Undeclared War (9 page)

Musclehead was not going anywhere for a while, certainly not until someone removed the pinning knife. The pain of the wound, and the fact that the side of the blade was pressing against a branch of his median nerve, would keep Musclehead from even considering trying to pull the blade out himself.

Continuing with the circular motion of his body, Reaper turned to face where Gun Weasel lay on the floor. The Desert Eagle was to the man's side, where Reaper stepped over and picked up the huge weapon.
Gun Weasel was unconscious, though breathing raggedly. He was not an immediate concern.

Turning back to Musclehead, Reaper took a quick glance at his handiwork with a knife. He could see that there was no arterial spurting from the wound around the blade, the hilt of which was deep into the arm. It wasn't that he was at all concerned for Musclehead's welfare, but he might need information from him later. The thug probably wouldn't bleed to death, though falling into shock was a very real possibility. Reaper grabbed Musclehead's right hand and slapped it down against the thug's inside upper left arm.

“Hold it or die,” Reaper said grimly. Then he turned to where Deckert lay on the floor.

His friend's eyes were open and he was aware of what Reaper had done—he had been only feigning unconsciousness to try and give Reaper his chance.

“You about done now?” Deckert said.

“Yeah,” Reaper said as he pulled his friend up and righted the wheelchair. Helping Deckert back into the chair, Reaper grabbed the M1911A1 lying on the counter and put it in his partner's hand.

The situation was moving fast and Reaper didn't notice the mistake he had just made. His immediate concerns were for his friend and his family. And the only certain source of information about Reaper's family was getting farther away by the moment. Snatching up a rag from the counter, Reaper pressed it against the side of Deckert's head where he was still bleeding.

“Okay, enough,” Deckert said, “I'll be all right.
You have to get after that asshole in the suit. Take the cab, I can hold these two.”

Deckert waved to the key cabinet underneath the cash register behind him. “Get the keys and move you slow-ass squid,” he growled. “Leave this mess to me.”

His friend was hurt but functioning. And Reaper knew that his family was in real danger. Reaper accepted the situation and dashed around the counter, slowing only long enough to grab the indicated set of car keys as he headed back to the garage.

But just as Reaper was leaving, he heard Musclehead, still in his pained voice, futilely scream at the unconscious Gun Weasel, “Get up. We've got to stop that crazy Marine from going after Arzee!”

Now Reaper knew who he was chasing—this Arzee character could expect a lot of pain unless Reaper found his family, safe and alive, soon.

Closest to the house door of the garage was Keith Deckert's favorite vehicle. Even if he wasn't able to drive it as he had in the past, he meticulously maintained the stealth hotrod he had built, keeping it ready to go at a moment's notice. As Reaper dashed into the garage, hitting the garage door opener on the wall, he lowered the hammer on the Desert Eagle that he was still holding and stuck the big pistol into his pants pocket. Then he started pulling the protective tarp covering off the car as the door started to rise.

Removing the tarp revealed nothing more exciting-looking than a 1972 model Checker cab. The square, boxy front end of the cab, with its two pairs of headlights held in oval chrome metal frames at the upper corners, had the styling of a 1950s-era family sedan. The vehicle even had the white plastic roof light with the name
CHECKER
on it in block lettering. The whole body of the cab was bright yellow with a white-and-black checkerboard stripe running
along either side of the body and doors. The outside of the vehicle was purely just a Checker cab, but a lot of the inner workings no longer were.

The car was a “sleeper.” What you saw was not what you got. Keith Deckert had built the Checker cab over years as a pet project. The only time the Checker was really seen in public was during what was called the Woodward Dream Cruise in the summer where the sound of the vehicle was a popular favorite.

Under the hood of the Checker was a 454 Chevy Big Block V-8 engine bored out oversize to 505 cubic inches and fitted with forged extra-strength pistons. The engine had large diameter custom-formed headers and a big single 2x4 Holley four-barrel carburetor giving it a base horsepower of 550. A precharger kept the engine's oil up, lubricating the system and eliminating warm-up oil problems. The Checker could move out at top speed very soon after starting.

The power of the engine went through a rebuilt heavy-duty Turbo-Hydramatic 400 transmission with a Griner aluminum billet racing valve-body and a 3.73:1 differential gear on the rear axle. The suspension of the cab had been beefed up with extra control arms with solid bushings. A remote cutout in the exhaust system allowed the muffler to be bypassed by the driver at the flip of a switch.

With the muffler cutout operating, the roar of the engine could deafen people standing close by. More than just a noise producer, the cutout system added a few more horsepower to increase the speed of the cab. That wasn't the only trick under the deceptive
body of the Checker. The vehicle and engine had been fitted with a Holley Cheater nitrous oxide system (NOS).

In the trunk was bolted down a twenty-pound bottle of nitrous oxide. The gas bottle had a Holley NOS remote bottle control so the driver didn't even have to open the trunk to turn on the main valve. Turning a switch on the dashboard would remotely open the gas bottle and charge up the system.

After Deckert had tuned the big Chevy engine and knew what he wanted, and what the V-8 would accept, he had fitted the carburetor with his choice of the metering jets that finally bled the nitrous oxide into the air/fuel flow. A remote key switch on the dashboard would arm the NOS system. Lifting the red safety cover and flipping the lighted blue toggle switch underneath it would open the electric solenoids that released the nitrous oxide into the engine.

With the nitrous going, the roar of the Chevy V-8 would sound like it belonged on the deck of an aircraft carrier as the exhaust cutouts would automatically open if they hadn't already been set that way.

It was a lot more than sound that resulted from dumping nitrous oxide into a carburetor and an engine system tuned for it. For a maximum of thirty seconds, the engine would suddenly have 250 extra horsepower. The top speed of the Checker was over 130 miles an hour with the tricked-out V-8. Pushed by 800 horsepower, the Checker would top out at over 160 miles an hour as it accelerated from the nitrous. The Checker became a huge, blunt steel missile.

The weakness of the system was that the vehicle
just couldn't maneuver well. At speed, the cab had a huge turning radius, and even then it risked flipping free of the road surface. In a straight line, the vehicle was in its element. The main limiting factor of the Checker was that it couldn't push the air out of its way any faster.

Opening the door and climbing into the cab, Reaper pulled out the Desert Eagle and tossed it down on the seat next to him. He pulled up the seat harness with its double shoulder straps and locked it in place around his waist. Sticking the key into the ignition, he fired up the big engine and it caught on the first crank.

The interior of the garage echoed with the sudden roar of something that was definitely not your average car engine. The sound quickly settled into a muted rumble as the muffler of the exhaust system suppressed the sound of the engine. Stopping for a moment, Reaper used both hands to disconnect the NOS safety key from the key ring. Sticking the key into its socket on the dashboard to the right of the ignition key, Reaper turned it and the light came on under the NOS switch. The red safety cover of the nitrous switch now glowed like a spot of blood on the dashboard, the lettering that said
ARMED
easily visible.

Reaper quickly backed out of the garage and started after the Corvette. The expression on his face was one of grim purposefulness, one you would not want to see if you were the reason for it in the first place.

Being way back in the country now worked very well in Reaper's favor. There was only one way back
to the highway, the main road to Detroit. The chance that the Corvette had turned north was minimal. The only thing for miles in that direction was more open country and then Port Huron thirty miles away. To the east was the Huron River and Canada on the other side. But the Corvette had Michigan plates on it. Reaper followed his instinct and turned in the direction of the highway.

 

Having lived in the city for most of his life, Arzee did not spend much time in the country. Having grown up in the dirt and squalor of the industrial areas around Detroit, he hated the dirt fields and mud of the country. He did find the open rural areas had one advantage that appealed to him. While traveling over the country roads, Arzee had been speeding, but not by very much.

He barreled through a long S-curve in the road and felt the Vette stick to the ground like it was running on a track. Traffic seemed to be nonexistent on the well-maintained long country road. There was a huge stretch of marshland to his left and just the occasional farmhouse, barn, or outbuilding breaking up the trees and fields to his right.

Coming out of the turn, he was looking down a several-miles-long stretch of empty road that had no stops, turns, or traffic, very little even in the way of crossroads except for one every mile or so. It was a big temptation to let the classic Corvette stretch out a bit, a temptation that Arzee indulged himself in.

The 350 cubic inch V-8 under the long, low hood growled louder as Arzee fed more fuel into its four-
barrel carburetor. Two-hundred horsepower pushed the streamlined sports car down the road as the speedometer swept past sixty miles an hour, on its way to seventy.

Arzee was a few miles from the gunshop and well satisfied with the way things had gone. Paxtun had told him that Reaper was an ex-Navy SEAL, as if that was supposed to frighten him. Reaper may have helped force Paxtun out of the service, but that hadn't meant anything to Arzee when he met Reaper. Sure, the guy looked like he could be a hardcase, but you didn't always judge things just by looks. This tough SEAL crap was just a bunch of Hollywood hype and TV bullshit. When it had come right down to it, Reaper had just stood there and done nothing while Arzee had told him exactly what was what and how things were going to be done. So much for tough looks.

As far as Arzee was concerned, it didn't take much in the way of brains to pull a trigger for the military, and Arzee had little respect for those men who had joined the Army, Navy, or whatever rather than try to make it on the outside as he had.

The plan Arzee had put together to secure the guns and maintain a tight leash on Reaper looked as if it would work fine. If Reaper went to the police and complained about his family's disappearance, he would have to convince the officers that his wife had been kidnapped, and that might take some doing.

It was far more likely that the authorities would think Reaper had done in his family himself—the idea of a rogue ex-SEAL committing such a crime wouldn't be hard to swallow. The phone call the
wife had been forced to make to the local police saying she was in fear of her life would reinforce that idea.

When Reaper supplied the guns they wanted, their firepower should be enough to satisfy Ishmael that Paxtun's organization was doing all that it could to support their Islamic brothers in their struggle. If the guns were recovered down the line after Ishmael had used them, they could only be traced to Reaper—who would have already committed “suicide” in his remorse over killing his wife, and then his business partner. At least that would be the way any carefully planted evidence would point.

The problem about the lost weapons looked to be under control. Arzee was very glad he had found the information about Reaper's family and was able to put it to immediate use.

His men would be leaving the gunshop about now, if they weren't already gone. Arzee expected little trouble from that quarter. The hardware would be secured. He was certain that Reaper and his partner would work their asses off to turn out more of the exotic shotguns over the next three days—just as they had been told to.

From what Paxtun had said, Chief Reaper's weakness for children and families had been demonstrated in Bosnia. The kids there hadn't even been his brats. With his own wife and child being held hostage, he couldn't risk any harm coming to them.

Arzee was quite proud of the way his plan had unfolded. There would be loose ends, but those could be made to disappear. With Reaper as a cutout, any investigation leading to him would stop
there. What specifically was to be done with him, his friend, and his family could be decided later after his usefulness was at an end.

The S-curve wasn't much more than a quarter mile behind Arzee when he noticed another vehicle coming up behind him in the rearview mirror. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't a cop car unless he was passing by Mayberry out here in the sticks. His radar detector hadn't gone off and it didn't look like any cop car he had seen outside of an old movie or TV show. It was some kind of boxy, vintage design, with a front grill like an old Plymouth or something. Still, the old beast was catching up to him. He'd let it get closer and figure out what it was before bolting away in a real performance car.

When he looked in the mirror again, Arzee could see that the old car was noticeably closer. He could make out some details now and was astonished to see that it was a cab of all things that was catching up to him. His surprise caused him to let up on the gas, slowing slightly, allowing the cab to close up even more.

Just what was a cab doing way out here? Some farm clod needed a ride? That was going to be some fare. This was not the area where you could expect a cab to just be passing by. The driver must have had the gas pedal pushing through the floorboards to be catching up to the Vette the way it was.

Then the cab was close enough that Arzee could make out real details, and what he saw caused his blood to freeze. There was a sudden buzzing in his ears as his blood pressure skyrocketed and his skin itched from muscular reaction. Behind the wheel of
that cab was Reaper! And his expression made him look like death itself was driving that horrible yellow car.

Arzee was suddenly so scared that he whimpered a little, though he couldn't hear himself do so. In fact, he would have found it almost impossible to make any coherent sound given the fact that his mouth and throat had suddenly gone as dry as a sun-pounded beach in August. He pressed down on the gas pedal, trusting in the power of his classic car to run away from the devil in a box that was right behind him. Slowly, he started to pull away.