Hero Play

Old Town, Key West

May 10

We’re two weeks into this thing and we’ve already made a hundred wrong moves. We’re even running out of rope to hang ourselves. A few more bad calls and we’re done.

This afternoon, I sat on the roof of the Crown Plaza Hotel, tucked away in the sixth floor bar, which gave me a view of nearly five miles in every direction—normally an uninterrupted view of paradise, but my paradise was now surrounded by naval vessels. I had borrowed some binoculars from one of the surveillance vans, and I could see well enough to read the street signs up and down Duval Street. Out in the harbor, I counted a dozen or so twinkling lights—fishing boats and yachts bobbing in the dark water. I wondered how many of them were still alive. For all I knew, they were floating listlessly in the open sea, waiting until the waves pushed them ashore or the winds carried them out to the deep blue.

Looking back at the island, I saw three separate columns of smoke from last night’s fires, and plenty of people. They were back on the street today—lost, confused, their faces covered with towels or bandanas, each one staking claim to a different bit of the soul of a man who, just three weeks ago, had all the answers.

The palm trees that once glowed from the sunrise fluttered in a gusting wind that carried the smoke over the waiting gunships. It reminded me of a child’s birthday cake just blown out, and I repeated the same wish I’d made every day since Elizabeth died: Just get me through one more day.

The police radio brought me back to the task at hand. “Officer down... 525 Duval Street, inside the old candy store. You’d, uh, better hurry. Send help. You hearing me out there? We’re doing everything we can, but he ain’t looking good.”

The radio clicked off, as it had done every ten minutes for the past hour. The transmissions were coming faster now, more desperate. The radio had belonged to Key West Patrol Officer Boston Sidula, before he disappeared from a checkpoint near the Lighthouse around midnight. Two rescue operations had come up empty, but this marked the first time they’d given us an address.

Matthias Wisdom, my oldest friend, rested beside me, perched atop a mahogany table designed for moonlit parties, now co-opted into a sniper’s nest. His full title had a bunch of Army in it, plus a few formal tags to signify all the medals Uncle Sam had given him. To me, he was just Wisdom.

As he scanned the tops of the buildings, he looked relaxed, maybe even content. If anything shocked Wisdom, he’d never say it, and if I asked, he’d tell me he’d seen worse. Afghanistan? Maybe. Africa? Possibly. But not the same—nothing like this in America. Through a Leupold scope, he watched my city slowly smolder while everyone in the world looked on and no one bothered to help. All the while, his right index finger rested above the trigger on a Winchester rifle.

“They’re waiting for you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

I lowered the binoculars. “Of course, they’re waiting for us. That’s why we have to go. It’s time to take the fight to them.”

“You sure you’re up for this?”

“You gonna suggest someone else?” I knew what he meant.

Chief Williams had been gone since the beginning. Everyone hoped he’d show up, but he was last seen by his wife, taking off on his typical pre-dawn jog on the beach. No Chief meant the job fell to the next ranking officers. Captain Angelo, the veteran SWAT Commander who had me on seniority by a few years, would have been a fine choice, but he’d been killed in a car crash during the first week.

Wisdom leaned closer to me. “You might want to bring more people... just to be safe.”

Safe? Nothing had been safe since the bridge blew. “I don’t think safe is the goal anymore.”

He shook his head. “So, that’s your play? Suicide? Race in, become a victim, let them raise a toast to your heroic sacrifice, maybe even a statue if this ever ends? I could just plug you myself, save some bullets, and maybe save those boys from getting killed on your hero trip.”

“Just make sure you know how that rifle works.”

“I’ve never held a gun I couldn’t shoot, even if there’s a trident symbol on the stock. How’d you get some squids to give up a gun?”

“We found it in a duffle bag next to two dead naval boys.” That was a partial truth.

“Then they won’t mind that I’m borrowing it.”

“They were beaten unrecognizable,” I countered, hoping to get a rise from him. “Left behind a dumpster. We’d need prints or dental records.”

The same day they blew Highway 1, a naval speedboat anchored down eighty meters off Higgs beach. We never got the why, since no one from command was talking to us at that point, but I figured they had come too close to the civilians. You touch the perimeter and you’re inside the perimeter. Right? Isn’t that why we’re all being left to die? Because of the killer disease of Key West? If they had just radioed, we would have met them on shore and brought them in behind our barricades. They might even still be alive.

“Doesn’t make the gun any less sweet,” Wisdom said. “Not sure if it’s zeroed, so the first shot or so is gonna be iffy. Then I’ll tighten it up.”

“I need the scope more than the trigger.”

“The scope and the trigger go hand in hand.”

“I’ve got a job to do. You do yours.”

“I’m on vacation, remember, Mon Capitan?” The title fell flat from his lips, hitting like a curse rather than the rank upon my badge. “So, technically, I don’t have a job to do... sir.”

“Right now, we’ve got the element of surprise.”

Wisdom sat up and slung the rifle over his shoulder. “I can cover the outside, but only the outdoor seating area and the front door. I can’t cover you inside.”

“Probably wouldn’t matter. Once we’re inside, it will be over quick... one way or the other.”

I handed Wisdom a Motorola radio, tuned to channel 36 to match the one clipped to my belt. “Stay in touch.”

I left him in the staircase for the fifth floor. He was going to go lower to try and get a better view into the bar. I returned to our makeshift base at the Monroe County Courthouse. I’d changed out of my uniform—couldn’t have gotten twenty feet in uniform without somebody grabbing onto me and begging for help. It’s insane. Two weeks and ‘under cover’ means something totally different.

The few officers still operational and not assigned to a post waited for me in a break room just inside the rear loading dock. They sat around a table covered in maps and supplies. Someone had even found a dog-eared copy of the Key West Yellow Pages to hold down one corner of the map. On the wall behind them hung a grease board filled with the names of those we’d lost. It was almost full.

I scanned the list quickly, noticing two names had been added since I left. “Any word on Daniels or Rison? Has Wardell checked in from Fort Trumbo.”

“Wardell and Rison are headed back,” answered Officer Anthony Bremer, a tan and toned patrol officer more accustomed to beachfront foot patrols than raids. “Daniels is still working her way home, so everyone has checked in except Sidula.”

Lieutenant Travis Buckley sat beside him, a veteran patrol officer smarter than he looked but dumber than he thought. “Cap’n, how do we know Boston’s not already dead? They’ve already killed them Navy guys. Just napalm the place. Burn it to the ground. There’s no use in wasting more folks to save that one. Pull a drive-by, spread enough bullets across the front of that place to make sure no one messes with us again—just exact some biblical vengeance and be on our way.”

“How does that save Boston?” asked Bremer.

Buckley pulled away from the table. “That ain’t our officer down there. It’s just a police radio in the hands of some lunatic.”

“Our officer? His name is Boston Sidula,” said Bremer.

“Was... you mean? Boston Sidula, past tense. Now he’s just the cheese that’s gonna get us wiped out. I say we skip tripping the spring and go right to destroying the trap.”

Officer Pavel Llepicka, our horse-riding New York transplant, complete with the accent and the attitude, leaned onto the table with the same paternal look he used on his seven children at home. His riding boots thumped beneath the table. “We take care of our own—no exceptions—and we ain’t leaving nobody behind.”

Bremer stood up. “We have to know, one way or the other. I can’t stand to listen to this shit on the radio anymore.”

“And if we walk into a trap?” asked Buckley.

I stepped up to the table. “The people on this island—the survivors, everybody shuddered up in their houses—they need to see us save him. If we can’t, then they need to see us try. It’ll do them good to see us run code one more time.” I was never as eloquent as I wanted, but they understood, and the mood shifted from the if to the how.

“Why aren’t we using one of the armored personnel carriers?” asked Buckley.

“This is an officer rescue,” I answered, “not a raid. They want squads and an ambulance, so we’re going to give that to them. I want two marked units, Buckley and Bremer in one, Llepicka in the second with Santiago and Koz. I want close movements, nothing more than a bumper between you, followed by me in the ambulance with Plunkett.

“Once we pull up in our white chariot, our focus is on getting inside and securing Sidula. Anything outside belongs to our overwatch.”

“What’s overwatch?” asked Buckley.

I pointed to the Crown Plaza on the map. “You’ll know him if negotiations break down.”

Bremer said, “Won’t we need paramedics? Real ones, for the injured?”

I nodded. “Once it’s secured, we can call for Fred and Tommy.”

“And Boston?”

“He’s a hero, same as us,” I answered.

The door behind me creaked as Ryan Plunkett joined us, still wearing the vest below his paramedic outfit. The former FSU linebacker and Army medic held up the keys to our ride. “Your chariot is here, Captain. A clean ambulance.”

Ryan remained as steady as anybody on the force. If anyone could take a surprise, it would be him.

[23-second delay, inaudible background conversation]

Where was I?

Okay, we had emptied the weapons locker at the police station a few days after the initial chaos, exhausting the police armory. It seemed like a good gamble at the time, but some of the best ones never came back. The same can be said for the officers. While some, like Wisdom, had been more creative in acquiring some firepower, we were down to stealing Saturday Night Specials from the evidence locker, and we were way too loose with the ammo. I used to palm a handful of .40 cal bullets every time I qualified with my Glock, and my desk drawer littered with slugs is the only reason I still had three full clips. As a backup, tucked into a vest holster, I now used a tiny single-stack Glock that I’d bought from a dock owner two years ago, after a drunken tour boat captain crashed his boat into the dock.

We checked weapons and load-outs one last time, and stuffed extra magazines into cargo pouches of the medic suits, or filled any free space on our vests and belts. I tucked a handful of .40s into my back pocket, just in case; the gun battle with the shooter on Frances had lasted half the night, and I was not looking to run dry. Llepicka slipped a pair of flash-bangs into a pouch on his tactical vest.

I grabbed the passenger side door of the ambulance and watched the others tuck into their squads behind us. Before we rolled out, I ducked around to the driver’s side of the ambulance and told Plunkett to move over. “Slight change of plans,” was my only explanation as I slid behind the wheel.

We pulled slowly out of the garage, more like causal tourists than emergency responders. I wanted to put some distance between us and our little base before I fired up the lights and sirens.

We darted around a pair of abandoned cars and flattened a bicycle left abandoned in the middle of the street. As we approached Duval Street, the beach-to-bay lifeline of my city, I remembered the parades that once filled this concrete passageway, celebrating freedoms ranging from human rights to the need for more women of color in comic books. For a moment, it seemed like home, complete with the familiar urge to turn toward Eaton St. and head for my house. Now, every third business had covered their glass with storm boards.

Instead, I turned right onto Duval, flipped the switch, and bathed us in blinking lights and a blaring siren. The two squads did likewise and roared around me, taking the lead, but also taking my driver’s side mirror with them. A group of people under the business awnings on our right spun toward us and, after a second of recognition, began to flail their arms and step into the street. We revved our engines, and convinced them to jump out of the way. Ahead of us, pedestrians ducked into open doors and alleyways. The street remained littered with debris from the riots, and cars with all the glass bashed out. One of them had caught fire and burned up.

I heard a bullet impact the box. With the siren and windows up, I couldn’t hear the shot, and didn’t know how many more there were or where it—or they—came from. People were scared shitless and they blamed us. Shouts, rocks, bottles, gunfire... they’d been hearing the same government message broadcast from the copters for the last two weeks, without any end in sight.

I sped up.

A taxi that had overturned that last night of the riots, and a roll-off dumpster, blocked the left side of the street. The squads slipped between them easily, but as I slammed the accelerator to keep up, I was forced to choose between striking a Lexus or a rusty Swimming Pool Repair truck. The Lexus lost, but I also flattened a newspaper kiosk and sent a discarded scooter flying. The suspension of my aging ambulance was not up to the task, and the box around me rocked side to side, a pendulum of justice racing down Duval Street. The wheels screamed in protest but held tight as I jerked hard to the right to avoid a pair of motorcycles laid over on the curb. It’s seemed a shame to smear out a Harley on the street, so instead I splintered a wooden shaved ice cart, showering the windshield in colored syrup, and sent a green trash can flying.

I looked down at the two-way radio on my belt while the wipers cleared the glass, making sure it was still on. Just beyond the haze of a burning car, I saw Mandy’s Candy, in front of the pastel façade and hand-painted candy images. Like everything else, it looked like someone had smeared cotton candy onto a 1950’s storefront.

“Here we are, Boss,” said Plunkett. “It’s go time.”

I could see the veins throbbing in his hands; he was ready, maybe too ready, for what he thought was about to happen.

Except... I’d lied to all of them. Only Wisdom knew the real play.

I yelled at Plunkett to tighten his seat belt. I’ll give him credit; he did it with just the slightest look of confusion.

Buckley and Bremer passed the store, turning hard to block the street to the east, before running toward the front door of Mandy’s. Llepicka stopped short and sealed the west.

I slammed on the brakes, feeling the ambulance’s wheels squeal in protest as the rubber tires ground over the sprinkling of sand and garbage that now littered the street.

Plunkett looked a question at me while the others bailed out of their squads.

Two men had emerged from the store front, waving us inside.

“What are we doing, Cap?” Plunkett asked.

The perimeter was still settling while I gripped the gear shift in my sweating hand. I imagined their confusion in the next few seconds, when hell broke loose. They were expecting two of their own, decked out like medics, to make contact and give a go signal. They were expecting to play along with the trap, pretend like they were contacting friendlies who were leading us to our injured man out of the goodness of their God-damned hearts. Then we would turn the tables, draw down and order everyone on the ground, give them a chance to surrender. The store was empty, though—Sidula wasn’t there. Wisdom had assured me of that.

And I was done giving chances.

“Well,” I said, “they’re waving us in, aren’t they? Let go see what’s inside.”

I shifted into reverse and slammed the accelerator to the floor.

The radio on my belt chirped. “Two in the front yard, both about to be down,” Wisdom said.

As we passed Mandy’s, I jerked the wheel to the left, whipping the ambulance around into a left turn that uprooted a fire hydrant, coating the ambulance in water. The turn put the back of the ambulance on target with the glass store front of The Domino Draft House.

“Shots fired! Shots fired!”

I checked the passenger mirror and saw two dead bodies sprawled over a picnic table on the porch. One of them lay on his back, hands inside his jacket, where they’d been going for his weapon.

Wisdom’s voice crackled again. “Three inside, two by the door. Batter up.”

“Batter’s at the plate,” I said, and jammed the pedal down.

Plunkett shouted a curse as the ambulance’s rear bumper obliterated a two-foot brick wall and sent the ambulance rocking like a drunk man at Mardi Gras.

I stayed on the accelerator, using speed to overcome the physics threatening to end my hero’s play, and reduced a waitress station to rattan toothpicks.

The glass doors had shattered on contact. Splinters from the door frames spread out into the front room like jagged arrows. The two men by the door flew across the room with matching masks of broken glass and new walnut splinter ventilation ports.

The ambulance lurched to a stop, halfway inside, trapping the driver’s door against the pillar. I scrambled over the console between the front seats and through the center of the ambulance while Plunkett, still cursing, fumbled to get his belt off. Through the tiny window in the back door, I saw the third man scrambling over a pile of tables toward the back of the bar.

“No visual,” chirped the radio at my hip.

I plucked the pistol from my holster and grabbed the side door handle. Before I could open it, a man slammed against the window, smearing three bloody streaks across the glass. His face was bleeding from a jagged cut across his nose, but I could see the black pistol in his other hand.

“Kill you!” he screamed through broken teeth as he lowered the barrel toward the window.

I fired three rounds without thinking. The first one shattered the glass, the second one filled the store with a bright orange glow and sprayed red all over the man’s face. I fired once more before realizing he was gone.

“I can see another down,” said Wisdom.

“The hell’s going on?” Llepicka screamed in the police radio. “Where? Where?”

I was thinking, Christ, man, catch up.

I stepped out into the bar, checking that my bullets had done their job. One man lay dead at the back of the ambulance. Another, impaled by glass and wood, lay dead on the floor in the corner.

“One more, running hard,” said Wisdom.

A third man, wrapped in biker leather over a stained white t-shirt, raced out of a back room, a chef knife in one hand and a bloody beer bottle in the other.

There was no time to aim so I emptied my gun, putting holes into the rest of the bar, but none into the biker. The man appeared rabid, his eyes full of murder. He’d been in a fight. His lips were split and bruised, but the purple didn’t look like any bruise I’d ever seen.

I retreated to the ambulance and scrambled to reload, pulling the door shut with my foot. The man’s knife caught the door before it closed, but I kicked against it, slamming it back against the man, shattering the bottle in his hand. The glass cut deep into his face, but even with gashes in his forehead and a bit of exposed bone on his chin, he simply ripped the door open again.

I tried to line up my sights on his chest, but before I could fire, a volley of gunshots rang out, two whizzing by my head.

The man fell, courtesy of Llepicka as he crawled through the front of the ambulance. Buckley and Plunkett’s guns were smoking, too, after firing through a smashed side window.

The man fell, and five crimson stains spread across his chest. His right eye had also been blown out, proof that our overwatch could indeed see inside through broken windows.

I saw the confusion in their eyes, and answered before they could ask. “Wisdom saw these guys across the street, confirmed the ambush, so I had to change the plan. I tried to tell you, but my radio didn’t transmit. Glad you followed our lead, though.”

Plunkett glared.

“Don’t touch this one,” I said. “Possible infection case.”

At that, they spread out and away.

We checked around us, but there was no one else in the bar. Koz and Buckley climbed over the smashed tables and stools and into the back room behind the bar.

“There’s a man in here,” screamed Buckley. “He’s still alive.”

“Looks like your instincts were right, boss,” said Llepicka, heading toward them.

I left Plunkett to guard the ambulance, and followed them.

A man sat tied to a whicker lounge chair, his wrists bleeding from wire restraints, and his face misshapen, like a pineapple with human hair.

“Boston, is that you?” asked Bremer.

“It’s okay, buddy,” I said, then knelt beside him and untwisted the wires that held him to the chair. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

“I... I... never saw ‘em. Heard a noise... turned....”

“Don’t worry about it. Doesn’t matter.”

What did matter was finding out what happened to the second member of his two-man team. In his last transmission that night, he said his partner, Michael Dial, was missing. Maybe our fan club got him too, but Dial had been acting funny for days, and once we ID’ed the attackers, my bad feeling got a whole lot worse.

Wisdom called on his radio. “Got some movement on the street, boys—south side, coming from Protest City. Probably need to cancel your beer tasting and come home.”

The others formed a skirmish line around us and we loaded Boston into the ambulance. Buckley and Plunkett slapped a high five and their smiles spread like wildfire through all of us. Llepicka stood over one of the dead, pointed his pistol, and made a pew before blowing imaginary smoke from the barrel.

I felt the unfamiliar spread of my own grin. I tried to fight it back, but Boston was alive, and he was our only casualty. We grabbed wallets, a couple firearms, and a good-looking single-bladed dagger, and retreated to the vehicles. The ambulance was wet from spray off the fire hydrant, but the water had stopped shooting up. Now it just bubbled and poured.

Out of everything we did, hitting that fire hydrant was the only thing that pissed off city services. The limited power they’d managed after the bridge blew had given us some water pressure, but just a little. McKenzie hit the fan when he found out about the leak. We’d have to come back with a couple of his people and cut it off later that day.

Right then, however, we just had to get out.

Protest City: the name we dubbed the Truman Annex after the navy evacuated the site and the protesters moved in. About five hundred strong, the only thing they had in common was that most of them weren’t local, and they hated blue-suits with a passion. If only they’d left.

I want them out as much as I want the government relief guys in.

Anyway, still a block away, a group of them was growing in numbers and clearly spoiling for a fight.

Nearby, I could hear a woman’s voice yelling that her husband needed help. I pretended not to hear and motioned everyone to saddle up. I let Plunkett drive us home, but I scanned the buildings for onlookers. For everyone that saw what we did, they would know the police were still doing their job—doing some kind of job at least. My men also knew we would fight for them. More important, they knew I would fight for them. They needed that. So did I. Men who are willing to fight are men willing to die, and that’s exactly what we needed.

The old regime might be passing away, but it wasn’t going to go, to quote a classic, ‘gently into that good night.’

We drove Boston up to the hospital. The place looked horrible. They put Boston in a room that still felt like part of an ER, but a lot of the rest was starting to look more like some old British workhouse. It smelled terrible in there. The outside tents looked like they could blow over with enough wind, but still, I think I’d rather be outside than in.

I’d definitely rather be under one of those tents than in the little building where they’re housing the infection cases.

Dr. Morenz took me in. They gave me a mask and gloves, and the guy with me had a flashlight. They kept it dark inside, and quiet too. The doctor said that helps. They had about a dozen right then, every one of them strapped down and partitioned away from the others. All the bedpans made me grateful for the mask.

Officer Hunt lay in the back. He looked terrible, with lips dark and cracked, and red, bloodshot eyes that startled me when his neck snapped in my direction.

I hadn’t seen that before but Morenz said a lot of them are like that, said they don’t blink enough.

Hunt didn’t even know me, and the Doc didn’t hold out much hope.

So far, no one has recovered.

[16-second delay, a sound, possibly stifled laughter]

We made a report, if you can believe that. We cut paper on all of it, even the four we shot in front of courthouse. I’m planning to put these recordings with those and anything else. When this is all over, somebody needs to come up with a handbook for this kind of thing. We didn’t have one. That’s for damn sure.

I don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake. I still don’t know what I could have done differently. It was the second day after the chaos of that last night of the riots, and after we heard about the infection, and we... we... things got a little tense. If you aren’t in law enforcement, then you won’t understand. Our morale had gone to hell ever since the media decided police were a bunch of monsters out to kill innocent black kids.

Suddenly, everybody was trapped on this island with this disease that no one had ever heard of, and jets were flying overhead and helicopters were telling everyone to stay inside, and gunboats were blaring warnings to get off the water, and wouldn’t you know it, things got....

[9-second delay, then an audible sigh]

We used everything we had to restore order—Tasers, pepper balls, bean bags, every less-than-lethal weapon in the tool chest. Sure, we fired a few rounds that last night. That was on the news. My God, the news.... We still had news crews running around. We tried to get it back, and used all we could find. If we had it, we used it. It was no good, though—none of it. We had these four guys—four of the most violent ones—throwing bottles at the PD. One of them had a pipe. We beat them pretty good and got them in cuffs, but what were we going to do with them? The jail was talking about kicking everyone out. The power had cut off, and even when we got the little of it back, the detention center didn’t get any. It was hot—I mean hot—inside, and what were they supposed to do?

So we got these four that are fighting and fighting, and a couple of us are talking about some room that we might be able to secure from the outside, and then this one guy... the worst of the bunch, was trying to kick at one of my guys—it doesn’t matter who—and he’s trying to get turned, and he’s telling us all he’s going to kill our families and... our guy... holding the cuffs with one hand... draws his weapon and puts one in the back of the raving maniac’s head.

[12-second delay]

I shot the others, and everyone stood there with their mouths open. I didn’t see another way. We were about to turn on each other. I knew it. It was going to be the fors versus the againsts, and the guns were going to come out. This wasn’t a democracy anymore, and there would be no vote. It had already been decided for us when this thing started. So, I shot them, and after that we stopped using less-than-lethals.

Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, because by then we had the disease to deal with. Not to mention all the people like our friends in the bar, who just wanted to kill themselves a cop. But that was what did it. We still had eighty percent that morning. The guys were all in uniform and still said sir and still put in for overtime when they finally got relieved, and still had black stripes on their badges for the three we lost that last night....

After that, it was like opening a flood gate. All of the sudden, we were fifty percent down. No one was answering their phones. We looked for a few, and then the bridge blew, and the gunships started shooting, and the phones stopped working.

We still kept bleeding troops. They knew it was over. We weren’t police anymore. We were something else. The oath they’d sworn had expired. The job they’d known had vanished.

I know I can never go back. Not now. The things I’ve done... the things I’m going to have to do....

Three of the dead from the beer hall were felons dumped out of the lockup. One of them was cousin to Mike Dial’s ex-wife. Wisdom wants to find him, but I don’t think we’ll have to.

I suspect Officer Dial is going to show up any day now.