Turnbull shoved the officer forward and covered her with his carbine. “Abraham! Abraham, come out! We’re leaving!” The other prisoners stared, numb.
Down at the end, a young boy’s head peeked around the corner. He had a black eye.
“Remember me, Abraham? We’re going. I’m taking you out of here.”
Abraham blinked, then started to approach.
“Come on, run, we gotta go. All of you, you’re free! Get out of here! Go! Before this place burns down!”
But the prisoners seemed less interested in leaving than in the guard. They surrounded her, silently, and she began to babble and step backwards. They kept coming.
Abraham reached Turnbull and he took the kid by the upper arm and pulled him out the door. The last thing he saw was one of the prisoners raise her fist and bring it down on the guard’s face. As he turned and pushed the kid out into the hallway, he could hear her incoherent screaming through his plugs.
Junior opened the door of the brown Explorer and jumped into the driver’s seat. It started right up – the lieutenant had good taste in what he stole from other citizens. It even had a full tank of gas – probably courtesy the PSF’s own pumps – and the range indicator estimated 413 miles, which should be more than enough.
He pulled it out of the stall and over to the gate. Leaving it to idle, he got out and ran around to the fence to wave to Amanda up the street to come on over. The cruiser’s engine turned over, and Junior turned around to head back to the Explorer.
The buckshot hit the ground low in front of him; his left leg was technically struck by three ricocheting pellets. The gunner was a PSF officer with an ancient Remington 870 about 50 yards up in the dark of the road kneeling to take the shot. Limited practice had limited his effectiveness. If he had been better trained he might have come close to taking off the leg entirely, if not killing him outright. Still, Junior was now on the ground tangled in his carbine’s sling and trying to draw his Glock.
Around them, a growing audience of civilians watched from the darkness.
The PSF thug smiled as he stood up and racked another double aught shell into the chamber and prepared to empty it into Junior’s head. He got two steps before the cruiser slammed into him at 30 miles per hour, snapping his femurs and fracturing his skull on the light bar when he flipped over the roof.
Amanda braked and the cruiser skidded to a stop. She got out of the cruiser, Beretta in hand, and walked back to the shattered officer, who lay groaning in the middle of the road, bloody, his legs at terrifying and impossible angles.
“You shot my brother, you fucking dick” she screamed as she raised the pistol and shot him again and again, until the slide locked back on the empty gun.
Satisfied that the PSF officer was off to his final reward, she turned and ran over to Junior, who had managed to stand upright, sort of. Putting her arm around his shoulder, she helped him to the idling Explorer and put him in the rear passenger seat so he could cover the station door with his M4 through the open window.
On the street, shadowy human shapes swarmed over the dead officer.
Junior checked his watch. It read 10:50 p.m. And the sirens in the distance were getting more numerous and louder.
Turnbull took a vest off a dead thug and put it on Abraham and warned the kid to keep behind him, but to always remain close. The Evidence Room was at the end of another corridor; he had seen it going to the cellblock. Smoke was starting to fill the station. There were still occasional gunshots. A PSF officer came up in his blind spot, looked at the pair, then simply decided – for whatever reason – to continue on his way. Someone had gotten very lucky in that encounter.
The Evidence Room door was closed, and it looked reinforced. A grenade might not take it down. Turnbull approached slowly, weapon up, covering each room he passed. Inside Detective Room C were four desks, and on one was Abraham’s backpack.
Turnbull charged in. Two detectives had taken cover inside behind a desk in a corner. They had no intention of going out to look for trouble, but trouble had come to them and they fired their Berettas. One’s rounds both went off the mark, but the other managed to hit Turnbull in his vest an inch left of his front Kevlar trauma plate just before he squeezed the trigger and emptied an entire magazine into both of them.
“Shit,” said Turnbull. He knew what a broken rib felt like. He also know what a gunshot wound tearing through his flesh felt like, and at least this didn’t feel like that. He dropped the empty mag and seated another.
It occurred to him that his hip still hurt. That’s what he got for pissing off a Texan girl. He looked at Abraham.
“That’s your pack, right?”
Abraham nodded.
“Please tell me the hard drive is in there.”
“It was.”
“Look.”
Abraham unzipped it. “It’s here.”
“Take the pack and let’s go. Stay behind me.” Turnbull moved to the door, but the kid didn’t budge. He was staring at the dead detectives.
“He’s the one that hit my face,” Abraham said.
“He’s not going to hit anyone’s face any more. Now we have got to go.”
The smoke was getting very thick as Turnbull led the kid toward the impound lot exit. There was a lot of yelling now, and some more shooting. Down the hall, shadows appeared – people, but not PSF. Turnbull held his fire and the intruders, already carrying spoils, rushed past them as if they weren’t even there. The civilians were looting the station. Good, he thought. Harder to figure out just what we were doing here.
They found the exit to the impound lot, and Turnbull went out first. A brown SUV was idling at the gate. Shadowy figures were rushing by, swarming the cars, lurking at the foot of the stairs to go in the door when the big man with the big gun got out of the way.
“Kelly!” Junior yelled, waving from the window.
“Come on,” Turnbull said, pulling Abraham outside and down the steps. Before the door shut and locked, several civilians had come up, pulled it open and rushed inside.
Turnbull ran around to the driver side and put Abraham in the back next to Junior, then jumped behind the wheel. He hit the gas, accelerating into the street past the dead officer and dodging the civilians running across Wilcox to join in the chaos.
“Abraham, this is Amanda. Amanda, Abraham.” Turnbull said.
“Where are we going?” the boy asked.
“We’re taking you out of here, like I promised your father.”
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Abraham asked.
“Yeah, he’s gone. I’m sorry.”
Turnbull turned right on Sunset, entered the freeway, and headed east. They said nothing for a long time.
18.
“They found two dead officers in the street just a half mile from here,” said Larsen, puzzled. “Their cruiser is gone. They were part of our perimeter operation.”
“And nothing to the west?” asked Rios-Parkinson.
“No, we flooded the zone with personnel. Nothing.”
“Why would they draw attention to themselves by shooting two officers here and getting on the radio pretending to be a regular citizen telling us it happened elsewhere?”
Larsen shrugged. “They wanted to draw us away?”
“But we were never going to be drawn away from this raid by a couple of dead PSF,” the Director scoffed. Larsen shrugged again.
Rios-Parkinson took a few minutes to change out of his soiled suit and into a tactical PBI black utility uniform. He felt it was good for the men to see him like that – it might inspire them, though he had absolutely no tactical training himself. Then he waved over a sergeant.