Chapter 3

 

‘DOWN,’ Bear roared, his Glock appearing magically in his hand.

He grabbed a chair with his left, and as soon as the door sprang open, let it fly. The chair crashed into the first gangbanger. He went down. Another appeared. He too went down when Bear’s rounds peppered him.

Bear leapt over the table, hauled a body up, and thrust it out of the door. No rounds came his way. He motioned for Hall and the cop to cover him, dropped to the floor and peered around the door. The corridor was empty.

Only two gangbangers. The rest are probably waiting at the front.

An alarm went off in the hotel. A voice came through the hotel’s announcement system, asking guests to stay in their rooms. That the cops had been alerted and were on their way.

‘To the rear,’ Bear whispered and got Hall and the cop to lead the way. They made their way swiftly without encountering any hostiles. Through to the rear parking lot, where Hall commandeered a vehicle for his people. Bear grabbed a SUV’s keys off another guest, ignored his protests, and showed his Glock when the guest became aggressive.

‘Inside. Get to the floorboards,’ he said tersely to the principal.

The lack of more shooters worried him. The Zetas wouldn’t send just two. Unless, those two were just an advance party to confirm Cardovo’s presence, and the others were bunched up elsewhere.

He knew Hall had the same thought, the same flash of realization in his eyes. ‘They’ll be outside the gates. Waiting.’ Hall had seen combat. He was cool, calm, almost as if he was enjoying being in the thick of the action.

‘I’ll lead. I’ll be the decoy.’

Bear ripped Cardovo’s’ jacket off his shoulders and tossed it to Hall’s cop. ‘Get him to wear it. Same height. It’ll draw their fire.’

Hall’s ebony face lightened briefly in a smile. He nodded it to his cop. ‘Great idea. Wear it son. You’ll get a medal.’

The decoy didn’t work.

 

 

The first SUV rammed into Bear’s as soon as they hit Wilshire Boulevard. He struggled to control it, and from the corner of his eyes he saw another vehicle drawing level. In his mirror he saw Hall’s vehicle, which had gone in the opposite direction, disappearing fast, a vehicle following in hot pursuit.

A sickening crunch brought his attention back to his attackers. Three vehicles. Two at the rear. One to the right.

He floored the accelerator and broke free of the one at the back, then swung the wheel hard and smashed into the vehicle to his right, just as the first shots blew holes in his windows. He didn’t know which vehicle had fired. It didn’t matter. ‘Keep down,’ he yelled at the principal who squeaked in response. Bear ducked his head and kept thrusting, pushing the gangbanger’s ride into oncoming traffic.

Metal screamed and tore as a car plowed into it and more vehicles crashed. The gangsters inside it stayed still. Maybe injured, or dead.

The hoods behind him retaliated by firing blindly. Horns blared and people shouted as they dove out of the way. Wilshire Boulevard was where the wealthy came to shop, and where tourists came to gawk. It had turned into a war zone.

Despite the urgency, despite all the bandits chasing him, Bear couldn’t help grinning when the sleek glass front of a fashion store splintered, and a couple of shoppers sprang back inside. He could imagine the spluttering rage of the women. Guns and shooting happened in neighborhoods like Westmont and Chesterfield Square. Not in Beverly Hills. Welcome to the Zetas, babe.

He twisted his wheel back, seeing a clear channel ahead, and floored it. His SUV stalled and died.

‘Not now.’ He tried again, tuning out the principal’s whimpers. No dice. The vehicle didn’t respond. From his broken mirrors he spotted shooters exit from the rear vehicles. They fired blindly, and some of them started running. They were twenty feet away. Maybe thirty.

Rounds pinged off their vehicle’s body as Bear searched frantically for an idea. A diversion, anything to help even the odds. Nothing struck him. He jabbed his Glock out and fired. Some of the approaching Zetas dove. Their rush, slowed.

Rapid change of magazine. Another burst of fire. He hit three shooters, more out of luck. The lane to his right was blocked because of the crash. No sign of gangbangers from that direction. Vehicles on that side lined back as far as the eye could see. People cowered inside their rides. No passersby. They had all sought cover. Sirens were in the air, but the cruisers would take time. He didn’t know where Hall was.

He could take Cardovo and melt into the vehicles to his right. No sooner had the idea come to him, than he acted. He reached back, opened the left rear door and poured a stream of lead.

‘Move to the right. Open the door and run on my count to three.’

Cardovo looked blindly at him.

‘Run through the right door, on my count of three. Go through the traffic. Behind that bus. I’ll follow you. It’s the only chance we have.’

Cardovo nodded jerkily. He didn’t protest.

‘One.’

Cardovo opened his door.

‘Two,’

Bear started firing through the rear window. Another fast reload.

‘Three,’

He and Cardovo jumped out. His eyes searching, spotting the attackers, grouping. Pointing in their direction, he shot at them and shoved Cardovo over the yellow lines. Shots came his way. He ducked. More shots. Like a rumble of thunder. Tires squealed. That didn’t sound right.

‘BEAR,’ a voice. Feminine. Vaguely familiar. The thunder continued. Bear recognized it for what it was. An AR-15. In the middle of Los Angeles. He grabbed Cardovo by his shirt and stopped him, making sure they had cover behind the bus. He risked a quick glance backward. What he saw astounded him.

A Hummer had backed to his stalled vehicle. A face at its driver’s window, narrowed in concentration, as she fired burst after burst through the rear window.

She. Bear blinked. His rescuer was female. And familiar. The same dark hair that had haunted him.

‘CLIMB IN,’ Chloe shouted and pointed at the passenger side door which swung open. ‘I’LL COVER YOU.’

Chloe? Here? How? Later.

He turned Cardovo around, pushed him towards the welcoming vehicle firing his Glock with his left hand, and three steps later, he and the principal were in the safety of the Hummer.

Chloe sped off before he had even shut the door. ‘Take the AR. Use it.’

He took the assault rifle and fired a warning burst at the receding figures and turned back to Chloe who held her hand up. ‘Later,’ she commanded.

 

 

She drove swiftly, her eyes flicking between the mirrors and the road ahead. Clear ahead, no signs of a chase. Bear looked at his watch. Less than ten minutes had passed since the attack. Not enough time for the cops to respond, not in that kind of traffic. He checked his principal who was trembling in shock. Unhurt, and that was more important.

He turned back to Chloe, to the long, slender, column of her neck, visible above her shirt collar. A few tendrils of hair escaped from the tight bun on her head. He forced his eyes away, asked his pounding heart to slow down. Pounding not because of the shootout. It was her presence. Her proximity.

I’m just surprised she’s here, he told himself, and deep inside knew it was a lie.

‘Where are we going?’ Cardovo got his courage back.

‘To safety,’ Chloe replied. She took a rapid left, then a right, blew through several traffic lights and entered a hotel’s parking lot in La Brea. She leapt out, urging them on with an imperious finger, and hustled them into a Yukon.

She headed out, made another vehicle change at Crenshaw, drove around for three hours and when night was falling, took them to a ground floor apartment in a building near Los Angeles International Airport.

 

 

Hall had called Bear while she was driving and updated him. ‘Three vehicles waiting for you, two for us. Our two cut us off from you. One in front, one at the rear. They just opened up with automatic rifles. Right in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard.’

His voice was tight and Bear could feel the controlled rage in it. The Zetas had turned his town into a battlefield. Bear could imagine the political fallout and the media heat Hall would receive.

‘Something similar at our end. Casualties?’

‘One civilian dead. Several injuries. Lot of wreckage. Who’s she?’

Bear looked at the dark hair and the profile of the woman who had never left his mind. ‘Someone from my past.’

‘You trust her?’

‘With my life.’