Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

The skinny guy glanced toward the side window.

McNulty shook his head. “They know about the rat pit. Won’t eat me fast enough that they won’t find the body. Then forensic swabs for explosives and, bang, you’re up in smoke for multiple homicide and no cut of the heist.”

He nodded toward Billy Bob. “Only play you’ve got to keep your family together is to get out front of this thing. Stop it from happening.” He raised his eyebrows. “Who knows? You might be the heroes of this story. Get a reward.”

That got Billy Bob’s attention. “Reward?”

McNulty smiled at the idiot brother. “If you stop a million dollars from getting robbed and save a hundred lives? Damn right there’d be a reward for that, don’t you think?”

“Except we put the explosives in the Mickey Mouse float.”

The skinny guy elbowed Billy Bob in the groin.

McNulty shook his head. “That’s not how you play it. You renovated the float. The other guys used your cabin for the explosives but you didn’t know about that until now. Good citizen thing. You came forward as soon as you realized what was going on.”

The skinny guy looked at McNulty. “When they catch them fellas, you think they won’t roll over on us?”

McNulty softened his eyes. “The military guys armed to the teeth? Do you really think they’re going to come quietly? Those types don’t surrender. They go down fighting. Only people left to tell this story is us.”

Billy Bob looked nervous. The other men didn’t look much better. The skinny guy glanced at his brother and knew this was the only way out. He closed his eyes while he considered his options. The music stopped, leaving an uneasy silence. The cabin creaked and ticked and settled. McNulty looked at each man individually. This was taking too long. He softened his tone. “You like your movies. How about this? Conspiracy thriller based on the JFK assassination. The Parallax View?”

The skinny guy opened his eyes. This was one he didn’t know. “What?”

McNulty laid it out for him. “Warren Beatty. This corporation sets up guys with an unstable background to be present when an assassination takes place. Cops find him trying to get away and shoot him. Inquiry afterward rules that he was a lone gunman.”

He sat up and focused on the skinny guy. “Like Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. All caught on the Zapruder film.” He let out a sigh. “Well, I’ve got the Zapruder film. And these guys are on it. Not you. But the heist? The explosion? There won’t be any film of that. And they’ve already set up the lone gunman. You.” He tapped the table for emphasis. “You’re Lee Harvey Oswald. And they didn’t leave Oswald alive.”

Everybody turned to face McNulty. No one was looking out the windows. There was a long awkward moment, then the skinny guy took a deep breath and got ready to speak. He didn’t get a chance. The first gunshot smashed the front window and took the man standing there square in the back.

FORTY-FOUR

Three more shots put the window man down forever. Solid grouping. Center mass. No risky headshots. Everybody hit the floor at the same time. Two shots thudded into the wall right behind where the other window man had been standing. A third hit the grandfather clock, setting off musical chimes as the bullet ricocheted around the pendulum.

The shots stopped as quickly as they’d started. This wasn’t a Die Hard shootout. There wasn’t a fusillade of gunfire smashing everything in sight but not hitting anyone. This was targeted shooting. As if to prove McNulty wrong, three shots shattered the rest of the front window and three more took out the glass from the side window. This kept everyone’s heads down, not giving them time to stand up and return fire.

The skinny guy crawled to the fallen man and checked the pulse in his neck. It was a natural reaction, but all it did was confirm the obvious. Four holes had punched through the chest and had already stopped bleeding. The heart wasn’t pumping anything out. The leader lowered his head and blew out his cheeks. He looked back at his brother and jerked his head toward the metal cabinet. The gun locker. Billy Bob nodded and scrambled across the floor.

Two more gunshots sounded outside. Bullets punched through metal, followed by a hissing noise. Two additional shots took out the second car. There’d be no speedy getaway unless it was in the car in the workshop. McNulty looked at the skinny guy. “Is the car on the ramp driveable?”

The leader moved to the middle of the room. “Yeah. Bodywork’s finished. Engine’s fine.”

McNulty thought about camera angles and making a miss look like a hit. Fooling the eye by making the viewer look the wrong way. “Can you get to it from here?”

The skinny guy nodded toward the bedroom. “Back door. Against the overpass wall. Access door into the workshop.”

McNulty kept low beside the dining table. “You’ll need a distraction.”

The skinny brother let out a sigh. “Like Mickey Mouse?” He turned sad eyes on McNulty. “You were right. I fucked up. It’s for me to un-fuck it.”

McNulty raised himself on one elbow. “I’m as fucked as you are. This is a team effort now.”

The leader shook his head. “You’re not on our team.”

His brother opened the firearms cabinet, which hadn’t been locked. The rifles in their cradles weren’t chained or padlocked. Billy Bob pulled out three target rifles and a pump-action shotgun. He tossed a rifle each to the other two men then held up the last rifle and the shotgun. The skinny guy pointed at the shotgun and Billy Bob lobbed it over the settee. McNulty held his hands out. The skinny guy looked at him. “You firearms trained?”

McNulty knew the basics but hadn’t specialized. Back in England, uniformed patrol officers were unarmed so his only training had been in Savage, Maryland. The Savage PD training had been