part0005

GIL Boyett drummed the fingers of his left hand on the steering wheel of the stolen Ford Explorer and sucked on a joint, as he, Jack Mitchell, Joel Shaw and Lee Roche waited for Jack’s teenage stepson, Will, to phone Jack on a pay as you go burner and tell them when the assistant manager entered the front door.

Will Parker had a JPEG on his cell phone of the man’s face, and was sitting on a bench opposite the bank, listening to music on his MP3 and keeping watch. When the slim, grey-haired guy walked into the bank, he phoned Jack.

The ten-minute countdown was on. Grant Cooper appeared relaxed as he said good morning to the staff and entered the four-digit code to enter the offices beyond the customer area, to disengage the rear door lock, after first switching off the alarm system and the CCTV cameras. He then took the stairs up to his office on the second floor and just waited for the shit to hit the fan.

All good plans are simple. The gang would walk in waving twelve gauge shot guns and rob the bank. This would be their third heist in two months, and they did not expect any trouble, and had not as yet harmed anyone. Neither staff nor customers wanted to die for the sake of a sack of money that did not belong to them.

It went wrong, big-time. Hal Gorman, the security guard, was a twenty-nine-year-old ex-truck driver with no background in law enforcement. He wore a uniform and had a Glock 17 in a holster on his right hip, and had imagined scenarios of armed robbers entering the bank, and how he would shoot them down, to become a hero and have his face in the newspapers and be interviewed on Fox, NBC and CBS.

Standing to the right of the main doors and looking out at the street and people passing by, Hal was taken by surprise when a voice from behind him shouted, ‘Everyone face down on the floor, now’, which was immediately followed by the thunderous report of a shotgun being fired into the ceiling.

Turning, drawing his gun and going down onto his right knee, Hal saw three figures wearing Donald Trump plastic masks and wielding pump action shotguns in front of him, less than thirty feet away. He got off a single shot, and one of the would-be robbers spun to the right and keeled over. But as he aimed at one of the others, he was blown back into a large yucca plant as buckshot hit him in the abdomen.

The wound was mortal. The concentrated cluster of metal pellets ripped through his guts and blew his backbone apart, severing his spinal cord. Hal lost consciousness in less than a minute, and was dead soon after.

“Shit,” Jack said to the others. “Get the money, and shoot anyone that moves a fucking inch.”

“I’ve been hit,” Joel said, climbing back to his feet and holding his right shoulder, where blood was seeping through the lightweight material of his bomber jacket and running through his fingers. “The fucker shot me.”

“You’ll live,” Jack said. “Keep your eyes on the customers while we grab the green.”

Grant heard shots from the first floor and didn’t know what to do. He just got up from the swivel chair behind his desk and wished that he had never met Jack Mitchell. Jack had been a regular at Barry’s Bar on W Van Buren St, and that is where they had met and struck up a loose friendship.

Grant had been attempting to drink his sorrows away, but couldn’t, and was feeling worse for wear when Mitchell had sidled up to sit on the stool next to him at the bar and say, “Hey buddy are you OK? You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

Grant had opened up and told Jack his woes; said that he was a compulsive gambler and was in danger of being paid a visit by enforcers from an Apache-owned casino. He had suffered a bad run of luck and his credit with the Cochise Casino and Country Club had been suspended until he came up with the hundred thousand bucks that he owed them. He had obtained a twenty K loan to buy him an extra seven days grace, so was now in double jeopardy.

“I could guarantee you more than you owe, but you’d have to take a calculated risk for it,” Jack said.

“I’m desperate, so I’m listening,” Grant said.

“You told me that you’re the assistant manager of a bank. If it got robbed, you’d have a big payday.”

“I mean that it sounds as if you’ve dug yourself a hole that’s too deep for you to climb out of.”

“I’ve got choices. I could take off for California or Florida and start over.”

“That could help you shake off the loan sharks, but the Indians would need to hunt you down and make an example of you. It’s principle with them. You’d wind up in intensive care, and they would still want the money when you were fit enough to somehow repay it. They’re like the fucking Mafia, they never forgive or forget.”

“What’s your plan, and what would I have to do?”

Jack told him, and he had thought it through and gone along with it, having been given the assurance that no one would get hurt. But too many assurances in life turned into empty promises, like the ones that politicians gave whenever they opened their mouths in an attempt to win over the hearts and minds of the masses.

Slowly making his way down the stairs, Grant was met by Jack, who had tilted the Trump mask back onto his forehead.

“What happened?” Grant said.

“The dumb-ass security guard shot one of my team, so I had to whack him. You’re now a liability, buddy,” Jack said as he raised the Mossberg 500 with a sawed down barrel and stock, to trigger a shot into Grant’s chest and then a second into his head, bursting it apart like a melon as the bank official died almost instantaneously and was beyond all earthly worries over debts owed or anything else.

They left the bank, dumped the masks, weapons and a large duffel bag packed with money in the cargo space, and climbed back into the Explorer. Gil drove out from the rear of the bank, to pick Will up before using side streets and alleys for a couple minutes before stopping next to a derelict brewery on a deserted street, where Lee quickly changed the rear plate and stuck a couple of decals to the cargo door to modify the look of the vehicle.

“What happened?” Will said to Jack.

“You don’t need to know.”

Gil observed the speed limit and drove east toward Globe, cutting north onto Apache Trail to pass the Roosevelt Dam and soon after make a left en route to Chuckwalla Canyon, where Jack owned a cabin and a couple of worthless acres of gopher-infested scrubland that he had inherited from an uncle by the name of Daniel, who had died a decade ago at the age of ninety.

Both Jack and Gil instinctively knew that the thunderous noise from above them was a rockslide, and that in scant seconds a quantity of boulders would hit the surface of the dirt road that ran through the steep-sided canyon. Gil had a choice; stamp on the brake pedal and hope that the fall was in front of them, or gun the engine and attempt to outrun it. There was no time to ponder. He pressed the metal hard to the floor and shot forward, only for the hood and roof of the vehicle to be crushed by a boulder the size of a grand piano, which squished Gil and Joel Shaw up front like bugs under a farmer’s booted foot.

For less than ten seconds the falling rocks peppered the SUV in a storm of cold hard stone, denting bodywork and smashing glass. A wall of silence followed, and Jack and Will sat frozen in the rear, praying that it was over with. Lee Roche was dazed, with blood running down his left temple and cheek from lacerations caused by cubes of safety glass that had peppered his scalp when the window next to him had been shattered.

“You OK?” Jack said to Will.

“Yeah, is it over?”

“Who knows? Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Will was in mild shock. The backs of the front seats were still in place, and yet everything in front of them had been obliterated. He could see blood between the seats, but no sign of Gil and Joel. They had obviously been flattened by the sheer size and weight of the boulder. To be looking at a wall of fissured rock no more than an arm’s length away from him was surreal. If Gil had managed to drive just a little further, then it would have been Jack, Lee and him that would have been Jell-O.