Chapter Thirty-Three

Sunday, eight a.m.

  

A buzzing cell phone woke Brack from a deep sleep. He sat up in bed, looking around trying to figure out where he was. The white room came into focus and he remembered—still crashing at the pet-friendly hotel.

He answered the call and Darcy said, “We need to hit the road. I’m on my way with Mutt. You’ve got ten minutes.”

“What happened to ‘good morning’?”

His only answer was silence because Darcy had hung up. With time for a quick shave and shower, he dressed in his old shorts and upgraded to a decent polo, swallowed a couple of vitamins, and gargled with Listerine before heading out.

Mutt waited for him in the lobby, talking with Darcy. When Brack joined them, Mutt said, “You better pack somethin’ beside that pocket knife for this one.”

Brack went back to his room, stuck the forty-five down the waistband of his shorts, and grabbed three full clips before returning.

When he returned, he noticed Darcy held a coffee and a McDonald’s bag. “Good morning.” She handed Brack the coffee and bag. “You can eat in the car.”

“Hooray!” Brack took the offered meal. “Breakfast and guns. This ought to be good.”

“It isn’t,” Darcy said. “But we’ll make the most of it.”

He and Mutt followed her outside to her undercover car, Brack chewing a mouthful of Egg McMuffin. “Make the most of what?”

She turned to them. “The airport isn’t just one of the busiest places for travelers. It’s also the hub for human trafficking in the U.S.”

“No kidding.”

Her eyes, which changed color depending on her mood, were now a gray-green. Ignoring him again, she said, “Johns fly in, are chauffeured to some location to rendezvous with a sex slave, then fly out.”

“Please tell me Regan isn’t mixed up with this somehow.”

“Not sure,” she said. “But Vito is.”

Brack finished off the sandwich and took a gulp of coffee, thinking this meant a whole lot of people were involved.

“Ready to get in?” She gestured to the Honda.

“You’ve got a line on one of the johns, don’t you?”

A smile crept across her pretty face. “And I’m going to love burning him with this.”

Brack downed the rest of the coffee and tossed the empty cup and balled-up sandwich wrapper in a trash can at the curb. He opened the passenger door and sat. “This is a little bigger than that Chinese brothel sting back in Charleston, you know?”

Darcy had broken that story and Brack had killed a few of the hoods running the joint.

“I know.”

“Good,” he said. “We just need about a thousand more of us.”

Darcy said, “Don’t be so dramatic. All we’re going to do today is get pictures and have a little discussion with the john.”

Brack asked, “You got a tracker on him or something? I mean, the Atlanta airport isn’t a small place.”

Mutt said, “I got a line on the one pickin’ up the john.”

“How’d you get that exactly?”

“Exactly by him bein’ one of my own customers,” Mutt said. “Fool got drunk and started gabbin’ to me last night. Lucky the place was otherwise empty. I figured you was asleep, Opie, so I called Wonder Woman over here early this mornin’.”

“The john’s flying in this morning?” Brack asked.

Darcy said, “We have an hour to get set up.”

And that was what they did. Perched in her Honda, they staked out the chauffeur’s apartment. The Lincoln Town Car he drove was a polished black chariot of sin parked in front of his unit. He’d mentioned to Mutt an arrival time for the john. They calculated that he’d leave about an hour before the flight touched down. Their calculation was within five minutes.

The chauffeur, a small, wiry African-American man with a mustache going gray, exited his apartment shortly after they arrived. Wearing a dark suit and tie, a white shirt, and polished shoes, he got into the Lincoln, backed it from its spot, and pulled out of his apartment complex.

Darcy let a few cars get between him and them before giving chase. Brack wondered why Mutt thought they needed the heaters, given the small stature of the driver, though he found it best to err on the side of too many guns rather than too few. He’d had sufficient experience with the latter to desire never having to relive that again.

A sweet aroma filled the car and Brack looked back to find Mutt vaping. He asked, “There’s no other flavor besides vanilla?”

Mutt said, “I like it.”

Brack thought Cassie had done her darnedest to domesticate Mutt. A haircut, tooth bridge, and fancy clothes had cleaned up the exterior along with the switch from cigarettes to vapor. Not a whole lot could be done about the rest though. Like Brack. They were both tomcats ready to scrap. And Brack loved him for it.

Darcy said, “We’re on the job here, gentlemen. Why don’t we try to focus?”

Brack said, “This is how we roll.”

From the backseat, Mutt cackled and said, “How!”

They followed the Lincoln through traffic all the way to Hartsfield Airport, and then to “Arrivals.” Mutt’s bar patron pulled to the curb and waited. They drove past the Town Car and two more taxis, then grabbed an open spot. Brack got out and walked back toward the limo with his cell phone out, snapping pics as discreetly as he could. A dark-skinned man in a sharp houndstooth sport coat approached the Lincoln. The man looked around, spotted Brack, and stared. Brack passed him, kept walking, and entered the airport, the man’s image now immortalized in digital.

Once inside the terminal, Brack reversed course, upped his pace to a brisk walk past three baggage-claim conveyors to the next exit, pushed the doors open, and hopped in Darcy’s car, which had moved ahead when he’d gotten out.

As soon as he was seated she took off. Good thing his feet had cleared the doorsill because her acceleration slammed his door shut with no effort on Brack’s part.

“He spotted you, didn’t he?” she asked.

“Yep. But I got his picture.”

“This isn’t good, Brack,” she said. “You’ve been compromised.”

“We don’t know that,” Brack said, although he suspected he might regret his words.

Mutt said, “Right now, we gotta stay with that Lincoln. I don’t know where they’re goin’.”

Darcy kept the target car in sight. Because of its heavily tinted back window, they couldn’t see inside the car. The driver headed for the center of town, but thirty minutes into the trip he made an unexpected turn down a one-way side street. They followed. The Lincoln stopped in the middle of it. Too late they saw this street was more like an alley. Worse, parked cars on each side meant they couldn’t go around.

Darcy slowed and looked in her rearview mirror. “We’ve got a problem.”

Brack looked back and saw a Chevrolet Tahoe approaching and yelled, “Throw it in reverse and ram him.”

“What?”

Mutt pulled out his pistol. “Do it! And with your head down.”

Brack pulled his forty-five, opened the window, and fired two shots in the air.

The Tahoe stopped, the two front doors opened, but no one emerged. Yet.

Darcy put the Honda in reverse and accelerated toward the SUV.

The two men in the Tahoe fired at them.

The Accord’s rear window shattered in a spider-web pattern.

Mutt and Brack twisted in their seats to return fire and unloaded their weapons into the Tahoe.

Two seconds later Darcy rammed it.

The force jarred Brack and he bounced off his seat and slammed against the dash.

He slid a full clip into the forty-five, opened his door, and jumped out rolling, attempting to draw the gunfire away from Mutt and Darcy. His back let him know it was not in any kind of shape for this maneuver.

He rolled to one of the parked cars, ducked behind its trunk, and raised up briefly to fire into the Tahoe. His shot caught one of the men and the force of the bullet nearly took his face off. The man went down.

The other one in the smashed SUV reversed out of the alley.

Brack looked at the Accord. Darcy and Mutt appeared to be okay. The Lincoln was gone. In its place was another vehicle, an F-150, coming up fast the wrong way. Brack aimed and shot at the truck’s tires, blowing one out. It veered right and crashed into several parked cars.

Mutt must have understood what was happening because he opened the rear door, leaned out, and fired shots into the pickup.

The front-seat passenger got out of the F-150 with bad news. Real bad news. Like a freaking submachine gun.

Brack emptied his clip at the truck. Mutt ducked back inside the Accord.

With a click, the forty-five told Brack it was empty. One more clip left. In less than two seconds he ejected the empty and jammed in the fresh.

Without taking his eyes off the man with the submachine gun, Brack heard Darcy continue reversing the Honda out of the street, now clear of the Tahoe she’d rammed. It had disappeared.

The man with the submachine gun hadn’t. Brack took several shots at him, attempting to provide cover so Darcy and Mutt could escape. But Brack was too late.