24: Deadline (24 Series) Read online

  On an impulse, Sticks brought up the cell phone he still had in his hand and snapped a couple of shots of the two men. One of them must have caught the flash in the corner of his eye, because he shot a look in the biker’s direction before disappearing toward the back of the strip club.

  “What’re you doing?” Fang spun around to see the two men and he immediately tensed like a dog catching the scent of an intruder. “Whoa, is that them?”

  Sticks abandoned his conversation and pushed through the gathered riders and truckers, shoving them out of his way, leaving a wake of angry curses and shouts behind him. Fang kept pace with him, at his side as they reached the mouth of the corridor. “Check on Sammy!” he snapped.

  Fang nodded and grabbed the office door’s brass handle, turning it before he realized that it was red-hot. “Hey—”

  Whatever he was going to say was lost as the door came open with a heavy gust of hot, fiery smoke. Fang reeled away as flames curled like talons, sucked out into the corridor by the pressure change in the air. It had been a long time since the Crankcase’s pitiful sprinkler system had been overhauled, and too late it was clear that if it had ever worked, it certainly wasn’t working now.

  Sticks grabbed Fang by the collar of his jacket, hauling him back as the flames bit into the wooden flooring and went searching for anything else that would burn.

  Behind him, a shock of panic jolted through the Crankcase’s clientele, and chaos erupted as everyone made for the door at once.

  * * *

  The strip club’s fire alarm bleated, but like the unmaintained sprinklers it failed to do the job it was designed for, giving off a muffled squeal that was barely audible among all the other background noise.

  Chase ascended the staircase at a pace, holding the Ruger down and to the side. A blond-haired biker was coming up off a stool as he came into view.

  “Hey, what’s going on down there, izzat smoke?”

  He didn’t give the guy the chance to think. Chase brought up the pistol and cracked the butt of the gun across the bridge of the biker’s nose, smashing it with a single blow. Blood gushed out across his face and he staggered, shaking off the pain. In the next second, the man roared like a bull and charged at Chase with his hands out.

  It was an easy assault to deal with, and a part of Chase liked the fact that his old skills were snapping back into place so seamlessly. He dodged the attack and hit the guy low, sending him sprawling down the staircase in a messy tumble. Below them, there was a thud of displaced air as the fire started to take hold.

  Jack sidestepped the first guard as he went down and turned at the top of the staircase, aiming down the upper corridor. “Target!” he snapped.

  Another Night Ranger, this one a gangly figure in denim with a shock of black hair, came racing toward them clutching a compact Mini Uzi submachine gun. Unlike the other biker, this one didn’t hesitate. He mashed the trigger of the SMG and let the recoil jerk his hand up and across, spraying a salvo of 9mm rounds across their path.

  Chase threw himself into cover behind a decrepit leather chair, ducking as shots tore the stuffing from the seat back. Despite the gunfire, doors along the corridor were opening as those inside heard the racket. A skinny redhead—one of the women who had been dancing when they arrived—froze on the threshold and shrieked in panic.

  Jack didn’t flinch at the new line of attack and fired twice with his M1911 pistol. Both rounds hit the biker in center mass and he jerked backward, unloading the rest of the Uzi’s magazine into the walls and the ceiling. A stray round from the machine gun caught the redhead between the eyes and she fell back into her room.

  Gray smoke was following them up the stairs now, and heat came with it. Jack moved forward on the left, keeping his gun close to his chest, and Chase moved in parallel with him. They kicked in doors, panning across each room with their guns, seeking targets.

  Each of the rooms was the same kind of sordid, perfunctory space, set aside for the Crankcase’s callous human trade. A parody of a boudoir, all snarls of bedsheets and sex toys laying in a mess. “Everyone out,” Jack shouted. “This is your one and only chance! You stay in this place and you’ll burn with it!”

  His words were enough; women spilled out of the rooms in disarray, desperate to flee the indignities they had been forced to suffer here.

  Jack called out to Chase. “Can’t go back the way we came in, there has to be another way out.”

  “I hear that.”

  “We need to find it, fast.” Jack tried a door that didn’t open at first, then he raised his foot and kicked squarely at the lock, snapping it out of the frame. He pushed through into a darkened interior and out in the corridor Chase caught the stink of stale sweat and cannabis. He glimpsed a blur of movement and suddenly Jack was pulled off his feet, wrenched aside and out of Chase’s line of sight. He heard a girl’s high-pitched scream, and the crash of something breaking.

  Leading with his Ruger, Chase rushed the room and came upon the other man in the grip of a huge, naked biker easily as big as a sumo wrestler. In the half-dark of the room, Chase made out the biker’s tree-trunk-thick arm around Jack’s throat, pulling tight to choke the life out of him. “I’m gonna snap your neck, little shit!” he bellowed. Jack struggled, his gun lost in the melee, punching and kicking his assailant to no obvious effect.

  Chase didn’t hesitate. The training was still there. He was still good enough to do this. He didn’t think about the nerve damage, he didn’t dwell on the bottle of painkillers, he just raised the semiautomatic and fired a single shot before the biker could position Jack as a human shield. The bullet went through the big man’s left eye and blew out a welter of blood and brain matter over the wall behind him.

  Jack pushed away as the biker’s corpse dropped like a felled tree. He sucked in a ragged breath. “Thanks.”

  Chase nodded, finding the girl who had cried out hiding by the bed. “C’mon,” he told her. “We’re getting you all out of here.” He was suddenly breathing hard, the old familiar sting of adrenaline rushing through him.

  * * *

  Jack coughed out tainted spittle and stooped to scoop up his pistol from where it had fallen. As he bent low, he felt the heat radiating up through the floor from the strip club beneath them. Smoke was gathering along the roof, and it wasn’t just the death grip of the biker that was making it hard to breathe.

  His plan, such as it was, had passed the point of no return. Get in. Find the captives. Get them out alive. Everything else was secondary to those objectives—but if he could destroy this snake pit in the bargain, Jack was ready to call that a win on all counts. These bikers were not the usual kind of trained soldiers that he faced, but that didn’t mean he could afford to drop his guard. What outlaws tended to lack in skill they more than made up for with violence and enthusiasm. Momentum would be the key here, he decided. From the moment Jack had been forced to attack Sammy, he had set into motion a chain of events that couldn’t be stopped. Thugs like these reacted to threats with the same pack mentality as wolves; bark loud enough at the start and you might force them to back off … but give them time to think it over and they would come for you in force.

  He strode back out into the corridor and found the victims of the Night Rangers in a loose, fearful cluster. They were all looking to him and Chase for guidance.

  “Please tell me you’re a policeman,” said a petite, dark-haired woman.

  “Concerned citizens,” Chase corrected, helping the girl from the room as she walked on bare feet across the rough flooring.

  “This place is on fire!” said one of the others. “Oh god, those creeps left us in here to die!”

  “Not gonna happen,” Jack told them. He shot a look at Chase, lowering his voice. “I’ll go for the roof, make sure it’s clear. There’s got to be a fire escape at the back. Get them ready to run. Give me a two count, then follow.”

  “Copy that,” said Chase. “Be right behind you.”

  Jack sprinted down to the
end of the corridor, turning his momentum into shouldering open a push-bar door. He spilled out onto the roof above the entrance of the Crankcase, and immediately a gust of hot, dry air washed over him. Smoke and licks of flame were spilling out the front of the strip club. He heard the crack and pop of bottles behind the bar exploding in the heat, and down where the MC had parked their motorcycles there was a chaotic mess of angry bikers trying to get their precious rides away from the building inferno. That was good; the confusion would work to his advantage, but not for long.

  With the flickering, dying neon of the club’s illuminated sign between him and the bikers, they couldn’t see him moving around up there, but it was obvious that the front of the bar was not a viable escape route. The Crankcase was going to burn to the ground, and nothing would stop that from happening. Jack guessed that like law enforcement in the town of Deadline, whatever had passed for their fire department had long since been abandoned.

  He turned around and scrambled up along a raised section of the flat roof, heading toward the back of the building. The heat was radiating up here too, and sweat prickled his chest. Jack blinked to clear his vision and moved low and quick, aiming the pistol into every shadowed corner. He’d been sloppy, letting that big thug get the drop on him. The next time it might cost him his life.

  He circled around a skylight, thin streamers of smoke issuing out from the places where the window frames were loose. Inside, the flickering orange glow made it look like a portal into a furnace.

  Peering over the edge of the roof, Jack saw a wide yard at the rear of the Crankcase with ten-foot brick walls topped by barbed wire. The only way in or out was a metal gate that opened onto a backstreet, and from his vantage point he caught sight of a heavy steel padlock securing it. Overfilled Dumpsters and heaps of beer crates congregated in one corner, and a black Chevrolet van was parked along the line of the far wall. Three more Night Rangers were out there, two of them arguing about what to do while the third one milled around, anxious and twitchy. Each man was armed with a TEC-9 semiautomatic.

  “Screw this,” one of them was saying. “I ain’t sticking around here!”

  “You want Rydell to know you left your post?” snapped the other.

  “This ain’t the army, pal,” came the retort. “I’m not going to stand here and watch this place burn.” He started toward the van, but got two steps before his fellow biker stopped him.

  Jack assessed his chances, considering and discarding angles of attack one after the other, trying to find the path of least resistance to the objective he wanted. Namely: three dead men and a way out of this place. Everything about the situation was stacked the wrong way for Jack—he was outnumbered and outgunned, low on time and options. If he waited too long, the fire would do the job for the bikers. He had to move, and chance the odds—

  Without warning, from behind Jack there was a sudden, violent crash of breaking glass. Seared by the rising heat from the fire, the skylight imploded and collapsed into the flames. It caught him unaware, and he froze.

  The noise caught the attention of one of the bikers, who swung up his gun and caught sight of Jack’s shadow, framed against the roof by the fire glow. “Hey!” he shouted, pointing.

  Jack twisted and brought up his pistol. The biker saw the motion and started shooting before he had aimed, sending wild rounds into the lintel and ricochets across the rooftop. The other men reacted the same way, and in seconds the three of them were chopping at the brickwork as Jack dropped behind an air-conditioning vent.

  He shot back, blind firing around the side of the vent box.

  “Who the hell is that?” Jack heard one of them say.

  “Who the hell cares?” shouted another. “Waste him!”

  Going flat on his belly, Jack swarmed across the roof toward the top rungs of an iron escape ladder. Bullets lanced through the air over his head, the drone of their passing perilously close, making him flinch. He rolled onto his back, ejecting the M1911’s magazine and slamming a fresh one into the butt of the gun.

  It was like lying on a griddle. The fire had its teeth in the building now, and if Jack couldn’t get off the roof in the next few moments he never would.

  Got to risk it, he told himself. But could he take out three men before one of them got off a kill shot at him? Jack didn’t pause to consider the alternative. He could hear a roaring noise getting louder as he rolled to the fire escape. Chase’s voice issued out from somewhere behind him as he came out with the escapees in tow. No time to think about it, Jack decided. If the roof caved in, they would all perish.

  He popped up from behind the edge of the roof and time seemed to slow, becoming fluid. Jack saw the three bikers, each of them training their TEC-9s in his general direction. Two were close together, and they almost had a bead on him. The third was near the gate, taking aim.

  He fired. The first bullet hit one man in the chest, a good kill that took down the target immediately. The second shot was discharged so close to the first that the report of the pistol was a single crashing echo. That round punched through the throat of the next biker, dropping him.

  But the third man had Jack’s range and was firing back even as he swung the muzzle around in the last shooter’s direction. Bullets chopped at the roof under Jack’s feet and the roaring sound reached its peak.

  He saw a bright flare of white headlights on the backstreet, and from out of nowhere a blocky silver shape collided with the metal gate and smashed it off its hinges. Sparks flew as the Chrysler stormed into the yard, slamming the last shooter aside as he bounced off the front fender. The car skidded and crashed into the rear of the building, the front end crumpling.

  “Laurel!” Jack vaulted over the ladder and slid down its length. He sprinted to the ruined car as the driver’s-side door creaked open. The woman rocked back from the safety airbag that had inflated across her, wiping the powdery discharge it left behind from her face.

  “Hey,” she managed. “Something caught fire.”

  “Guess so.” Jack helped her from the wreck as more figures came down the fire escape, half-falling, half-running. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Didn’t do it for you.” Laurel pushed away from him, still unsteady on her feet as she ran to the dark-haired girl who had spoken to Jack a few minutes before. “Trish!” She embraced her. “Are you hurt?”

  “Catch up later.” Chase was the last to come down the ladder. “We gotta jet!”

  “The van.” Jack ran to the vehicle and found the door was already open. He ducked beneath the dashboard, cracking the plastic casing around the starter cylinder, feeling for the connections to hot-wire the starter. Behind him, a side panel slid open and the van lurched as Laurel loaded the women into the back. He twisted the frayed copper ends of two wires together and the engine turned over, grumbling into life.

  “I got the gear,” Chase shouted, sprinting across from the wrecked Chrysler, dragging Jack’s bag behind him. He slammed the door closed as he clambered inside. “Floor it!”

  “Hold on.” Jack stamped on the accelerator and the black van lurched forward, the rear end skidding as he aimed it through the wrecked gate and out into the darkness.

  In the rearview mirror, the Crankcase was wreathed in orange flames, stark against the black sky.

  Mission accomplished, Jack told himself. But the fact was, the night’s work had only just begun.

  * * *

  “Oh shit,” breathed Sticks, panting as he tried to get his breath back. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit.” Outside the burning strip club it was mayhem, as Night Rangers shoved aside the few truckers who had escaped the club with them, wheeling their motorcycles out across the street in a ragged pack. Fights had already broken out over who had started the fire, and in some places brother bikers helped other chapter members stagger away, all of them gasping to get fresh air in their lungs.

  “That’s … that’s right,” wheezed Fang. He had grabbed a bottle of beer on his way out and now he dropped to his haunches on th
e road, upending it over his head. He let the cold beer pour over the fresh burns down the side of his face, hissing in pain through gritted teeth.

  The roof of the Crankcase gave a strained, crackling moan, and as Sticks watched, the upper floor of the building slowly caved in. Wood splintered and metal twisted, catapulting plumes of red-hot embers up into the night. The big neon sign, now dead and unlit, quivered and began a slow tilt forward. There were still people trying to get away from the club as the sign came apart and collapsed across the front entrance. Sticks saw a handful of bikers and bikes alike vanish under the twisted framework, flames coiling in the displaced air.

  “Too slow,” Fang offered. “Poor chumps.”

  “Kansas City charter,” Sticks said coldly. “Who’s gonna miss ’em?” He shook his head at the destruction before him. “But this … oh, man. Rydell is going to bust a nut.”

  “Those guys. It hadda be them.”

  Sticks nodded, suddenly remembering the phone he was still clutching in his hand. “You think they’re still in there?” The wind carried a faint scream from somewhere inside the burning building, but no one was making any motion to venture back toward it.

  “Would you be?”

  He gave a woeful shake of the head and tapped the speed-dial button. “Lance,” he grated, swallowing a cough as the line connected. “We have a big problem.”

  * * *

  Rydell sat in a crouch, holding the big gold-plated Desert Eagle in his hand, waving the muzzle of the .50 caliber pistol around to illustrate his points. “Have I made the situation clear?” he asked the man in front of him.

  The man was around the same age as Rydell, probably in his mid-to-late forties. There was only a few years between them, but while the biker was big, broad-shouldered and hard-faced, this guy—this civilian—was out of shape and flabby. Rydell sneered. It never ceased to amaze him how so-called stand-up folks like this maggot seemed to think that the world was going to be even with them. After all that this idiot had suffered, losing whatever crappy office cubicle job he had and being reduced to taking a chance on the cash-in-hand gig offered by the MC’s recruiters, he still believed that there was such a thing as fair play. That he was somehow entitled. Rydell had learned that kind of thing was a fantasy a long time ago. The world was a hateful place, and a man either used it or got used by it. He rolled the Desert Eagle around in his grip, like a gunslinger.