Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“Dutch. The biker you met at Cotton Lake. He took her off my hands. Did me a solid.”
“Dutch Manklin.”
“Yeah. You need to talk to him.”
Through the scope Isaac trained the reticle at a point just above his target’s head. Dimi was still speaking into the cell phone. Isaac had cut the audio on his end to concentrate on the shot. Dimi was looking more and more agitated as he spoke, his eyes white in mute terror.
Isaac brought pressure to the trigger. In the lens’ eye Dimi’s head shifted out of view.
The bullet punched a hole in the bench back where Dimi had been a half second before.
Isaac jacked in a fresh round while rising to a standing position. Far away the tiny figure of Dimi was running from the row of benches. Isaac lifted the rifle and found Dimi in the scope as he was vaulting the ironing railing before the water slide area. He pressed the trigger, jacked a round, and found the target again. Dimi was hobbling at speed around the bottom edge of the water slide. Isaac snapped a shot. His target kept moving until he was out of sight, the mass of the slide between them.
“Jesus Palomina,” Isaac said. He leapt from the air housing leaving the rifle behind. As evidence it was clean. He wore gloves while loading it. Any investigation into its background would reveal that it was on a list of ordnance believed destroyed in a copter crash in Herat in Afghanistan.
He wouldn’t need the long range rifle any more.
Now was the time for working close.
Dimi screamed as loudly as his laboring lungs would allow him. He ran deeper into the grounds, crossing the lanes between the shacks, stalls and more permanent buildings. Fear washed the pain from him. His body was wracked with deep aches from abuse at the hands of Yvan and Tupo. All of that was nothing compared to the startling agony rising from his calf.
The bullet caught him at the arc of his leap over the fence before the water slide. It ripped a furrow through the muscle at the back of his right calf. It was bleeding steadily. His whole leg went numb. Useless. He was dragging it now, feeling the pain begin to build as nerve endings got over their initial shock.
He called out as he shambled along a twisted path. There had to be someone here. Somebody had to hear him. It was the fucking state fair. The place was huge. There had to be someone still working here. Cleaners. Security. He’d call 911 himself but he’d left the cell phone behind when he bolted.
No one answered his cries. The grounds backed up on surface streets. If he could reach one of them there would cars and people. Someone would help him. He didn’t care who. All he wanted was to get away from the maniac who was shooting at him. And Tupo and Yvan. He reallywanted to get away from those two sick fuckers.
He stopped screaming then. The man after him and his former captors would hear him. They were probably already looking for him. There wasn’t time for Tupo and Yvan to have made it back to their car. They wouldn’t leave anyway. Not until they were sure it was over.
It wasn’t over.
Isaac was across Martin Luther King and into the ground’s parking lot. He pulled the Rover as close as he could to a fair entrance. He jerked his gear bag from the back seat and leapt a turnstile to enter the grounds.
Between two exhibit halls he stopped long enough to pull the Mariner from the bag. It was fully loaded with a plastic rack of five more twelve-gauge cartridges mounted on one side of the action. He grabbed a fistful of cartridges and stuffed them in a pocket of his windbreaker.
The cries from inside the park died away as he reached the benches before the water slide. He marked the direction of the shrieking voice. He found the splash of blood where his target jumped the railing. He was over it and following the spatters deeper into the amusement area. The target was taking a winding path, using cover. The blood trail was thinning; a collection of spots here and there as blood vessels collapsed around the wound.
The target was getting farther away as he followed the path of the waning blood trail that wound back and forth. He stopped tracking and headed on the straightest path for where he’d heard the last call for help. There was a bloody smeared handprint down the side of a corndog stand as he crossed the target’s trail again. He stepped onto a broad midway and moved along one side at a trot, ears open for any sounds. The target was close. The target would break cover soon or hole up.
Isaac didn’t hear the first shots meant for him.
A jet flying low overhead on its climb out of Tampa International drowned out all sound with its passage. Concrete shards sprayed over the ground striking his legs. He turned, shotgun up. The larger of the two men who’d escorted Dimi into the park was running toward him between rows of seats set before a band shell. The man had an automatic raised in his fist, emptying it on Isaac’s position.
The second man, the Mongol warrior, was not in sight.
Isaac dropped and rolled under the tarp of a concession stand. Rounds punched holes in the canvas. Glass from the canopy of a food warmer showered everywhere. Isaac was out the back of the stand and moving low along a narrow alley that ran behind rows of stands. It was crowded with trash bins and stacked cartons. He was coming to the end of the lane when the second man stepped into view off a concourse.
Pumping round after round into the Mariner, Isaac walked toward the man. Two loads of buck took the Mongol high in the chest. throwing him backwards. A third raked his legs as he fell. A fourth tore through the air, taking out the glass in front of a ticket kiosk. A nickel-plated handgun spun from the falling man’s hand.
Isaac stepped into the concourse and emptied the last round, a rifled slug, into the fallen man’s head. The man’s face vanished in a red mist. Isaac slid over the counter of a concession stand. He lay on his back, reloading the Mariner, then settled down to listen.
A voice called in Russian, becoming more hushed as it approached. In the inch or so of clearance under the tarp covering the front of the counter, Isaac could see a pair of feet approaching. They were in leather loafers, alligator maybe.
A hissed curse as the wrestler came into view of his fallen comrade. Isaac held his breath and waited. The shadow of the man was visible through the sun-washed tarp.
Isaac fired through the cloth. Three rounds of buck. He heard an agonized grunt as he rose to his feet. Isaac trained the shotgun down on the big man lying in the dust of the concourse with his legs shot away. The man had fallen with his gun hand under him. He was struggling to roll and free it.
Another load of buck and a slug dropped him.
That left the prime target.
Isaac reloaded as he walked.
He caught up with Dimi Kolisnyk at the back of the grounds.
A parking area under sheltering oaks rose from the medians that separated the lanes.
The target made it to a high fence separating the fair from a residential neighborhood. He was hobbling along the fence line trying to find a way through, dragging the wounded leg behind him.
He never heard Isaac coming through the trees toward him.
A round of buck swept his legs from under him.
He lay whimpering, raising bloody hands to Isaac.
His mouth opened and closed soundlessly but for a whistling whine from deep in his throat.
The next load was center mass.
It lifted him from the ground in a cloud of dust.
His body was thrown against the fence.
The next stilled his convulsions.
His hands fell to the ground.
Isaac dropped the shotgun where he stood. He stripped off the bloody windbreaker as he walked back into the fairgrounds. He shoved it down in a dumpster and walked on. The flannel shirt he wore underneath was a black and red check that hid the blood soaking into it.