“I hear you, brother. I’ll meet you at the Crypt if all goes well.” Gus made a humorous call me motion with his hand to his ear.
Nick grinned and headed out into the darkened avenues. Dressed in black parka windbreaker with black nitrile gloves on, Nick kept to the wooded cover bordering Lighthouse and Asilomar Avenues. He moved with steady and deliberate purpose, sighting in on the van with his night vision ocular when pausing his approach. The man in the passenger seat with his arm on the window frame became Nick’s early warning sign of danger. He never moved. When right underneath the casually placed arm, Nick pulled the pin on his concussion grenade, popped up, and tossed it into the Chevy Tahoe.
The resulting explosion in a confined space elicited screams of agony which Nick halted quickly with his potent baton stun-gun. He pulled open the passenger side door, zapping the already writhing occupants bleeding from nose, mouth, and ears into silence, noting with satisfaction his grenade toss didn’t blow any body parts off. Nick worked quickly to throw the two men in front into the backseat. He then went into the back with the two from the front, and their third partner already behind them. After plastic tying them securely, and gagging the three with duct tape, Nick called Gus.
“Secured and ready, Gus. Hold on.” Nick moved into the driver’s seat, and started the vehicle. “Outstanding. The Tahoe was concussion grenade resistant. I’ll see you at the Crypt.”
“You are without doubt the Dark Angel of incomprehensible karma. Good Lord… you aced a van full of pros, and you’re making car jokes. How many?”
Nick drove toward the Crypt. “Three. You and Jean need to refrain from nicknaming me. You two tagging the label angel on me in any reference is a bit goofy.”
“My bad. It should have been Angel of Death. You do realize we only have room for one more in the freezer, right?”
“These three aren’t going into the freezer, Gus. I plan to work them over at the Crypt, but I won’t be going inside or storing them. I want to get a feel for their meager knowledge, and then make a statement with them.”
“Oh boy. See you at the Crypt.”
*
Rennie Bigalo woke in the dark. All he could hear was a buzzing in his ears. He could feel every part of his body though. Every part throbbed with intense pain. Rennie felt the bindings keeping his hands and feet secured behind his back. They were tight to the point of cutting his circulation off, and unmoving. He gasped from the sharp pain while trying to roll either way.
“Rennie?”
“Al?”
“Yeah… Paulo’s still out. What the fuck happened?”
“Concussion grenade. Your voice sounds like we’re talking through tin cans and a string.”
The third man groaned. His companions heard him trying to move, grunting in pain with each effort in the pitch black darkness of the Tahoe’s rear cargo space.
“Paulo. Can you hear me?”
“Christ! My guts on fire! Rennie… what the fuck’s happenin’?”
“We’re hogtied in the back of the Tahoe. Can you move?”
“Shit! I can barely hear you… it…it feels like they poured acid on my gut!”
The Tahoe’s rear hatch opened. The light came on inside, and Paulo Floyd began screaming. His intestines lay in a blood soaked pile under where he had been opened up from his groin to his sternum. Paulo’s screams turned into cries of agony as Rennie Bigalo and Al Garvey inched painfully away from Paulo. Two men watched the three from outside the cargo area without comment until Paulo subsided into shock.
“Hi guys. I’m Nick. This is my partner Gus. You three did a couple of great big bad things. Now, it’s time to pay up. Paulo here gutted a young woman with the US Marshal’s service. I found the knife he used on her in his pocket. I’m sure you three enjoyed the hell out of her muffled screams. I guess you two other guys lit up the man in the room. Want to tell me why, or do you want me to get creative with my questioning?”
“The asshole made a deal,” Bigalo said. “We find him and the broad in bed, and neither one has the fuckin’ chip! We figured he made a deal with someone else. He kept sayin’ he didn’t have it, but we knew better. Sorenson had a bunch of buyers in line for the chip, and decided to cut out our employer, but he never budged from his claim the other Marshals had the chip. We left them the bodies to see we meant business.”
“They didn’t call the fuckin’ cops or backup,” Garvey added. “We knew they must have all been in on trying to auction off the chip. Let us loose, and we’ll work out a deal for the chip.”
“What about your employer?”