Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys (A Brick Ransom Adventure) Read online

  Nick and Ransom watched from below as the chopper circled back toward the building in a swooping turn, the pilot barely maintaining control.

  “What the fuck is going on in there?” Ransom shouted.

  “It’s coming back at us! What should I do?” Nick screamed.

  “Get ready to duck!”

  The engine sputtered and whirred, threatening to stall.

  In the cabin, Tim again spun around to fire at Jeff, who tried his best to stick close to the floor, even as the handcuffs held his hand fast to the armrest. His other arm was throbbing now, the coat sleeve growing a deep crimson as blood from the bullet wound bled through the fabric.

  Will was going to be pissed!

  The fear of his valet’s wrath gave Jeff a boost of energy.

  He leapt to his feet, lunging towards Tim in an awkward repeat of his previous, highly successful kick. This time his foot glanced off the back of the front seat, deflecting slightly, but still hitting Tim in the wrist, sending the handgun flying free, where it hit the side of the cabin and slid out of reach. Tim recoiled in pain, the chopper again swirling out of control as it swooped back and forth over the roof of the hospital.

  The movement knocked Jeff from his feet. He fell backwards awkwardly, his restrained arm wrenching his shoulder as the weight of his body crashed down. He looked down, realizing he was laid out on the flat of silver canisters. Their shiny metal bodies shimmered in the whirling daylight. Jeff reached out to them with his injured arm even as Tim regained control of the chopper, sending the machine lurching from side to side.

  The door to the cabin swung open, and Jeff’s feet slid briefly out into the open air before he caught the bottom of the seat support with his foot. He reached out farther and farther for the canisters.

  Tim saw what he was doing and sent the aircraft into wilder and wilder in-air acrobatics.

  Then Jeff’s fingertips brushed the nearest canisters. His index and middle fingers made contact with the switches, flipping them up with a satisfying electronic ping. Blue lights lit up on the metal bodies. No sooner did the flashes of blue light up his face, than Jeff was sliding across the cabin floor again.

  The copter tilted to the side, and Jeff was suddenly airborne.

  But his flight was brief.

  Snap.

  The handcuff caught his wrist, catching him before he fell. The wrist snapped, twisting and splintering at a terribly improper angle, even as it held him in place.

  Nick watched as Jeff dangled from the side of the copter as it spun wildly. The pilot was trying to shake Jeff out of the aircraft.

  Murray jumped to his feet as the copter swung down toward the platform, its skids coming within inches of the surface, then shooting back up into the air.

  Jeff’s legs kicked wildly. Shouts of pain, panic, and anger roared from his mouth.

  Murray ran for the edge of the platform, pulled a gun from the back pocket of his vest, and aimed for the handcuff chain that clasped Jeff’s wrist to the arm of the passenger chair. He fired two shots, both of which missed their mark as the chopper again spun toward him. Murray ducked, rolling to the side and over the edge of the building towards the next roof level below. He hit the surface with a thud, knocked out from the impact.

  “What’s happening now?” Ransom asked.

  “Pepper’s dangling from the side of the chopper!” Nick shouted.

  “Handcuffs?”

  “I assume! Sure as hell doesn’t look like he’s there on purpose.”

  “Can you hit ‘em?”

  “What?”

  “The cuffs! Can you hit ‘em?”

  Nick turned to him. “Hell, I can try.”

  “Do it!”

  * * *

  Fuck, this hurt.

  Jeff’s wrist was screaming bloody murder.

  His arm was howling like a banshee.

  His body was flailing wildly in the air, exerting all the more pressure on his totaled arm and wrist.

  Plus -- his eyes locked on the twinkling blue lights -- these fucking canisters, whatever the hell they were, were ready to go off any second. The lights racing around the switches were going round and round in faster and faster rotations. He didn’t know much about these things, but his hunch was that that was not good.

  Tim gripped the controls, rocking the aircraft from side to side, trying to tip the platter of canisters out of the cabin. He was having no such luck, but he was sure as hell coming close to tearing Jeff’s arm from its socket.

  Each time the chopper listed down to the right side, Jeff flailed his arms and legs, trying to get a foothold on the skid or the side of the cabin. When it went back in the other direction, Jeff slammed into the side, his body hitting the metal shell with a jolt, the momentum spinning him around.

  To make things worse, the view below was a helter-skelter nightmare -- moving back and forth from rooftop to the freefall possibility of nothing but air. Each time the helicopter, with Jeff dangling from the side, appeared over the edge of the building, he could hear the crowd gasp. He just bet the news crews were having a field day with this. It wasn’t every day the world’s third richest man, the software guy, got battered around like this on live television.

  Oh, and to make matters worse, he’d been shot by his old high school buddy, Brick Ransom. In the instant before the first shot hit him in the shoulder, Jeff had caught a glimpse of his old friend on the rooftop, taking dazed, rather half-assed aim at Simon, and instead hitting him.

  Now he was in this predicament.

  Christ, if he survived this, the footage of this moment would be in every news bio, video tribute toast, and Saturday Night Live sketch from now until the day he died. Hopefully that would come later than sooner! Christ! Hell, let them air this shit whenever the hell they wanted to! Just let him get two feet back on the fucking ground!

  The copter was banking south of the building towards Lake Union. Jeff’s leg movements had slowed, probably from exhaustion.

  Nick held the gun aloft, closed one eye, and took slow, steady aim at the chain above the Pepper’s wrist.

  He’d get one shot.

  One shot, then the pilot would pull away from that building, away from all the gunfire.

  Nick tracked the movement, sweeping his arm to the side, moving the view up and down as the body of the aircraft continued its topsy turvy movements. The aircraft moved over the edge of the building, its engine seeming to sputter and wheeze. Then it started back over the rooftop, and Nick pulled the trigger.

  Kuh-pshow!

  The chain around Jeff’s wrist let go. Completely. One minute he was flying backwards, over the roof. The next he was falling through thin air as the chopper hurtled away, over the edge, over the crowd, to the north of the building. Jeff looked up into the copter’s cabin as he hung in the air, briefly motionless. He locked eyes with Tim as the man struggled at the controls, then held still, his face going slack.

  Behind Tim, in the middle of the cabin, a flash of explosive went off, and a cloud of mist filled the air around him. Jeff watched in horrific curiosity to see what would happen. For a moment it seemed nothing would, then Tim’s eyes seemed to bug out, the whites swelling out of his eyelids. His face and cheeks puffed out in a ghastly expression of surprise, as Tim’s now swollen hands flew up to his neck in panic. Blood seeped from Tim’s eyes as Jeff regained his sense of gravity and began pinwheeling his arms and legs. Still, he looked inside the cabin, saw the burst of blood from Tim’s nose and ears, saw the mist of pink vapor burst from the man’s eyes and mouth. Then he saw the worst of it, the final hiccup, as the man’s body seemed to twist inside out, erupting in a geyser of blood and tissue as the glass on the front of the helicopter was covered in blood.

  Then, Jeff fell towards the rooftop. He twisted his body in the air, trying to direct the impact to his back, turn into it a little. Closer, closer, the rooftop flew up at his face as he hurtled downward.

  Bam!

  He landed with a thud at the edge of th
e platform, the force of the impact sending him flying head over heels toward the ledge, before he stopped, his head and shoulders hanging over the side. He reached out to hold himself in place, his broken wrist on one side, his wounded arm on the other. He closed his eyes in pain, and took a deep breath. When he looked up, a young man, 25, 26, was standing over him, reaching out his hand. Jeff took it, and grunted as the guy pulled him forward, up and away from the edge. He struggled to his feet, dazed, as he heard the sound of his helicopter’s wheezing, gasping, sputtering engine. The two of them looked over at the chopper as it whirled about wildly, its dead pilot’s ruptured remains slumped at the controls.

  The chopper began making wider and ever wilder movements, spinning toward the corner of the building with its rotors. Jeff watched, fascinated, until the young man again pulled on his arm, rather forcefully, leading him towards the metal stairs and away from the platform.

  Then the chopper’s nose tilted down as it hugged the top of the building and rocketed away towards the lake. Its flight was cut short as the rotor blades made contact with the roof, clipping their tips on the concrete surface, and sending shards of metal blasting outwards like an abstract porcupine. Jeff and Nick dove for the stairs and shrapnel screamed through the air around them. When they looked up, the body of the mortally wounded aircraft was hurtling forward, over the edge of the building, in a listing arc, still headed for the lake. The sound faded away as their eyes bulged.

  The machine seemed to hover in the air. Then it moved farther and farther away, off into the distance, over the crowd below, over the buildings of the south campus, and out towards the water, where it quietly and gracefully splashed down in an oddly muted crash landing.

  The twisted, burning wreckage floated in place for a moment, bobbing on the surface, before slipping beneath the waves and disappearing from sight.

  * * *

  The bomb squad disarmed the triggers on the doors, and slowly but surely the people trapped inside the building tumbled out, some running to their friends, who stood at the edge of the crowd, others stumbling out into the fading evening light, their expressions dazed, their eyes half-shut from fatigue, and fear, and exhaustion.

  It took the crowd a few moments to notice Ransom, Jeff, and Nick once they finally made their way from the building. Jeff’s shirt was soaked through with blood. He was limping, his leg injured from his pinwheeling exit from the doomed aircraft. Nick was also struggling to walk. The two of them stumbled along together, balancing out each other’s weight, their gaits resembling the strides of geriatics in a senior citizen three-legged race.

  Ransom followed behind, blinking as his vision slowly returned. No sooner did the crowd recognize them and pinpoint Jeff, than the three of them were surrounded by a mob of cameramen, TV news crews, and pure noise.

  Flashes started popping in their faces.

  Ransom squinted through bleary eyes as the cameras moved in closer and the voices of reporters and well wishers came at them from all sides.

  “We’ve got an injured man here,” Ransom shouted to the crowd. “Step aside, we’ve got an injured man here.”

  Then the crowd parted, sliced down the middle by Sam Ballard and several of his men, who wheeled a gurney between them.

  “Out of the way!” Sam shouted. “Out of the way!”

  Two of the firefighters, along with Ransom and Nick, helped Jeff up onto the edge of the gurney, where he sat for a moment, catching his breath before they leaned him onto his back and rolled him towards a waiting ambulance.

  He was immediately swamped by EMTs, who sliced off his shirt, checked his vitals, pressed on his wounds, and got him ready to go.

  Jeff saw everything through a haze, suddenly slipping into shock from what had happened.

  No, he thought, I can’t do this.

  Mind over matter.

  Sensei will be displeased.

  Just before he closed his eyes, Jeff rolled his head to one side and saw the stand-in for the pilot, Murray, sitting on a stoop on the side of the road, holding an ice pack to his head as an EMT brought him water. Jeff blinked his eyes and lifted his hand to get the man’s attention, then he rolled onto his back and had just enough time to see Nina step into his field of view, her expression worried, but as always, authoritative.

  “Where are you taking him?” she demanded.

  “Right up the street,” someone answered.

  “Well, good,” Nina responded. “They’re the best.”

  “I know we are.”

  Then she walked over to Jeff, put her hand on his shoulder, and climbed in the ambulance along with him as they loaded him up and closed the doors.

  * * *

  The bodies were hard to watch.

  They came out slowly, each in a white zippered bag.

  The workers tried to make each one’s removal quiet and dignified, not to announce each new discovery, but every time a new gurney rolled through the crowd, or agents emerged with another body bag, the news crew went wild trying to get footage.

  Nick sat at the edge of the crowd, watching the latest bags being carried from the building. Were some of them the gunmen? Probably. Were some of them students? He didn’t know. One of them was Renoir, he knew that now. He’d heard some of the agents speaking to an older woman earlier, who’d seemed strong right up until the end, when she grew quiet, pulled in her arms and legs, and without a sound, or a word, leaned forward and crumpled in on herself as the people around her caught her and carried her away. Nick recognized the woman as Renoir’s wife.

  All around him, people were hugging their loved ones, calling their families, or sitting alone, staring off into space. Survivor’s shock.

  For a moment, Nick thought of calling Kendra, telling her that he was all right -- assuming she hadn’t seen anything on TV about the event -- but in his heart, whether he thought she’d be concerned or not, he knew he wouldn’t call. That was over, and it was time that it was resolved. The last of their strained phone conversations had revealed a pretty blatant subtext. They were in love, just not with each other. Each of them sensed that the other was with someone else. Nick had no allusions of Kendra returning to him, and he sensed that she was feeling the same way.

  He made his way out of the front entryway, to the treatment center that had been set up by the curb, where he was greeted by the EMTs and led over to the concrete steps along the exterior of the courtyard. They told him to sit down and relax while his body gathered itself together.

  All Nick could do was picture a face and a feeling, hair and lips and eyes, and her.

  Yes, he had thought of his wife, of Kendra, but she wasn’t the person he wanted to see. Who he needed to see. He needed someone else.

  Then he looked up and saw her coming through the crowd.

  She was looking for him.

  Morgan.

  * * *

  Onion tartlet.

  He had to keep reminding himself.

  He had something good going for him, someone else, someone who might be more than a bit forthcoming tonight, especially after he made her his special meal.

  “Onion tartlet,” Brick muttered to himself.

  “What was that, Ransom?” Aftab turned and asked.

  Onion tartlet.

  “Nothin’.”

  He was watching Morgan and that kid Nick. Goofy guy was all thumbs and elbows. She was pure leg and heart. A vitalic little nymph. A love fawn. An intimate biscuit. Or something. Dammit. He was punchy, and jealous.

  Jealous of two kids in their twenties.

  But how could he not be, she was gorgeous. A fantasy come to life.

  A fantasy.

  Then again, so was Victoria. She had killer arms, and legs, and lips, and hair, and she had one thing more, experience. Oh, and once she’d had his onion tartlet she’d be all but melting for him. Melting.

  He ran through the rest of the recipe in his mind. Then he glanced at his watch. If he headed home now, he could just get things together in time. He could j
ust barely put the finishing touches on dinner, slip the main dish in the oven, and get everything ready to slip in between the sheet.

  The lovebirds let go of each other for a moment. Nick looked over at Ransom and nodded. Ransom nodded back. The he turned and walked over to a Seattle squad car, flashed them his badge, and asked for a ride home.

  * * *

  After they’d answered all the authorities’ questions, Nick and Morgan went to Nick’s place.

  They went to Nick’s place.

  That was a first. In all the excitement of janitorial closets and university back rooms, the two of them had never been together in Nick’s own bed.

  The next day they slept. And slept. Holding each other tightly as morning sunlight streamed in through the curtains, reflecting off the sheets and softly lighting their faces.

  Then the phone rang. Nick rolled over and felt around for it in the mass of dirty laundry piled around the bed. He brought the receiver to his mouth and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes,” a woman’s voice replied. “I’m trying to reach Nick.”

  “Speaking,” Nick answered as he wiped sleep from his eyes.

  “My name is Nina Parker. I’m an associate of Jeff Pepper’s.”

  “Oh,” Nick sat up suddenly. “How can I help you?”

  “We have a proposal for you. Mr. Pepper has been getting a lot of calls from publishers. Everyone wants a book deal with him, they want to put out something on everything that’s happened.”

  “Okay?” Nick replied.

  Nina continued, “In learning more about the people involved, including yourself and Mr. Ransom, Jeff’s friend from the FBI, we learned that you’re an editor at the University.”

  “I was. Not sure there's anyone left for me to work for.”

  “Well, we also got a look at some of your college transcripts. From the look of your thesis, we’re guessing the last thing you wanted to be doing was editing research papers, right?”

  Before he could answer, Nina responded for him.

  “Of course not. Which is why Jeff, I mean Mr. Pepper, thought you might like to write this book with him.”