“Are you sure?” Grosskopf seemed to delight in doubting Anka.
“Hey,” I defended, “It’s her plan. Let her run with it.”
Anka smiled at me and then looked up and down the corridor. She trotted back to the cart with the cardboard and grabbed a piece. She tore off small pieces and started dropping them in her wake. We followed again, but this time we were walking. After several more turns we came around to see the cart with cardboard. A few more strides and we saw Anka’s trail.
“Damn,” she threw down the cardboard in disgust.
“What if we take left turns? That should get us out.”
“Or get us further lost,” Grosskopf complained.
“For a brilliant neuroscientist you aren’t very good with logic,” I said, “If there’s a right-turn circle, then taking lefts will almost surely get us out. There would have to be several self-contained sections of the mall completely surrounded by service corridors for us to make both right and left circles.”
“Whatever you say,” the doctor sighed.
“Right, Anka, let’s try it again but this time with the left turns.”
She smiled at me again and we headed off. We made the first turn and then the second before I heard sounds from behind. They didn’t make me think of feckless mall employees trudging to the recycling bin.
“I think the agents are into the corridors,” I whispered up to Anka.
She turned and nodded while holding her finger to her lips. Grosskopf sighed again. I wanted to smack him in the back of the head. We walked on silently. I hoped that the cardboard breadcrumbs would keep the agents busy long enough for us to escape.
Around another bend and we saw the freight elevator. Anka pressed the call button and we climbed inside. I was nervous about the noise, but it couldn’t be helped. The freight elevator was very likely to be near the loading dock, so we were well served to take it.
We clanked inside and closed the doors. As the motor whirred to take us up, I thought I saw someone come around the corner, but then we were between floors. When we got to the top I pushed the others out of the elevator and intentionally left the doors open. No one would follow us via the elevator for now. Grosskopf ran on ahead to the loading dock. It smelled of dusty cardboard, rotting garbage and diesel fumes. I looked at Anka and then back to the doctor just in time to see Agent Jones put a gun to his head.
“Nicely played, Agent,” Anka called to him.
“Surrender yourselves or the doctor dies.”
“Wait,” I said, “Don’t you want
us
dead and
him
alive?”
Jones looked confused for a moment before shrugging, throwing Grosskopf to the ground and pointing his gun at us. We dove around the corner just as his shots pierced the air we’d been occupying.
“Maybe,” Anka puffed, “in the future don’t encourage people to shoot at us.”
“Right. My bad.”
She grinned at me despite the situation. I seized on the moment and kissed her; I’d been wanting to do that since she hosed down the ice.
“Now what?”
“We need a gun.”
Without saying more, Anka headed back to the elevator where she closed the doors. It immediately started descending at the call of the person below. She grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back against the wall on the side of the elevator. Hopefully Smith would make it up before Jones came around the corner. In the distance we heard swearing and scuffling.
“Dammit Doctor! Get off my leg.”
Well done Grosskopf. We pressed ourselves against the wall and waited until the elevator arrived. After the inner doors opened I readied my best Krav Maga move for taking a weapon. When Smith put his hand through to open the outer doors of the freight elevator, I jumped forward and grabbed his hand. With a quick pull I knocked his face against the elevator doors. He was stunned but not out. Anka came in and pulled the doors the rest of the way open while I applied a wrist lock. She removed his gun and extra clips, shoved them in the back of her skirt waistband and applied the sleeper hold to Agent Smith this time.
“You’re going to have one bastard of a headache after this.” Anka slowly lowered him to the ground.
“Wow, you’re good at that move.”
“Lots of practice. Now, let’s go get Grosskopf.”
Anka drew the gun, pulled back the slide and flicked off the safety. Her competent handling of the gun was more than a little sexy. I’m pretty sure she knew it from the dimples that flashed as she walked past me.
“What’s the plan,” I whispered.
“Let’s try this, you do your Parkour running thing and just run past the loading dock door. Jones will see you, be distracted and then I’ll pop out and shoot him.”
“Um…that sounds dangerous.”
“We’re using guns here, everything is dangerous.”
“Good point. Ready?”
“Ready.”
So I channeled the Parkour videos and took off running down the hallway. When I got to the point just across from the loading dock, I launched up onto the wall and, for a few steps, ran across the wall about two feet off the ground. Gravity demanded penance so I landed hard on the other side and fell to my knees, but behind me gunfire had already erupted. Small portions of the wall were exploding where I’d been running. Then Anka poked her head out and fired off three rounds. Bang-bang, bang.
Slowly I got up. My knees and wrists were sore from my fall to the concrete. There were no more shots fired. I looked over to see that Anka was unhurt. She’d pulled back behind the wall after her shots were fired. She nodded at me and I nodded back to her. In unison we poked our heads around the corner to see a crumpled pile of humanity.
Slowly we walked forward. Anka kept her gun trained on the mass of limbs and torsos as we edged closer. When we were within a few feet a groan sounded from within the pile. Anka stepped up, found the gun with her foot and kicked it toward me. I picked it up and tried to hold it as confidently as Anka.
“Cover me.”
I did what I thought she meant by that. I pointed the gun at the part of the pile that was mostly Jones while she put her gun back in the waist of her skirt and knelt down. An ever-expanding pool of blood oozed out from under the bodies. First Anka checked the pulse at Jones’ neck. I saw her frown for a moment and then sigh. Then she found Grosskopf’s neck and checked him for life. The same frown appeared, but then she immediately started disentangling him from the Jones-pile.
“He’s alive.”
“Who? Grosskopf?”
“Yeah, Jones is dead.” It almost sounded like there was a break in her voice.
She pulled the doctor free and we saw a red, wet stain on the front of his tan sport coat. Crap. Anka pulled his jacket back and then ripped open the hole in his shirt to show the wound just below his right collarbone. Grosskopf groaned.
“Get me the agent’s tie and his socks.”
“What?” I was frozen, shocked.
“Move!”
I stumbled over to the dead body and groped his tie off with fumbling hands. Then I pulled off his shoes and socks. The unresisting feet made the task feel ghoulish. As I returned to Anka with the requested material I saw her with her hand behind the doctor’s right shoulder.
“Damn.”
“What now?”
“The bullet didn’t go through. It’s still inside. Give me the socks.”
I handed her the black socks and she wadded them up into one ball of fabric.
“Here, press this against the wound.”
I held the sock-wad on the bullet hole while Anka took the tie. She slid it under the doctor’s shoulder and armpit and then tied the tie around the socks to hold them in place.
“That’ll hold him for now, but we’ll need to get him some help soon. Now we have to move.”
“What about the body?”
“Good point.”
“Wait, I have an idea.” I took off running back to the elevator and dragged Smith over to the hallway. I then took Jones’ gun and put it in Smith’s hand.
“The ballistics are all wrong. It’ll never fool an investigator.”
“No, but the people that’ll be really investigating this already know who we are. This is just to keep the cops from looking for more people while we run.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s a good idea then.”
“What hospital do you want to go to?”
“For what?”
“For the doctor. You said he needs help.”
“We can’t go to the hospital. They’ll pick us up for sure. We have to find a place to stabilize him. Can we get back to your place?”
“I don’t think we can really take him on the MAX in his condition.”
“You’re right. Good thing we’re at the mall then.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, we’ve got a car to pick out.”
General Hospital
Anka drove while I searched for videos on how to remove a bullet and dress a wound. I found a good survivalist site that had videos for most things. After watching a few I had to stop to settle my stomach, as much from the blood as from looking down while Anka drove.
“We’ll need to stop and get some supplies before I can patch him up.”
Anka grunted in response. She weaved through traffic on I-5 as we headed north toward Washington. Not only were we headed toward Grosskopf’s lab, but also right for Anka’s boss who had tried to kill her on several occasions. She wasn’t happy about it.
“If you pull in at Janzten Beach we can get the stuff we need. It’s the last exit before the bridge.”
“I know where it is.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.”
It didn’t sound fine, but I dropped it. I looked into the back seat of the Suburban and saw that Grosskopf was awake and looking at us. He looked pale but lucid.
“You alright, man?”
After a swallow and a pause he nodded.
“Where are we headed?”
“Seattle, just like you said. We need to get to your lab.”
“What happened to the agents? I just remember getting shot at.”
“Yeah,” Anka said, “Sorry about that.”
“You shot at me?”
“Not at you per se, but you happened to be in the way. I thought you would be lower.”
“Oh. Jones pulled me back up after you guys went around the corner.”
“Like I said, sorry.”
“Well, now I’ll have a story to tell at parties, I guess.” The doctor laughed at his own joke, but ended up coughing spasmodically.
“Hold on,” I said, “We’re stopping to get first aid supplies and then I’ll patch you up. Take it easy until then.”
“Yeah,” Grosskopf said between coughs.
I turned to Anka. Her jaw was clenched tight. Her pulled-back hair stuck out in wisps all over and there was a streak of blood on her cheek. But at the corner of her mouth I saw a little quiver that made me nervous. If this was her first assignment, then this was probably the first person she’d ever killed. It was hard enough for me to touch the body, but she’d transformed it from a person into a pile.
“You okay?”
She glanced over at me, her face was still stone but her eyes pleaded. I answered the question I thought she was asking.
“You didn’t have any choice. He was going to kill us. That wasn’t the first time he tried. If you hadn’t done something we’d be dead now. It was him or us.”
She looked back at the road and nodded, but still didn’t look like she believed me. Anka pulled off the freeway and into the Target parking lot. She tossed some money at me and told me to go get the supplies.
“I’m going to see about our vehicle. Hurry back.”
I walked into the store and quickly grabbed a first aid kit, rubbing alcohol, an Exacto knife and some tweezers. As an afterthought I also grabbed some trail mix, Gatorade and chips. Walking back out to the SUV I saw Anka kneeling down behind it. She got up as I approached and gave me a quick grin.
“I hope that the soccer mom over there doesn’t mind us borrowing her plates.”
“What did you do?”
“I just swapped plates with that minivan over there. Now when this Suburban is reported stolen they won’t be able to find us immediately. It should give us the time to get up to Seattle.”
“Clever girl.”
“Uh…thanks?”
“No it’s from…ah never mind. When we get out of this I’m going to have to show you a ton of movies.”
“Why?”
“So you know what I’m saying most of the time.”
“Oh, was that a movie reference?”
“Just a little bit.”
“Well excuuuuuse me!”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Despite the bleeding doctor inside a stolen SUV in which we were fleeing for our lives while heading into a death trap, I laughed. I laughed at the worst Urkel impression that has ever been attempted. I stepped over to Anka and embraced her. It wasn’t a sexual thing, just an impulsive outburst of affection for someone who desperately needed it. I don’t know if I’d ever done something like that before.
After a moment of hugging I pulled away to see her eyes wet. Maybe that was a good thing.