Chapter Thirty-Five #2
“Drop your weapon and show me your hands!” Same voice. Commanding, with a tinge of arrogance like it came from someone whose orders were usually obeyed.
“Coming up. Don’t shoot,” Walker said.
“Hands!”
Walker stepped over the dead body at the base of the stairs, pressing the IR pressure pad twice in quick succession, which engaged the IR laser’s constant mode so that it stayed on without the pressure of his left hand.
He lifted his left hand high above his shoulder so it would be the first thing someone at the top of the stairs would see.
He dropped the rifle to his right side, angled up, on fire, finger on the trigger.
Through his monocular NOD he saw the beam of light coming from the top of the stairs. He took a step, then another.
“Don’t shoot,” he said again, trying to make his voice as feeble and weak as he could.
He took another step and saw the top of a ball cap, the same one worn by the two men who had exited the Charger. With his weapon still below the officer’s line of sight, the IR laser landed on the man’s forehead just below the brim of his NOPD hat. Walker pressed his trigger to the rear.
The single shot broke the sound barrier and caught the officer in the forehead, the bullet splitting the hemispheres of his brain in two down the medial longitudinal fissure.
He was dead before his body collapsed at the top of the stairs.
Walker performed a tac reload, ejecting the depleted magazine and exchanging it with the full magazine in the back pocket of his jeans. He then cautiously worked his way up the staircase. It was a small house. There were not many places Belle could be.
He stepped over the dead man.
You just killed a cop.
You killed an enemy combatant.
The short hallway was clear.
Walker slipped into the first room on his left.
It had once been a bathroom. A sink was on the floor next to a hole where the toilet should be. He glanced into a filthy bathtub as he passed and saw that a body was curled up in it. The smell conjured images of the dead.
Keep pushing.
The bathroom had a second door that was partially closed.
He stepped to the side to get an angle on the room, a bedroom with peeling wallpaper.
He could hear whimpering. Female. It didn’t sound like Belle.
He decided to slow his clearance, the thought being that Belle was now the cop’s bargaining chip.
He won’t kill her, Walker hoped. Hope is not a solid course of action.
He combat-cleared from the bathroom and discovered the source of the crying: another woman, white, short hair, skinny, sitting on the floor, her face between her knees.
He moved swiftly and silently across the room to a door that led back to the short hallway. A closed door was directly across the hall. Last door on this level. A master bedroom?
He moved into the hallway and listened. He thought he heard mumbling and the scuffling of feet.
Go through the door?
Odds are the cop has his weapon trained on it.
Has he called for backup?
Other corrupt cops?
He doesn’t need corrupt cops. He can just call for backup saying they interrupted a deal gone bad.
Maybe he should just leave? No way, then he kills her. They know she pieced enough together to come here asking for Snowball. They found her phone. She’s a liability. No way he lets her live.
You need to interrogate this guy.
No, you need to save Belle.
Walker looked down the hall. The same rot and decay that infected the lower level was just as prevalent upstairs, including the holes in the walls spilling insulation.
He turned to his left and studied the drywall.
The first hole did not penetrate through to the room beyond.
Walker kept moving.
The second hole was smaller. Made by a hammer? A fist?
He reached out and, as quietly as he could, pulled the remaining insulation toward him.
Slowly.
He tugged a little more and heard feet shuffling beyond the wall.
The hole was small, but it was a through-and-through, and in the green phosphor of his Harris monocular, he saw the police officer. He had Belle’s neck in the crook of his left arm, pulled tight to his chest. She was on her tiptoes, fingers clamped on his forearm. A human shield.
The cop was whispering in her ear to stay quiet. His right arm was extended and his Glock 22 .40 pistol was pointed at the door, the door that Walker had almost entered moments earlier.
The hole in the wall was just small enough that Walker could see into the room or feed his rifle into it, but not both. He needed the barrel of his rifle and the IR laser on its rail to have a perch along with a clear line of sight from his NOD so he could align the laser with his target’s head.
Think!
What the 2005 floodwaters had not destroyed, they had left to rot. That rot had infected everything. He reached out and felt the drywall in front of him. It crumbled in his hand. The other side must be the same. Hope again? No, it had to be.
He heard sirens.
Shit.
Walker positioned his suppressor on the edge of his side of the drywall.
One punch and start sending rounds, or slowly work it through so there is enough room to see the target, align the laser, and take the shot?
Slowly, that should work. With the cop’s and Belle’s heavy breathing and elevated heart rates, and the physical exertion of holding her in place, Walker figured he could maneuver his rifle into position.
All he needed to do was push out a piece of drywall just below the already existing hole, making it larger.
He took one last look and was about to exert pressure against the inside of the wall when the cop let Belle go, pushing her onto the floor in front of him.
Walker watched as he shifted the Glock to his left hand and reached for the inside of his left ankle.
He was going for a drop gun. There was only one reason for him to do that. To kill a witness.
Change of plan.
Walker punched his rifle forward, but it didn’t penetrate the drywall.
The cop heard the sound and spun in Walker’s direction, raising the Glock and a smaller revolver from his ankle, pressing both triggers in wild abandon.
With Belle on the ground, Walker’s shot required much less precision. It didn’t need to be an accurate head shot. All Walker needed was rounds on target.
His finger found the trigger, and he sent round after round through the drywall.
His first shots impacted the wall to the cop’s left.
Walker quickly adjusted. He continued to fire, his bullets finding a knee, then a thigh.
As the cop stumbled, Walker pressed his attack, sending rounds into the officer’s pelvis, then into the body armor that protected his stomach and chest, then through his exposed neck and face.
Walker pulled his rifle from the hole and sprinted down the hall to the bedroom door. Throwing it open, he marched past Belle and put another round in the cop’s head before rushing to Belle’s side.
“Are you okay?”
She looked at him.
“What took you so fucking long?” she asked.
“You’re okay. Let’s get out of here,” he said, dragging her to her feet and toward the door.
“Wait.”
She broke away from him and ran to the dead police officer. “This bastard has my phone, car keys, and cash.”
She pulled them from his pockets and ran back to Walker.
The sirens were getting louder.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading her into the hallway and to the stairs, where they stepped over the dead body of cop number one. They rushed down the steps and over Flat Brim.
Walker turned left.
“That’s not the way,” Belle shouted.
“I know,” Walker said, stepping into the kitchen, toward the counter.
Belle followed.
He pressed the button on the back of his Scout light and illuminated the cardboard boxes on the counter with white light. They were marked with different names in thick black pen: “Yellow Jacket,” “Pez,” and “Snowball.”
Walker reached in and grabbed a handful of plastic baggies from the Snowball box and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.
“Now we go,” he said, grabbing Belle by the arm and hurrying through the Mardi Gras beads into the living room, out the front door, past dead Cooler man to the BMW.
“Get in,” he ordered, running to the driver’s side and jumping behind the wheel. “Give me the keys.”
The sirens had to be just blocks away.
Walker stepped on the clutch and turned the key. The engine sputtered.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
“Pump the clutch twice, and then slowly give her gas,” Belle advised.
Walker followed orders and the car rumbled to life.
He sped from the curb and kept the lights off until they were two blocks away, at which point he slowed to the speed limit and turned on the pale, yellow beams.
“You ever meet anyone you didn’t kill?” Belle asked.
Walker ignored her, making sure to obey all traffic laws as he made his way back to the river.