Beck took in everything. Across the street was a long-term parking lot filled with cars dropped off by airline passengers. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounded the lot, covered by a green plastic mesh.
Beck started running as fast as he could toward the lot. Demarco could see Beck was taking the high ground. Beck rolled under a locked double-wide gate and ran toward the fence bordering the motel parking lot.
Demarco raced up 153rd Court, closing the distance between him and the slowing SUV.
The Cadillac turned into a narrow lane that led to the parking area behind the motel, the SUV following. Demarco dug in and ran full blast.
Beck slipped and stumbled across the parking lot, but hit full stride and made it to the last row of cars parked parallel along the chain-link fence. He scrambled onto the roof of the nearest car, leaned over the top of the fence, and found himself ten feet above the motel lot as the big Cadillac slowly eased between the concrete wall that supported the parking lot fence, and a car parked against the motel wall in a handicapped space.
Beck opened fire. Fully automatic bursts of 12-gauge shot. In five seconds, he took out the front passenger tire of the Cadillac, and both front tires of the Tahoe. He then shifted and blasted the back windows of the Cadillac. The driver floored the accelerator and the car leaped forward on the shredded front tire, sending up sparks as the rim spun against the asphalt.
Out on the street, Demarco stood behind the SUV shooting nonstop with both handguns through the back window. The driver tried to accelerate between the wall and the car parked on his right, but with two flat front tires, he veered into the wall.
Beck fired a blast into the Tahoe’s engine, stalling the SUV.
The driver was too close to the wall to open his door, but the big Russian, Vassily, fell out of the passenger side, landing hard on the asphalt, gun in hand, firing back at Demarco.
Demarco calmly shifted aim and fired both guns at the downed Russian. After six shots, the Russian stopped firing back,
The panicked driver of the Cadillac tried to turn left, but without a front tire, he smashed into a parked car.
Beck blasted five quick shots into the back of the Cadillac, obliterating the trunk and tires. Everything went silent.
Demarco calmly walked to Vassily, who had been hit four times: his left arm, chest, right shoulder, and a grazing shot that had taken off most of his right ear. He leaned down, put his gun against Vassily’s head, and said, “Who’s the glupo chertovski negr now, fat boy?”
Vassily’s mouth moved like a fish gasping for air. Demarco put him out of his misery with one shot.
Beck had no choice but to climb over the fence. It seemed to take him forever to lower himself to the ground and slide down off the four-foot concrete wall that bordered the parking lot while still holding the shotgun. He had never fired it before and could hardly believe the damage it did. He started limping toward the Cadillac.
Demarco looked inside the open door of the SUV. The driver had fallen over the steering wheel. He looked dead, but Demarco put one shot into him to make sure.
Beck had to be certain Kolenka was dead. He moved as quickly as he could toward the Cadillac. When he was ten feet away, the back door opened and one of Kolenka’s bodyguards leaned out and shot at him. Beck lurched right and fell to the ground, but could not get the AA-12 out from under him to fire back.
Demarco, still back at the SUV, fired off wild shots at the bodyguard over the open door of the Tahoe, until both handguns clicked empty, giving Beck enough cover to fire the AA-12 from a prone position, cutting down the bodyguard with two shots.
Demarco stepped over Vassily, slammed the Tahoe door in his way and ran to Beck, lifting him to his feet. They both walked to the Cadillac, Demarco reloading his Glock. The carnage inside the car was nearly complete. The driver and remaining bodyguards were dead. Kolenka was pitched forward against the passenger seat, blood across the top of his head.
Beck leaned into the car and pulled Kolenka back off the seat. He had a massive head wound, but he was still breathing. Beck placed the muzzle of the AA-12 into Kolenka’s side.
“You should have stayed out of it, Ivan.”
He pulled the trigger.
The entire gun battle had taken less than three minutes.
Demarco helped Beck limp back to the Mercury as quickly as he could. He wasn’t sure if Beck had been shot, but he couldn’t waste time on the street finding out.
The Bolo’s white van was long gone. By the time they crossed over to get onto the BQE heading west, they still hadn’t heard a police siren.
73
Phineas P. Dunleavy loved battling law enforcement. Good, bad, competent, indifferent, it didn’t matter. Cops. Judges. Assistant district attorneys. It didn’t matter. He would even badger a court clerk or a corrections officer if he felt he had to. He didn’t waste energy being mean or vindictive about it. He just took it as his mission in life.
For Phineas it came down to a visceral reaction against bullies. Maybe it was his too often drunk and angry father who demeaned Phineas as a kid, or the fearsome nuns that tried to terrify him in parochial school, or the tough older boys who took shots at him because they didn’t like his looks or his brogue. Or maybe it was just some deep dark Irish DNA that rebelled against oppressors. Whatever it was, Phineas P. Dunleavy was hardwired to fight against anybody who thought they had the right to push other people around, and Phineas never had to look far to find those people. The legal machine that ground out its merciless work 24/7 teemed with tin-pot tyrants who assumed they had a right to ruin the lives of thousands who had neither the education nor the resources to do much about it.
Which stoked Phineas’s ire sufficiently to keep him in battle mode perpetually.