‘So if they want him alive so much, what was that about?’ the Marshal asked.
‘It’s called playing the percentages,’ Lock said, grabbing Reaper and frogmarching him towards the door at the front of the plane. ‘OK, no more firing, I’m bringing him out,’ he shouted, jabbing a finger at one of the Marshals to open the door. ‘But you have to move back from the aircraft. Right now.’
‘We’ll pull back, you send him out.’
Lock stayed with Reaper and motioned for the two Marshals to get their weapons and move to the exit-side windows.
‘OK,’ he shouted. ‘As soon as we see you move back, I’ll send him out.’
Chance pulled the patrol car away from the plane. Every second that passed, their options were narrowing.
The door of the plane juddered open, the stairs unfolded, and there stood Reaper in all his glory. It was enough to make Chance catch her breath.
But then, as Reaper took the first step, she saw that he wasn’t alone. There was a man with him. The man produced a Glock, shoved it in Reaper’s face, and with his free hand pushed the cuffed Reaper down the rest of the stairs. At the bottom, he stopped and pressed the gun hard into Reaper’s mouth.
‘You seriously think I’m going to hand you this piece of shit?’ he shouted.
Behind Chance, Cowboy and Trooper had fanned out, trying to find an angle, but Reaper’s sheer size precluded a clean shot at the man who was now propelling him across the runway.
Then the man stopped.
‘You want him so bad, you come and get him.’
Lock had to concede that Reaper made for one hell of a human shield. It was like standing behind a Stryker armored vehicle.
One of the attackers, a man wearing a cowboy hat, darted out from behind the hijacked police cruiser. Lock flicked his borrowed Glock away from Reaper’s mouth and let off a single shot which bounced off the runway three feet to the guy’s left, then put the gun back to Reaper’s head.
‘Come on, you pussies, come and get him. I can do this all day.’
Another male attacker with long blond hair appeared, this time from the other side. Lock hauled Reaper in closer to him, pivoted round and got off a shot which went high and wide.
In the distance, a symphony of sirens could be heard, getting louder.
‘The question is, how long you got?’
Chance could hear the sirens too. She could even pick out the trail of flashing red lights. She clenched her fists, furious. They could stay, fight their ground, but ultimately they’d be overwhelmed, and the mission would be a failure. Or they could walk away now, and try again.
She took a deep breath, filling her lungs. She exited the patrol car, grabbing the grenade launcher on her way out.
Cowboy and Trooper screeched to a halt next to her in the black SUV they’d jacked from the Marshals. They screamed for her to get inside as she raised the launcher and sent a final defiant message roaring towards the JPATS plane.
Lock pushed Reaper down on to the ground as the RPG round whistled over them. A wall of fire soared into the sky as it made contact with the plane, the fuel tank engulfing the entire fuselage in flames. He hated to think what it was doing to the men inside.
Looking up, Lock saw the jacked SUV slamming out on to the service road beyond the perimeter of the airfield. He pulled Reaper back to his feet and smiled into his stony face.
‘Looks like you’re gonna have your day in court after all.’
31
The police cruiser edged its way slowly down the street like a Halloween-styled homecoming parade float. Rorschach-style blood spatters patterned the windshield. The bodywork was peppered with shrapnel and bullet holes. One of the tires was shot out so badly that sparks were flying from the rim. Behind the cruiser followed, at the same funereal pace, a convoy of police and Emergency Medical Service vehicles.
With no view through the windshield, Lock hung out of the driver’s window to get a better view of the terrain ahead, his right foot alternating between the gas pedal and the brake. He brought the car to a halt beside the steps of the Medford courthouse and got out, his randomly purloined body armor and smoke- blackened face giving his appearance a post-apocalyptic makeover.
‘All ashore that’s going ashore,’ he said.
He opened the rear door and hauled Reaper out, shoulders first. In addition to his usual restraints, Reaper was sporting the previously threatened piece of cloth jammed into his mouth to stop him from talking.
Reaper hit the sidewalk like a sack of potatoes. Lock put out his hand and helped him to his feet. A couple of Medford cops went to help Lock but he waved them away with a gruff ‘Back the hell off.’
He shoved Reaper hard in the back, propelling him up the stone steps. At the top, Jalicia stood among the open-mouthed crowd with the rest of her prosecution team. Lock kept Reaper moving until the final step, when the front of his right foot happened to clip the back of Reaper’s left foot and he sprawled face first directly in front of Jalicia. As Reaper tried to look up, Lock placed his boot on the back of his head, forcing his face back down on to the stone.
‘Everyone else who was on the plane is dead,’ Lock said. He glanced down at Reaper. ‘All apart from me and this piece of shit.’ He dug into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys for Reaper’s cuffs and leg restraints, and handed them to Jalicia. ‘Here’s your witness.’
The shock was etched on Jalicia’s face. ‘Everyone’s dead?’
‘There was a welcoming committee waiting for us at the airfield.’
‘How the hell could they have known where he was coming in?’
The question had crossed Lock’s mind ever since he’d spotted the assault helicopter. There was only one answer: they had someone on the inside.
But who? One of the Marshals? A guard back at Pelican Bay? Someone in local law enforcement? It was a pretty wide field. Without knowing who the group who’d ambushed them were, narrowing it down was going to prove next to impossible.
‘I don’t know, but they were well prepared.’ Dust caught at the back of his throat. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, turning his head in Reaper’s direction and spitting some of the runway grit from his mouth. ‘One more thing you should know. I gave them ample opportunity to kill this piece of shit, and they didn’t take it. For whatever reason, they wanted to take him alive.’
Two cops rushed in to scoop Reaper up from the ground.
‘Now,’ Lock said, ‘if you’ll excuse me…’
Carrie was standing ten yards away, in a knot of other media people, with her cameraman. Lock looked at her as she brushed back a strand of blonde hair from her eyes, which were blue and earnest as she talked to another reporter. She turned and saw him. Her features softened as she made her way towards him.
As she reached him, she raised an eyebrow. ‘Straightforward mission, huh?’
Lock shrugged. ‘It was when it started.’
He reached out and placed his hands either side of her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks.
She smiled. ‘It always is with you.’
He leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. It felt fantastic.
They walked slowly back to the mini-van Carrie’s network had provided. Lock took her through the whole story, starting with the conference room in San Francisco. She’d already heard about Ty and had good news for Lock: ‘They’re moving him down to a hospital in San Francisco later today.’
Lock felt the slabs of tense muscle in his back and neck ease a little. ‘That’s good.’
They both fell silent for a few seconds. Lock was anxious about what was coming next. He’d taken on what had proved to be a near-suicide mission, and kept Carrie out of the loop. The guilt about it had weighed on him all the while he’d been inside the prison, only outweighed by the dour determination he’d felt to bring the killers of Ken Prager and his family to justice.