Hilde stared at her. After a long of silence, she mumbled, “You’ve got another child?”
“The baby miscarried. A couple of years later, my playboy husband left me for a teenaged Air Force floozy and I ended up burying myself in a career of beating the crap out of bad guys.”
“How…when…” Hilde stumbled over the words, struggling to grasp this new depth with which she was getting to know Lonnie. “How did you and Marcus finally get back together?”
“After he retired from the Marines, he came home and we kinda got tossed back at each other, thanks to a police call, of all things.”
“Your life sounds like a movie,” Hilde said. Motion high in the sky caught her attention. She glanced up and saw an eagle, its massive wings spread wide. It floated in a long, lazy arc on a current of air several hundred feet above them. Even at that distance, it still looked huge.
“I don't know about that. But things turned out pretty good in the end … so far at least,” said Lonnie. “So how about you and Mike, how did you two meet?”
“Fate as well, I guess. It's kinda complicated as well. He and my boss were old buddies in the Marines. Mike's first wife and son…”
“Got your side arm?” Lonnie blurted, instantly derailing the conversation.
“Huh?”
“If not, there's one in the glove box. Get it out now.” Lonnie reached into her purse and produced a .45 caliber Glock 39 pistol.
Hilde turned toward her and saw why. More than half a dozen men walked out from behind a warehouse building on Lonnie's side of the truck. Dressed in baggy blue jeans and white T-shirts, most sported tattoos that covered their arms and wriggled out of their collars. Pieces of pipe and short baseball bats swung at the sides of many of them. Pistol butts jutted from a couple of waist bands. One man flipped a long butterfly knife back and forth in his hand, the metal handles snapping rhythmically with each flick of his wrist. Their feet crunched on the gravel surface of the rail yard as they crossed.
“Who are they?” Hilde asked, her voice rising with the tension.
“Local gang,” Lonnie said. “Get ready with the gun. Glove box. It's chambered. Get it out, but keep it beneath the window for now.”
The men encircled the truck. Hilde discreetly opened the glove box and found a Smith & Wesson 4566, 45 caliber pistol on top of the car's registration form. She recognized the weapon as one that many FBI agents had carried in the past. She’d fired one a few times but the power and kick of the large caliber were too much for her. She preferred her personal side arm, the much smaller SIG P232. Hilde slid the mean-looking weapon out of the space and held it low. The weight of the blued steel felt cold and awkward in her hand. She was an analyst, not an operative. She only qualified on her own weapon, once a year and wasn't sure if she'd even remember how to use it if things got crazy. Her heart smacked against the inside of her ribcage.
“I'm not a field agent, just surveillance.” Her voice rattled with nervous tension.
“You know how to use one of these?” Lonnie asked without looking back at her.
“Yeah, but I've never shot anyone.”
“Pray we don't have to tonight. Got your badge?”
“In my purse.”
“Get it out, but keep it down too.”
One of the men approached Lonnie's side of the truck, stopped several paces away, and raised his hands above his head in a recognizable gang-style gesture. The other punks probably thought looked cool, but anyone with half a brain would’ve thought looked like an underfed, hairless orangutan waving his arms at a bunch of flies.
“Hey, baby,” he said with a generic “urban” accent that was not native to any part of Alaska, an obvious imitation something he'd seen on television. “Whatcha' doin' in my yard?”
“Two hot chicks like you parking out here at night?” another said. “Must be a couple of lezzies left over from the fagot parade getting it on in there.”
“Ooh, I wanna watch.” said a third man.
“How’s about I give you some man flesh,” said the leader, a pistol hanging loose in his hand. “Show you what you’re missing.”
The men's lustful glares twisted Hilde's stomach into sickened knots. The leader stepped closer, and Lonnie stared back at him with her practiced evil Korean ajumma glare. Once he was within ten feet of the truck, she raised her badge to the open window. Hilde did the same. The gang leader paused in his tracks. A look of confusion crossed his face, but vanished right away, replaced by a serpent-like smirk.
“Boys, we got us a couple of dyke police officers here.” He sneered at them. “Two horny bitch cops all by themselves in our territory.”
“Hey, Snake,” said a nearby man, “I think they got tired of playing with their night sticks and came looking for some real gangsta thang.” He grabbed his crotch and shook it at Lonnie.
The men encircled the truck. Someone smashed a heavy metal pipe against the tailgate, and a metallic crash echoed against the buildings. Hilde flinched at the sudden noise. She struggled to mask her fear with an unconvincing snarl. Seeing herself in the side view mirror, she thought her expression looked less like she was fierce and more like she had indigestion. She caught a glimpse of Lonnie's expression, her eyes sparked with violence that rivaled that of the gang bangers surrounding them. A loud hiss sliced through the tension and the back of the truck sank as two of the thugs pulled short knives out of the sidewalls of the tires. Lonnie gripped her pistol tightly, but kept it out of sight just below the window. The front tires went next.
“Leave us alone,” she said. “Just turn and go.”
“Or what, bitch?” said the leader from about three paces away. “You gonna arrest me?”
“No,” she said. “I’m going to kill you.”
Her pistol slid into view, and she trained it on his chest. Hilde raised hers into view as well. Everyone stopped in their tracks. The leader stared at her, a mixture of fear and hatred smoldering in his eyes.
“You ain’t got the balls to kill me.”
“You’re very observant,” Lonnie said. “Women don’t need balls. We’ve got hormones, and if you take one more step, I am going to hormone your ass straight to hell.”
“There’s seven of us.” He gestured around the group with a sweep of his hands. “You can’t get us all.”
“Maybe not, but you’ll die for sure.” Her eyes remained locked on Snake's like a snare that trapped him, choking him with her stare. She continued, her voice a low growl filled with unbridled menace, “And at least three more will die before you can stop me. I'm really good with this thing.”
Hilde glanced in her side mirror and caught a man sneaking along the side of the truck toward her. A creepy grin stretched his lips as he glared up at her. Right handed, she couldn’t swing her gun hand toward him, and he seemed to know it.
A sudden yelp burst the air like a popped balloon. The wet smack of flesh, followed by a thump of bone on metal, echoed from the back.
“You dented my brand-new truck,” Marcus's voice boomed, shaking the air. He jammed a fist into the man’s gut, then let him drop to the ground, “and you slashed my tires!”
The next man's left leg snapped sideways as Marcus drove a kick into his knee so fast his foot was a blur. The man screamed as he dropped to the ground, grasping at the dislocated joint. A heavy thud forced a gasp out of another man as Mike delivered a two-fisted blow to his kidneys. He tumbled forward, knocking a third man off balance. Mike lashed out with a hook kick that cracked the jaw of the man who had been sneaking toward Hilde. He crumpled to his knees and started to raise himself back up to fight. Mike stepped forward and hammered into his temple with the side of his left fist, slamming his head against the side of the truck with a thud, the nearly lethal force dropping him to the ground.