9-1-1 #5
The gunshots into the ceiling were always a surprise. He sank to a crouch like the rest of the patrons and held his hand up, swiveling to see four gun-wielding assholes wearing black ski masks, faded-to-fit blue jeans, and identical red zip-up hoodies crashing through the front door.
“Everybody, get down!” screamed the leader. “This is a robbery. You have two minutes to comply.”
Eric joined the rest of the wide-eyed patrons—women in skirts or work uniforms, obviously taking care of their business during lunchtime, men in suits and blue-collar clothes, doing the same.
They all sank to the uncomfortable, scantily carpeted floor with their hands over their heads, staring at the gunmen in a grim combination of fear and fury.
Eric—who was rarely on this side of a gun without a backup plan—glanced toward Jai in annoyance and realized that the big man had… disappeared?
That wasn’t right. He was damned close to seven feet tall, nothing short of a giant from a fairy tale. How did that guy disappear?
“Look at me!” A masked gunman was suddenly right there, screaming in Eric’s face, and Eric raised his eyes to the crazed pair behind the black polyester ski cap and blinked rapidly to clear the spittle.
“I’m looking,” he said, keeping his voice down. Stupid, desperate, or crazy, he figured being soothing couldn’t hurt.
“That’s better,” the robber growled. “Ki—Fucker One, what’re we waiting for?
” he screamed, and Eric, who sat with the cashiers to his left and the door to his right, glanced over toward the cashier bank.
Two of the robbers were behind the windows with the predicted canvas bags, forcing the cashiers to scoop money into them.
That seemed legit, Eric thought, but he watched as one of the men—”Fucker One” perhaps?
—stared at the clock on the wall, his lips moving.
“Five more minutes,” he said, and Eric glanced to the corner where Jai should have been—and actually spotted him, crouched behind an empty loan officer’s desk, his eyes moving actively over the scene but nothing else.
Those busy eyes made contact with Eric’s, and Eric almost read his mind. The bank crew wasn’t rushing this operation, they were drawing it out.
“Aw, c’mon, Fucker,” whined Eric’s new friend. “Can’t we just take the money and go?”
“We get double if we do the other thing,” his friend snapped. “Fucker Three, got your load?”
“Yup,” said the man on the other side of the cashier’s window. Eric saw that the men had been working their way from the outside in, and while rocket science this wasn’t, it was organized, and it should have been quick.
His eyes darted to Jai’s again. What are they waiting for?
Jai shook his head and shrugged.
At that moment, a single police unit screeched into the parking lot, siren going, and Eric stared through the double glass doors in time to see Brady get out of the driver’s side and crouch there, assessing the situation over the hood of his SUV.
He spoke into the comms unit on his collar and then scowled.
“That it?” said Fucker Three, gesturing with the nozzle of his automatic weapon.
“We got the take,” said Fucker Two—or Fucker 2000 for all Eric knew. “Three, Four, get the doors!”
Eric’s heartbeat, which had stayed pretty even, suddenly sped up in his chest. He could see it so clearly—two of them would haul the doors open, and then they’d go out, two by two, guns blazing.
This? Was this what they’d been waiting for? For this one single SUV to pull up?
Brady, get the fuck out of there, he thought.
Eric had to force himself to wait for the bank robbers to all move past him to the doors, his gun burning a hole through his spine.
He caught Jai’s eyes, and Jai shook his head.
“Wait,” he mouthed, and Eric suppressed a whimper.
He listened for more police sirens, prayed for them in a way he’d never prayed for law enforcement before, not even when his father was still alive.
Brady was out there all by himself, and these robbers weren’t preparing to negotiate, they weren’t trying to escape.
They were getting ready to go out, semiautos forward, and take the lone officer out before they cleared the building.
But the fuckers weren’t stupid.
As two of them got ready to pull the doors open, the other two, at their shoulders, turned around and scanned the room.
Eric had to control his breathing, keep his hand from twitching, just stay there, on his aching knees, hands going numb over his head while the woman next to him tried not to whimper, as those wild eyes drifted from patron to patron.
The robber’s gaze lingered on Eric’s for a moment, and Eric wondered if he saw raw hatred or a tranquil, deeply frozen glacier.
Either was possible, he knew, but his heart stayed steady as he thought of how quickly he could reach that gun behind him.
The wild brown eyes turned back to the rest of the bank robbers, and the two behind put their hands on the shoulders of the two in front while Fucker One called out, “One, two—”
“Now!” Ace cried, and while Eric reached for his gun, he saw the most amazing thing.
From the corner of his eye, he caught Ace, way back at the door to the hidden employee accesses of the bank. His hand was extended in front, and one leg was extended in back, his body a beautiful profile of athleticism and grace.
In front of Eric’s eyes, he tracked Ace’s knife, unfolded, that long, serrated blade flying straight and true, as though it was an arrow or a spear, pushed by the weight of the haft and handle, as it traveled through the air so fast time slowed down.
Eric’s Beretta jumped into his hand like an eager puppy, and he’d set his aim on one of the two lead trigger men to his right. On his left, he watched as Ace’s knife slid through the hand of Fucker One and into the shoulder of Fucker Two.
Both men screamed, and Fucker One dropped to the floor in pain, dragging Fucker Two with him, while the two Fuckers on the right, their attention diverted from the lone police officer for a moment, both stared at the spectacle before raising their guns to take out everybody in the bank.
Eric, taking a page from Ace’s book, fired through Fucker Three’s wrist and into Fucker Four’s shoulder.
They both yelped, and Eric fired one more bullet, this one into Fucker Three’s shoulder, and that man dropped to the ground.
Four tried to lift his gun, but Ace hadn’t been idle.
Time sped up again as Ace ran up on the two men pinned together by the knife and ripped the thing out of their flesh.
Jai had been right behind them, and with two swift, brutal kicks to the face, he left them unconscious while Ace had time to hurl the knife into Fucker Four’s stomach.
Four grabbed at the hilt and dropped to the floor, gibbering. Ace ran forward and yanked the knife out of his stomach and then called, “Out through the back.”
The three of them hauled ass out of the bank, through the empty corridor Ace had obviously made his way through and out the back door of the establishment. Eric spotted a broken doorframe and a fried keypad as they ran, and he figured Ace, too, had his own ways to escape detection.
“Eric, go tell him to call an ambulance,” Ace snapped. “And tell him what those assholes said. You got thirty seconds.”
And with that, Ace and Jai swung to the lot to get the Crown Vic while Eric went wide, glad to see that the outside cameras had red lights flashing, showing they, too, had been put out of commission when he’d been tootling about on his phone.
“Brady,” he ordered, sliding behind the SUV with the cop, “call for an ambulance, and go cuff the fuckers before they figure out they’re not gonna die.”
“Eric?” Brady had been sweating, Eric realized.
He’d been crouching here behind his SUV, planning to stand here and make a heroic stand while no help—none at all—was coming.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Brady slid his eyes sideways, and he took in the gun held at Eric’s side. “You didn’t….”
Eric shook his head. “As. If,” he pronounced with disdain.
He didn’t want to say that he made more interest in his offshore accounts in a day than this place took in during the course of a week, but, well, it was what it was.
“No. I was going to open an account here, since I just moved to the area, but, well, things happened.”
Brady’s eyes narrowed. “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
There was a beep behind him, and Eric shrugged gamely.
“Listen—call for an ambulance, handcuff the perpetrators, take people’s statements, and when it comes to passing some of what they say on, remember this.
Those assholes were waiting for something—they could have been out of there three minutes early, before you even arrived.
But the minute you came roaring in, they said, ‘That’s him!
’ and lined up to take you out. So you make your own decisions, but before you mention you talked to your new friend Eric, maybe check to see what that’s all about. ”
Ace stuck his head outside the window. “Come on!” he hollered. “Those assholes can only pretend to be so late for the fuckin’ call!”
Brady abandoned his fear of whatever was in the bank and stared at Ace.
For his part, Ace grinned and waved, his hand bloody. “Did he tell you to call the ambulance? You’d better hurry—one of those guys has a gut wound!”
And then Eric hustled his ass to the back of the Crown Vic, hopped in, and belted up before Ace could hit the pavement.
Seatbelts saved lives, doncha know.