Rios-Parkinson pushed and forced himself inside.
“I am the Director of the People’s Bureau of Investigation,” he announced. “Where is your telephone?”
He did not wait for an answer – there was a wall-mounted land line in the kitchen. He ran to it and put it to his ear – nothing.
“That phone hasn’t worked in years,” said the old man.
“Your cell phone, now!”
“It’s…where is it?”
But Rios-Parkinson spotted it on an end table in the living room and lunged for it. There was a signal, but a weak one, maybe one or two bars depending on where he stood. He dialed the main exchange but, because he was without his address book feature and did not remember the individual phone numbers, he had to bully his way through the central exchange until he finally reached Larsen.
“Seal the Sector! No one leaves!” he screamed. “And take the Jews now!”
16.
They parked across the street from the eastern wall of the Westside Sector, in as quiet and out-of-the-way place as they could find, and waited. No patrols. There was a camera, mounted on a light pole. Turnbull got out of the car and walked directly underneath, then shot it with the silenced Ruger. Chances are the guys assigned to watch the feeds of all the security cameras would write this off as just another malfunction. After all, who would disable a camera inside the Sector? The problem was keeping people out, not keeping them in.
He got back into the Lexus, which they had driven to in Amanda’s Nissan, and swung it around to the other side of the road, right up next to the wall. Turnbull left the keys in the ignition; hopefully someone would come along and remove the evidence. They climbed up onto the trunk, then onto the roof, snipped through the razor wire with their wire cutters, and climbed over the wall.
It was a long walk to the abandoned Del Taco. They moved fast, knowing they needed to warn David. Turnbull was not sure exactly what he’d do to help the people, but it was pretty clear their time was running out. They would have to go out, all 27 ½ of them.
The three of them kept to the shadows and tried to avoid arousing attention. Amanda was particularly nervous; she had rarely left the Sector and it was clear she was worried. She had reason to be; several salty looking crews looked the trio over. Turnbull’s hard looks in return convinced them that discretion was the better part of predation. They moved on to weaker prey.
Other than that, there were few people out that night. Maybe they sensed something.
When the three got near to the old restaurant, they didn’t go straight in right away. They watched it from the ground floor window of a deserted office building about 150 yards away. The kid, Abraham, was there all right, staying generally out of sight in the back parking lot. No one else was around. No one seemed to be watching.
“He’s got a pack on,” said Junior, handing back the binos.
“Yeah,” Turnbull said. He scanned the surrounding bushes for signs of an ambush.
Down the street, maybe 350 yards to the east, in the direction of David’s building, a pair of PSF cruisers slid into view and blocked the intersection. Their light bars went on. Four PSF thugs got out, casually standing around their vehicles.
“Awesome,” said Turnbull bitterly, but he didn’t move. He just watched.
“Shit, they’re setting up a perimeter,” Junior said.
“Yeah, but I don’t see any other cruisers.” Turnbull pivoted to look south and north. Nothing there. Then, from the east, the rattle of gunfire. Controlled bursts.
“What’s happening?” asked Amanda.
“It’s a perimeter all right, but not one around us,” said Turnbull.
“David?” asked Junior.
“Yeah. Gotta be. I should have shot that son of a bitch in the doorway.”
“We need to go get Abraham.”
“Ah shit, he’s moving.”
Abraham had stared east for a moment, then paced, then began running east down the street, directly at the cruisers.
“What’s he doing?” Amanda asked.
“The kid’s going back to his house. Damnit!” Turnbull pointed at Amanda, binos still in his hand. “You stay here! Junior, come on!”
They dumped their packs and tore out of the building at a run, not entirely sure of exactly what they intended to do. It was clear they were not going to outrun Abraham, who was charging toward the PSF roadblock at full speed.
In the distance, more bursts of gunfire. Many more. And the dull thud of an explosion.
The kid was far ahead of them – there was no way they would catch him before he reached the vehicles, so Turnbull pulled Junior into an overgrown yard and watched.
Abraham seemed not to have a plan either. He kept running east on the sidewalk. When he was perhaps 50 yards away, one of the PSF thugs started yelling something at him. Abraham ignored it, and as it became clear that the kid was going to try to rush through the roadblock, the PSF thugs spread out to take him down. He tried to dodge, and when they tackled him, he struggled. He was shouting, but Turnbull could not make out the words. Turnbull brought up the binoculars.
They rolled him over on his face and took off his pack. One of the PSF thugs then kicked the pinned teen hard in the ribs. Another pressed a knee into his back to hold him down while zip-tying the kid’s hands behind him. Two of them lifted Abraham to his feet and threw him against one of the cruisers. They patted him down while another put the pack on the trunk and started going through it.
Turnbull focused the binoculars, trying to see what was coming out of the pack in the red and blue flashes of the light bar.
The thug was looking at something, puzzled. It was small, maybe metallic.
“Is it the drive?” Junior asked, straining to see unaided. Another long burst of gunfire from the east echoed through the deserted streets.
“Maybe. I can’t say for sure. But whatever it is, the blues don’t seem to think it’s important.”
One of them opened the back door of the cruiser and unceremoniously shoved Abraham inside. The other went to the passenger’s seat with the pack. After a brief conversation, the driver got in, started up the cruiser, and pulled away to the south.
“They gotta be going to the Hollywood station,” Turnbull said.
“Shit, what do we do?”
“Come on.”
Turnbull stepped back onto the sidewalk and started heading toward the remaining cruiser. Junior followed, unsure.
As they approached, one of the PSF thugs shouted, “Hey, turn your ass around.”
“What?” asked Turnbull, slurring the word a bit.
“Turn your drunk asses around or we’ll kick ‘em!”
Turnbull closed to about 15 yards and the PSF thugs were imagining some entertainment. The closer one pulled out his stick and stepped forward.
“I told you to….”
Turnbull drew and fired two quick shots into his face, then pivoted and dropped the other with two rounds as he tried to draw.
“Shit, Kelly,” said Junior.
“Take their vests,” Turnbull growled. “And a Beretta plus some extra mags.” In the distance, there was more gunfire.
“What are we doing?”
“Well, we aren’t leaving that kid and the hard drive with those assholes. Everyone else is probably dead by now, but I’m not leaving that kid. We’re going in to get him.”
“He’s in a PSF station. It’s full of cops.”
“Don’t ever call them cops. They aren’t police. They’re just criminals with guns and uniforms, and they just helped the PBI kill all those people who helped us.”
Turnbull had the driver’s door open and was looking under the dash for a switch. There it was – he flipped it. The PSF thugs liked to be able to cut off their GPS tracking sometimes so they could do their personal business using official vehicles, so most had unofficial kill switches installed by PSF mechanics they threw a few bucks at for the service.