell of things, you would not want to run across here if there was a fire, yes?” He paused and let that sink in. “I will not ask again.”

DiMarco slowly set the weapon on the grating at his feet. His face was so red I thought he might explode.

“Please come here, Mister Case.”

Who was I to argue?

“Perfect timing, Albert,” I said, stepping away from the vault door and into the open. My rescuer’s head tilted to the side. I slipped out of my now ruined coat, wincing at the still bleeding belly wound, and draped it over my shoulder. With my free hand I pulled my goggles down to dangle around my neck. My head ached a bit, and I felt a little dizzy … but it’s a lot better than being dead. Jalin slowly receded into the background. “Hey, Gino, maybe you should get back into the car and relax.”

“Mister Case …” Albert said, concern filling his voice.

“Trust me.”

“Case! This isn’t over, you motherfucker!” Gino screamed as he got into the car. He slammed the door as I stepped up to Albert.

I scolded the fat Italian. “Temper, temper, Gino. You’ll give yourself an aneurism.”

“What if he has a weapon in there?”

“Gino’s not stupid,” I said quietly. “He’ll wait for his lawyers at this point.”

Albert nodded. “How did you know it was me?” he asked, keeping the Kalashnikov aimed at the limo.

“That’s a long story,” I replied.

“We should not talk here, then.” Albert said. “Come outside while we wait for the police.” He backed up to the door, his rifle never wavering.

“Police? I came here to kill that piece of shit,” I said indicating DiMarco.

“I am aware of this. Please. Come outside and we can discuss it.”

“Alright,” I muttered. I walked with him towards the door.

Albert opened the door and motioned for me to go through.

I stepped halfway through and then stopped dead. “Oh, wait, I want to do one more thing before they take him off to jail.”

Albert sighed and shook his head. I walked over to the massive black vault door and stared at the electronic keypad set into it near the edge. I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a small, gray device that looked like a calculator but with fewer buttons. I placed it over the door keypad and hit a button. An amber light flickered on, and some characters appeared in a small screen. I hit a few more buttons, and the amber light went purple. I stepped back and watched characters flicker by quickly on the readout. A few seconds later something buzzed and clanked inside the door. I grabbed the device and put it in my pocket as the door slowly swung open. I stepped around the door and walked inside, slipping my goggles up over my eyes.