Suicide Mission Read online

  Jackie recognized the voice. It belonged to Caleb McBurney, the chief of police of this small town that sat on the vast plains. McBurney had arrested him more than once for this, that, and the other. The charges usually involved drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, and bodily assault. McBurney had hauled him in on armed robbery charges, too, when Jackie learned the painful lesson that if you live in a town of less than a thousand people and everybody knows everybody else, it’s probably not a good idea to hold up the local grocery store.

  But that was all in the past. They had thought he was just a cheap crook, but now they knew better. Now he was a killer. A mad-dog killer.

  He liked the sound of that.

  Those thoughts flashed through his mind as he said into the phone, “What is it you want, Chief McBurney?”

  “You know what I want, Jackie. I want you to come out of there with your hands empty and in the air where we can see ’em. Once you’ve done that, then we can talk about whatever’s happened in there and see if we can straighten this mess out.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to straighten out, Chief,” Jackie said. “Greg Redmond’s dead. I shot him, the damn homewrecker.”

  “Ohhhh, hell,” McBurney said with a long, weary sigh. “Blast it, Jackie, why’d you have to go and do that?”

  “I told you. He stole my wife. Man’s got a right to defend what’s his, don’t he?”

  “Greg Redmond didn’t even live here when Maggie Louise left you, Jackie! She didn’t meet him until later, and you know it. He didn’t have anything to do with your marriage breaking up.”

  “Well, that’s not the way I see it,” Jackie said calmly.

  “Maggie Louise left you because you couldn’t stay out of trouble,” McBurney went on as if he hadn’t heard what Jackie said. “She didn’t want to stay married to a man who couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t stay out of jail, and spent most of his time hanging around with a couple of crazy, meth-cooking skinheads!”

  “Now, don’t you be talkin’ bad about the Franklin brothers, Chief. Those boys have been good friends to me.”

  “Good friends, hell! I know about how they’ve got you delivering that junk all over the county. Damn it, Jackie—!” The chief’s voice softened slightly as he went on, “I knew your mama and daddy. I knew you when you were in school, playing ball. We all hoped you’d go to college, and when you went in the Army instead, we thought that might do you some good, but you can’t . . . you just can’t seem to settle down!”

  Jackie sighed again and said, “I tried, Chief. I surely did. But there’s just somethin’ wild in me, I guess. There’s only one way this is gonna end.”

  “Jackie, don’t—”

  He set the phone down without disconnecting the call, then turned and pointed the gun at Maggie Louise, who was watching him with a look of sheer terror on her face.

  “You should’ve been faithful to me,” he said.

  She screamed.

  Jackie heard glass break somewhere to his left, then a thud and a soft pop. Suddenly the room was full of blinding, choking smoke. Tear gas! The bastards had shot tear gas through the window.

  He started pulling the trigger, but he couldn’t see where he was aiming anymore. He just shot blindly, hoping that one of the shots would connect with Maggie Louise. It didn’t matter if he emptied the gun. He’d still wave it at the officers when they broke into the house, and that would be enough. He’d never leave here alive. Suicide by cop, some called it. As good a way as any to go out. He didn’t want to hurt anybody who didn’t have it coming.

  He heard the crash as they used a battering ram on the door and broke it open. He turned toward the sound as the gun’s hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

  “I’ll kill you all!” he bellowed, even though he had no intention of killing anybody else. “I’ll—”

  Something hit him in the back of the knees and knocked his legs out from under him. His face bounced on the carpet as he landed on it. A weight landed on his back, and fists rained down on his head.

  “You crazy son of a bitch!” Maggie Louise screamed as she battered him. “You crazy son of a bitch!”

  “Don’t shoot!” a man yelled. “Hold your fire!”

  No! They were supposed to kill him. This was all going wrong, Jackie thought as the weight went away and somebody grabbed his hands and jerked them behind his back. He felt handcuffs go around his wrists and snap into place.

  He couldn’t see anything because his eyes were stinging so bad from the tear gas, and he could barely talk because it made him cough and choke so much. But as he was hauled to his feet he managed to say, “No, no . . . this ain’t right . . . this ain’t the way it was supposed to be!”

  There was no getting around it. He had screwed up again.

  CHAPTER 23

  A federal detention facility, somewhere in the U.S., six months before the New Sun

  With the sun shining brightly, the exercise yard looked warm, but actually there was a bone-numbing cold in the air, the sort of cold you get on the high plains when the sky clears and the wind dies down and the bottom seems to fall out of the thermometer.

  The three guards huddling in their parkas would have rather been somewhere else. Anywhere as long as it was warm and maybe there was a cup of hot coffee.

  Their orders said they had to be out here, though, because Madigan was.

  And Ellis “Bronco” Madigan didn’t seem to feel the cold. In fact, he was stripped to the waist as he worked out with the weights set up in one corner of the yard, revealing his massively muscled, heavily tattooed torso. Those muscles worked smoothly and easily as he lifted more weight than a human being should have been able to lift.

  Of course, there had been a considerable amount of debate over the years as to whether or not Bronco Madigan really was human.

  Some people seemed to think that he had been created in some mad scientist’s lab.

  Others were more of the opinion that he wasn’t a creature of science but rather a demon from some dark hell.

  Either way, he looked the part.

  The only hair on his head was a neatly trimmed goatee and his eyebrows. His scalp was as bald and gleaming as a skull. Tattooed across his shoulder blades was a winged dragon with the head of a laughing Satan. On his arms were pentagrams and other sinister, eldritch symbols. On his bulging right pectoral muscle was a swastika. An inverted cross decorated the left pectoral. He was every normal person’s nightmare.

  One of the guards clapped his gloved hands together for warmth. While he was doing that his gaze strayed across the yard, and he said to his companions, “Oh, crap. Here comes the other one.”

  Calvin Watson hadn’t taken off his shirt, but he wasn’t wearing a coat, either. His breath fogged and plumed around his head like a wreath of smoke. He was a couple of inches shorter than Madigan’s six-five, but his shoulders were maybe an inch wider than the taller man’s. His black skin was tattooed as heavily as Madigan’s white skin was, only with urban gang symbols. He wasn’t bald, but his hair was cropped extremely close.

  Watson couldn’t move very fast because he wore leg irons. His wrists were shackled together, too. Even with those precautions being taken, sharpshooters up on the wall had a bead on him, just as other guards kept their rifles trained on Madigan anytime he was out in the open. Nobody wanted to take any chances with either of these two men.

  Between them they had killed at least forty people.

  The exact number of their victims was unclear, but Madigan had been convicted on twenty-two counts of murder, Watson on eighteen. They were both suspected of being involved in numerous other crimes, including homicides, but there hadn’t been enough evidence to bring charges against them in those cases, usually because the bodies were never found or because witnesses mysteriously disappeared before they could testify for the grand jury.

  But the murders were enough to put these two away for life, especially combined with multiple charges of attempted murder, rape, extortion, con
spiracy, drug trafficking, arson, kidnapping, and assorted other felonies.

  The only reason they hadn’t gotten the death penalty was because the feds had intervened in their cases and persuaded the judges that Madigan and Watson would be more valuable alive. They were important figures in the criminal underworlds of the Midwest and the West Coast, and if they could be persuaded to talk, they might lead to people even higher up the chain . . .

  So far Madigan and Watson hadn’t said anything to federal interrogators except for the occasional anatomically impossible suggestion.

  They had been talking to each other, though, here in the federal pen. Talking trash. Like now, when Madigan set the barbell he’d been using back on its stand and said, “What are you doing here, you—”

  He finished the question with an obscenely modified ethnic slur.

  Watson grinned at him and said, “That’s hate speech. That’s against the rules. You might hurt my feelings.”

  “Why don’t you go—” More invective spewed out of Madigan’s mouth, followed by, “This is my time to work out, and you know it.”

  “They had to rearrange my busy schedule,” Watson said mockingly. “Got a meeting with my new lawyer in a little while.”

  “How many lawyers does that make?”

  Watson’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.

  “I’ve lost count. For some reason they don’t like me. Important thing is, I get my hour outside now.”

  Madigan glared at the guards who had brought Watson out here into the yard.

  “Can he do that?” Madigan asked.

  “The warden says he can,” one of the guards replied.

  Madigan described the warden in unflattering terms, then said, “He’s just scared of some chickenshit lawsuit. Doesn’t want the ACLU on his back screaming about discrimination.”

  “Got to be fair,” Watson said. “Now get your ass outta here, white boy.”

  One of Madigan’s guards said, “Come on, Bronco. Maybe we can bring you back later, get you a little extra time today.”

  Madigan nodded. He still wore his leg irons, but his shackles had been removed so that he could work with the weights. Now he stuck his arms out so the shackles could be fastened around his wrists again.

  At least, that’s what it looked like he was doing at first. But as Watson took another step toward the weights, Madigan suddenly whirled and lunged at the huge black man.

  Madigan’s attack was so swift that Watson didn’t have time to brace himself. The impact as Madigan slammed into him drove him backward. With his legs in irons like they were, Watson couldn’t catch his balance. He crashed to the ground with Madigan on top of him.

  One of the guards yelled, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” into a walkie-talkie, letting the sharpshooters on the wall know to hold their fire. A couple of others yanked short clubs from holsters on their belts, underneath the parkas, and rushed forward to bludgeon Madigan on his bare back as he tried to get his hands around Watson’s throat.

  The blows seemed to have no effect on Madigan. He ignored them as he continued grappling with Watson. He tried to drive his knee into Watson’s groin, but Watson twisted from side to side, blocking Madigan’s efforts with his thighs.

  He hammered a punch against Madigan’s left ear. Madigan might not have felt it when the guards hit him, but Watson’s fist had so much power behind it that it couldn’t be ignored. The blow slewed Madigan’s head to the side and unbalanced him enough that Watson was able to heave him off.

  Watson rolled away and came to his feet just ahead of Madigan. With incredible agility, Watson let himself fall backward and kicked Madigan in the face with both feet while Madigan was still on one knee. That left both men stretched out on the ground. Madigan was stunned, though, and Watson wasn’t. The black man scrambled up and dived at Madigan. He looped his arms over Madigan’s shaven head and tightened the shackles against his throat.

  “Now you’re gonna die, you damn skinhead,” Watson growled in Madigan’s ear.

  Madigan’s face started turning purple as Watson cut off his air. Bucking and heaving, Madigan fought to get loose, but to no avail. His knees scrabbled around on the asphalt yard, but he couldn’t get enough purchase to throw Watson off him. His hands were free, but he couldn’t pry the chain away from his throat, no matter how hard he tried.

  The guards had all backed off, and now the one with the walkie-talkie gave the order to fire. Shots sounded from the top of the wall, but they weren’t the high-pitched cracks of regular rifles. Watson stiffened as the needles of the tranquilizer rounds pierced his shirt and stabbed through skin into muscle. The drugs they pumped into him spread rapidly through his body along with the blood driven by his wildly pounding heart. The adrenaline coursing through him just made the knockout rounds take effect that much quicker.

  Watson went limp as he passed out.

  Finally, Madigan was able to pull his head out of the other convict’s deadly grip. He rolled Watson off him and surged to his knees, gasping for breath. As soon as he got enough air in his lungs, he let out of a bellow of rage, clubbed his hands together, and raised his arms, obviously intending to batter Watson’s face until the man was dead.

  Madigan paused before the blow could fall and lowered his head to stare stupidly at the hypodermic rounds protruding from his chest where they had just struck him. After a moment he snarled, ripped the needles loose, and threw them to the side.

  “Good Lord!” one of the guards gasped. “There’s enough of the stuff in him to knock out a horse.”

  Madigan seemed to forget about Watson. He lumbered to his feet and swung around toward the guards. As he did, two more rounds fired from the wall struck him in the back. He staggered a little as he took a step, then weaved wildly as he tried to take another. He flung his arms out to the side in an attempt to balance himself on his tree trunk-like legs.

  It was no use. The drugs finally caught up to him, and his eyes rolled up in their sockets. He toppled forward, again like a tree—one that had been cut down at the base. The ground didn’t actually shake when he landed on it . . . but he was so big it seemed like it should have.

  The guards were sweating now despite the cold.

  “Just think,” one of them said. “They’re both in here for life. That means we’re never gonna get rid of those monsters!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Bakersfield, California, six months before the New Sun

  “Don’t you ever sweat?” the member of the crew in the front passenger seat asked Nick Hatcher.

  “Why would I sweat?” Nick asked from behind the wheel of the getaway van. “The weather’s nice and cool today.”

  One of the men in the backseat laughed.

  “Nick doesn’t get rattled. That’s why he’s the best wheelman in the business.”

  “Maybe not the best,” Nick said, not taking his eyes off the traffic around them. “Oh, who am I trying to kid? I am the best.”

  “See?” Chadbourne said. He had put this crew together and was the nominal leader. “That’s how you stay alive in this business, by surrounding yourself with good people.”

  “I think you mean talented people,” Nick said. “We’re bank robbers. We can’t actually be considered good.”

  Chadbourne laughed and said, “We can debate philosophy later. There’s the bank, just up the block.”

  Nick knew perfectly well where the bank was. He had scouted it half a dozen times in the past two weeks, since the crew had gathered in Bakersfield in response to Chadbourne’s summons. He knew every building, every foot of sidewalk, every pothole in the pavement for blocks around. Preparation was the key to success . . . and often to survival.

  The other man in the front seat was named Harris. He was short and stocky, with curly black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. In the backseat with Chadbourne was Galloway, tall and lanky with blond hair that tended to fall across his forehead. Chadbourne was the oldest of the bunch, close to fifty, square-faced, mostly bald. Since he
’d first gone away to juvie at fourteen, he had spent almost exactly as much time behind bars as he had out. That didn’t mean he wasn’t good at what he did, though. It was just that he pulled so many jobs, the law of averages kept catching up to him.

  Nick was the youngest member of the crew, but he had been at the game long enough that he was considered an old pro, anyway. He had never been caught, never done time. Although it wasn’t evident when he was behind the wheel, he was tall and well-built, with the body of a tight end. His brown hair tended to stick straight up, which was why he kept it cut fairly short.

  The bank’s parking lot sat to the right of the building. Nick hung a bogus handicapped parking placard from the rearview mirror as he pulled in. All four handicapped spaces, the closest ones to the bank’s front door, were empty at the moment. He parked in the one all the way to the left. A wide sidewalk was between him and the street.

  He would have been able to get out quicker if he’d backed in, but a van backing up like that at a bank might draw too many curious glances. Pulling straight in like he had made everything look normal, which was exactly what they wanted.

  Chadbourne put on a baseball cap and tugged down the brim a little. He picked up a cane and opened the door beside him. People resented an able-bodied person taking up a handicapped space, which meant they were more likely to notice something like that. If somebody got out moving stiffly and using a cane, though, that was all it took to alleviate suspicion. Even if the other people who got out of the vehicle—in this case, Harris and Galloway—didn’t seem to be handicapped, it didn’t matter. Chadbourne’s slow-moving, slightly awkward gait was enough to justify parking there.

  Harris wore a baseball cap, too. Galloway was in a hoodie with the hood pulled up. The air was cool enough today to warrant that. Some crews rushed in wearing ski masks or helmets and body armor, so that things got tense and potentially violent right away. Chadbourne and his men strolled into a bank, unobtrusively keeping their heads turned just at the right moments to make sure the cameras didn’t get a good enough shot of them to be identified in court. Only after they were inside and had sized up everything would the guns come out.