The Vengeance of the Tau (5 page)

McCracken halted a mere six feet from the van.

“Hey—” the little man started, reaching to push him on.

But Blaine had other ideas. “Fuck the Dragons,” he said loudly to the group just passing.

The boys swung on their heels and turned his way in unison, showing their weapons.

“What’d you say, man?” said the one in the front menacingly.

“Wasn’t me,” McCracken told the kid. “It was
him
!”

As he spoke the final word, Blaine grabbed one of the pair of balding men and flung him toward the gang members. A club swished through the air and cracked the man’s skull. The gang members stormed forward with weapons swinging. Blaine stepped into the confusion, grabbed a boy who was wielding a set of nunchaku, and tossed him into the little man, who had just managed to free his gun. The little man’s face exploded in rage, the soft flesh seeming to tighten and tear.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
he screamed, and fired off a trio of shots into the Chinese boy’s belly and then shoved him aside.
“Get him!”

But McCracken was already sprinting down Beach Street through the crowd of stunned bystanders, many of whom were ducking for cover. He had glanced back at the sound of gunfire and was revolted by the little man’s excessive response, blaming himself for involving the gang in the first place. But he’d have to save the lamenting for later. The little man had steadied his pistol Blaine’s way when another of the gang members slammed into him. A club smacked against his wrist, and the dandy’s gun went flying. McCracken had gazed back over his shoulder just in time to see the little man twist from the next blow and launch a deft flurry of fists and kicks. With the rest of the boys converging on him, he became a whirling dervish wielding a vicious round of blows from the center, no longer the feathery dandy taunting Blaine from the rear.

McCracken moved faster, catching only glimpses of the rest of the gang members falling or fleeing.

“Get him!”
the little man’s still-high voice repeated.

A series of gunshots thundered Blaine’s way and chewed red brick from the storefronts around him. Another now-familiar sound reached him from behind.

The pair of Rollerbladers in their fluorescent spandex rolled down the sidewalk in his wake, scattering pedestrians in all directions. Cars braked and swerved to avoid them as they darted into the street in frenzied pursuit. Blaine heard metal crunching, glass breaking.

And bullets slamming all around.

A quick glance to his rear was all Blaine needed to show him the submachine guns in both the riders’ hands. They were gaining steadily and were already drawing a bead on him. He came to the intersection where a left off Beach led to a steep climb up Polk Street. Blaine saw a cabbie just coming back to his car with a grinder in one hand and a Pepsi in the other. The man squeezed the soda can to his chest and had his hand on the door when Blaine tossed him backward and ripped the keys from his grasp.

“Sorry,” McCracken said.

He gunned the engine and tore off up Polk’s steep grade.

Blaine was able to breathe easy only until he caught a glimpse of a bus turning up Polk behind him. Holding on to either side of its rear were the Rollerbladers, machine guns dangling from shoulder-slung straps. When McCracken avoided a traffic snarl by swinging right onto the level North Point Street, another quick gaze into the rearview mirror showed the young men disengaging themselves from the bus. They kept up with the traffic, weaving their way between and around cars when the flow allowed.

Closing the gap.

Before him the traffic light turned yellow and then red. McCracken jammed the cab’s brakes abruptly. Three cars lay between him and the intersection with Van Ness, which provided another steep grade for his pursuers to manage. He drew his eyes to the rearview mirror and saw the Rollerbladers only a dozen cars back now. Well behind them, the familiar blue van had just turned onto North Point.

The Rollerbladers were bringing their submachine guns up once more.

McCracken twisted the taxi’s wheel to the left and lurched onto North Point’s left-hand side against the flow of traffic. A car that had just swung onto the street clipped his fender, but Blaine kept right on going. He swung left onto Van Ness and gunned the engine to speed his climb. Order had barely been restored when the van smashed its way through a narrow opening toward the Rollerbladers.

To McCracken, escape seemed as close as Lombard Street and the curvy one-and-a-half-mile jaunt to the Golden Gate Bridge that it offered. He turned onto it with the rearview mirror clear.

The first stretch of Lombard is formed of nonstop tight curves and tough corners. Blaine took them at dangerously high speeds. The taxi’s suspension system squealed in protest. The road began to level off after a steep decline, the Golden Gate coming into clear view. The rearview mirror remained clear, but once over the bridge he’d be able to lose his pursuit for good. He had just caught sight of the bridge toll plaza a hundred yards ahead when a sudden snarl of traffic forced him to a screeching stop. At first he thought it was the routine delay caused by the collections process. Then he saw that construction had shut down one lane of the Golden Gate in both directions, accounting for a backlog of traffic that would linger through the entire day.

McCracken’s eyes locked on the rearview mirror. He caught first sight of the Rollerbladers when they emerged between a pair of tractor-trailers fifty yards behind him. He could no longer see the van they must have ridden up Van Ness holding on to, but they posed enough of a threat all by themselves. Watching them weave their way forward through the stuck traffic, Blaine resolved that he had no choice but to abandon the cab and continue on foot.

He threw open the door and stuck his hand under the seat. Cabbies often stowed weapons there, and the operator of this taxi was no exception. McCracken’s fingers closed on a tire iron. He slammed the door behind him and rushed down the last stretch of Lombard Street, Route 101 now, leading onto the bridge.

The Rollerbladers continued to close on him, not rushing to use their machine guns since they believed they had him trapped. McCracken kept his body low as he ran to utilize the frames of the stalled cars for cover. He moved in an erratic zigzagging motion, anything to confuse the aim of the spandex-clad young men.

Just fifty feet away, the Rollerbladers sped toward Blaine in single file down a narrow channel between the stopped cars. He turned to face them, the tire iron gripped low by his side. The lead skater brought his submachine gun up. McCracken tossed the tire iron, not high for the obvious head strike, but low at ankle level.

The tire iron crashed into the wheels on the lead Rollerblader’s skates. He was tossed airborne instantly, landing hard on the hood of a car. He bounced once and then crashed to the road directly in the path of the other skater, who spun out of control trying to avoid him. But the second Rollerblader recovered his balance quickly after bouncing off a trio of cars and surged forward, machine gun leveled once again.

McCracken seized the momentary advantage he’d gained by continuing with his original plan, albeit on foot instead of behind the wheel. There was no other option at this point.

The Golden Gate Bridge offered his only chance for escape.

Chapter 5

BLAINE REACHED THE START
of the bridge and rushed down the wide right-hand sidewalk toward the sounds of a jackhammer chewing up asphalt. As he closed on the roped-off construction area, he saw that a man in an orange vest was waving his flag frantically in an effort to make him veer away.

“Get down!” Blaine screamed as he dove past the man.

Too late. The fresh barrage from the final Rollerblader’s submachine gun slammed into the man’s midsection and blew him backward. McCracken was reaching for him when he saw that just beyond the spot where the flagger had dropped, the entire roadbed was missing—eaten partially away by the elements and then jackhammered into oblivion to make way for new asphalt. This hole that dropped straight to the waters of the bay below lay between a circle of sawhorses.

Bullets clanged off the steel support rails of the bridge. Construction workers scattered in all directions. Frustrated drivers ducked low beneath their dashboards. Blaine heard screaming coming from every direction. Daring the spray of automatic fire, he darted outward and tossed the sawhorses enclosing the missing chunk of roadway aside so he could feign taking cover behind them. Before him the Rollerblader snapped home a fresh clip and picked up speed before opening fire anew.

McCracken felt the heat of the rounds surge by him. From any distance beyond thirty feet, the Uzi was a weapon of chance for all but the most experienced in handling it, especially when on the move. That provided his hope.

The Rollerblader’s single-minded vision provided the rest. Gun aimed high and straight from chest level, he didn’t see the hole in the roadbed until it was too late. He managed to twist his blades sideways, but couldn’t slow himself fast enough. His hands flailed out for something to grab and then disappeared along with the rest of him through the gap.

His drop might have allowed McCracken to relax, if it hadn’t been for the sight of the blue van streaking down the sidewalk in the Rollerblader’s wake. The sidewalk was barely wide enough to accommodate its width, forcing it to hug the steel guardrail for much of the ride. Sparks leapt into the air. The bridge had erupted into total chaos. Drivers and passengers alike abandoned vehicles and fled to escape the battle.

The van’s driver was tilting a machine gun Blaine’s way now. Fresh bullets split the air, and McCracken saw his luck running out in a pained instant. A previous glimpse over the side rail had shown him the scaffolding that bridge workers had used to access the roadbed’s underside. It was suspended halfway between the asphalt surface of the bridge and the steel superstructure beneath it. Blaine vaulted over the side rail and pitched down onto the scaffolding.

A sitting duck if he remained in this position, he located the control panel and lowered the scaffolding platform enough to gain access to the superstructure. He climbed halfway out and then smiled. With his weight shifted almost entirely onto the superstructure, Blaine pulled the cotter pin from the platform’s right-side cable lock.

He reached the heavy steel superstructure just as the van screeched to a halt above him, directly in front of the hole the second Rollerblader had plunged through. Around him, McCracken could see evidence of the workers who had been here until just minutes ago. Their abandoned equipment included thick hoses coiled like snakes about the superstructure.

Blast hoses. Used for stripping old paint and rust from the steel components of the bridge, the hoses pushed coarse black sand made from iron-mill slag called Black Beauty out at incredible pressure. McCracken figured this black sand would be the number forty-five size. With the air pressure set at 175 pounds and pushing 365 cubic feet of sand per minute, the hose could slice through granite blocks, never mind flesh and bone.

“Get him!
Get him!
”
shouted the high-pitched nasal voice of the dandy.

Two 9mm pistols poked through the opening, followed by a pair of balding heads Blaine recognized from back in Ghirardelli Square. McCracken grabbed one of the blast hoses and aimed it their way. He squeezed the deadman switch, and a dark blanket roared out in direct line with the faces of the balding members of the assault team.

McCracken could not recall ever hearing screams worse than the ones that followed. He abandoned the hose and swung to the left at the sound of a
thump.
One of the big men in overalls he had glimpsed standing at the van’s rear back on Beach Street had dropped down onto the scaffolding platform from the rail above.

“Kill him!” the dandy screamed.

Before the big man could carry out the order, the cable with the missing cotter pin let go, dropping the platform and sending the man tumbling. He managed to grasp a rail at the last and hung there with legs dangling desperately four hundred feet above San Francisco Bay.

“Fuck!” the high, nasal voice wailed.

McCracken had already rushed off toward the labyrinth of catwalks and beams that formed the superstructure. If the roadway above was the Golden Gate’s heart, then this was its soul: ten million square feet of steel layered in all directions, spanning the entire scope of the bridge.

Blaine eased himself from the yard-wide catwalk onto a narrow steel rail to quicken his escape. He walked down the rail gingerly, holding fast to thick support beams whenever possible. In the near distance, he heard sirens screaming.

A pitter-pattery sound behind him made Blaine swing round.

“Aye-yahhhhh!”

The martial arts kiai preceded the dandy’s kick by an instant, long enough for Blaine to move his head out of its direct path, but not enough to avoid the strike entirely. The kick smacked his temple and drove him backward against a support beam. The dandy stalked forward with light, graceful steps, never even looking down. He moved from one rail to the next with a hop step and came straight at McCracken.

“What’s the matter, sweetie, don’t want to take your medicine?”

Blaine lunged forward with a kick of his own. But the dandy blocked it effortlessly. At the same instant, he slammed his other hand into the inside of McCracken’s thigh, narrowly missing his scrotum. Again Blaine reeled backward, just managing to catch his balance before the edge came up.

“Yeah, you’re strong all right, sweetie, but it’s not gonna help you. Not against me. Come on, show me what you’ve got!”

McCracken jumped up and grabbed hold of a steel crossbeam. He swung forward and dropped down on an adjacent catwalk to buy space and time. Four feet separated him from his toying adversary now, the dandy not looking too concerned.

“You can do better than that, sweetie.”

Blaine again leapt for hold on a neighboring crossbeam. Only this time he threw his whole body forward with legs lashing outward. The move seemed to fail when the dandy grabbed his outstretched ankles and held them in place.