The man hiding amid the ruins of the old cotton gin loading dock watched a Hueysized chopper close in, leading a convoy of military Humvees down Sunflower Road, straight for the T-intersection at the gin. None of the vehicles had lights on. As the convoy approached, the sounds of racing engines came from opposite directions on MLK Jr. An instant later, the light bars on two police cars lit up, with sirens in full opera soprano mode.
The man's jaw dropped as an old stake-back truck raced down the middle of the street, from his left, pursued by one police car and heading straight for the second. With no options left, the stake-back truck careened left onto Sunflower Road head-on into the convoy.
Then the night filled with a concerto of squealing brakes, skidding tires, and the eruption of broken glass and tortured metal. The concerto's second movement commenced when the other vehicles in the convoy rear-ended each other in an extended chain reaction.
The two police cars skidded to a stop behind the stake-backed truck. The helicopter lit up then and spotlighted a tall, thin black youth as he sprang from the cab of the stake-back truck. Uniformed police officers leaped out of the squad cars and gave chase.
A third police car arrived less urgently and disgorged a huge man with a uniform and a black cowboy hat. The sounds of more sirens grew closer. The big man walked over to the Humvee as the passengers got out. Undamaged vehicles made their way around the collision but found themselves blocked by the Itta Bena police cruisers. A tall man with gray hair and a cigarette screamed obscenities at the huge man in the cowboy hat. Men in helmets and SWAT gear swarmed out of the vehicles.
The far end of MLK Jr. Drive lit up then with more police light bars. The faintest of scraping sounds came to the man as he took in the scene. He whirled, but saw only the blur of a boot disappearing through a gap in the siding. The man followed the boot inside.*****
The MP5's next shot lifted the hair at the back of my neck as I rolled Jasmine away from Jay Shanker's lifeless body. But the red dot was relentless. There was no time to aim my H amp;K because the slightest pause meant certain death.
Just as I feared history would repeat itself, a sustained burst of full-auto weapons fire came from the front of the gin, shunting the persistent red dot off into the darkness to paint a still life on the rusty tin roof.
My relief deepened with a totally unexpected voice.
"Old son, don't you have enough good sense to stop pissing off the federales?" "Rex?" I stared at a shadow emerging from the darkness.
"Keep your voice down, podnuh. We don't want our buddies outside to connect the dotted line between you and me. Not too soon anyway."
I helped Jasmine stand up as Rex's compact muscular form grew near. From outside, the sounds of urgent voices and the thuds of running feet sifted into the gin's confined space, filled now with the smell of gunfire and death. "How… why?" I stuttered.
"Because nobody else is going to keep pulling your cojones out of the fire, my man."
I shook the gloved hand he offered me as tin siding rattled at the rear of the girl. We all three dropped for cover and brought our guns to bear.
"Don't shoot."
The voice was familiar.
"Uncle Quincy?"
"Jasmine!"
Quincy Thompson emerged from behind a sheet of corrugated tin siding, which swung out like a secret door at the back of the gin, right about where it abutted the adjacent building.
Instants later, I made out Quincy's face, which changed from relief to anger when he turned his head from Jasmine to me. Then he spotted Rex.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Chill out, cap'n. I'm just along for the ride."
Quincy muttered something beneath his breath. Then: "Come on! Quick!"
As we followed Quincy, the sounds of a siren grew near; flashing lights leaked through the old siding at the side of the gin. Then, almost lost in the dazzling of light-bar flashes from outside, a red dot danced about Quincy's back.
"Down!" I yelled, and launched myself into the backs of Quincy's knees, cutting him down with a clip that would have drawn a penalty flag in any football game. Shots sparked off a rusted piece of machinery I heard Rex's TEC-9 and a distant cry of pain.
Then a voice at the rear called out, "Come on! Come on! Come on!"
I helped Quincy to his feet. He stared at me.
"What the hell you staring at?" I said.
His mouth struggled for words, which would not come.
"Get your rear in gear, pal," Rex broke the impasse, pushing us along.
"Or your ass is grass and those folks're lawn mowers."
Quincy and I followed Jasmine through the makeshift opening. Behind us, Rex emptied the TEC-9 at the far corner of the gin, then tossed it away.
"Bought it off a street dealer in Jackson. When they track it down to him, he'll be in a world of hurt." I followed Rex through the narrow opening and let the tin panel close behind me right as the light and concussion of a flashbang filled the interior.
CHAPTER 72
Smoke and flames persisted behind us in the gin. The flashbang had found plenty to burn in the old gin's debris, desiccated wooden beams, decades of cotton lint from ginning.
We slogged through mud and standing water along a narrow passage between the gin and the back of a brick wall of an adjoining structure. After maybe forty feet, we reached a low, narrow hole and shoehorned ourselves through it into the brick building's crawl space. After crawling under floor joists for twenty feet or so, we climbed up into an abandoned warehouse.
Our guide helped us up from the access hatch one by one. As soon as he let go of my hand, he unzipped the front of his Ben Davis coveralls to reveal the uniform of the Leflore County Sheriffs Department. His name tag told me his last name was Mandeville.
"I'm Pete," he said. I shook his hand. Then behind him, I spotted a wizened old man holding a guitar case.
Mandeville caught my gaze. "That's Pap. He used to work at the gin. He's probably the last man alive who remembers the passage we just took."
The old man gave us a broad smile filled with teeth too white and even to be anything but dentures.
"Uh-huh, tha's right," Pap said "We use that way when we late or need a break. Gin boss never caught us. Uh-uh."
"Come on, John's waiting," Mandeville said.
Pap stood by the door with his guitar case.
"Thank you," I said.
He nodded.
"Were you the one singing 'Kilin' Floor'?"
Pap nodded.
"You played the best set of open D-minor licks I ever heard. Better than Skip himself"
Pap smiled.
A Leflore County sheriff's van sat on the other side of the old warehouse. Mandeville slid open the side door and motioned us all to hurry.
Inside sat John Myers in front and Tyrone Freedman way in back, sandwiched in among all of the luggage and gear from the SUV. The radio crackled nonstop. Half a block away, fire station sirens began to wail.
"Tyrone!" I said. "What the hell?" I leaned over to shake his hand before sitting down at the end of the rearmost bench seat. Jasmine sat next to me.
Quincy got in, sat next to Jasmine, and gave her a hug. Then Pete Mandeville slid the door closed. The sky brightened with a warm flicker over by the old gin.
"They connected you to my Internet traffic," Tyrone said. "A whole gang of federal agents came in the hospital's front door, so I went out the back and paid Deputy John here a visit."
Myers nodded. I looked around at the faces.
"Oh, man." My heart fell. "Tyrone, I am so sorry to drag you into this."
Mandeville slid into the driver's seat and put the van in gear.
Tyrone shook his head and laughed.
I looked around at the lives I was dragging into this black hole of trouble: Myers, Tyrone, Quincy, Jasmine, and Rex, who held his black gloves and mask in his hands. I had grown accustomed to getting myself in and out of trouble all by my lonesome. Until now, when it mattered most.