City of Secrets Page 17

  Carlos leans close to Dillard, growls, “Someone gonna hear all this shit. Fucking national guard’s gonna show up with machine guns, cannons. One fuckin’ cop. Picking us off. We gotta rush him.”

  The rain comes in hard, sweeping in waves, popping on the aluminum awning. Beau can’t rely on his hearing now. Wind blows rain across the pier and past Beau. He wipes his eyes. He can go to the wrecked cars, cover the pier’s exit point but that will only give them a good firing position behind the pillar he’s at now. No. Keep them on the pier and the cat walks.

  Carlos, crawling along the catwalk, stops near the body on the pier, waits for the rain to pick up to peek over at Oscar lying in a wide pool of blood, pulls his head back down, feels the anger rising again inside.

  Beau knows they can get past him in the water, if they want to swim. He moves to the left side of the pillar, glances at the water and looks back, spots a movement on the catwalk. Coming out of the shadows, a white male crawls with an AK-47 pointed toward Beau who ducks back behind the pillar.

  He counts to twenty, switches the Glock to his left hand. Lightening flashes and a thunderclap explodes as another rush of rain washes over him. He closes his right eye and slides quickly to his left to aim the Glock and the man is fifty feet away, looking his way and sees Beau, but not in time. Two shots then two shots, the Glock’s recoil is smooth as the rounds strike the man in the face and head and he rolls off the catwalk into the water.

  Beau slides back to the right side of the pillar, moving the Glock back to his right hand. The pier is empty except for the body down the way. The others are probably on the other catwalk. After a minute there’s a lull in the rain and Beau focuses. Waits again. He’s soaked, thinks of reloading the Glock but he still has fourteen rounds.

  Another flash of lightning, even brighter, brings a thunder clash that seems to shake the pillar as another wave of rain washes in and an AK fires, along with a Tec-9, bullets striking all around Beau. They fire blindly at both pillars and pier.

  Ack! Ack! Ack! Pow! Pow! Pow! Ack! Ack! Ack! Pow! Pow! Pow! Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack!

  Ack! Ack! Ack! Pow! Pow! Pow! Ack! Ack! Ack! Pow! Pow! Pow! Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack!

  A big man comes up on the pier from the far catwalk, AK sweeping and Beau ducks as the rounds strike. The firing continues as Beau crawls around the pillar to catch the man as he rushes past, the AK sweeping side to side. The AK’s shots slam, sparks flying as they hit the guard rail. Beau moves quickly, crawling back around the pillar, picking up the big man close now and firing three shots, three shots, three shots and the running man falls heavily and rolls, losing the AK.

  A punch to Beau’s right arm burns and he knows he’s hit as another figure comes past the next column, a Tec-9 in each hand, spraying bullets at Beau. He tries to fire back but hand won’t work, the Glock slipping out of his hand and his arm is afire and Beau rolls around the pillar, forces his bleeding arm to withdraw the baby Glock. He takes it from his numbing right hand with his left hand as he gets up to go around the pillar. Bullets crash against the concrete and bricks and he reaches around the column, draws a bead with his left hand and fires two quick shots. The shooter stiffens and Beau regains the target and fires six more rounds in controlled shots, sees them strike and the figure falls straight back, arms spreading wide.

  Beau jumps away from the pillar and lunges for a dirt-coated Pontiac that had flooded and sits with two flat tires. He gets behind it and realizes he can’t move his right arm. The rain pelts him and he looks back and sees no more shooters. He goes to the rear of the Pontiac, puts the baby Glock down and reaches back for a magazine, fumbles getting it out of the ammo pouch but manages. The pain shoots through him and he shakes and knows he has to reload. He manages to push the extract button on the side of the weapon and its magazines pops out. He presses the baby Glock against the car’s tire and shoves the full magazine in, slapping it hard. It locks and he has twelve rounds now.

  Blood covers his arm and hand and sitting up he recognizes a sharp pain in his side. Probably another bullet wound. He sits cross-legged against the car and presses his left hand against the wound on his right arm and swoons, almost passes out from the agony. A scuffling noise turns him to see someone there, rushing to him. He tries to aim the Glock but it too late. A hand grabs the Glock, shoves it away and he sees Donna Elena’s face.

  She pulls him to the ground and grabs his bleeding arm and the white-hot pain freezes him. She’s trying to stem the flow. The rain pelts her and in the light he sees her face clearly. A pretty girl. She looks at him and he tries to smile.

  “Don’t move. I have to stop the bleeding.”

  There’s a light behind her. A bright light in the darkness and Beau wonders if this is the light at the end of the tunnel when you die. The pain seems to ebb and he watches the light, sees another light, hears voices and realizes as a door opens, it’s a Humvee. He blinks and opens his eyes wider but can’t see anything now, the lights fading –

  Felicity Jones is the first one to Beau, sees all the blood, the girl holding his bloody arm. He turns and yells to the medic.

  “Now. Now. Here!”

  He rode in with the medic, knows the young woman’s name is Bristol and she’s from Madison, Michigan, with carrot red hair and braces. Hell, he thought Madison was in Wisconsin. Specialist Bristol wraps a thick bandage around Beau’s arm, tightens it, stops the bleeding.

  She checks his vitals, looks up at Fel. “Strong pulse and he’s breathing. We gotta get him out of here. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  It isn’t until now does Fel realize seven Michigan guardsmen are spread out around the Pontiac, each with an M4 at the ready. Their lieutenant – name tag reads Stephens – comes over and says there’s a woman’s body at the front of the pier. “There’s a Tec-9 next to her.”

  Stephens helps Fel lift Beau, carries him to the Humvee with the red cross on the side, the driver getting out to help. They put Beau on a gurney and slide it into the Humvee, Bristol climbing in with him. Donna Elena jumps in. Fel closes the door behind them.

  Fel turns to Stephens, tells him to secure the pier. “There might be more hostiles.”

  “Where you going?”

  Fel pulls the driver out of the way, jumps behind the wheel, backs it up, plowing into a Ford that lies upside down in the parking lot. He turns the wheel and punches it, getting the Humvee out of there.

  “The airport,” Bristol says. “We have triage there.”

  “Fuck it! I’m taking him to Ochsner Hospital. They got electricity and specialists there.”

  He guns it and the Humvee flies over a rise. He takes it to Pontchartrain Boulevard and floors it. A minute later he calls back, “How is he?”

  “He’s still with us.”

  For a second he sees Donna Elena’s face. She looks like a little girl sitting here holding Beau’s left hand.

  Part 5

  A Warrior’s Travail

  John Raven Beau feels movement around him, knows someone is there, tries to get their attention. He can’t breathe. He struggles, tries to move his head. He grunts. He can’t breath. Why don’t they see this? He tries to kick out and someone moves and there’s a pop and something’s pulled from his mouth and he gasps for breath. Exhales. Gasps for another and his lungs fill and he lets only a little out and sucks in more air.

  “Slowly,” says a woman’s voice.

  It’s too bright to see anything but a blurred movement.

  “Just breath normally.” The voice is firm and soft at the same time and he slowly sees her. The determined face of a black woman wearing green scrubs. She has surgical gloves on her hands and she wipes his mouth with a cool, wet towel.

  He tries to say, “Water.” His throat burns but the word doesn’t come.

  She looks into his eyes, nods and puts a straw to his lips and he sucks in delicious, bracing cold water.

  “My name’s Ree. I’m your nurse. You can breathe normally now.” She pulls the straw away and he takes two br
eaths and she puts the straw back in and he drinks more.

  The eager face of a light complected black man with a thin moustache appears behind the nurse, a man also in scrubs, blue. He has a stethoscope around his neck, smiles at Beau.

  “I’m Doctor Summers. You remember what happened to you?”

  The doctor touches Beau’s forehead. No gloves.

  “I was shot. Twice I think.”

  “Once. In the right forearm. Your ulna was fractured. There’s a deep bruise on your right hip.” Dr. Summers lifts his own arm, points to backside of his forearm. “We operated on your ulna while we had you under. There’s a steel rod there now. Probably set off alarms at the airport when you fly.” The doctor studies the monitors next to the bed for a moment, turns back. “You lost a good deal of blood, officer, but you are going to be all right.”

  The doctor checks the liquid drip next to Beau’s arm, smiles again and steps away.

  Beau takes another drink of water before Nurse Ree puts the water aside and checks the needles taped on Beau’s left hand where the tubes are attached. He’s in a hospital room surrounded by curtains, knows its some sort of intensive care unit, hears people moving around, turns and sees Donna Elena curled up on a folding chair not five feet from his bed.

  “She won’t leave. Det. Jones tried to lift her, take her to a sofa and she pulled out of his arms and came back here. He tells me she’s not a relative or your girlfriend.”

  Donna Elena’s eyes open and she blinks at Beau. She’s still in the Apple logo tee-shirt and jeans. He nods at her and she nods back, sits up and stretches.

  “See,” the nurse says, “We told you he was going to be all right.”

  “How long?” Beau manages to ask.

  “About thirty hours,” Fel says as he comes through the curtain. “Now I might be able to get this girl to eat something.”

  Donna Elena unfolds her legs, sits up.

  “She told me you called out to her.”

  Beau watches Donna Elena stand and stretch again, come over and touch his arm. She smiles, looks at Fel and says, “Where’s that food?”

  Nurse Ree comes around to check the tubes again.

  “Only one visitor at a time here,” she says.

  Fel taps Beau’s foot. “We’ll get something to eat. You got other visitors.”

  Beau catches Ree’s eye, asks, “Does my hair look all right?”

  She laughs. “Yeah, you gonna live all right.”

  She walks out and Linda comes in, moves to the bed, leans her hip against it and brushes Beau’s hair. She’s in a yellow polo shirt and faded jeans. She looks great with that honey-blond hair fluffed and that red lipstick. Her green eyes pick up the subdued light and seem to glimmer.

  “Cowboy boots?” His voice croaks.

  “I live in Texas, remember?”

  She smiles. “I was wrong. She is a stray cat.” He’s seen that smile before – forlorn, a little sad, the smile of someone enamored of him and a little frightened because John Raven Beau has a way of disappointing women. He could be wrong, of course. Women are too complex to figure out. He saw it early in life. His mother was far brighter than any of the men and he learned to never underestimate a woman. They are more intelligent than men.

  “It’s over now,” Linda says, leaning forward, brushing her lips against his.

  He kisses her back and it’s intense for a short kiss. Nurse Ree steps in with a hypodermic and shoves it into a receptacle in one of the tubes feeding Beau’s arm.

  “You’re going back to sleep for a while.” She leaves.

  Linda holds his left hand and Beau tries to squeeze hers but there’s no strength in his hand. She must feel it as she squeezes back gently. He watches her face as he feels the drug pull him away.

  Did she say it was over? He feels a crooked smile crawl on his face.

  It’s never over, Linda.

  •

  Jesus, how long was I out?

  Beau manages to sit up a little. This isn’t ICU. He’s in a private room, one with two windows that shows it’s dark outside, a light rain tapping the panes. In the dim room light, he sees three women. Linda is curled and sleeping in an cushioned chair. Donna Elena sleeps in a matching chair on the other side of the room. The third women sits in a chair beyond the foot of his bed. She stretches, stands and comes to the bed.

  Jodie Kintyre is in her late thirties, maybe forty now. A southern gentleman never asks a woman her age – or weight or ever ask a woman when the baby’s due unless he knows her and is positive she is pregnant. Jodie is as slim as she was when they first met, back when she was LaStanza’s partner and Beau was a patrol officer. Her hair is still cut in a long page boy. Bangs. She wears some sort of tactical jumpsuit, navy blue with POLICE in white above her right pocket and a white star-and-crescent NOPD badge logo above her left pocket. Her detective’s badge is clipped to her gunbelt.

  Those wide-set, hazel eyes grow narrow as she looks at him. Cat eyes. This is a woman who knows how to wear make-up so it’s almost invisible, except for the brownish red lipstick. Jodie was his first partner in Homicide, trained him, taught him more than she realized.

  “I didn’t even know you were back.” There’s a catch in her voice and that oh, so familiar look of sadness in her eyes. “I thought you were still in Abbeville.”

  She’s talking about how they sent him to help out after Hurricane Rita, that second big bitch who hit Louisiana a month AK.

  “Cannes Bruleé is gone. They sent me back.”

  “You could have contacted me.”

  “How? You weren’t at the airport anymore.”

  She nods. “They sent me to Algiers and now we’re assembling what’s left of Homicide at the Second District Station.” She doesn’t have to explain. Magazine Street didn’t flood and they must have electricity back in the old stationhouse. Hell, he’d driven by the place the night he followed the Ravens back to their lair.

  Linda stirs but doesn’t wake. Donna Elena sits up, her eyes watching Beau now.

  Jodie puts a fist on her hip, looks at the rain. “You need to go away. I’m not kidding.” She focuses on him, a piercing look. “Take Sad Lisa to the Virgin Islands. Join the shore patrol. It’s still the U.S. I met their chief. Get away from this city.”

  She knows Sad Lisa isn’t an ocean-going houseboat.

  He smiles and his cheeks hurt. What the fuck wrong with my cheeks?

  “Why don’t you go there?”

  “My skin’s too fair.” She says that without a smirk. “And I don’t have a permanent chair in the grand jury room.”

  Ah. Beau’s joke, the director’s chair in the Orleans Parish Grand Jury room with his name stenciled on back. A permanent seat to explain why he killed another citizen.

  He starts chuckling and that hurts worse. Who the hell punched my side? Oh, yeah. Bruise. Did a bullet bounce off? Not likely. He rammed it into something jumping away from bullets.

  He laughs again.

  “It’s not funny, John.” Jodie only calls him by his first name when she’s angry.

  “I’ll be a week in front of the next Grand Jury. I lost count how many I shot.”

  “Seven at the Marina,” says Felicity Jones, who stands in the open door. He comes in. “The eighth died of snakebite.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently a Brown Raven thug named Axel Smith tried to swim away from the Marina and came across a shitload of cottonmouths. Found him on the levee.”

  Fel moves over to Donna Elena, leans against the wall next to her. “Counting the others you shot in the last few weeks – you sent an even dozen to the happy hunting ground.”

  Jodie lets out a long breath.

  “When did y’all move me?”

  “We had to put you where we could guard you.”

  “From what? I missed one?”

  “No,” Donna Elena gets off the chair. Beau sees Linda standing too, by her chair.

  Donna comes and stands next to Beau’s injured arm, l
ooks at the huge bandage, looking like a white cocoon. “You got them all. Carlos wasn’t about to tell them in L.A. that one man was doing all this. But the Raven have connections in the city. They’ll find out.”

  Dr. Summers breezes in with a chart in hand, comes to see the monitors.

  “You are doing very well, Mr. Beau. Not a hint of infection.” He taps Beau’s left foot. “You will be here for a few more days.” He looks around. “Unfortunately your entourage is getting in our way. There are twenty-seven others in the hall.” He smiles. “The nurses will get you up in a little while. You need to walk.”

  He leaves and Beau asks Fel, “Who’s out there?”

  “Police. We’re keeping the media downstairs.” Fel turns and walks out. Donna Elena smiles. Life in those dark brown eyes now. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

  As she moves away, Beau tries to sit up higher, can’t.

  “Donna. Don’t run off.”

  She waves at him.

  “I’m serious.”

  She stops at the door, looks at Jodie, then Linda, smiles again as her gaze moves back to Beau. “I won’t. I promise.”

  Jodie still looks disappointed, Linda more wide-eyed, probably wondering what the hell.

  “You two been introduced?”

  “We talked for two hours,” Jodie says. “And she’s still here.” Jodie almost smiles. “Can’t scare her away.”

  Nurse Ree and a taller nurse comes in.

  Jodie moves to Beau’s left side. “I’ll go clear the hall so you can walk without having to talk to people.” She touches his hand. “I’ll be at the Second. You remember how to get there?” She does smile this time, then starts to laugh only her eyes give her away. She can’t hide the wetness. She nods to Linda on her way out.